Dairy Free Cookie Exchange: Fudge Balls

This year, I was thrilled to participate in a dairy free cookie exchange. Bloggers nationwide were swapping recipes in holiday cards (those travel much easier than actual cookies). My recipe came from Steph at DairyFreeOmnivore.

When I got my card, I nearly cried: I've never made Gluten free cookies before & it took me a while to get this right. A complete stranger was adapting a recipe for me so I could enjoy one of her holiday favorites! That's the epitome of the holiday spirit right there! Receiving the card with a hand written recipe on an index card was a true delight. Along with baking the Fudge Balls. (Steph wrote an entry on this recipe - the instructions are great and are super easy.) She had great success with Gluten Free Pantry's all purpose flour. I used the Silvana Nardone blend from Cooking for Isaiah.

I took this dessert to a New Years Eve party. Since the powdered sugar can get a little messy, each ball was placed in a mini cupcake liner. So simple yet so delicious! Everyone at the party loved it! This is a great way to get a dairy free and gluten free chocolate fix!

GFCF Gingerbread Pound Cake Petit Fours

After drooling over pictures of gingerbread cookies, dreaming about moist gingerbread, and lusting after images Christmas cakes, I got to work in the kitchen. I created a more pound cake like version of a gingerbread cake and turned them into petit fours! Petit fours are simply small cakes - the perfect bite sized treat during the holidays! Making them gluten and dairy free was easier than I thought! Warning - there's a lot of Crisco in this recipe so they aren't the most calorie-light dessert, but since when did we count calories in desserts?

The white cakes provide a blank canvas for decorating. I finished these late at night so my creativity at that point boiled down to green zig zags in thinned icing with the cakes nestled in holiday cupcake liners. I brought them to work and everyone in my gluten-eating office loved them! Warm up the oven and get baking! These are magical little cakes that are sure to brighten up your holiday! I'm so excited to share my recipe with you!

GFCF Gingerbread Pound Cake Petit Fours

Ingredients

1 c Crisco

1/2 c brown sugar

1/2 c white sugar

1 c molasses

1 cup buttermilk (1 T of lemon juice plus enough rice milk to make 1 cup. Let sit for 5 minutes.)

Dry Ingredients

3 cups Bob's Red Mill gluten free all purpose flour

2 t xantham gum

1 1/2 t baking soda

1/2 t sea salt

1 1/2 t ground ginger

1 1/2 t ground cinnamon

1/2 t ground cloves

Line a 9x13 pan with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a stand mixer, combine the Crisco, molasses and sugar until smooth.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients.

With the mixer on a low speed, alternate adding the buttermilk and dry ingredients together, until everything is thoroughly mixed.

Pour the batter in the parchment paper lined pan. Bake for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted is clean.

Cool for 20 minutes in the pan. Then cool on a wire rack. Once totally cool (placing the cake in the refrigerator or freezer helps), slice the cake into bite-sized pieces.

White Chocolate Icing

3 lbs white chocolate bark, divided

1 1/2 c Crisco, divided

In a double boiler, melt 1 lb of chocolate bark and 1/2 cup Crisco. Mix together. Dip the cake pieces in the chocolate. (Watch this video! I love her technique!) Let dry on a wire rack. If crumbs appear, cool the cake in the refrigerator and give the cake another coat. Make more icing as needed.

Decorate with thinned royal icing or sprinkles or wherever your creativity takes you!

GFCF Gingerbread House

Last year, I bought a gingerbread house kit from the store and called it my most stressful decision ever. I nearly had a panic attack from working with wheat and dairy-filled icing. In the end, the gingerbread house was built with a hot glue gun and sat throughout Christmas on the far corner of my table - away from anything I would eat. This year, I wanted to put my Wilton skills to use (I took the first course and went from horrible to terrific very quickly) and that meant making a gingerbread house that could proudly take center stage on my kitchen table and I wouldn't be flipping out over touching a wheat-filled kit and then touching everything else in my kitchen. No gingerbread house is worth getting sick over!

Pamela's Products held the answer to my gf Christmas wish! Her website has a recipe that uses Pamela's Gluten-Free Bread Mix to create a gingerbread house! And it even included templates for the house! Before work one morning, I quickly mixed together my dough, using Crisco as my butter, and refrigerated it.

When I came home, I laid out some parchment covered cutting boards and got to work. Since I don't have wooden bars for consistent dough rolling (this is on my Christmas list, Santa!), I laid down two square chopsticks and was mindful of where they started to taper down. I cut out the templates with scissors and then gently placed them on top of the dough to cut out the shapes with a dough cutter/scraper.

Only problem was the paper was sticking to the dough! Since these were rolled out on parchment paper, I simply picked up the paper and flipped the dough over onto my parchment paper covered cookie sheets. Voila! Problem solved! The nice, smooth side was face up. The dough gave me just enough for the house and three small gingerbread trees. Before cooking my house, I used some stencils that my mom and I found (unopened) in her kitchen (similar to these) and drew out the shapes I wanted to draw in an attempt to minimize any free-handing the cake needed.

The pieces ended up baking for about 20-22 minutes. When they came out of the oven, there were several bumps in the dough. I've never done proper gluten free cookie cutter cookies so I don't know if this is normal, the dough, or me. The lumps are barely detectable now that the house has some distracting decorations on it.

This year, no glue gun was needed to put this house together! I made Royal Icing from Wilton's website (naturally dairy free) and used almost a dozen tips and three colors (white, red, and green) to decorate my house. I had a lot of fun putting this house together this year. The stress was off and I was in my element decorating with swirls and flourishes. Having the stencils imprinted with the designs helped immensely! All of the decorations were made from royal icing, so I had no additional labels to read. Wilton has been great about responding to my e-mailed requests about their products being gluten and dairy free - I know my colors are all safe for me!

Are you building a gingerbread house this year? Will yours be gluten free or gluten full?

Day-After-Thanksgiving Pizza!

I'm not one for a turkey sandwich for leftovers. This year, I used Katz's gluten free, dairy free, nut free pizza crusts, loaded them with Libby's pumpkin, some turkey, corn, and a dollop of cranberry sauce and called it a Day-After-Thanksgiving Pizza!

My mom questioned my judgment (and why I was taking pictures of my food), but this was surprisingly delicious! All of the turkey-day favorites in a new form! The pizza crust held up nicely under the weight of my toppings, but I ended up eating it more like a pita than a pizza.

Katz products are made in a gluten free, dairy free, nut free facility. I've sampled several of their products and enjoy their offerings. And I LOVE that I can grab any of their products (and there are lots) without worrying about my restrictions!

How do you eat your Thanksgiving leftovers?

Pumpkin Pancakes

Thanksgiving is a foodie's holiday - right? And why not get things off with a great start - breakfast! In my family, lunch is skipped in favor of having an early dinner so having a filling breakfast is essential. Doing a Thanksgiving breakfast with my home-bound grandma was all my sister's genius idea - and was quickly met with instant approval from everyone! I prepared a feast for us - fruit salad, hashbrowns with rosemary and thyme, Applegate Chicken and Apple sausage and pancakes. My grandma loves pancakes but said I didn't need to make anything special. Plain pancakes are fine. But Thanksgiving is for more than plain pancakes - they are for the best ever (and very fluffy and sweet) gf pumpkin pancakes!

Two days later I got a phone call from my grandma thanking me again for breakfast and she kept telling me how proud she was of me. I was thankful that I was able to show off my culinary skills to her and prepare something that the family could enjoy! And I'm sure you will be thankful for this delicious recipe! It makes a lot (I was cooking for 8) - freeze the leftovers and you can have a taste of Thanksgiving any time!

Pumpkin Pancakes

3 cups Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Pancake Mix

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups + 1 T rice milk

1 cup Libby's canned pumpkin

1 t cinnamon

1/4 t ground ginger

Preheat an electric griddle to 350 degrees.

Combine all ingredients together with a hand mixer, or whisk together.

Lightly spray the griddle with cooking spray. Scoop the batter on to the griddle using a 1/8 or 1/2 measuring cup. When halfway done cooking, flip over.

Serve while still warm. Tastes great with maple syrup (and perhaps even powdered sugar?).

Stuffing

Thanksgiving means turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, another scoop of stuffing and more, right? Back during my less-than-ideal eating habit stage, I would make Stoffer's stuffing and have that be my meal. One night, I had my leftovers cooling in plastic containers before putting them in the fridge. The next morning, I found my (then very cooled) stuffing still on the counter. I cried. What a waste of stuffing!!! I never realized how emotionally attached I was to bread and herbs...Am I the only one with this problem?

Last year, I was on a mission to make stuffing. I tried and fell in love with Silvana's recipe in Cooking for Isiah. I made the recipe twice - once as soon as I got the book and the second time for Thanksgiving. I even brought over the entire recipe (after several healthy "tastings" first, of course) to my family as another stuffing option. The cornbread stuffing is packed full of corn, bacon and apples.

This year, I am a recipe tester for the new on-line gluten free magazine Easy Eats.

(Do you subscribe? You really should.) I tested the rye bread stuffing. Did you know that ryeless rye bread is a thing? It is and it is delicious! I made Gluten Free Goddess' recipe found here. First and foremost - I didn't realize I missed rye bread until I had a slice. I highly recommend trying it out! The stuffing recipe I tested for Easy Eats was Mushroom-Rye Stuffing (page 79). The recipe was easy to make and had such a hearty flavor. This is a dish that is worth passing around the table for the holidays! I'm glad I took on my recipe assignment - it pushed me beyond my traditional family favorites and I tried a new recipe that tasted more like Thanksgiving than any other stuffing I've had before.

What's going in your stuffing this year?

Road's Ends Organics Mac and Chreese

I love (and miss) the novelty of convince foods. Even though I have no desire to eat food from McDonalds, I miss the simple pleasure of going in, ordering, and leaving without asking any questions in mere minutes. Same went for packaged foods. I pretty much lived off of Kraft Mac and Cheese my first year out of college. I've seen gluten and dairy free mac and cheese in a box at the store once, passed it up, and then spent months trying to find it again. Road's End Organics has a Dairy Free Mac & Chreese Alfredo Style. Gluten free, soy free, lactose free, cholesterol free and vegan. Perfect! Over $3.00 a box at Wal-Mart? This was going to be a splurge. Especially since the blue box gluten and dairy filled versions were priced under a dollar in the same aisle...gr...

The good:

The product is organic. And soy free (most gf foods contain soy). The cooking instructions are pretty close to the Kraft version. It cooks pretty quickly - the noodles need 6-10 minutes of cooking time. The only ingredients that you need to add are a milk product of your choice or water as well optional butter or olive oil. I added bacon (ruining the vegan-ness of the meal) and that was quite tasty. You can never go wrong with bacon (unless cooking for a vegetarian or vegan, of course).

The bad:

It was really bland. I was more excited about eating my frozen veggies seasoned with salt and pepper. It was expensive. I had high hopes for the dish, so I realize the bar was set pretty high. It didn't taste like Alfredo and the color was an off-putting beige with dark specks. The best word to sum of eating it was "meh".

The ugly:

Not my prettiest dish.

Maybe I should stick with making my mac and cheese from scratch. It tasted much better and had lots of flavor.

(Note: I have issues with cow's milk products and butter, but my stomach loves goat and sheep's cheeses. My default from scratch mac and cheese uses goat's cheese.)