I gotta admit, I’m a total sucker for a good sugar cookie.  I’m a sugar cookie girl. They are about the best treat ever.  They are also (in my opinion) the hardest gluten free treat there is to make.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe everyone else out there has figured out some magic way to make a delicious, soft gluten free sugar cookie and I’m the only one that doesn’t know about it.  If that’s the case, I wish someone would tell me.  The problem is that other types of cookies can rely on secondary ingredients to change the flavor and the texture to be more like a regular ones (peanut butter, chocolate chips, oatmeal etc.), but with sugar cookies, you’ve got nothing but flour… and a lot of it.

Here in Utah, we’ve got the Swig and all the other drive-thru soda/sugar cookie shops.  Apparently it’s a Utah thing, although I really don’t understand why the whole world hasn’t figured out that the best way to get your mid-afternoon caffeine and sugar fix is through the drive-thru.  Probably because Utah has an unusually high population of young, tired moms that don’t want to unload their minivan full of toddlers just to get a Diet Coke.  Anyway, the Swig seems to have brought the sugar cookie back into style, they are thick, they are soft, they are rich, they are pink and they are just so good.

My husband’s never had one (poor man) because, of course, he eats gluten free.  Lucky for us, I don’t, so this works out perfectly.  I love sugar cookies, I eat sugar cookies, I enjoy me a Swig sugar cookie, I bake gluten free, I bake gluten free Swig cookies… and now I share.

Let me warn you that this is kind of a time consuming process.  It isn’t a hard process, but, like most sugar cookie recipes, there’s a lot of chilling involved.

Fluffy Gluten Free Sugar Cookies

• 4 ½ cups your favorite gluten free flour blend*
• ½ tsp. xanthan gum
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• ½ tsp. salt
• 1 cup softened butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• ¼ cup full fat sour cream
• ¼ cup cooking oil
• 2 tsp. vanilla

Sugar Cookie Frosting

• 1/2 cup softened butter
• 1/4 – 1/3 cup full fat sour cream
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 2-3 cups powdered sugar
• food coloring of choice

*First – your flour blend.  Some like to buy theirs off the shelf, I like to mix mine.  I used a pretty common blend with these cookies – 2 cups asian white rice flour, 2/3 cup potato starch, 1/3 tapioca starch and 1 tsp. xanthan gum

• Take your dry ingredients and toss them in a bowl together, mix them well and set aside.
• Put butter and sugar in your mixer and beat well, until light colored and kinda fluffy then add your eggs, one at a time, mixing well between each egg.  Add the sour cream, oil and vanilla (as well as any other extracts you’d like.  Sometimes I put in a tsp. of lemon extract or coconut, whatever sounds good to you)
• Once wet ingredients are all mixed well, add the dry ones.  No special way or anything, just don’t throw 4 1/2 cups of flour in your mixer and turn it on high. I speak from experience.  Mix it well and scrape the bowl to make sure you’ve got it all worked in. Your dough won’t be stiff like cookie dough usually is.  It will be pretty sticky, almost gummy, but it’ll taste good.
• You can try to bake right away, but I prefer to stick my dough in the fridge for a few hours.  The cookies will hold their shape better and the dough is easier to work with.
• When you are ready to bake, preheat to 350 and LINE YOUR COOKIE SHEETS WITH PARCHMENT PAPER.  I’m dead serious.
• Take big scoops of dough (maybe 2 or 3 Tablespoons) and plop them on your cookie sheets, leaving plenty of room for them to spread out.  I like to shape them into sorta thick, disk shapes because it helps them to spread better as they bake.  Like so…

• Bake for 8-9 minutes.  When you pull them out, they won’t look done in the middle.  Pull them out anyway.

• Allow to partially cool on cookie sheet and transfer to a cooling rack to finish.
•  CHILL THE COOKIES IN THE FRIDGE.  I know, you want to eat your cookie now, and you can, but the texture will be more crumbly, not thick and soft like a Swig cookie.  I stack them, put them in a tupperware with a lid, and give them a few hours.
• Once cool, frost to serve with the frosting recipe listed and enjoy!

I hope this recipe works as well for you as it does for me.  My family loves these.  The kids just hound me, harass me, hover over me until I start handing them out.  They be good.