Have fun decorating this fun and allergy friendly sugar cookie house for Valentine's Day! This recipe is gluten free, dairy free, and nut free, and is a lot of fun to decorate with kids. You can use the base cookie house recipe and template to decorate for other holidays as well, such as Easter or Halloween. Gluten free, dairy free, vegan; Free of: peanuts, eggs, tree nuts (depending on the dairy free butter you use)
Course Cookies, Desserts
Cuisine American
Keyword gluten free roll out sugar cookies, sugar cookie house
Print off the cookie house template on paper or card stock and cut out the template pieces. Set aside.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and add a sheet of parchment paper to a cookie sheet. Set aside.
In a large bowl, cream together the dairy free butter, sugar, and vanilla.
In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the fine sorghum flour and the gluten free baking mix. If using all purpose gluten free flour rather than gluten free baking mix, whisk in 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon baking soda.
Add half the flour to the butter blend and half the dairy free milk, using a hand mixer, and mix until blended.
Add the other half of the flour and the other half of the dairy free milk and mix until a thick dough forms. The dough should have the look and feel of playdough. It should not be dry/crumbly or sticky, it should be easily pressed together into a ball, and easily rolled out and cut into shapes.
If the dough seems too dry to press together into a ball, add 1 teaspoon of dairy free milk. If the dough seems too wet/sticky, add 1 Tablespoon of gluten free baking mix.
Divide the dough into 2 portions. Wrap the other portion of dough in plastic wrap to keep it from drying out while you roll out the other half of the dough.
Lightly dust the counter or pastry mat with the gluten free baking mix or sorghum flour (either will work), and roll the dough portion out until it's between 1/8 inch and 1/4 inch thick. The thicker the cookie, the softer it will be.
Cut out the biggest house pieces first, adding the smaller pieces to use up the remaining dough.
Gather together the dough scraps, press into another dough ball, and roll out again until the dough is used up. Use the other half of the dough to cut the remaining pieces.
Any remaining cookie dough can be cut into regular cookies and baked for 8 to 10 minutes if you like.
Bake the cookie house pieces for about 10-12 minutes.
Allow the cookie house pieces to cool on the baking sheet for about 10-15 minutes, then add the starlight mints or Jolly Rancher candies to the windows and bake again for about 6-10 minutes, removing when the candy has melted and spreads to fill the window spaces.
Allow the pieces to cool completely on the pan before assembling your cookie house using our dairy free buttercream frosting for gluing the house together and decorating.
If the edges of your cookie house pieces are not straight, you can use a microplane to grate or "sand" off the edges to make them straight for easier assembling.
Notes
The calorie estimates here are for a regular cookie using this recipe and don't reflect the nutritional info for a cookie house. Our cookie house isn't really meant to be eaten, the cookie pieces are twice baked for structure. *Baking mix has baking soda and salt already added to it, whereas gluten free all purpose flour generally does not have these things added. We used King Arthur gluten free baking mix in this recipe, so if you use regular gluten free flour, you'll need to add some salt and baking soda to this recipe (about 1/4 teaspoon of each). Please note: the Country Crock Plant Butter sticks do not have soybean oil in them, but the tubs do. I have not tested this recipe with other brands of dairy free butter, so I can't guarantee the results using other brands of butter.