ChefSteps is a team of chefs, writers, and food lovers who develop recipes, techniques, and guides to help people cook better at home.

ChefSteps

We played with our original shortbread cookie recipe to make it with oat and rice flour, both traditional ingredients in shortbread. This cookie is buttery, with a texture that crumbles into little pieces if you nudge one too firmly. And yet, with a gentle touch, this plain, slightly sweet cookie holds up to a dunk in a cup of tea or hot chocolate. It also happens to be gluten-free. These days, we tend to believe that &quot;real&quot; shortbread is made with wheat flour and anything else is a pale substitute. However, oats were introduced into Scotland in the 1st Millennium BC. The climate of Scotland—rainy, with the sun a glorious exception to the typical weather, like Seattle—was conducive for growing oats. For centuries, most Scottish people ate a diet of porridge made from oats and barley, plus beans, fish, and dairy products from their cows. (And kale!) Wheat was difficult to grow in Scotland, so it was imported for centuries. This meant that only the wealthy could afford to bake with it until the 1800s. This made oats the dominant crop for Scotland for centuries. Most food historians attribute the development of shortbread to the French chefs hired by Mary Queen of Scots to feed her court. She had a particular affinity for the crumbly sweet cookie. Word of her love for it spread among the wealthy, and then to the rest of the Scots. Since wheat flour was so expensive, baking shortbread was reserved for weddings and the holidays. However, once people developed a taste for shortbread, a craving for it on ordinary days meant using ground oats to create that crunch and crumble of the buttery cookie. Since most farming families had butter in their home from the cows they owned, that ingredient would not have been considered a luxury ingredient in those early days. Some believe that the cookie is called shortbread since it contained so much shortening (one name for butter then). It could also be because the amount of butter makes the cookie crumbly, rather than crisp, and thus a &quot;short&quot; pastry. Sugar would have been the only truly expensive ingredient, Perhaps that is why shortbread is not that sweet?Once we learned that Scottish people ate shortbread cookies made from oat flour for centuries, we had to try it too. And since most recipes for traditional Scottish shortbread call for some rice flour—the pure starch keeps down the protein content of the final dough, thus keeping the cookie more tender and sandy—we tried that with oats too. Our trials with plain white rice flour weren&#39;t entirely successful, since that flour is made with long-grain rice, which can lend a grittiness to the final cookie. Using sweet rice flour—with its superpower-starch strength—created a tender cookie that holds together well. That makes this cookie an international modern twist on a traditional recipe. And since oats and sweet rice flour are gluten-free, this cookie is a great choice for your gluten-free family and friends this holiday season. (However, if you are feeding someone with celiac, who cannot tolerate even a bit of cross-contamination, be sure to use certified gluten-free oat flour.) Make a big batch of these and have a cookie decorating party with <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/fun-flavorful-freeze-dried-fruity-festivus-shortbread-cookies">our festive freeze-dried cookie toppings</a>. You can feed your friends—who will be so grateful—and you will enjoy these shortbread too.