Cara's Nog Cookies! (Celebration #14)

For today's celebration, I baked up a huge batch of gluten-free eggnog cookies based on the recipe that featured in Fork and Beans 12 days of Cookiemas. Since I didn't have the pre-mixed baking mix that she recommends, I ended up having to play around with the recipe quite a bit, but I'm really happy with the end result so I'm posting it here!



Cara's Nog Cookies
makes about 5 dozen

Gluten-free flour mix (based on one I saw on the PPK earlier):
1 1/2 c white rice flour
1/2 c coconut flour
1/2 c almond meal
1 c GF oat flour
3/4 c tapioca flour
2 tsps xanthan gum
1 tsp baking powder

3/4 c Earth Balance
1/4 c coconut oil
2 c sugar
1 c non-dairy nog (I used Silk's soy nog)
1 tsp nutmeg, or to taste
1/2 tsp cardamom

For rolling:
powdered sugar
more nutmeg
more cardamom

1. Preheat oven to 350F and line a couple of baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Mix together all of the flour mix ingredients and set aside.
3. Cream together Earth Balance, coconut oil, and sugar, adding a little of the nog if it does not seem to be creaming on its own.
4. Beat in the nog.
5. Mix in the nutmeg & cardamom; taste to make sure your cookies taste noggy enough.
6. When liquid ingredients are spiced to your liking, dump flour in and mix til just combined.
7. Fill wide shallow dish with powdered sugar & some more spices.
8. Drop cookies by the spoonful into powdered sugar, then use your fingertips to gently roll them into balls.
9. Place balls on prepared cookie sheets and press gently in the center of each one with your thumb to flatten slightly.
10. Bake at 350F for 16 minutes, then allow to cool on cookie sheets for at least 10 minutes before moving to wire cooling racks.

I have no idea what's in the Authentic Foods GF baking mix, but I think it must be very different than mine... I had to bake hotter AND longer to get these to a point where they'd ever be cooked all the way through. My first batch came out really bizarrely squidgy (fortunately it was only the first dozen... out of five) and I played from there til I got it right for this particular mix of flours. Oh gluten free baking! You are an exciting new adventure!

Flavorwise, I love these. They're really good. Super noggy and yummers. I am SO GLAD I didn't use quinoa flour because yeah, they don't have that quinoa flour bitterness that I hate so much.

The Emperor was not a super great helper with these (he mixed a little, but actually told me it was my turn to mix again... not something he usually ever does) but once they were baked, really, really, really loved these. He ate four... of the squidgy first batch. He probably would have begged for more but then it was bedtime.

Here he is idly mixing. You can see that his heart wasn't in it today! I wish I had gotten a picture of him enjoying the cookies instead but there you go...