Almond Wheat Free Cookies

These cookies are absolutely amazing. They're incredibly light and crumbly, like a non-stodgy shortbread. I used goats butter instead of marg because I prefer it (although it's a lot of butter!!) and like Mrs Kleidosty I used half a teaspoon of vanilla essence.
They're delicious served with strawberries, yoghurt or crème fraîche and dark chocolate as a dessert.
Even if you're not on a wheat-free diet, these are fantastic cookies in their own right.
Yum!

Our oldest son, who is on the autistic spectrum, has been eating a gluten-free, casein-free diet since the beginning of September. It has been surprisingly difficult to find cookie recipes that meet all of our criteria and are easy to make. For Christmas, I wanted to make cut-out cookies that were safe for my son to eat. I searched online for a GFCF recipe and tried it, much to my disappointment and frustration. The dough was incredibly gooey and impossible to roll out, let alone cut, and even the old "drop by teaspoonfuls" technique proved to be a challenge. I resigned myself to thinking that cut-out cookies just weren't going to be a possibility with this diet. I found these Almond Wheet Free Cookies quite by accident in an attempt to find a regular ol' cookie recipe that didn't require five different types of hard-to-find gluten-free flour. Since all of our gluten-free flours are from Doves Farm, I thought I would scour their website for a recipe. Unfortunately, there are only two (thus far) that comply with our son's diet, this being one of them. However, when I read the words "roll out" and "cookie cutters," I nearly decided against trying them. But I did, and I am so incredibly glad! The recipe was easy to follow, and the resulting dough had a consistency that was almost identical to the regular, glutinous kind of sugar cookie dough. I tweaked it only slightly by adding about half a teaspoon of vanilla extract in place of a few drops, just for some extra flavour. Now for the rolling... I figured if it didn't work, I would just plop spoonfuls on the baking sheet and flatten them with the bottom of a cup. Thankfully, I didn't need to resort to that, although after using cling film on the first attempt and finding it a bit sticky, I decided to try two sheets of greaseproof paper instead. Those worked quite well, especially with a light dusting of g-free flour on the bottom sheet, but I think that using greaseproof paper on bottom and cling film on top might work even better. Oh, and I baked them for ten minutes at the recommended temperature for a fan-assisted oven, which gave them a nice golden-brown colour but not too dark. The resulting cookies look and taste so close to the cut-out cookies I grew up with that it's hard to believe they are GFCF, not to mention egg-less. I give this recipe 5 stars and beyond. Thanks, Gemma... oh, and my kids love the cookies, too! :-)