Gluten-Free Holiday Treat Recipes!

OK, I don't have pictures for you yet, but I wanted to point you in the direction of some great holiday recipes I'm pulling out this year --some of these are tried and true and some are new ventures, so I hope you enjoy!

Peppermint Meringues: This recipe from Bon Apetit was forwarded to me by my mom and I'm going to be whipping them together this afternoon. The recipe is fairly straightforward and it makes a large quantity (approx. 60 per recipe).

Stained Glass Windows: This was a childhood staple for me during the holidays --for gluten-free and gluten-eating alike. I'm a sucker for the chocolate combo, so these are always good in my book. And with just five ingredients (I usually leave out the nuts), they're ridiculously easy to make!

Crisp Coconut Chocolate Pie: I made this first for Thanksgiving last month. It worked so well and was so delicious (and a little bit rich) that I just have to make it again for Christmas. Again with the chocolate-coconut combo. This time I am trying it with coconut milk instead of heavy cream - fingers crossed that it actually works!

Poached Apples: I fell in love with poached pears earlier this year. (Seriously, if you're in the Cleveland area and haven't tried the poached pear with creme anglaise at Sasa Matsu, you need to go!). When I got three (ginormous!) delicious Jonagold apples with my CSA order this week (OK, there were actually four, but with peanut butter in the house the fourth one did not last long...), I wasn't sure what I would do with them, especially with no gluten-free flour, oats, or pie crusts... And then it struck me: poached apples. Poached. Apples. Yes, yes, and yes.

For more gluten-free recipes and ideas, follow my gluten-free board on Pinterest!

Happy Holidays!

Holiday Baking

Thanks to the holidays, I have been baking a lot more than I usually do (which is pretty much not-at-all). My experiences with gluten-free baking in the past have not been all that great. To be honest, there's a bit of a love-hate relationship between me and gluten-free baked goods. "Love" when someone else makes it and "hate" when I do. Also,  I have to contend with not only being gluten-free, but also being yeast-free as well --double whammy!

Anyway, this holiday season, I decided I would plan ahead and make my own gluten-free treats to take to holiday parties so that I wouldn't just go and have to watch everyone eat all the delicious food. I'll be trying to post more recipes as I go, but here's a synopsis of my current holiday favorites (which actually isn't all baking, but oh well!):

1) Chocolate Coconut Pie - Found this recipe on Pinterest and was surprised to see that it was a) relatively easy and b) completely gluten-free without any modifications whatsoever. I made two of these for Thanksgiving and I was pretty happy with the results. I will say that I'd like to try my hand at making this recipe a little lighter since it was so incredibly rich. Also, the crust was a little difficult to cut if you weren't careful.

2) Bob's Red Mill Shortbread Cookie Mix - I actually tossed these together last night after I got home from work. They were really quite simple and delicious, but (as with most gluten-free items) a bit on the dry and crumbly side. It may be heresy to do this to shortbread, but I'm thinking about adding a thin frosting (maybe a lemon glaze?) on top to add a little zing. Also, I found out last night that I don't own a rolling pin. I might need to remedy that. Last night I was rolling out cookies with the salt container...

3) Lastly, pumpkin pancakes! Yes, I know. It's not baking. BUT it was a fantastic holiday morning treat (especially after completing my first ever Turkey Trot). I modified Katie's recipe to toss out some delicious pumpkin pancakes that were just about perfect. They were a little too cakey for my taste, but future modifications can remedy that.

Happy Holiday and good luck on your gluten-free holiday baking adventures!

I'm still here!

I kind of disappeared there for a while. So sorry. Between moving, new job, no wifi, and phone problems, it has really cut down both on the blog and on the Twitter account.  Once I get my wifi set-up and my phone problems straightened out (using Twitter for almost all of the communications for this project and then having it flip out has not helped), I will be back and on top of things again, but for now...

I'm still here, still eating gluten-free and definitely dreading the upcoming holiday season. I think I'm just going to need to have a weekend of holiday baking so that I have something to take with me to the office, family parties, friends' parties, other miscellaneous holiday events.  

A few weeks ago, I ran across this amazing Tumblr called wheniwentglutenfree. Yeah, it's all sorts of awesome. The .gif below (found via that lovely site) pretty much describes how I feel about the holidays.

WHEN THE BREAD BASKET ARRIVES

(Source: whatshouldwecallme)

More Gluten-Free Experimentation

I’m back to the chickpea flour. I haven’t tried baking anything with it yet and probably won’t be attempting a gravy any time soon, but what I’ve done so far I have loved. Last night was a flounder filet, dredged in a mixture of Parmesan and chickpea flour (very similar to this chicken) that I then
panfried.

Lovely flounder with veggies

Dessert? Gluten-free cookies (the ones from this post) warmed in the micro and topped with fat free vanilla frozen yogurt. Pretty tasty and, more or less, guilt free.

Gluten-free cookies and yogurt

Recipe Makeover: Grain Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites

So, as part of my gluten-free journey, I regularly rework recipes (or at least try to!) to fit not only my dietary needs, but my tastes as well. I ran across this recipe when a friend of mine started pinning grain-free recipes on Pinterest. Since I had recently gone completely gluten-free again, I was excited to see a cookie that I could actually eat.

I tried them for the first time a few weeks ago and they turned out well, but I wasn't convinced. Especially as mine were significantly uglier than the lovely pictures posted on the Texanerin Baking blog.

What I did with this recipe. I love me some chocolate and I found the original 'dough' to have a chickpea flavor that I was having a tough time getting used to. So, I added cocoa powder to the batter, threw in some butterscotch chips and called it a day. Oh, and after rolling the cookies, I pressed them down with a fork a la peanut butter cookies.

My final recipe:

2 cans of chickpeas (drained, rinsed, and dried)
3/4 c. peanut butter
3/4 c. honey
2 t. baking powder
2 T. cocoa powder
3 t. vanilla extract
1 c. butterscotch chips

Preheat the oven to 350F. Combine all ingredients except the chips in the food process. Then, fold in the butterscotch chips. (My dough was a little runny, so I ended up chilling it in the freezer for about a half hour.  Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and roll the dough into bolls. If you find the dough sticking to your hands, wet them and then roll. Bake for about 10 minutes. Afterwards, I like to let them cool on the rack and then froze them before bagging and popping them back in the freezer.

The final result. It's almost an I-can't-believe-it's-not-gluten moment!