There is not much better than walking into a house and being embraced with the aroma of something baking. When the kids get home from a day at school, it is a special treat to have some fresh cookies waiting for them. I admit though, with the shortage of time that everyone has, my favorite kind of cookies to make are drop cookies. They still have the same great smell when baking, but they don’t require all the extra work of rolling out the dough. 
These Gluten-Free Sour Cream Sugar Cookies can either be rolled in sugar before baking, or topped with icing once they have cooled. After scooping the dough onto the parchment lined baking pan, you can also freeze them and store the frozen cookie dough in a zipper seal bag to bake another day, making it even easier the next time you want some fresh baked cookies.
Yields approximately 45 cookies
Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup sour cream
- 1/2 cup oil (I used canola)
- 1 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 large egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 1/3 cup white rice flour
- 2/3 cup potato starch
- 2/3 cup tapioca starch
- 3 Tbsp cornstarch
- 1 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line your baking sheets with parchment paper.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk together the sour cream, oil, sugar, vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until smooth. Set aside.
- Place all the remaining dry ingredients in a separate mixing bowl and whisk to combine.
- With the mixer running on low, slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Mix on medium speed until completely blended.
- Scoop 2 teaspoons of dough on your baking sheet, leaving 2-inches between cookies to allow for them to expand while baking. Dampen your hands with a small amount of water and roll the scooped dough into a smooth ball. This will give your finished cookies a nice round shape.
- Bake cookies in preheated oven for 12-13 minutes, or until just slightly browned around the outside. Allow cookies to cool for a few minutes before moving them to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Only frost cookies when they are completely cooled. I prefer to frost the cookies just before serving them, so that the icing does not cause a problem when storing them. Store cookies in an airtight container.
NOTE: Cookies can be rolled in sugar before baking. Just spoon the dough into a bowl of sugar, and roll dough to coat in sugar. Form dough into balls and bake as directed.
Frosting
Ingredients:
- 2 cups confectioners’ sugar (icing sugar), sifted
- 1/4 cup softened unsalted butter
- pinch salt
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 3-5 Tbsp heavy cream (enough to get the consistency you want)
- colour – optional
Directions:
- In a tall mixing bowl, beat all the ingredients with an electric mixer until smooth.
- Store in an airtight container until you are ready to frost the cookies.
This recipe was created in hopes of winning a trip from Manitoba Canola Growers to Food Bloggers of Canada Conference 2013, which is hosted by Food Bloggers of Canada. This type of opportunity hasn’t been available to Canadian food bloggers before, but I think it would be a great chance for me to grow and learn as a blogger. *Fingers crossed!*
Thank you for this recipe! Is it my imagination or could this be changed a tiny bit to make a sour cream Snickerdoodle cookie? My dear Aunt Fern used to make a sour cream Snickerdoodle but sadly didn’t leave any recipes. She was the best baker & teacher.
I think they could! You could just roll them in a cinnamon/sugar mixture before baking!
Another great cookie recipe! I love the picture. It just makes me want to eat of of them, or maybe two!
THanks for entering the My cookies are the Best conference.
These cookies look so pretty..I’m sure they disappeared quickly.
Thanks for this– I’ve been looking for a special, but not stressful, cookie to make at my family’s holiday cookie bake. Which is stressful enough! And my niece is on a GF diet, so this is perfect. And looks delicious.
These turned out wonderfully! I did the little balls rolled in sugar for my first batch which were nice (tops were a bit cracked but cookie held together). For the next batch I went ahead and rolled them out and used cookie cutters (had to use a little water to moisten for the rolling out process) and they turned out perfectly even and smooth. My kids absolutely loved them. I’ll be frosting some for my son’s soccer team party this weekend since both he and his best friend are gluten free they can finally have a treat to enjoy. Thanks for this great recipe, we have our official holiday sugar cookie.
Oh I am glad someone has tried with cookie cutters! Growing up one of our halloween and christmas traditions were making sugar cookies and cutting them out to holiday shapes, we would spend a night as a family icing and sprinkling them! I am excited to do this again! Thanks for the wonderful recipe Jeanine!
What is the texture of these cookies like? With traditional baking, I loved to make the soft, cake-like sour cream cookie. Last year, shortly after figuring out my gluten issues, I made the traditional ones for everyone else, but wound up with eczema on my hands from handling the dough. I’ve been looking for a gluten free recipe that would come close, since I don’t care for a crisp sugar cookie. I’m hoping the sour cream would lend the same properties to a gluten free cookie as a traditional wheat flour cookie. I would certainly appreciate some insight. Thanks!
Thank you so much for this recipe! I could not keep my kids away (and they can have gluten) My husband has not had a good sugar cookie in 12 years, until now!! Can’t wait to try other recipes on this site!
Jeanine is making me a believer when it comes to gluten-free baked goods, and I’m not even a baker. It takes me forever to put everything together and actually get them done. I would rather “order” from her if she had a bakery. I have tried two cookie recipes (both delicious), and her biscuit recipe (love these), and look forward to her book. One of these days I might get brave enough to try the cinnamon rolls, she makes them look not so difficult.