Gluten-free, rice-free cut-out oat cookies

Santa needed Christmas Eve cookies this year, but I didn't want to make cookies that everyone else could eat and I couldn't because of my wheat issue....what to do??? Well, with the help of the Internet, several various failed recipe attempts, and lots of tasting, I came up with a very yummy gluten-free, rice-free cookie!

(Note: if you're beginning a gluten-free lifestyle, and you can tolerate rice, then you can use a gluten-free flour blend. That's not an option with my family's allergies, though, so I was left creating a recipe.)

Ingredients (Cookies):

1/2 cup softened organic butter

1/4 cup organic brown sugar

1/4 cup clover or orange blossom honey (nothing darker than clover preferably)

3 Tbs organic canola oil (for a crunchier cookie) OR 1/4 cup of organic applesauce (for a cookie that softens with time)

1 egg

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp sea salt

2 tsps vanilla (homemade preferred)

3 cups gluten-free, wheat free oat flour (I grind my own from Trader Joe's bag of oats)

Ingredients (Icing):

powdered sugar

cocoa powder

water or milk

Directions:

1. Beat together butter and brown sugar until fluffy

2. Beat in honey

3. Beat in oil OR applesauce

4. Mix in egg until just combined

5. Mix in baking soda, salt, and vanilla

6. Combine in flour until all the flour is absorbed

7. Form into a ball, cover with plastic wrap, and flatten into a 6-ish inch disc, and refrigerate for at least an hour, up to two days

8. Line a baking sheet with parchment and preheat oven to 350.

9. Generously cover counter top with oat flour, unwrap your disc, sprinkle with oat flour, and begin rolling out until about 1/4 inch thick, dusting with oat flour as needed.

10. Cut out shapes & transfer to lined baking sheet

11. Combine scraps and roll out and cut out again (the number of cookies you make depends on the size of your shapes, but I usually make 2 half-sheet cookie sheets of cookies from one recipe)

12. Bake on the top two racks in your oven, turning the sheets and switching racks half way through. Total cooking time about 20 minutes (we like our cookies fairly well-done so I cook them until quite brown on the edges)

13. Cool on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack; cool completely before icing.

*** Icing: My icing is not science. I mix about two scoops of powdered sugar to one scoop of cocoa with a dash of water or milk to make my icing. Then, I make enough of that proportion to make enough icing for the cookies....sorry this isn't more exact! The cookies are good without icing and great with icing!!!!