Lovely Lemon and Honey Ladies (gluten free)

For Christmas one of my oldest and dearest friends gave me cookie cutters to make gingerbread girls (my boys keep telling me it's gingerbread men that are wearing coats. Right, boys!). I just couldn't wait till next Christmas to make them, and who says you actually have to? So this morning my toddler and I made cookies that taste like summer and that make you smile: lovely lemon & honey ladies (and some scary looking lemon & honey dinosaurs too, because one cannot live without dinosaur cookies ever, of course).

These cookies make a great birthday treat too

Even though I try to bake sugar free as well as gluten free I decided to use cane sugar for these cookies, because it makes them more firm and the gingerbread ladies are quite huge, you don't want them breaking as soon as you pick them up. This recipe doesn't use an insane amount of sugar, so I dared to risk it using cane sugar. 
I made a double batch of dough (as Gijs tends to eat half of it straight out of the bowl anyway) so I had two trays of dinosaur cookies and 5 enormous zingy ladies. We did not decorate them, because quite frankly, they are just lovely the way they are. 

Here's the recipe (one batch).

Ingredients:

• 175 grams (6 oz) of gluten free rice flour
• 25 grams (1 oz) of almond flour
• 50 grams (1.75 oz) of cane sugar
• 50 grams (1.75 oz) of butter
• 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar
• half a teaspoon of xanthan gum
• 1 egg
• zest of one lemon
• vanilla seeds (from one vanilla pod)
• 2 tablespoons of honey
• 2 tablespoons of milk if the dough is too dry and won't combine.

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees centigrade (325 degrees fahrenheit).
2. Put all the 'dry' ingredients (everything except the honey, milk and eggs) in a big bowl and mix well. 
3. Add the egg and honey and knead it into a soft dough using the electric mixer. If the dough doesn't combine, but stays crumbly; add the milk, spoon for spoon until it does. 
4. Do not eat all the dough out of the bowl. Yes, this is very important, because the dough is so wonderful, you might just do that and end up with no cookies at all. 
5. Knead the dough on a (rice)floured surface and roll it out into a big slab. I make them rather thick it makes the cookies nice and fluffy. The thinner the dough, the crunchier the cookies become (that's a bit of a "duuuhhh" I know). My kids like fluffy cookies. 
6. Get out your cookie cutters and knock yourself out making cute & funny cookies. 
7. Put them on a baking tray lined with baking parchment. 
8. Put them in the oven and bake them until they are golden. Depending on the oven it takes 12-20 minutes. The lovely ladies took a while, because they are rather large. 
9. Let them cool on a wire rack and serve them with a cup of tea. 
10. Enjoy!