Oh, the baking disasters! Part I: Shortbread

Scottish shortbread is kind of a holiday tradition for my family. It's a relatively simple food to make, and only has four ingredients. Unfortunately, I'm allergic to two of the four.

A normal shortbread is a mixture of flour, salt, sugar, and butter. Nothing else. So what do you use as a butter substitute when you're allergic to both milk and soy? And will the finicky gluten-free flour really stand up without the butter?

Actually, no. Not really.

I poked around for a recipe that only required the ingredients I had on hand. Several of the recipes used coconut flour, so those were out. Then I found a recipe for a vanilla and chocolate swirl shortbread and decided to try it.

Here's the recipe:

50g (2oz) rice flour
50g (2oz) potato flour
25g (1oz) tapioca (I wasn't sure whether this should be tapioca flour, starch, pearl, or whatever so I used tapioca flour)
.25 tsp xanthan gum
.50 tsp salt
50g (2oz) caster sugar (I assumed this was confectioner's sugar)
1 tsp vanilla essence (I used almond extract)
125g (4.5oz) dairy free margarine (I used coconut oil)

Combine dry ingredients. I stirred the almond extract into the coconut oil. Then I "rub[bed] in the margarine until the mixture combines, using [my] fingertips."

It was a creamy, gooey mess that stuck to my fingers because my hands were warm enough to melt the coconut oil.

Place dough in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Roll the dough out on wax paper (to about 1cm) and cut into rectangles. At this point, I had to put it back into the fridge because the "dough" was melting apart as I tried to put it on the cookie sheet.

Bake for 15-20 minutes.

Within 2 minutes, I knew it was a disaster. The rectangles spread and broke. In the "separating in weird ways" kind of broke.




Despite it not keeping its shape, the texture is actually about right. However, the coconut oil is a bust. The coconut flavor is overpowering, so they're more like coconut oil cookies. Meh. I'm not as much of a fan of coconut oil after these.