Gluten-Free Sugar Cookies That Hold Their Shape
Gluten-Free Sugar Cookies That Hold Their Shape October is the month the cookie cutters come out. Halloween is three weeks away, and if your house is like mine, the pumpkins and ghosts start showing up on the kitchen counter long before the 31st. Decorating sugar cookies with kids is one of those simple pleasures that should be easy. But gluten-free sugar cookies have a reputation: they spread. You cut a pumpkin, you get a blob. You cut a ghost, you get a puddle. The shape is the whole point of a cutout cookie, so this matters. The problem is structural. Wheat flour forms a gluten network that holds the cookie's edges while the butter melts in the oven. Without gluten, the butter wins. The cookie spreads before the structure sets, and intricate shapes blur into circles. Start with the flour. A 1-to-1 gluten-free baking blend works, but check that it contains xanthan gum, or add about half a teaspoon per cup of flour yourself. The gum replaces some of the binding power that glut...