12 Weeks of Christmas, Week #4 Albino Gingerbread Men

It is week 4 into 12 Weeks of Christmas Cookies.

I was wondering whether it is still too early to be introducing cookies with the festive colours of green and red.After all, week 4 means that we are STILL 8 weeks away from Christmas.

But, that’s pretty subjective isn’t it? We could be: We are ONLY 8 weeks away from Christmas!

So I’ve decided to play it cool, slowly incorporating the colours, bit by bit. Starting from drawn green and red features on my troop. Nothing too gaudy here. Yet.

And these cookies, inspired by i-bake-for-you are just it!

Being a snow-washed colour, these cookies are also like blank canvases, so ready to take the merry colours of the season.

They are also made from tapioca starch. Now, i am not a flour expert here, but i think these are gluten free (can anyone clarify on that?). Because no matter how much i kneaded the dough, the familiar gluten strands didnt form.

But having said that, i think the fact that these are gluten free made these cookies really fragile (again, is this accurate?). They are of this melt-in-your-mouth, sandy texture.

You dont really need to chew them, u can just break these cookies by pushing it against the roof mouth with your tongue. It will pretty much shatter and dissolve on its own. Geez, am i even making sense here??

Ah, my smart looking, friendly, albeit brittle troop.

And of course, some casuaties are inevitable aren’t they. No biggie, just pop them into your mouth and none will be the wiser. 🙂

I didn’t follow the recipe published on I-bake-for-you as it called for stir frying that tapioca starch. I wasn’t interested  in a creating flour bath in my kitchen,  instead i settled on this ingenious recipe which called for microwaving the said starch. Ah!

Recipe adapted from Little Corner of Mine (Thanks for sharing!)

Ingredients:

-2 1/2 cups tapioca flour/tapioca starch
-1 Tbp. butter, melted
-1 egg yolk (from large egg)
-1 cup icing sugar
-120ml thick coconut milk (or coconut cream)

Method:

1. Place a paper towel on a microwave safed bowl, add the tapioca flour and microwave for 1 minute. Set aside and let it cool. (You can fry the flour in the wok if you don’t have a microwave.)

Microwave extra tapioca flour for standby (to flour the surface) and kneading purposes.

2. Sift tapioca flour and icing sugar in a big bowl. Add melted butter, yolk & coconut milk. Knead until the dough is pliable. (If the dough is wet or soft, add more tapioca flour, 1 Tbp. at a time and knead until it becomes a harder dough. Likewise, if it’s too dry, add more coconut milk).

3. Roll out the dough on lightly floured surface to about 3mm thickness. Cut into shapes with a cookie cutter (Or you can use the kuih bangkit mould (this required longer baked time). Arrange on lined baking tray and bake at 350’F for 15 minutes. It will puff when baked.

Again, i thank Abby for hosting the wonderful event! I am excited to see what the other cookie makers do this week!