These were literally just a fun experiment for me. Since we are in the holiday season, cookies are a must and a definite. I love doing different kinds of cookies and shortbreads, so I wanted to make some that, in this case, featured misugaru. For those of you who are not familiar with it, misugaru is a 7 to 23-grain mix that tastes like peanut butter. But it is not made with nuts, nor does it have gluten. And it can be used like flour if you are familiar with how to use it in such a way. I wanted to use that misugaru to be a loose nod to a peanut butter thumbprint cookie, but instead of doing that, I went with crusting the shortbread in crushed palm sugar, which adds a nice sweet, earthy, and crunchy note to it. Some notes on baking with misugaru, I found that doing a one to one with misugaru to gluten-based wheat flours resulted in a really dry cookie. To offset that, I added a bit more butter than in my normal shortbread dough, and doubled the egg yolk quantity, just to guarantee a more hydrated product.

For the shortbread dough:
1 1/4 cups misugaru powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt
1/2 cup palm sugar, in two parts
1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
10 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold
2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a bowl, mix together the misugaru, baking powder, salt, palm sugar, and xanthan gum first. Then mix into that your cold butter until it forms a crumbly texture. Mix into that your egg yolks and the vanilla to form a dough. Pour your dough out into a long sheet of cling wrap and roll it up into a log that is 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Then unwrap the dough and roll it in the remaining palm sugar to crust it. Refrigerate the crusted dough for at least 30 minutes. Cut the dough into 24 cookies and then bake at 375 degrees F on a parchment-lined sheet tray for 14 minutes, rotating halfway through to guarantee even baking.