It's not too long until you'll get your Shortbread. Even if you can't have Gluten.

So, it's no secret that I love shortbread. I used to think that the only way to get good shortbread was to drop down some serious cheddar on Walker's Shortbread Fingers. Then when I got back into cooking, one of the first things I tried was making shortbread. Surprisingly enough, it's pretty darn easy. It's basically flour, sugar and butter. It's called bread, by the way, since the British taxed cookies and cakes when they occupied Scotland and this was a way around that. Anyway, I've been making shortbread pretty regularly since, most of the time Millionaire's Shortbread. What I haven't been able to do is make a good Gluten Free shortbread. The version I have in my previous blog post was OK, it was kind of heavy though. I finally found a version that is light and crispy. Unfortunately I haven't been able to try it out with butter, since our son who can't have gluten can't have milk either, so if you try this it will probably be much better with butter.

You'll need:
1/2 Cup cornstarch
1/2 cup icing sugar
1 cup rice flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup butter or margarine (175g)

Preheat your oven to 300F (150C).
Add all the dry ingredients and mix well.

Make sure your shortening is cold and cut it into cubes and add it to the dry mix.

Then get mixing.Start with a fork but you'll need to get to kneading it with your hands.

I had a bit of help.

It should form a slightly sticky ball. Put it onto a sheet of plastic wrap and roll it into a log. Refrigerate for about 20 minutes. This is actually when you should turn on the oven.

When it's set and the shortening has hardened cut it into rounds and place them on some parchment on a cookie sheet.

Now you can get fancy. I put chopped almonds on some and vanilla sugar on the rest.

20 minutes in the oven...

They kind of melted into each other. I'll work on that, but they're super crisp and very tasty. So, get baking!