Gingerbread cookies are one of my favorite parts of the holiday season. I haven't made Christmas cookies since discovering I had a gluten sensitivity, a sad, sad situation that many gluten-free folks experience. Learning a new kind of baking is scary, and all it takes is one flop to make sure you never make another attempt.
For me, I just never tried. I figured I could never compete with my grandma's gingerbread recipe that I grew up with, and the idea of duplicating her perfectly tender recipe without using wheat flour threw me for a loop. This year, I got over myself. And guess what? The gingerbread cookies I made were nothing short of incredible.
There's a trick to working with gluten-free dough, since it's much stickier than doughs made with wheat flour. It needs to be kept chilled, and once it's been cut with cookie cutters, moving it from one place to another is nearly impossible because it likes to hang onto to everything it touches. The best way to work with gluten-free cookie doughs is to roll it out between two pieces of parchment and then stick it in the fridge for 30 minutes. Once it's chilled, you can cut out your shapes with cookie cutters.
At this point I recommend removing the excess dough to be re-rolled, and then cutting the parchment around the cookies with a pair of scissors. The cookies can then be moved without contorting into ridiculous shapes, and since they're on parchment, they won't stick to the cookie sheet after they're done baking. Once they're done, I move the baked cookies while they're still secured to the parchment, leaving them on the paper until they're completely cooled and not likely to break into pieces.
