Missing peanut butter cookies? These allergy friendly and vegan Gluten Free SunButter cookies are like a cross between shortbread and a soft cookie. They are delicious and completely nut free!
We’ve got another great cookie recipe today! Since “cookie” is in my name (amy blog name, that is), I plan on living up to that and including cookie recipes regularly on the blog 🙂
Peanut Butter cookies have been a personal favorite of mine for years, but since my kids have peanut allergies, we don’t keep peanut butter in the house. I was determined to create a SunButter version of my favorite peanut butter cookies that are egg-free and don’t turn green.
SunButter can turn green?? Yep, it happens. SunButter (and ground sunflower seeds) tends to turn certain recipes a green color, but I have discovered that only happens when I use baking soda or baking powder. The pH change in the recipe can cause the naturally occurring chlorogenic acid in the sunflower seeds (and SunButter) to turn a green color.
Since I wanted my peanut-free SunButter cookies to look just like regular peanut butter cookies, so I skipped the baking soda and baking powder, making these delicious Gluten-Free SunButter Cookies a nice golden color with a nice shortbread texture. So yummy!
I got the general idea for this recipe from one of my favorite peanut butter chocolate chip cookie recipes that had that wonderful shortbread texture, but since these are gluten-free and egg-free I had to start from scratch creating the recipe and came up with my own.
I went through several baking sessions little tweaks here and there to get the cookies just right and keep them a bit healthier, but I finally hit on this recipe that is perfect. P.S. the cookie dough tastes pretty awesome, too!
How to make SunButter cookies
I used baking Stevia in the Raw for these to help reduce the sugar, but if you’d like to use all cane sugar for this recipe, replace the baking Stevia with unbleached cane sugar, not brown sugar, or there will be a bit too much moisture in the dough.
When you mix the dough for these cookies, the dough will seem dry and crumbly at first, but resist the urge to add anything extra to the recipe. This is exactly how the dough should be. If you add any additional milk or oil to the recipe, the cookies will spread out a bit and the texture will be different.
Once you’ve mixed everything up, press the dough crumbles into a big ball, then pinch off the amount of dough you need for each cookie, roll into balls, then flatten on the cookie sheet with a fork.
You won’t need to put the fork in flour or anything before pressing the cookies down, these have enough oil to keep the fork from sticking to the cookie dough.
Want some chocolate in these cookies? Add some allergy friendly mini chocolate chips, my kids love those! If you add mini chips, just press the cookies down with your fingers to flatten instead of a using a fork. Who can resist chocolate chips and peanut butter SunButter!
After these cookies have baked, they will be a bit crumbly until they cool off. Make sure to let them cool off for about 5-10 minutes on the cookie sheet before removing to the cooling rack.
Once they cool, these SunButter cookies won’t be crumbly, but when they’re hot they tend to fall apart a little since they are a bit like shortbread. Wait a few minutes for them to cool, you won’t be disappointed!
Allergy friendly blog hop
I got together with 10 of my fellow free-from bloggers to share some delicious allergy friendly cookie recipes perfect for fall!
Our allergy friendly blog group is also hosting a KitchenAid mixer giveaway on Instagram, go enter to win!
- Allergylicious – Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars (V, Top 8 Free, GF)
- Life After Wheat – Copycat Swig Sugar Cookies (GF, SF, NF)
- Zestfull – Chocolate Chip Chickpea Cookies (Top 8 Free, GF)
- Veggie Inspired – Soft Baked Pumpkin Cookies with Maple Frosting (V, GF, SF, NF)
- Flippin’ Delicious – Gluten Free Snickdoodles (Top 8 Free)
- The Fit Cookie – SunButter Cookies (GF, DF, SF)
- Chelsey Amer Nutrition – Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies (Top 8 Free, GF, V)
- Celiac and The Beast – Vanilla Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies (GF, DF)
- Eat at Our Table – Apple Spice Snickerdoodles (GF, DF option)
- The Urben Life – Pumpkin Spice Sugar Cookies
Check out our other allergy friendly cookie recipes:
- Best Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Gluten Free Snickerdoodle Cookies
- Top 8 Free No Chill Sugar Cookies
- Vegan No Bake Cookies (aka Eskimo Cookies)
- Gluten Free Chocolate Peppermint Cookies
Tools you’ll need for this recipe:
Gluten-Free SunButter Cookies (Vegan)
Ingredients
- 2 Tablespoons ground flax seed
- 2 Tablespoons water
- ½ cup SunButter
- ¼ cup natural palm shortening
- ⅓ cup packed brown sugar
- ⅓ cup baking Stevia in the Raw
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¾ cup Authentic Foods superfine sorghum flour
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and set aside
- In a small cup, stir together the flax seed and water. Set aside
- In a medium bowl, with a hand blender, beat together the SunButter and palm shortening until creamy
- Beat in the brown sugar, Stevia in the Raw, vanilla, and the flax water mixture
- Add the sorghum flour and salt to the SunButter mixture and beat together until blended and a thick but crumbly dough forms. Press the dough together into a large ball
- Pinch off pieces of cookie dough and roll into balls about 1-1/2 inches in size, then press a fork cross-wise into the dough to slightly flatten the cookies
- Bake the cookies on the prepared cookie sheet for 13-14 minutes
- Allow cookies to cool for about 5 minutes on the cookies sheet before removing them to a cooling rack
- Enjoy!
Nutrition
We recently updated the photos in this post, check out our older photos:
Sarah Jane Parker is the founder, recipe creator, and photographer behind The Fit Cookie which she founded in 2011. Sarah is based in Wyoming and has been managing food allergies for herself and her 2 children for over 20 years. Sarah was also a certified personal trainer for 12 years, as well as a group fitness instructor, health coach, running coach, and fitness nutrition specialist.
I’m drooling just looking at these! I love baking with ground flax, I’ll have to check out that sorghum flour. YUM 🙂
Thanks Jenna! I can’t have a lot of brown rice flour, so I use sorghum flour instead. It’s a great substitute for brown rice flour pretty much 1-to-1, and it’s whole grain!
We love making SunButter cookies around here. Or basically anything with SunButter…. it’s just a life saver. And these cookies look delicious! I’ll have to try them with Stevia in the Raw next time.
Thanks Nicole! SunButter is a staple here, it’s so yummy, too 🙂
It looks absolutely amazing! I want them now with my cup of tea!
These would be perfect wth a cup of tea!
Buttery soft deliciousness right here! I wish I could sink my teeth into 10 of them! Then my butt might be buttery soft? ha ha ah ha!
Oh man, I tell you sometimes I could eat ALL the cookies, but I don’t because I care about my body…and I don’t want to have a massive stomach ache!