Gluten Free Recipe - GF Lemon Drop Cookies

At long last, I have FINALLY found a GF sugar cookie recipe that I like!  Let us all shout for joy! It took a little work, tweaking a couple of different recipes to get one that worked for me, but let me tell you, these are good.  I'll first share the recipe for the standard drop sugar cookie and then the modification to turn them into lemon drop cookies.

GF DROP SUGAR COOKIES

First off, your ingredients...

- 2 sticks (one cup) softened butter
- 1 3/4 cups sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tsp. vanilla
- 2 cups asian white rice flour
- 1/3 cup cornstarch
- 1/3 cup sweet rice flour
- **1 cup - 1 1/2 cups GF baking blend **
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1/2 tsp. xanthan gum
- 1/2 tsp. salt

Alright, alright, alright.  Let's get this going.

- Preheat to 350 degrees and line your cookie sheets with parchment paper.  DON'T FORGET THE PARCHMENT PAPER.
- Mix your butter and sugar really, really well.  Beat the eggs in, one at a time, scraping the sides of the bowl in between.  Go ahead and throw in your vanilla too and mix it in.
- In the meantime... mix your rice flour, cornstarch, sweet rice flour, baking soda, xanthan gum and salt.

** OK, here's the tricky part.  I've found that recipes that work for other people, don't work well for me because of the flour content.  I added at least a cup of the GF Baking Blend that I know and love to the recipe to get the texture of the dough that I need.  You can try using just more white rice flour instead of the baking blend.  I recommend that you try it and bake it, a little at a time until you get the texture of cookie that you  are looking for.  If the dough is too gooey, your cookies will just melt and you'll end up with something that looks a lot more like a stained glass window than a midnight snack.  You want your dough to be the consistency of Play Dough.  For reals....

See this?  This is BAD.  You don't want your dough to look like this. Too gooey.

See this?  This dough is much thicker.  It balls up a little when you mix it in the mixer. I think I ultimately added 1 1/2 cups of Baking Blend to the original recipe.  It's a firmer dough that will hold up to the heat.  Do what you've gotta do to get to this texture, just keep track of what you're doing so that you can write it down :)

- OK, at this point, you can roll your dough into balls, place on that parchment paper and bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.  

Before and After

- If you want, just stop right here.  These are fantastic cookies.  They are perfect topped with some pink frosting and sprinkles.

Now, the modification to make LEMON DROP COOKIES...

You'll need...

- Half a bag of lemon drops, pulverized.

- The zest of two lemons

- The juice of one lemon mixed with about a cup of powdered sugar - for the glaze.

- After you get your standard sugar cookie dough prepared, smash up about half a bag of lemon drops.  Then throw them in the mixer along with the lemon zest.

- Bake them for 10-12 minutes at 350.  Make sure you've got that parchment paper on those cookie sheets.  Remember that you're melting hard candy and it can make a big, sticky mess.  In the end, you should end up with something like this...

- Allow them to cool for a couple minutes before pulling them off the cookie sheet.  Place on a separate piece of parchment paper to cool and brush on some of that lemon juice and powdered sugar glaze that you whipped up.

Yum.

Then, dig in.  This dough refrigerates well, but you'll have to let it warm up a bit before you can form it into balls.  Good luck!  And enjoy!

Gluten Free Recipe - GF Cinnamon Roll Pancakes

At my house, breakfast for dinner is kind of a big deal. Do you know the feeling? I could spend hours in the kitchen, making a delicious meal, and when I finally get my family seated and served, the kids just end up wishing that I'd just made them pancakes instead. This is why, at least once a week, I don't even bother with dinner and instead, opt for brinner. Brinner makes life better.

When I'm feeling REALLY fancy, like today when we ate brinner for our one and only Sunday meal I plan to prepare, I'll make gourmet brinner. Gourmet brinner consists of Cinnamon Roll Pancakes.

Good golly, these are tasty.

I got the cinnamon goo and cream cheese syrup recipe from HERE.

And the GF pancake recipe from HERE.

But, as usual, I'll post the recipes here too.

First things first.

Start with your cinnamon goo and syrup before you make your pancakes.

Cinnamon Goo

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) hot butter

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Mix them all together and pour it into a plastic baggy. You'll snip off the corner and squeeze it into your cooking pancake. Like cake decorating. Or something.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) of hot butter

3 oz. softened cream cheese

3/4 cup of powdered sugar

1 tsp. vanilla.

Wisk them all together and set aside to serve.

Easy peasy.

Now for the pancakes. This is totally my favorite GF pancake recipe to date. They're a tasty treat and they require no special GF flour cocktails. They're my go-to "i don't have anything to make for dinner" quick fix.

Just remember that...

1- buttermilk is a big deal. I've used regular milk and vinegar to substitute, and they just aren't the as big and thick and fluffy.

2- don't forget the baking soda! I did that today. Baking soda es muy importante.

Gluten Free Pancakes

1 1/2 cups asian white rice flour

1/2 cup cornstarch

2 T sugar

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp, xanthan gum

2 cups buttermilk

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

4 T melted butter

You know the drill... wisk together your dry ingredients first. In a separate bowl, wisk together your wet ingredients. Then combine it all together, and let it rest for a couple minutes. The batter'll be good an thick, like so...

I had my iphone handy while I was cooking, so I have to apologize for the photos. Instagram was the best I was going to do today.

Pour the batter onto your hot pan or griddle. Since the batter is pretty thick, I have to spread it out a little when I pour it on. I've found that the batter has plenty butter in it already, so I don't butter my griddle again.

Once they start cookin' up, swirl in your cinnamon...

I should have put more. It's so good!

Then give them a good flip...

Yum. That cinnamon makes a mess. I have to take a paper towel and wipe down my griddle between batches, but it's worth it.

Then serve them on up, smothered in your frosting/syrupy goodness.

And enjoy.

I don't eat GF when my husband isn't around, but it is true that I haven't eaten a really good, homemade cinnamon roll in, probably, the better part of a year. That said, I have to confess that these pancakes totally, completely satisfy the emptiness I feel inside when I crave homemade cinnamon rolls smothered in cream cheese frosting... and can't have them.

Gluten Free Recipe - GF Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've tried so very many recipes for GF Chocolate Chip Cookies. SO many. And I've finally found the one! By Jove, I've got it! I started with THIS recipe, but I modified it. I always have to adjust the flour and xanthan gum content in baking, I think it's got to do with our altitude up here, but everything just seems to need more flour. After I adjusted the ingredients, I got a nice gooey chocolate chip cookie. It is BY FAR the best GF chocolate chip cookie I've had. Here you are....

1 cup softened butter

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 t vanilla

Cream in your mixer for a few minutes, then throw in

2 3/4 cups GF flour blend (click for recipe)

1 t baking soda

1 t xanthan gum

1 t salt

after those are mixed in, add your chocolate chips

You want to make sure that your dough isn't too gooey. You don't want it too stiff, but stiff enough to see where your spoon has scooped the dough out of the bowl. Does that make sense? It does, right?

Put the dough straight on your baking sheet and bake at 350 for 7-10 minutes. I took mine out at 8 minutes. Get em' outta there before they look done, that way you'll get your crispy outside and gooey middle.

And make sure you pull them right off of that cookie sheet or they'll start to stick. The time it took to take this picture was a little too long. One of them broke. Sad. I ate it anyway.

I always put them on a paper towel because I feel like it draws the unnecessary grease out of the cookie. It's psychological, I know, but it helps me justify eating so dang many.

Try these. They be good. I generally make a batch of cookie dough and keep it in the fridge so that I only make as many as we are going to eat in one sitting, but I made extra last night and they were even good this morning after sitting in a Tupperware all night.

Thank goodness. I don't know how much longer I could have lived eating only mediocre cookies.

Gluten Free Recipe - GF Apple Crisp

My sister first turned me onto this recipe a while back. In all fairness, I think that she makes it better than I do, but I don't really know how since she sent me her recipe and I follow it too. She's just got that magic touch. The ingredients are as follows....

From Allrecipes (just modified a smidge with salt, because it tastes better, and to be GF)

For the apples

• 10 cups all-purpose apples, peeled, cored and sliced
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon GF flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 tsp. of salt
• extra fruit or jam, if you have any

For the top

• 1 cup quick-cooking oats
• 1 cup GF flour ( i use my favorite baking mix)
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter, melted

1. Mix all your filling ingredients together and stick them in a pyrex.

2. Mix all your topping ingredients together and put them on top of the filling.

3. Put your pyrex in the oven and bake at 350 for around 45 minutes.

But if I left it at that, it would hardly be worth a blog post, so I will now subject you to viewing my 4 year old's documentation of our making GF apple crisp.

We started with Granny Smiths because they are tart, therefore, they are better.

Now, there are two ways to cut apples for things like this. The hard way and the easy way. I opt for the easy way. Just bear in mind that the easy way required me happening upon a apple cutter in an antique consignment shop and paying $17 to bring it home and incorporate it into my life.

Do you have one of these? The ones at Bed Bath and Beyond are worthless, don't bother. You need the old school kind that clamps onto the countertop. It was a total stroke of luck that I found one at that consignment shop, I'm not sure where you can buy them, but it's worth looking into.

So easy, a kid can use it! Actually, I had to help her. If you haven't used one of these before, they peel, core and slice the apples into a spiral. My kids like them for snacks. They call them apple slinkies. The skin is referred to as an apple noodle. It's not at desirable as the slinky, but they'll still eat them.

Sliced apples and apple noodles. See, wasn't that easy? That's what I like about the easy way. It's so easy!

Ok, now here's a note about the recipe. If you have any jam or preserves or other fruit that you want to throw in there with the filling, you should do it. Last fall, my sister came over to my house and spent ALL DAY making plum jam and plum sauce out of her 5,000 pounds of plums that she bought for cheap. We throw some into the filling because it makes it more better. Unfortunately, this time I opened a jar of plum jam and put in about 1/4 cup and then smelled something.... funny. The jam was either disgusting to start with, or it hadn't been canned properly and had gone rancid. Either way, I blame my sister for the amount of time that I spent scraping all of it out of the bowl. Ew.

Anyway.... If you have plum or raspberry jam that isn't rancid, put some in your filling or just some fruit, if you've got some.

Ok, now to the finished product.

Ta da! It's obviously best when served a la mode. Everything in life is better a la mode.

Just make sure that the juices of the apples are able to break through the topping, otherwise it doesn't get crisp. Sometimes, I'll open the oven part way through and poke holes in it just to make sure. Because if it isn't crisp, how can it be apple crisp?

Ok, there you are. Enjoy! I know I did.

Gluten Free Recipe - Perfect GF Oatmeal Craisin Cookies

Fact: I LOVE oatmeal cookies. I crave them. I think about them while I'm awake. I dream about them when I sleep. I feel empty inside when they aren't available to me.

A couple of years ago, Nestle made oatmeal craisin cookie dough that you could buy in tubs at Costco and Sam's. It was sooooooo good. It was the perfect cookie. Crispy outside, chewy inside. I'm salivating just thinking about them. It was around Christmas time and the tubs all said that it was a limited edition. We ended up buying, like 12 tubs of it and sticking it in our freezer, but eventually, we ran out. It was a sad, sad day. It was also the day that I started trying to figure out how to make my own oatmeal craisin cookie dough. I made at least 5 or 6 batches before I got them perfect. But I did it. I made the perfect oatmeal cookie. Take THAT, Nestle!

Then we found out that Brent had celiac. Grrrrrrr.

This was the first recipe I made GF and I think that I made it that night to show Brent that it wouldn't be so bad, we could still have cookies. I made it with "oat flour" which means that I threw a bunch of oats in my food processor and pulverised them. They turned out ok, but I've gotten better since.

I'm proud to say that now, I've managed to come up with perfect GF oatmeal craisin cookie. I make the dough and keep it in my fridge so that we can all have warm cookies at night after dinner. I also sneak bites of dough during the day when my kids aren't looking. Please don't tell them.

Here's the recipe. Value it with your lives.

1 cup softened butter

1 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

Mix together well in your mixer.

Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, mix together...

2 cups GF flour blend

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. xanthan gum

1/2 tsp. salt

Add the flour mixture to the mixing bowl and mix on low until combined, then toss in...

2 cups rolled oats (we haven't ever had cross contamination issues with oats)

1 cup craisins

Ok, now to the baking. I bake them at 350 degrees. I preheat a bit in advance to make sure that the temperature is good and even in the oven before I throw the cookies in. It's a very scientific process. I'm a scientist. A cookie scientist.

Drop rounded tablespoons onto your ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Or less. I bake mine for 7. DO NOT OVERCOOK THESE COOKIES. I put that in caps so as to emphasize the importance of NOT OVERCOOKING THE COOKIES. You want them to be a little gooey in the middle, even looking a little undercooked when you pull them from the oven. Make them a couple at a time at first to test the timing, if you need to.

Here's a picture of mine fresh out of the oven. Yum.

This is what I ate for breakfast Saturday morning. It got me off to a nice, healthy start.

Why is it that no matter how much butter and sugar those cookies contain, I always feel like I'm healthy eating them because of the oats? Oats are deceiving like that.

And this is my baby eating my breakfast. Not cool.

Ok, now go make you some cookies and eat them for breakfast tomorrow morning. I won't judge.

Gluten Free Recipe - Good Old Fashioned Pancakes

When we found out that we had gluten issues, the first thing we cried about was probably pancakes. Oh the sorrow! The misery! How does one endure a life without pancakes?

So I got to work looking for a way to make GF pancakes. I always make my own pancake mix because it's just better that way. Do you make yours from scratch? You should. SOOOOO good.

Our first attempt was a package that my mom bought for us. It was a package of Bob's Red Mill mix and quite frankly, it was downright tasty. It gave me hope! Hope, I tell you! But I can't afford to buy the mix and make them whenever we want pancakes, so I still needed to figure out a way to make them from scratch.

Then I used my old trusty recipe and subbed out the flour for rice flour. Mistake. Don't do that. They were some bizarre cross between pancakes and jello. Jello pancakes are NOT good.

Then I tried to sub out the flour for the Bob's Red Mill All Purpose flour, but I don't like the flavor of their all purpose flour, so it didn't work for me either.

Fourth time was a charm. I found this recipe through Land-O-Lakes' website and I didn't need to modify this one at all. Here's the recipe.

1 cup GF flour blend*

1 cup buttermilk OR 1 Tblspn. white vinegar with enough milk to make 1 cup

1 egg

2 Tblspn. sugar

3 Tblspn. melted butter

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt.

*GF flour blend is 2 cups rice flour, 2/3 cup potato starch, 1/3 cup tapioca starch & 1 tsp. xanthan gum. Mix it all together and store any extra in the freezer for next time.

Mix 'm all together and scoop onto a hot griddle. I like mine at 350 degrees.

Their picture looked like this:

But I think that we can all see that this picture wasn't professionally taken and didn't look appetizing at all, so I took one of my own. With my point and shoot. Ya. I'm a totally amazing photographer. And with that disclaimer, MY pancakes look like this:

THAT, my friends, is a pancake. And a GF pancake at that.

And my kids love them. Me too. My daughter that doesn't have celiac will specifically request GF pancakes all the time. They are every bit as good as a regular pancake, when they're hot. I'm not so sure about when they cool, but they never last that long, so I guess it doesn't matter.