Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Gluten Free Olive Shortbread

For the most part, I avoid gluten-free baking. I've found it in many cases to be sort of depressing, a sad facsimile of a sham, a shadow of the glutinous original. I just eat around wheat products, and for the most part, I don't miss it. But sometimes I get a craving for baking, not just for eating the sweet, but for the process. I miss pinches of baking soda and folding in eggs.

I've noticed, though, in the gluten-free baking I have attempted, that the results generally yield a fairly dense what-ever-it-is. This lends itself to some things. I once made a delicious gluten-free lemon olive oil provencal cake, with lavender frosting. It was flat and dense, but that somehow worked.

So... in these colder months I've been pining for a sweet smelling, warm house. I remembered these cookies my stepmother brought back from Paris once, I think from O&Co--black olive cookies. They were brittle and salty and sweet and olive-oily.

I discovered in the internets that they are a type of french cookie called Scourtines, typically made with niscoise olives. So, I amalgamated a few recipes and came out with this:

1 1/2 stick butter
1/3 c sugar
1 3/4 c Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Flour
a pinch of xanthum gum, just to be safe
3/4 c kalamata olives, pitted and chopped
1/4 c dry cured black olives, pitted and chopped
a pinch of xanthum gum, just to be safe

Preheat oven to 350, grease cookie sheet
Beat butter until smooth, combine sugar. Sift in the flour and xanthum gum, stirring until totally mixed. Stir in olives.
Drop a spoonful of cookie dough onto the greased cookie sheet, about one every two inches (they spread out a lot). Bake until a bit golden.

They were really very good. They did not have that "I am deprived because of food allergies and this is what it tastes like" flavor which I find so bitter; they were utterly rich and salty and brittle and everything I wanted them to be.

1 comment:

  1. Made these this morning and do love the flavor. Mine seem to be a little "shorter" than yours--perhaps I was too shy with the xanthum gum?

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