Baking challenge #2 - Total failure!

Just to let you know, challenge #2 for cookies without sugar and wheat failed miserably. I used the recipe for Dutch ‘sand’ cookies (caster sugar, butter, flour). Except of course I wasn’t using regular flour and no sugar. I used a combination of wholemeal spelt flour and rice flour. I added the rice flour because spelt flour is pretty heavy and also to compensate for the wholemeal factor. I substituted artificial sweetener for the sugar and added grated orange rind for flavour.
What I thought might work didn’t work in practice. The taste was good though, can’t go wrong with butter and orange! But the texture was not good at all, very soft and crumbly (very, very fine crumbles) and you could feel the rice flour. At least that’s what I think cause it had the same feeling in your mouth as when tasting rice flour diluted with water. Also the artificial sweetener left a strange sweet aftertaste.
I think the lack of sugar and the use of rice flour are the main problem in this recipe. You just don’t get the crunch you would normally get when you use artificial sweetener and (gluten-free) rice flour.



As you can see on the picture, they don’t look appetizing...
Hopefully the next challenge will be better!