Sandies

For the gluten-free bakers, here is a recipe I recently found and tried. It's super easy and seems to go over well. The original was a winner in a recipe contest by an Oregon newspaper:
http://www.oregonlive.com/recipes/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/living/1165017356195340.xml&coll=7
Probably the original was excellent, but I didn't have all the ingredients when I tried it, so here's my version:

NOTE: I used some odd soy spread instead of butter because I was baking for people who shouldn't eat lactose. I imagine real butter should be better (although these really were tasty). Likewise, if anyone with nothing to do wants to try the recipe with 2 1/4 cups of all-purpose real flour in place of the the rice and sticky rice flours and the cornstarch and xanthan gum listed below, I'd love to hear about it.

• 3/4 cup "Soy Garden Buttery Spread"
• 1 egg
• 2/3 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract (maybe a little more, but almond extract has a pretty strong flavour)
• 1 cup rice flour
• 1 cup sweet (also called sticky or glutinous) rice flour
• 1/4 cup corn starch
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
• 3/4 cup roasted, finely chopped pecans
• zest of one lemon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Mix the "butter", egg, sugar, and almond extract thoroughly. Slowly add the dry ingredients to form a very stiff dough. The dough should form one big ball on the paddle of the mixer, hardly sticking to the sides of the bowl (if necessary to obtain this consistency, add more rice flour (either variety) sparingly).

Roll the dough into balls about 1 1/2 inch across (these are rather crumbly when finished, so smaller cookies have a better chance of holding together). Place on greased cookie sheets (they do not fall or "melt" when they are cooking, so you can line them up fairly close to each other) and bake at 375 for 15-18 minutes. The cookies are done when deep cracks appear in their tops; don't bake them much past this point.

Yield: About 25 cookies