These tender, lightly sweet gluten free sugar cookies are soft but not fragile, so they’ll hold any shape you can imagine—with a thick layer of sweet buttercream frosting.
This soft cut-out sugar cookie has become a staple at the holiday celebrations, baby showers, and birthdays of hundreds of readers for years. And they taste just like Lofthouse!
my take
Nicole’s Recipe Notes
- Classic taste and texture: soft, tender cookies that are lightly sweet with lots of vanilla flavor.
- Perfect for all occasions: they’ll hold any shape, from rounds and basic Christmas stars to Valentine Hearts, spring flowers, Easter bunnies, etc.
- Quick and easy: the dough is made in one bowl, with no chilling needed, and they’re ready to eat in just 30 minutes, start to finish.
- Soft but not fragile: they melt-in-your-mouth, but they’re thick enough that they won’t break. I’ve even shipped these cookies across the U.S. (with icing, not frosting), and they arrived looking perfect!
Cookie ingredients
- Gluten free flour: Try your favorite gluten free flour blend, even if it’s not one of my favorite blends, as long as the rice flour isn’t gritty. If it’s a little too starchy, you may have to add a few drops of water to bring the dough together. Bob’s Red Mill 1-to-1 works well, though!
- Baking powder – helps the cookies puff out and spread a bit so they’re not dense
- Sugars – 1/2 cup granulated sugar sweetens and tenderizes the cookies and and 3 tablespoons of powdered or confectioners’ sugar help them hold their shape
- Butter – adds tenderness, flavor, and moisture
- Egg – binds the cookie dough together, and adds richness
- Vanilla extract – adds depth of flavor
- Salt – also a flavor enhancer, and helps balance the sweetness
How to make gluten free sugar cookies
Whisk the dry ingredients together (gluten free flour blend with xanthan gum, baking powder, salt, granulated sugar, and confectioners’ or powdered sugar). Add the softened butter and press it into the dry ingredients with the back of a spoon until it looks like coarse sand.
Add a beaten egg and vanilla extract, and moisten all of the dry ingredients. Keep working until everything looks uniform, then knead together with clean, dry hands until smooth.
Sprinkle the cookie dough very lightly with more gluten free flour, and roll out about 1/3-inch thick. Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes. Pull away the rest of the dough, gather it into another disk, reroll and cut out more shapes.
Place the raw cut out shapes on a lined baking sheet, and bake at 350°F for less than 10 minutes, just until set, with little to no browning. Let them cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes, then place on a wire rack to cool completely.
Frost with the meringue buttercream frosting or royal icing, or leave plain. Store in a sealed glass container at room temperature, and they will keep their texture for about 1 week.
My Pro Tip
Expert Tips
Measure your ingredients by weight
Since the cookie recipe has so few ingredients, it’s really important that they’re all in perfect balance. You’ll find that the dough resembles moist crumbs and clumps, and you might be tempted to add more moisture.
Make sure you’re measuring your ingredients (especially the gluten free flour) by weight, not volume, for precise results.
Use soft room temperature butter
The term “room temperature” for butter, eggs, and other baking ingredients usually means about 68°F. Here, if the butter is below about 70°F, it may be difficult to work into the dry ingredients evenly.
To speed its softening, chop cold butter into small pieces and let it sit on the counter for about 20 minutes. Float cold eggs in very warm water during that time, too, or they’ll make the butter clump.
Knead the dough until smooth
Once you reach a uniform mixture that resembles moist crumbs and clusters, knead the dough with clean hands to bring it together before rolling it out. You can also use a stand mixer with a paddle attachment to make smooth dough easily, but avoid a handheld mixer with beater attachments or your cookies will have too much air.
Decoration tips
- Spoon a generous amount of frosting on the top of a cookie in a mound. Moisten a small spoon, insert it into the center of the frosting at an angle and swirl lightly in a circle.
- For classic Lofthouse-style frosting, use a small moistened offset spatula or a simple wide butter knife to flatten a mound of frosting into a disk.
- Always let the frosting to set at room temperature until it becomes semi-hard so it’s not so fragile.
- For a truly hard surface, use royal icing in place of frosting. To decorate sugar cookies, I use a #4 piping tip to outline and then “flood” the center, sprinkling decorations immediately before the icing has dried.
Ingredient substitutions
Dairy free
I have successfully replaced the butter in the cookie dough with Melt brand vegan butter. The edges of the gf sugar cookies aren’t quite as clean as they are when you use butter, but the recipe tastes and looks great overall.
Try replacing the butter in the frosting recipe with Spectrum brand butter-flavored nonhydrogenated vegetable shortening. For the milk in the frosting, use any unsweetened unflavored nondairy milk (I like almond milk).
Egg free
There is only one egg in the cookie recipe, so you should be able to replace it with a “chia egg” or a “flax egg” egg substitute (1 tablespoon ground white chia seeds + 1 tablespoon lukewarm water, mixed and allowed to gel). Some readers have reported success with Bob’s Red Mill egg replacer, too. I also think that “Just Egg” liquid refrigerated plant egg should work.
Meringue powder
Meringue powder is made of egg white powder, sugar, a starch, and some stabilizers. If you can’t have eggs, I’d just eliminate meringue powder as an ingredient altogether. The frosting will just be a bit softer.
Prevent your screen from going dark
Make the cookies
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Preheat your oven to 350°F. Line rimmed baking sheets with unbleached parchment paper and set them aside.
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In a large bowl, place the flour, xanthan gum, baking powder, salt, granulated sugar and confectioners’ sugar and whisk to combine well.
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Add the butter, and mix to moisten the dry ingredients with the butter, until the mixture looks sandy, pressing down on the butter with the back of the mixing spoon.
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Add the egg and vanilla, and mix to combine, until the dry ingredients are all moistened with the wet.
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With clean, dry hands, knead the mixture together to form a cohesive dough. It will be thick and relatively stiff, but not dry.
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Place the dough on a clean, flat surface, and roll it into a round a bit less than 1/3-inch thick, sprinkling very lightly with flour to prevent the rolling pin from sticking.
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Using a 2 1/2-inch round cookie cutter (or whatever shape you like), cut out shapes from the dough and place them about 1-inch apart on the prepared baking sheets.
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It can be helpful to remove the surrounding dough from the cutouts, and then peel the shapes off. Gather and reroll the scraps and repeat the process until you’ve used all the dough.
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Place the baking sheet in the center of the preheated oven and bake until the cookies are just set on top, about 8 minutes, depending upon size and shape. The edges of some cookies may brown slightly.
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Remove them from the oven before there is any significant browning, and allow them to cool on the baking sheet until set before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.
Make the frosting
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In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or a large bowl with a handheld mixer, place the butter, milk and vanilla, and mix on medium speed until combined. Increase the mixer speed to high and mix until creamy (about 5 minutes).
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Add the salt, meringue powder and about 3 1/2 cups of confectioners’ sugar. Mix slowly until the sugar is incorporated. Turn the mixer up to high and beat until it becomes uniformly thick.
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Add the optional vanilla seeds and as much of the rest of the confectioners’ sugar as necessary to thicken the frosting, and beat to combine well.
Frost the cookies
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Once the cookies are completely cool, pipe or spoon a generous amount of frosting onto the top of each, and spread into an even layer with a wide knife or offset spatula. Scatter sprinkles, if desired.
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Allow the cookies to set at room temperature until the frosting hardens a bit before stacking them. Store any leftovers in an airtight glass container at room temperature. Freeze any plain cookies for longer storage.
My favorite gluten free flour blends are Better Batter’s original blend gluten free flour and Nicole’s Best multipurpose blend (with added xanthan gum). Bob’s Red Mill 1-to-1 Gluten Free Baking Flour should also work, but add an additional 1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum to the dry ingredients or the cookies will be crumbly.
Cup4Cup changed its formula and doesn’t seem to work as well as it has in the past, so I don’t recommend it. To make your own blend using one of my “mock” recipes, please see the all purpose gluten free flour blends page.
Substitution suggestions.
Dairy-free: In place of butter, try vegan butter in the block. My favorite brands are Melt and Miyoko’s Creamery. Avoid Earth Balance buttery sticks or anything else that is very soft at room temperature, as it contains a lot more moisture and the cookies won’t really hold their shape.
Egg-free: I recommend trying a “chia egg,” Bob’s Red Mill egg replacer, or “Just Egg” liquid refrigerated plant egg.
Alternative to frosting: royal icing or this easy glaze. This will take 12 to 24 hours to set completely.
Note about nutrition information
Nutritional information is approximate, per cookie, and is for the cookies only and does not include frosting or icing of any kind at all.
Serving: 1cookie | Calories: 92kcal | Carbohydrates: 14g | Protein: 0.5g | Fat: 4g | Saturated Fat: 2g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 1g | Trans Fat: 0.2g | Cholesterol: 10mg | Sodium: 48mg | Potassium: 2mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 4g | Vitamin A: 117IU | Calcium: 9mg | Iron: 0.02mg
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
make ahead/leftovers
Storage instructions
Once these cookies are cooled, you can store them plain in a sealed glass container at room temperature. They’ll stay fresh that way for at least 1 week. If you’ve used royal icing and allowed it to set fully, they’ll last up to 2 weeks that way.
With the buttercream meringue frosting, once it’s set, you can stack them and store them in a sealed glass container for up to 2 days.
For longer storage, freeze them. If they’ve been frosting, freeze in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet for 2 hours, then pile them into a freezer-safe zip top bag and freeze for up to 3 months. Defrost at room temperature. Don’t heat cookies with icing or frosting or the topping will melt.
You can also freeze the raw cookie dough. Roll out the dough, cut out shapes, and freeze the rounds in stacks with a light dusting of gluten free flour between them. Wrap them tightly and freeze. When you’re ready to bake, place the rounds on prepared baking sheets and let them defrost before baking as usual.
FAQs
If you’ve got the right ratio of ingredients, you’ll find that your dough resembles moist crumbs and clumps. Try pressing it into a disk. If it doesn’t hold together well, you can try adding water by the drop and kneading it in to the dough until you reach the right consistency. Go slowly, though, since you don’t want a drop more water than absolutely essential, or your cookies won’t keep their shape in the oven.
You probably rolled out your sugar cookie dough a bit unevenly. That means some cookies came out thinner, baking faster and becoming crispier, while others stayed soft.
For best results, try my gluten free drop sugar cookies recipe instead. But if you change your mind mid-recipe, you can use this recipe. Just portion the cookie dough into equal-sized pieces, roll each in your palms into a ball, place it on the baking sheet, and flatten it using the palm of your hand. Bake at 350°F until the cookies appear set all the way to the center. Depending on how thick your cookies are, you may have to increase the baking time.
