Gluten-Free Shortbread Cookies

February continues its honest work. The temperature has not risen above twenty degrees since last Thursday, which is fine. I am sixty-six years old and I have been through sixty-six Vermont Februaries and not one of them has beaten me yet. The trick with February is not endurance — Vermonters have endurance by default. The trick is contentment. You find what is good in the cold and the early dark and the kitchen and the woodstove and you stay there. You do not wish for March. You let February be February and you find what it offers.

What it offers this week: the slow work of the bean pot, which began Saturday morning as always and produced by Saturday evening a meal that could not have happened in July. The beans absorb the cold somehow — or rather, the cold makes you appreciate them more completely. That is the same thing.

Helen has been making her mother's gingersnaps. Not Christmas gingersnaps — those are different, cutout shapes, decorated. These are the rolled-and-baked kind, small and very crisp, with black pepper in addition to the ginger, which sounds wrong and is not. Her mother made these in February specifically, calling them February cookies, saying there was something in the cold that made you want exactly this: spice and snap and a cup of hot tea. Helen has been making them for forty years in this house. The kitchen smells like her mother's kitchen. I am a man who appreciates continuity.

David called Sunday from Montpelier. The kids have had a stomach bug moving through the house — Teddy first, then Anna, now James is showing symptoms. David sounded tired. Karen sounded more tired. I said the bug will pass. He said he knew. When you have small children and a stomach bug in the house in February in Vermont, knowing that the bug will pass is necessary information but not sufficient comfort. He knows that too. I said come up the first weekend everyone is healthy. He said he would. We are fine. We will be fine.

Six weeks until maple season. I have been looking at the trees. They stand in the cold and they wait, and inside them the sap is building pressure that the freeze-and-thaw of early March will release into something worth working for. I understand this about trees: patience is not passive. It is stored energy. It is the whole winter, compressed into what spring will become.

Helen’s gingersnaps are hers, and I would not attempt to replicate them here — forty years of February muscle memory in those hands. But the spirit of them, the idea of a small crisp cookie that earns its place beside a cup of hot tea on a cold afternoon, is something I can offer in another form. These gluten-free shortbread cookies have that same quality: they snap cleanly, they are not too sweet, and they ask nothing of you except a few honest ingredients and a quiet kitchen.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 18 min | Total Time: 33 min | Servings: 24 cookies

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
1/2 cup powdered sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour blend (with xanthan gum)
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 tablespoon granulated sugar, for finishing (optional)

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat your oven to 325°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Cream the butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter and powdered sugar together with a hand mixer or stand mixer on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the vanilla extract and mix to combine.
Add the dry ingredients. Sift the gluten-free flour, cornstarch, and salt together into the butter mixture. Mix on low speed until the dough just comes together — it will be soft but should hold its shape when pressed. Do not overwork it.
Shape the cookies. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface (use your gluten-free flour). Roll to about 1/4-inch thickness. Cut into rounds or rectangles with a 2-inch cutter, or simply slice into fingers about 1 by 3 inches. Arrange on prepared baking sheets, spacing about 1 inch apart.
Finish and bake. Dust lightly with granulated sugar if using. Bake for 16–18 minutes, until the edges are just beginning to turn pale gold. The cookies will look underdone at the center — that is correct. They firm as they cool.
Cool completely. Let the cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. Allow them to cool fully before eating — this is where the snap develops. They will keep in an airtight tin for up to one week, though they rarely last that long.

Nutrition (per serving)

Gluten-Free Shortbread Cookies — The Snap and the Cold