Gluten Free Holiday Favorites

So I know that this time of year would be difficult for our family, especially Grace, but since I was going to have 2 weeks off from work I figured I would have the time to experiment and tweak our favorite Christmas/Holiday recipes for year's to come.


I started by baking my regular goodies with wheat flour, which turned out to be a good thing because I was able to use up all the flour and not throw it out.  I made these goodies for friends & co-workers.


The kid's classroom parties were fast approaching, therefore, the first recipe I experimented with was iced pumpkin cookies from allrecipes.com, all I  did was substitute the wheat flour with a flour blend recipe I found in a Living Without magazine and I substituted milk for lactose-free milk.  Both kids said their classmates really enjoyed the cookies.


PUMPKIN COOKIES V (allrecipes.com)
2 c. shortening
2 c. white sugar
2 c. canned pumpkin
2 eggs
2 t. baking soda
1 1/2 t. ground cinnamon
1 t. salt
4 c. all-purpose flour (substitute-gluten-free flour blend - recipe below)
1 t. xanthan gum


Icing
6 T. butter
8 T. milk (I used lactose-free milk)
2 c. confectioners' sugar
1 1/2 t. vanilla extract
1 c. packed brown sugar


Makes 4-5 dozen.  Preheat oven to 350.  Cream shortening, white sugar & pumpkin.  Add eggs and mix well.  Sift together baking soda, ground cinnamon, salt and flour.  Add to pumpkin mixture and mix well.  Drop onto ungreased cookie sheets and bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.


To make icing:  Cook butter, milk and brown sugar until dissolved.  Cool and add confectioners' sugar and vanilla.  Pour over warm cookies. (I liked my counter with wax paper and set my wire cooling racks on top of the wax paper.  I then poured the icing over the cookies and let harden.  Finally I sprinkled confectioners' sugar over top.)




Next, I wanted to make an apple pie, because our family's Christmas tradition is to have a slice of apple pie for breakfast on Christmas morning.  I had found a gluten-fee pie crust product at our local health food store, I had to several ingredients, but it made 4 single-layer crusts, which could be refrigerated or frozen for later use.

APPLE PIE I (allrecipes.com)

Substituted ingredients to make gluten-free

6 c. thinly sliced apples

3/4 c. white sugar

1 T. butter

1 t. ground cinnamon

1 recipe gluten-free pie crust

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Prepare recipe for two-crust pie.  Wipe, peel, core, quarter and slice apples; measure to 6 cups.  Combine sugar and cinnamon.  The amount of sugar used depends on how tart your apples are.  Arrange apples in layers in pastry lined pie plate.  Sprinkle each layer with sugar and cinnamon.  Dot top layer with small pieces of butter.  Cover with top crust.  Place on lowest rack oven in preheated oven.  Bake 10 minutes, then reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees.  Bake for 30-35 minutes longer.
HINT:  When working with this gluten-free crust, you make have to assemble top crust in pieces on top of apple-filled pastry.

I always make Rice Krispie Treats for the holiday season, but most rice cereal are made at factories with gluten cereals.  My mother-in-law, Debi, suggested I make them with the Gluten-Free Rice Chex that I usually have on hand in my house, so I did and they were super yummy.  My son's friend said if he were blind he wouldn't be able to tell the difference between our Chex Bars and the original Rice Krispie Treats.

CHEX BARS

1/4 c. butter

1 pkg. (10oz.) marshmallows (or 3 c. mini marshmallows)

6 c. Gluten-Free Rice Chex cereal



Melt butter in a large saucepan over low heat.  Add marshmallows and stir until completely melted.  Meanwhile, prepare baking dish with cooking spray.  Once melted, remove from heat.  Add cereal and stir until well coated.  Using a buttered spatula, press mixture into prepared dish.  Cool; cut into squares.

We also ate a very traditional dinner that included a roasted turkey (which we won in our bowling league - and gluten-free), mashed potatoes (included sour cream & milk), corn, homemade turkey gravy (Grace could not eat) and rolls (which Grace could also not eat).  We were planning on giving her the Lactaid for the mashed potatoes, but we forgot.  About an hour after dinner, we realized that the dairy had not affected her so maybe we can now slowly start to reintroduce dairy products to her....ALL IN ALL AWESOME HOLIDAYS!!!

 

Also, my mother-in-law sent me a Gluten-Free & Dairy-Free cookbook called Cooking for Isaiah, written by Silvana Nardone, the Editor in Chief for the magazine Every Day with Rachael Ray.  i haven't read through it thoroughly yet, but it does have tons of dessert recipes...yum, can't wait to try some out.

 

GLUTEN-FREE FLOUR BLEND

Living Without magazine

1/2 c. rice flour

1/4 c. tapioca starch/flour

1/4 c. cornstarch or potato starch

I tend to quadruple this recipe and store it in an airtight Tupperware container.

I've still been ordering with the online company azurestandard.com to get a lot of my favorite gluten-free products.