I don’t bake much. Make that: at all. I try not to cook much, but my kid’s the only toddler on earth who loves all foods and demands variety. She picks out a new ice cream every week, and loves them all.

I’m quite possibly the most picky person I know. We are horribly incompatible meal partners.

There exist, however, a few things we both enjoy. Cookies happen to be one of them.

Gluten Free Sugar Cookies!

Recipe! (Ish)

2 C gluten-free all purpose flour
1 C white sugar, plus more for rolling the cookies.
1 stick of butter (or Earth Balance or something similar)
1/2 Tbsp brown sugar
1 egg/replacer (I used chia seeds*)
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp xantham gum
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

*Chia seeds are by far my favorite egg replacer. The kid was egg sensitive for a long time, and still can’t eat eggs unless they’re baked into something, so I tried a lot of different things. A few, anyway. Now, even though I could use eggs, I usually don’t have any in the house. So I drop a tablespoon of chia seeds in a little bowl with three tablespoons of water and let it turn to jelly for a few minutes. Apparently a lot of folks grind their chia up first, but that sounds like too much freakin’ work to me, so I don’t.

Mix the room temp butter (or alternative), white sugar, and brown sugar. (I used a hand mixer dealie, but I’ve used a whisk, a fork, and my hands in the past. The hand mixer was a huge technological advancement in cookie-making.) Add egg/egg replacer and vanilla, mix again. Add baking powder, xantham gum, salt, and (gradually) flour.

When the dough seems decent (if you have a short attention span for baking, this will be right around the time your mind starts to wander, or two minutes), make a bunch of 1.5 inch balls. Yeah, that’s out of the excellent 1,000 Gluten-Free Recipes cookbook, but I’m not great with space, so I just tried to make them mostly the same size. This batch should make 24; mine made 22.5. (Ish.) Roll those puppies in more sugar and toss them on a parchment-covered baking sheet, then squash them down with the bottom of a glass or jar. Sprinkle more sugar on top and pop them in the oven at 375 for 12-15 minutes, swapping your cookie sheets halfway through to make sure one pan doesn’t bake unevenly.

Then: eat the freaking cookies.

Note: I don’t know how to bake cookies, but my baker bro assures me that you want to pull them out right around the time the puffy middle drops. In fact, I think you want to pull them either right before or right after that happens, but I don’t remember which. Consequently, my first batch was slightly underdone and my second batch was slightly overdone, though I consider both of those designations well inside the much simpler category of “edible,” and have no complaints.

Voila! Cookies. At some point you should stop eating them so as not to get sick. (Advice I may or may not take myself.) I used Bob’s Red Mill GF All Purpose, and I’d do it again, though I find it does leave a slightly bitter aftertaste that I associate with gluten-free flours. Not sure what that is, but some things have it more than others (I gag at the smell of BRM GF chocolate chip cookie mix, but Betty Crocker GF chocolate chip cookie mix is totally delicious). Enjoy, cookie fans!