Sunday, November 23, 2008

Christmas Baking Fun

Or it was supposed to be..... no just kidding, it was fun, but you thought you would read some thing dramatic didn't cha? Nothing out of the ordnary but I do have some beautiful pictures to share.



I like to get my cookie baking done by Thanksgiving so I can put some out here and there during the holidays. Before I was diagnosed with celiac disease I would make a ton of cookies every year, pack them in Christmas tins and give them to friends and family. Now the flour is too expensive to do it for anybody except my household. I also did not make the variety I used to make, I made sugar cookies, pumpkin cookies which is a new recipe for me, and I still need to make my peanut butter balls.

I made the pumpkin cookies first. It was a recipe given to me off the Silly Yaks web site. These cookies are delicious and we thought it did not even need the frosting but then with the frosting on it, YUM, YUM. I thought it was very close to what my favorite gluten filled pumpkin donut was so I am very happy to have this recipe and I will try frying it some time for donuts.



Here they are on a plate set that belonged to my grandmother. Beautiful plate isn't it?



I also made some sugar cookies. This recipe came from the latest Living Without recipe. I followed it exactly using my beloeved Better Batter Flour and placed the dough in the fridge and left it until the next day until I could get to it. When I tried to roll it out the whole thing just crumbled apart. I know what you are thinking, you're thinking "how did she fix it?" Good question. I crumbled all the dough back into my stand mixer and added a few table spoons of water to the dough, mixed it up and bam, beautiful sugar cookie dough! I was so excited that I fixed it.



During that baking day I also decided to try out a pie crust recipe and a bread recipe. For the pie crust I also used the Better Batter Flour and a recipe that was from the Silly Yaks site. It used eggs and cream cheese which was new ingrediants to me for a pie crust. I made a cherry pie and since the crust was pressed into the pan I had the delima of how to do the top crust. I tried to roll it out in one piece but it kept breaking and I knew I would never be able to to a full top crust. What was the solution you ask, good question! I rolled out small sections and cut with a christmas tree cookie cutter and placed them around the top in a nice looking arrangement. Are you wondering if I will share pictures? Of course!!

This is the cherry pie before the top crust.



And here I am cutting the crust out and placing it on top.





Here it is all arranged on top and ready to go into the oven.



Here is the finished pie!



It looked good and tasted great. I do prefer a pie made with instant tapioca rather than flour though. With the instant tapioca you don't get a lot of runny juices like you do with it just tossed in flour.

The bread recipe I decided to try first came from one of Bette Hagmans books More From the Gluten Free Gourmet. It is her french bread recipe and it came out so beautifully and tasted so good that I decided I did not need to try any other recipes. It was a winner. It tasted and had the texture of how I remember french bread being and had a beautiful crunchy crust. In fact the next day I made chili and turned the rest of the bread into a delicious garlic bread. No pictures of the garlic bread but I do have picture of the french bread when it came out of the oven.





I think covered every thing with the baking. I'll leave you with a picture of what one of our cats did all day while I was busy in the kitchen.



Helpful right. And here is a picture of our fun in the snow that evening.



What can I say, Harry likes to be buried in the snow.

Bye!

1 comment:

Sandy said...

What delicous looking goodies you have baked ... yum ...

Sandy