Gluten- free Butter Balls (Snowballs)

Well I have been in the test kitchen working to see if I could convert all of my regular holiday cookie recipes to be gluten free...So far my S- cookie recipe was a winner!...So I thought I would try one of my other favorites the Butter Ball! Some people call these Snowball cookies....The thing with gluten free baking is that dough can become crumbly and not hold together because of the lack in gluten, so some sort of binder needs to be added to compensate for that. That is where  the ingredient Xanthum gum comes in. Another ingredient used is Guar gum (Bob's Red Mill brand has both of these)..well I used both in this recipe for insurance because the texture of this cookie can be crumbly to begin with and it worked!....If you don't need this cookie to be Gluten-free you can omit the xanthum and guar gums and just use the same amount of regular flour...I used Bob's Red Mill 1 to 1 baking flour(pictured below) for this and the other cookies I have tested and it has been working really well....Well here is what I did ....Enjoy!

 

 

INGREDIENTS

 

2 1/4 Cups Bob's 1 to 1 flour...or Regular

1/2 Cup Confectioners Sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 Tablespoon Xanthum gum

1 teaspoon Guar gum

1/2 Cup chopped nuts (I used pecans)

1 Cup (2 sticks) soft butter 

1 teaspoon vanilla

More confectioner sugar for rolling cooled cookies in

Here is the flour below

 

 

DIRECTIONS

 

In your mixer with dough hook attachment,  add the flour, sugar, salt and the gums and give it a few rounds of mixing on low to blend

Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until everything is incorporated

It should look like this

It will look a little crumbly...but when you roll into ball and squeeze together from hand to hand it gets moist and comes together.

I used a tablespoon size cookie scoop to measure size and then roll into a ball

Place onto a cookie sheet (I used a silpat)

Bake at 350 for 8 minutes...

bottom will be golden

 

When cool roll into a bowl of Confectioner Sugar

You can store in a seal tight container until serving

(If they last that long!)

This recipe yields about 4 dozen, depending on size

 

**NOTE**

If you don't have a mixer this can be mixed by hand

 

**TIP**

Do not roll these too big...these tend to be better on the smaller side