Gluten free and sugar free Dinosaur cookies

I had forgotten how tough it is to adapt your life to a diet. Cooking, or rather living gluten free has become a way of life in our home. It doesn't matter if I have one person with Celiacs Disease in our home or let's say four, it wouldn't change a thing. We are used to that.
But now that we are limiting our  three year old's sugar intake to see if that helps him, I find myself checking everything in the store over and over again, adapting recipes that were once already adapted and sometimes completely failing at it. It's not as hard as gluten free, because a bit of sugar won't make my little boy sick, as gluten really do make my oldest incredibly sick, but it's still a challenge. Because I want what's best for our son(s).  And so we struggle a bit until this is a regular thing in our household too.

Yesterday my 3 year old an I baked cookies as my cookie dough & batter lover and I often do on Thursday. And not just any kind of cookies, but dinosaur cookies, because both my sons have succumbed to the 'Dinosaurs are cool' virus. We have this favorite gluten free cookie recipe, that we always use, but that contains sugar. Bummer! We decided to change that and turn it into a sugar free version using apple syrup (appelstroop in Dutch). It's a totally Dutch thing that we eat on sandwiches. Yes, us Dutchies, we are weird. We eat sprinkles on our sandwiches and pancakes for dinner. Don't judge us. ;-)

Run, the dinosaurs are back! :-)

Here's the recipe. For my Dutch readers: The Dinosaur cookie cutters were bought at Dille & Kamille.

Ingredients:

• 200 grams (1.6 cup) of rice flour
• 0.5 tablespoon of xanthan gum (to keep your cookies from crumbling)
• 1 teaspoon of glutenfree baking soda
• 125 grams (4.4 oz) of apple syrup. Maple syrup will work too I think!
• orange zest from one orange ( I add 2 tablespoons of gingerbread spices)
• 50 (about a 1/4 of a cup) grams of butter
• 1 egg

Instructions:

• Preheat the oven to 160 degrees centigrade (320 degrees centigrade)
• Put all dry ingredients in a kitchen aid or bowl and slowly add the other ingredients while mixing. Add some extra rice flour if the mixture is too moist, and a bit of milk if it gets too dry.
• Take it out of the bowl, dust the surface and roll out to an even dough, about half a centimeter or half an inch thick. Get out your favorite cookie cutters and cut out about twenty cookies.
• Put them on a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake them in the preheated oven for about 10 minutes.
• Let them cool on a wire rack. If you want, you can decorate them with icing, but my kids love them just the way they are!

Enjoy!