Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Gingerbread egg, dairy and gluten free!

Today we're making a Classic Christmas Favourite. 
Gingerbread Cookies!

I had a little help with my Decorating. lol
These are infact GLUTEN FREE and Completely DELICIOUS!
Again, I used the flour recipe from my first post HERE.

The Epicure ingredients I used in these are
Gingerbread spices
Vanilla Extract
Gluten free Baking Powder
VE milk Belgain Chocolate.

Okay, here we go!
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup dark molasses
1/4 cup water
beat all of the above in a large bowl until very well blended and pale in colour with electric mixer.

2 1/2 cups gluten free flour
1 tsp VE gingerbread spices
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. VE gluten free baking powder
3/4 tsp. sea salt (I used Bob's Red Mill)
Mix together all of the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl and add to creamed wet ingredients.
mix well.

At this point you need to gather all your dough together in some parchment paper, and refrigerate it for 1-2 hours.  It can also be frozen at this point.  The dough will keep for about 6 weeks frozen, or a week in the fridge.

When you're ready to use it, you definately want to keep it between 2 layers of parchment while you roll it out!  Go ahead and use a rolling pin, but don't use it directly on the dough.  sandwich the dough between parchement layers, and roll away.  When you cut with the cookie cutters, you can flour the cutter first, then cut.  To remove the cut raw cookies, you need to remove all the dough around the shape, then carefully use a lifter to transfer to a baking sheet also lined with parchment.  Alternatively, you can transfer your rolled out dough (before cutting with cookie cutters) to the cookie tray and then just cut and remove the excess, and you have then successfully avoided having to move the cookie dough cut outs at all! :0)
Once they are baked, and cooled, they're easy to handle.
Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes. 
We decorated ours with a simple icing made with just water and icing sugar, and then sprinkled with sprinkles, and I used my awesome Epicure Chocolate Decorator to add the Belgain Chocolate outline.  Mmmm...these are DELICIOUS with a cup of coffee, tea or even better yet...a gingerbread latte!

Gingerbread syrup for latte.
1 cup water
3/4 cup white sugar
2 tsp. VE gingerbread spices.
Bring all of the above to a boil while stirring in a medium heavy saucepan.
Boil for one minute, and remove from heat.
Use approximately 2 Tbsp. per cup of coffee, or to taste.
For a latte, fill the coffee cup half full, add syrup and frothed milk.
For a richer drink, add cream and whipped cream with chocolate syrup and cinnamon sugar to top!

Enjoy your bit of personal Heaven at a fraction of the cost you'd pay Starbucks!

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Ice box cookies!

Today I'm going to share with you my recipe for Ice Box cookies.  They're delicious, easy to make, and handy to have around!  You make up a batch, freeze them in logs in wax paper or parchment, and then just slice and bake when you need them!  This is one recipe I won't be without at Christmas time.
Here we see our dough. Mmmmmm....

And our finished cookies...albeit slightly over-baked. lol

Okay, time for the recipe!
For this one as for most of my recipes here I use the Nearly Normal Gluten free flour recipe from my first post.

2 1/2 cups gluten free flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
Mix these three well with a wooden spoon.

1cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1cup icing sugar
Cream together these three ingredients, then mix in the following

1 egg
2tsp. vanilla (I love Epicure's vanilla)

At this point you have a really thick clumpy batter and all that's left to do is to add the cherries!
chop up 1/2 cup each red and green glace. cherries, and add into the mixture. 
Then scoop up some mixture onto wax paper and form into 4 logs using the wax paper to form the logs.  Gluten free batter is REALLY STICKY and not so much fun to work with if you're using bare hands!

Chill for at least an hour in the fridge before cutting into 1/4" thick slices and bake at 350 degrees for 7-10 minutes.
This will keep upto 5 days in the fridge or upto 1 month in the freezer.  They smell wonderful when they're baking, and taste delicious!  You won't even miss the regular wheat flour!

I hope you have a chance to try this recipe out this Christmas.  It's become a family favourite.  Next time I get back to the blog, I'll post my gingerbread recipe!
Happy Baking!


Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Christmas Baking the Gluten Free way!

Over the next few days I'll be sharing some fabulous recipes with you that I make every Christmas. They work really well Gluten Free!

I am using the nearly normal all purpose flour recipe you can find a few posts down, and I even have pictures to share. I have them to share today infact, but it appears I have some blog sorting to do! I don't have the option to post photos at the moment. Odd.
Anyway, I have a gingerbread, ice box cookie, and confetti bars to share with you this week!
Stay tuned.