Soft and chewy GLUTEN FREE Sugar Cookies, originally uploaded by Kate Chan.
FINALLY!
I finally have a chance to share a recipe with you!
The Chicklet had a couple days of all day daycare this week as school begins again for me next week and I am moving classrooms. She did AMAZINGLY well….. Mommy on the other hand? Well, I called *my Mommy* every morning I dropped her off because *I* was a wreck! I swear, the world goes ’round because of the love from our moms, huh?
I’ve made several batches of these sugar cookies to test the texture. This recipe is for the overwhelming voted-for, soft and chewy version. (Although if you voted for crunchy and melt-in-your-mouth, I’ll satisfy your cravings with my next post… piece-o-cake!) I tried to frost the cookies a couple times – and the frosting was a HUGE hit with my nephews, but the adults preferred these. I thought the frosting would help keep the cookies soft and chewy, but it turns out – no help was needed!
And my babe – who really doesn’t like cookies (!!) or cakes, etc – likes little nibbles of these. The soft chewy texture and sweet little nibble satisfies something in her. However, her true sweet-tooth passion is fruit. Any kind of fruit – especially if Daddy is eating it. Yeap… she’s a food thief and a mighty-cute one at that!
So… without much more ado and fan-fair – ’cause let’s face it – my mommy haitus has been going on long enough – I”VE MISSED BLOGGING!!!! – here’s the recipe and few crucial tips:
SECRET TO SUCCESS: Start with room temperature butter (or Earth’s Balance)!
Gluten Free Soft and Chewy Sugar Cookies
Recipe makes 2 – 2 1/2 dozen cookies
Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter or Earth’s Balance
1/4 cup whipped cream cheese
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/3 cups gluten free flour mix
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
Directions:
- Cream together butter, whipped cream cheese and sugar until light and fluffy – about 3 to 4 minutes.
- Add the egg and vanilla. Beat for another minute.
- Stop the mixer. Scrap down the sides of the bowl. Dump all of the dry ingredients (starting with the flour) on top of the creamy mixture. Mix well.
- Preheat oven to 375F.
- Scoop by the tablespoon and drop on to parchment paper at least 2 inches apart. (The cookies spread.)
- Bake for 8 – 10 minutes or until the edges begin to turn golden brown. (Time may vary depending on your oven – so watch the color of the edges!)
- Remove the cookies from the oven and allow to cool completely on the parchment paper before moving.
- Frost, Eat and/or Store in an airtight container.
Happy Cookie Baking and Munching!
~Kate
Gluten Free Gobsmacked 
Yum, I may have to try these out tomorrow. I have all of the necessary ingredients just waiting… Thank you!
My son is allergic to eggs and nuts also, what would be a suitable substitute for eggs in the recipe??? Going to try and make train shaped cookies for his 3rd birthday that his guests can decorate instead of a cake…but will try to do egg free cupcakes for him to blow out candles….any ideas??
Miranda
Kate – these look delicious and very kid-friendly. With a new grandchild on the way, I’m starting to think about these things! Thanks!
Ellen
Yum!! Those look absolutely delicious =D. I love chewy cookies!
Good Luck with school and daycare!
look at her little tummy—she is getting so cute
So appealing. Hard to beat a plain sugar cookie IMO. 🙂 Love the chicklet … so glad SHE’s dealing with day care well. 😉
Shirley
I love sugar cookies…haven’t had them in so long. I looked at the gf blend you use and it’s almost exactly like mine, which is great because I could make these tomorrow. I bet they’d be fabulous with some ice cream in the middle. 🙂
Miranda, you can use 1 tbsp of flaxseed meal and 3 tbsp of water to sub for an egg.
My son just asked for sugar cookies and the only recipe I had was a roll-out kind. This will make things much easier! Thanks.
I was wondering where you get the superfine flours? I have not been able to find them….and once when I did….well my checkbook burst into tears!!!
Thanks
Ronni
You can buy them online (Amazon) or in Asian markets. (The Asian market option is BY FAR easier on your wallet!) 🙂
Good luck!
Is there a way to make your own? I live in a small town in N. Central WA. 150+ miles to the nearest Asian store….
I made these yesterday. They were amazing! I followed the recipe exactly, except I used the Gluten Free Pantry’s French Bread and Pizza Mix as my GF flour instead of mixing my own. (We use this mix in most of our baking.). The only suggestion from people was to add a touch of cinnamon and sugar on top of the cookie. I think I will try that way today and let you know how it goes. I didn’t have parchment paper so I greased the cookie sheet and it worked fine.
I just made these again and rolled the tops in cinnamon sugar before putting them in the oven. They came out perfectly and were a big hit. I will make these cookies both ways. Now, if I could just stop eating them before dinner!
The cinnamon sugar mixture was 1 Tbsp. Cinnamon to 3 Tbsp. Granulated sugar.
Those look wonderful! The recipe list says “whipped cream cheese”. Does that mean you have to whip the cream cheese before measuring? Just making sure.
Ohhh…good question – I had the whipped variety on hand (it’s already purchased “whipped” so it’s much lighter and easier to spread). If you don’t have access to that, I would use a Tablespoon less of the regular cream cheese as a substitute. 🙂 Hope this helps! -Kate
Yes, it does! 🙂 Thanks!
Kate, just want to say that I thank you for your website! My daughter has recently been diagnosed with celiac along with allergies to cow’s milk, eggs, corn, and wheat. My question is what can be substituted for the whipped cream cheese in your recipe? I have not had a lot of success with baking cookies, they all seem to spread out flat on the cookie tray. Any suggestions would be great!
I would try Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese as a cream cheese replacement.
🙂
Kate
Kate…I dont cook GF but my Niece has Celiac and I was looking to see about making her cookies for a party…I can tell u a secret i learned at a cookie class…if you put the cookies in the freezer for 5 min before you bake them it eliminates spreading
I subbed the egg to make them vegan. Nobody believed these where GF! Next time I’m going to try making them corn free, using gaur gum instead of xanthan, and making my own tofu cream cheese. FYI~silken tofu contains corn!
Wonderful recipe! I made a batch for my 5-year-old daughter’s Christmas party at school. They are tasty! My non-gluten free son asked if I “put wheat flavoring in them” so they must have been great!
“Wheat flavoring” !!! OH! That cracked me up!
I just made these for Christmas..I know its Christmas Eve… this is the year of procrastination.. anyway
My (very critical of GF food) Mother has been eating these like crazy! She said these are better then any sugar cookie she has had and she just had some made by a major non GF name today! so I think that says something. She likes hers more crunchy so when the 10 minutes were up I turned off the oven and I just left them in the oven for another 5 minutes..They were great the edge got very crispy but the inside was still chewy.
I made a double batch and there almost gone I will have to make a quadruple batch if I want to have any end up in the freezer. I’m going to bake some and freeze them and I’m going to try to freeze some raw dough and see what happens it would be nice to be able to just grab 10 and bake them when my son needs a cookie fix…I’ll let you know how it works!
I hope you have a wonderful first Christmas with Zoe!!
Thank you so much for this wonderful recipe. I made the cookies plain, with sprinkles, then another time put mint chocolate chips in, and each time, so so so GOOD 🙂 It’s such a treat to have a cookie that my husband wants to eat and I find enjoyable. Thank you!
First off, thank you so much for all your recipes! They have been a great inspiration to my own cooking and a life saver when I first started eating gluten free. I wanted to ask if there is a way to make superfine rice flour at home?? any suggestions? Thanks!
I noticed that your sugar cookies had the GF mix but then you still added more xanthan gum, what is the reason for this? Thanks
My mix uses xanthan gum, but not enough to hold the cookies together. So, that’s why I added a bit more. 🙂
~Kate
After a busy Christmas and New Year trying all kind of new recipes, things have finally settled down to somewhat ‘normal’, if there is such a thing. At any rate, I just wanted to say that I made the sugar cookies using your recipe. I used applesauce (1/3 cup) in place of the egg, guar gum instead of xanthum, added 1/4 more tsp of GFCF baking powder, and was blessed to find a GFCFDF cream cheese. I couldn’t bake them fast enough! As quick as they were coming out of the oven they were gone!! Needless to say, I didn’t have any to put on the plate for Christmas, but I made two recipes and I heard nothing but great reviews! This sugar cookie recipe got me motivated to try several other recipes, ie. PB Kisses (couldn’t find dairy, gluten free kisses so I just used 3 or 4 chips in each cookie), No bake Oatmeal cookies, etc. If anyone is interested in these recipes, I would be happy to forward them to Kate and have her post them if she is interested. Kate, just let me know. I’m happy to share! Just a note…anyone who is allergic to cow’s milk and still gets a hankering for caramel, use coconut cream for the heavy whipping cream. It works! The taste is a little different, but good! I used white organic sugar, but next batch I’m going to use brown sugar. I think that made a difference in taste. I purchased it at an Asian store. I have a little left and I am going to try whipping it with sugar and GFCF vanilla to see if I can make homeade whipped cream. Yum!
thank you!
Great recipe! Any secrets on stopping them from flattening out so much?
My husband is a celiac and has very bad reactions to xanthum gum and guar gum. This makes things difficult. Is there anything that I can use for substitutions? sure jell?
Thank You
Fabulous cookies!! I’ve been gluten free for about 6 months now and these are the first baked good I’ve made that tasted just like the real deal. Amazing!! They made my Christmas!!!
Thank you so much for your recipes. They are so helpful to me as all my munchkins need gluten free. I wanted to know if you felt the cookie would hold up if I were to roll out this dough and make cut outs?
Thanks so much!
I use this recipe for my roll out cookies without fail:
https://glutenfree.wordpress.com/2007/12/13/gf-christmas-roll-out-cookies/
anybody made these in high altitude??
hi there! so i tried to make these cookies following the recipe exactly – and although they were super chewy and tasted really good, they were extremely thin and really buttery (to the point of being greasy). your cookies in the picture, on the other hand, look a little thicker and not greasy. any ideas as to why this may have happened or what i could do to attain a texture more similar to yours?? my baking soda might be a little old, but i wasn’t sure if that would cause these issues? thanks!!
I have a family member who’s allergic to dairy and soy. What could I use as a substitute for the cream cheese?
I have heard AMAZING reviews of Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese. I bet that would work.
-Kate
I looked up the ingrediants and unfortunately it has soy. Guess I’ll just have to keep looking
Sorry, Steph. I knew it was GF. but duh…tofu… my brain lapse. (Happens a lot!)
What about using coconut oil for the cream cheese?
These cookies were delicious. Though mine spread all over the cookie sheet like a big cookie cake. I will try again with the butter/earth balance at room temp andpossibly freezing the batter for 5 minutes prior to baking. Also, I probably made them too big as I did not read the recipe fully, just charged in. Note for your cow’s milk allergies that whole foods sells goats milk cream cheese. It’s delicious and works well in this recipe and probably tastes better than tofu cream cheese.
I made these cookies and they were a total flop. I can’t figure out what I did wrong. 😦 They all ran together and were a giant mess. Were also super super paper thin once I was able to get one cookie from not running into the next. Plenty of room between and tiny scoops too and they still ran together. Wanted to make these for my new boyfriend who loves sugar cookies. Rats.
Oh Rhonda – I’m sorry to here they didn’t work for you. =( Can you tell me which flour mix you were using? Since they all absorb water/liquids a little differently, I’ve been trying to figure out if there is an easy way to determine which mixes will work best for what.
-Kate
I used Carol Fensters flour mix version. I’m going to try using newer baking soda but I’m not convinced yet that’s the issue as it isn’t that old.
I have been cooking and baking gluten free for about two years now and I have to say this recipe is AMAZING, these cookies turned out perfectly and they are even better than any normal recipe cookie I’ve ever made, thanks so much for this, it is getting easier to find gluten free recipes but this is now on the top of my list!