Gluten Free Oatmeal Cookies

*Updated (1/11/2009) : I left the eggs out of the original ingredient list. I also just made these with agave nectar in place of the sucanat and added some chocolate chips. They came out great, so I added that as another option. Note that using the agave nectar makes the cookies brown more quickly, and may shorten the cooking time.

Today we had a few snow flurries which brought such excitement to my boys. They were screaming and threw on their coats and ran outside not to miss a minute of this rare event in North Carolina. Just the smell of snow in the air makes me want to cook. While growing up, I lived in a small town and I have fond memories of my mother in the kitchen preparing food on snowy days just in case the snow shut down our town. So today, I made Gluten Free Oatmeal cookies, not something we would need to survive a storm, but as a way to celebrate the New Year and the last day of Christmas vacation. To our best memory our youngest son had never had oatmeal cookies and now that our case of Bob's Red Mill Oats had arrived, it was a recipe that had to be conquered...



I adapted the Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Oatmeal Cookie recipe to lower the sugar and made adjustments for other allergies in our household. They were delicious.

Gluten Free Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Flour
2 cups Gluten Free Rolled Oats
1 cup Earth Balance Buttery Sticks
1/2 cup Wholesome Sweetener's sucanat or 3/8 cup Agave nectar
2 Tablespoons Now Foods Vegetable Glycerine*
2 Large eggs
1 teaspoon maple flavor
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 cup organic raisins

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Beat butter, sucanat/agave, and vegetable glycerine together until smooth. Add maple flavoring and eggs; beat well. In a separate bowl, whisk flour, allspice, nutmeg, baking soda, salt and xanthan gum. Stir flour blend into wet ingredients. Add oats and raisins and mix well. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Press down with hands. (These cookies did not spread.) Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Cool for a minute then transfer to a wire rack. Makes about 20 cookies

*Note: 1 Tablespoon of vegetable glycerine replaces 1/4 cup of sugar