Christmas Cookie Week: Gluten Free Thumbprint Cookies

Welcome to Blackbird Bakery’s Gluten Free Christmas Cookie week. Like last week, I will be publishing a new cookie recipe every day to keep so be sure to circle back around to see just what I’ll be serving to all my guests this year, gluten free or not.

So to get things started, I chose my Christmas nostalgia cookie: the thumbprint. I made hundreds if not thousands of these over the years with my mother and grandmother, and now I get to make thousands of them with Leo.

I honestly can’t remember a single Christmas without thumbprint cookies, and this gluten free version is so delicious no one will be missing the gluten, including Santa. What I love the most about these babies is you can fill them with such a wide range of preserves and marmalades, you can make your holiday cookie tray look like a mosaic of stained glass.

The thumbprint may be simple, but since this is the first year I’ve had them since my diagnosis nearly a decade ago, they are my sparkle pony. Light the trees and ring the bells, because I think Christmas is here!

Gluten Free Thumbprint Cookies

60 g. or ½ cup glutinous rice flour
60 g. or ½ cup tapioca flour
45 g. or ¼ cup potato flour
40 g. or ¼ cup cornstarch
40 g. or ¼ cup sorghum flour
100 g. or 1 scant cup confectioner’s sugar
40 g. or 3 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoons guar gum

11 tablespoons unsalted butter, diced, cold
3 egg yolks
1 ¼ teaspoons almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

selection of preserves and marmalade for filling like blueberry, raspberry, fig, orange, apricot, strawberry and ginger.

Preheat oven to 400°F and line two cookie sheets with either parchment paper or silpats.

Combine all the dry ingredients in the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on the lowest setting to combine. Add the diced butter continue to mix on the lowest setting until the mixture looks like damp sand. Add the egg yolks and the extracts and mix on high until the dough folds in on itself.

Using a 1 ½ retractable ice cream scoop, spoon out the dough and roll into a ball. Repeat until all your dough is transformed. Place on your cookie sheets with an inch and a half between them, staggering the rows for a nice even bake.

Using your index finger, press an indention into each round. Then carefully fill each indentation with a variety of fillings. Fill just to the top of the cookies.

Bake for 7-10 minutes and the cookies have just taken on a hint of color and the preserves are melted.

Makes 36 cookies.