Recipe: Gluten-Free Frosted Sugar Cookies

It is no secret that I was overwhelmed this holiday season. Life is just plain busy and the last thing on my list was baking cookies. I felt obligated to make cookies for the kids, so I asked them both which cookies were their favorites and which did they want me to make. Surprisingly, they both said the same thing – frosted sugar cookies. Seriously?

I can’t pay these 2 to agree on anything, so how did they both want the same cookie?  I quit wondering and moved forward.  I was all about simplification, so I grabbed some Pamela’s Baking & Pancake Mix and started to browse Pamela’s website for recipes.

I quickly located this simple recipe for Sugar Cookies:

Sugar Cookies

**Recipe courtesy of Pamela’s Products

1/2 cup butter or margarine (1 stick)
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2-3/4 cups Pamela’s Baking & Pancake Mix

Cream butter and sugar together, add egg and vanilla and beat together. Add Pamela’s Baking & Pancake Mix. Wrap dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Roll out between two pieces of parchment paper until the dough is 3/8 to 1/4-inch thick. Cut out cookie shapes and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Leave space between the cookies, they will spread. Bake at 350° for approximately 12-15 minutes, edges should be light brown. Let cookies cool slightly and use spatula to remove from cookie sheet. OR wrap and freeze dough, then slice and bake for fresh cookies in a 350° preheated oven for 14-17 minutes.

Ideas: Use egg white to wet tops of cookies and sprinkle colored sugar crystals on top before baking, or frost cookies with a mixture of powdered sugar, water, and food coloring after baking.

Note: brown flecks of almond meal will show in the cookies.

The recipe actually seemed simple enough and with my Mom in town to help, things went very smoothly.  Hannah had fun helping to cut the cookies out into shapes after Grandma rolled out the dough.  We let the dough chill for a good hour before rolling out.  The recipe only says to chill for 30 minutes, but we got busy and didn’t get back to it in 30 minutes.  The dough handled very well.

Once the cookies were baked, we let them cool completely before decorating.  Sadly I did not get a picture of the decorated cookies, but I did get one of the “naked” cookies.

The brown flecks you see in the cookies is from the almond meal that is in Pamela’s Baking & Pancake Mix.  We frosted these cookies with Betty Crocker’s Holiday Frosting – it was white with red & green chips in  it and said “gluten-free” right on the side.  As if the frosting was not enough sugar, the kids added red & green colored sugar & sprinkles to the cookies as well.

I was very pleased with the way these turned out.  The cookies had the perfect texture and the frosting was the perfect compliment to the cookies.  I normally like to make my own frosting, but with the bustle of the holiday seasoning, I didn’t need the extra stress of making one more thing.  It is nice to know that there are gluten-free options out there if we need to use them.  I highly recommend this sugar cookie recipe to anyone wanting to make sugar cut-out cookies.