These Almond Shortbread Cookies Are So Delicious, You Won’t Believe They’re Gluten-Free

These gluten-free shortbread cookies are about to be your new favorite holiday dessert. Here’s how to make them.

Turning almond meal into a melt-in-your-mouth crumbly shortbread cookie may seem as impossible as, well, a toilet paper shortage would have seemed in 2019. But with the right ingredients, it’s surprisingly simple. In the latest episode of Well+Good’s YouTube series Alt-Baking Bootcamp, baker and fitness instructor Sashah Handal shows us how to whip up delicious gluten-free shortbread cookies. (The recipe is also dairy-free and zero-waste.)

Almond meal is the base of the cookies, and it’s also where the zero-waste aspect comes into play in the recipe. Handal says that almond milk is a staple in her household, and lately, she’s been making it on her own. “After you blend it up all of the water and the almonds, you’re left with this chunky almond pulp—almond meal, if you will,” she says. Instead of tossing the pulpy remains of the almonds into the garbage, she turns them into a flour perfect for baking. (Really!) Handal also uses honey and coconut oil to ensure that the final product is dairy-free as well as gluten-free.

Almond meal is more dense and moist than many traditional baking flours, so it may seem at odds at first with the light, crispy texture of shortbread cooking. Thankfully, the coconut oil plus arrowroot starch team up to keep these cookies from turning into flat, heavy disks.

“So good. So simple. And you get two bangs for one buck,” Handal says. The end result is a crumbly, delicious cookie that “melts in your mouth.” Ready to make these yourself? Watch the video to get the full recipe for gluten-free shortbread cookies.

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