Colorful Confetti Cookies (Gluten-Free)

Birthdays are one of my favorite ways to celebrate the people I love. But making and decorating a cake is time consuming and difficult to transport or mail. So, this summer I was delighted to discover these confetti cookies.

I was inspired by this Birthday Cake Sugar Cookie recipe at Self Proclaimed Foodie. However, my friend has a gluten intolerance. So, I adjusted the recipe to meet her needs and the results were both festive and delicious!

The only ingredient change from the recipe is instead of all-purpose flour, you use almond flour. Almond flour is a flour-like powder made from finely grinding almonds. This would NOT be a good substitution for a friend with a nut allergy!

Follow the recipe directions except when it calls for the flour, use double that amount of almond flour. You will roll the cookies into balls, so the dough needs to be thick enough to roll. It’s OK to add more almond flour until you reach that consistency.

Use a spoon and your hands to roll the cookie dough into little balls. Or if you are lazy like I am, use a cookie scoop and plop it directly into the decorations, they absolutely do not need to be a perfectly round ball first.

TIP: When picking out sprinkles (ie. hundreds-and-thousands or jimmies), check the label – while sprinkles should be gluten-free, some are made in factories with gluten contaminates.

The only other difference from the original recipe is that you will want to gentle smash down the cookie balls on the baking sheet. Almond flour doesn’t spread like cookies with all-purpose flour. This means you can fit more on the cookie tray which is nice, but does mean you’ll need to flatten them some if you don’t want to serve cookie balls.

I used rainbow sprinkles for my friend’s birthday and they came out so cute and colorful. More importantly, they were a huge hit and were gone within minutes even though the birthday party only had 4 guests.

I made them again for a mini-garden party I had with coral-colored sugar crystals and had similar success.

I hope this makes it into your cookie recipe rotation, as it has mine.