Gluten-Free Pecan Pie Cookies

These gluten-free pecan pie cookies are rich, delicious, and look fantastic on a holiday cookie tray. They're surprisingly easy to make, too!

The wheat version of these Pecan Pie Cookies been one of - and much of the time *THE* - most popular recipes on my Celebration Generation blog, ever since I first posted it.

That version of the recipe started out as a recipe that someone else gave me to use for my cake business, and it just kind of went wild from there - I even have a recipe for Keto Pecan Pie Cookies now!

They were always super popular for holiday cookie tray orders, and whenever I’d cater a dessert table.

When it came time to wrote my first gluten-free cookbook - “Beyond Flour: A Fresh Approach to Gluten-Free Cooking & Baking” - redeveloping the recipe in a gluten-free version was a no-brainer!

Let me tell you - as a gluten-free cookie, these definitely do not disappoint!

The various alternative flours bring a complexity to the base cookie that just isn't there in the all-purpose flour recipe.

That’s one thing I’ve been loving about gluten-free baking, especially with regards to cookies:

When you balance out the flavours and properties of the various alternative flours available, you can come up with cookie dough that tastes WAY better than flour cookies.

All-purpose wheat flour doesn’t have a lot of flavour, after all. Many of the gluten-free flours, on the other hand, do have very distinct flours.

Ingredients

In this recipe, I use:

White rice flour
Sorghum flour
Brown rice flour
Tapioca starch
Xanthan gum

Combined with the other cookie dough ingredients, this forms a very rich dough with a nice, deep flavour.

It’s the perfect base for the “pecan pie” filling that it’s topped with!

A Note on The Photos

If you’re a Celebration Generation reader, you may notice that the photos on this post look familiar.

Yep, they’re from the same shoot as the photos in the full-gluten recipe!

A while back, I was updating the posts on that blog with better photography - bigger images, nicer photos, etc.

I had a set of photos from when we shot these for inclusion in Beyond Flour, and they were a lot nicer than the wheat-version photos we’d had from more than a decade earlier.

As the cookies look exactly the same, whether with the original recipe or this gluten-free version, I just used my gluten-free pecan pie cookie photos in that post!

I’m just too lazy to make and shoot a batch of full-gluten cookies for the photos, especially considering that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy those cookies after making them!

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5 from 1 vote

Gluten-Free Pecan Pie Cookies

These gluten-free pecan pie cookies are rich, delicious, and look fantastic on a holiday cookie tray. They're surprisingly easy to make, too!

Prep Time20 minutes mins

Cook Time14 minutes mins

Chilling Time1 hour hr

Total Time1 hour hr 34 minutes mins

Course: Dessert, Snack

Cuisine: American

Diet: Gluten Free

Servings: 24 Large Cookies

Calories: 196kcal

Equipment

• 2 Baking Sheets
• Parchment Paper

Ingredients

Cookie Dough:

• ¾ cup Butter softened
• 1 cup Light brown sugar packed
• 1 Large egg
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla
• 1 cup White rice flour
• ½ cup Sorghum flour
• ¼ cup Brown rice flour
• ¼ cup Corn starch
• ¼ cup Tapioca Starch/Flour
• 2 teaspoon Xanthan gum
• 1 teaspoon Baking powder
• ½ teaspoon Salt

Filling:

• 1 cup Chopped pecans
• ½ cup Light brown sugar packed
• ¼ cup Heavy whipping cream
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla
• Pinch each of ginger, cinnamon, and cloves

Instructions

• Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
• Add egg and vanilla, continue beating until egg is fully incorporated and mixture is once again smooth and fluffy.
• In a large bowl, mix together flours, starches, xanthan gum, baking powder, and salt.
• Slowly add this dry mix to the mixer bowl, and carefully mix until well incorporated and smooth.
• Wrap dough in plastic film, chill for 1 hour.
• Preheat oven to 350 F (180 C). Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper.
• In a separate mixing bowl, mix pecans, brown sugar and spices. Add in heavy cream and vanilla, mix until well combined.
• Roll cookie dough into balls that are about 1.5" in diameter, and place them on cookie sheets – leave about 2" between the cookies.
• Gently use your thumb to press down in the middle of each cookie, making an indentation. Roll thumb slightly to stretch the indentation out a little.
• Fill each indentation with about a teaspoon of pecan filling
• Bake for 12-14 minutes, until lightly browned.
• Allow to cool on sheets for 5 minutes or so, before gently transferring to baking rack or counter to finish cooling.

Nutrition

Serving: 1cookie | Calories: 196kcal | Carbohydrates: 25g | Protein: 1g | Fat: 10g | Saturated Fat: 5g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 4g | Trans Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 25mg | Sodium: 132mg | Potassium: 62mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 14g | Vitamin A: 226IU | Vitamin C: 1mg | Calcium: 30mg | Iron: 1mg

Related posts:

Gluten Free Pie Crust Gluten Free Apple Pie Cookies Gluten Free Gingerbread Cookies Gluten Free Ginger Molasses Cookies