What are the holidays without sugar cookies? I really wanted to come up with a fantastic recipe for my fellow “fructmalers” for the holidays and here it is! People with fructose malabsorption really have it rough, so I wanted to get these as close to the real thing as I could. I made so many different batches, trying to get the perfect balance of sweetness and texture. It was a challenge, as you can see by the mess in my kitchen. They have to be wheat-free (thus gluten-free) and they have to be sweetened with dextrose.
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| My messy kitchen, where all the creativeness happens. |
I learned many things trying to create this recipe. The first is that most gluten-free cookies, by nature, are soft. So these are not going to be exactly like your typical cookie made with sugar and wheat flour. They are soft, but you know what? I actually like that! Secondly, the texture is also different in that it doesn’t have the sugary graininess. Dextrose is very fine, so you don’t get that crunch. What you do get is a rich, buttery, lightly sweet and tender cookie. I think they are delicious and the dough is beautiful to work with!
I don’t want to scare away too many readers with my liberal use of almond flour (which I love), so I decided to use a more neutral flour to let the taste of the butter and vanilla come through. I used the Sweet Rice Flour Blend that I’m fond of, but I think you could use any gluten-free flour blend for this recipe. Just make sure it has guar gum or xanthan gum added. I can’t tolerate brown rice flour and sorghum flour is a little iffy for me, so I like to use a white rice flour blend.
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| These cookies are delicious without frosting too. |
Now for the frosting. I just want to say for the record that dextrose alone does not work very well in a typical butter cream frosting. In my opinion, it is strangely and overly sweet. It also did not spread well and the liquid had a tendency to separate. It would have been fun to have the resources (i.e. time and money) to figure out a great butter cream frosting with dextrose, but I had to move on. Instead I wondered if there was something I could add to make the frosting less sweet and more spreadable. Of course, cream cheese! Cream cheese frosting works so much better and the sweetness is entirely adjustable.
Low-Fructose Sugar Cookie Cutouts
makes about 2 dozen cookies
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Ingredients
1 cup powdered dextrose
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup Sweet Rice Flour Blend or other AP gluten-free flour*
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
Directions
- In a large bowl, beat dextrose and butter together with an electric mixer until smooth. Add egg and vanilla and blend while scraping down sides of bowl.
- In a medium bowl, combine the flour, salt and baking powder; slowly add to butter mixture while beating on low until it forms a dough. Cover and refrigerate at least one hour or overnight.
- Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Lightly dust surface with the gluten-free flour and roll dough to 1/4″ thickness. Cut out shapes with cookie cutters.
- Place cookies on parchment lined cookie sheets and bake for 10 – 14 minutes, or until edges start to lightly brown.
- Cool on cookie sheet for five minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. Cool completely before frosting and decorating.
* I use the scoop and level method of measuring my gluten-free flour: use a spoon to lightly scoop flour out of the container into a measuring cup to overflowing. Then use the back of a knife to level it off.
Low-Fructose Cream Cheese Frosting
makes enough to frost one batch of
Low-Fructose Sugar Cookie Cutouts
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Ingredients
1/4 cup butter, softened
4 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 – 3/4 cup powdered dextrose (or to taste)
Directions
- Beat butter, cream cheese and vanilla with an electric mixer until smooth. Slowly add dextrose while beating until smooth and desired sweetness is reached.
- Use to frost one batch of Low-Fructose Sugar Cookie Cutouts.
Mine came out tasty but very cakey :/
Yes, cakey cookies are the result of baking with rice flour and dextrose. I'm glad you liked the taste though!
they look great, could we replace dextrose with fructose and in what proportion?
Well, since the point of the cookies is to be fructose-free, I have not made them with fructose, so I don't know what proportion to replace. Sorry! I hope you find a cookie recipe that works for you!
Where do you get your dextrose from? My mother and grandmother used to make sugar cookies from dextrose resulting in that soft, cakey like consistency. Grocers in our area stopped carrying dextrose probably around the mid 80's and now that I'm much older, I want to try to make this recipe again.
I buy mine online through Amazon
I tried your cookies and they spread out into little pancakes when cooking. I was wondering if you had this happen before and if you could suggest what I could do differently next time. Any help would be appreciated
Will this work with wheat flour rather than rice flour as I wanted the dextrose replacement for cane sugar rather than gluten free. Thanks
I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t know! I would actually recommend using a regular (wheat flour) sugar cookie recipe and just try replacing the sugar with dextrose. Keep in mind that dextrose browns a lot faster, so keep an eye on the cookies so they won’t burn.
Powdered dextrose is 50% sucrose, which has a lot of fructose in it for those of us with malabsorption issues. Wouldn’t confectioners sugar be a better option? Just sifted pure cane sugar?
I think you are confusing dextrose for sucrose. Sucrose (table sugar) is a disaccharide, containing 50% fructose and 50% glucose. Dextrose is the same as glucose and does not contain any fructose since it is a monosaccharide. Hope this helps clear things up!