Happy New Year -
Well I tried a new dessert to take to a New Years Eve party at our friends home.  I LOVE tiramisu, and our wonderful local Homeland carries Gluten Free Ladyfingers.  So of course it was time for me to enjoy this amazing dessert again.  I have enclosed a picture of the cookbook I got the recipe from.  I absolutely love this particular cookbook.  It has so many amazing GF recipes in it and they are easy!  I enjoy cooking, but my favorite type of cooking is - EASY!  We had a great time with friends and the dessert received great reviews from all who tried it.  I actually found a coffee flavored marscapone cheese, so I bought that to enhance the coffee flavor even more. 

It was wonderful to ring in 2012.  Although 2011 had some great moments, I look back over my  journal and read many entries detailing sadness and hard days.  It was a year of truly looking over the person I was and making decisions if this is the person I wanted to continue to be.  NO WAY was of course the answer, but took little action to make the changes needed.  Well 2012 will be the year action is taken.  Step One - SIMPLIFY!  I was way to materialistic and that was consuming me.  If it is not a true need - then do I really want to spend money on an item that will most likely end up in a yard sale, goodwill donation bucket, or trash?  Jim and I are simplifying our house too and yes it is killing me to get rid of items that are loaded with memories, but I am realizing I don't need "stuff" to keep the memories.  Step Two - MOVE!  I love Edmond, Oklahoma.  We have lived here longer than any other place in our married life, but it is time to get out of the race.  Our new home is out in the middle of nowhere.  At Christmas, my favorite part of the day was going outside at night and seeing the beautiful stars shining down on me.  I will love this view everynight after we move!  The closest grocery store - 15 to 20 minutes away and there are only two choices.  I have no idea where the closest mall would even be, maybe an hour away.  I want to raise chickens and help with the horses and cattle.  I am already asking Jim to build me a greenhouse for year round growing.  Of course with this move comes fear, which I am trying to not let take over me.  I have no job lined up, nor does Jim.  What if our current house does not sell etc.  But my heart has been in the wrong place for to long, so I will purge it of the waste and trust God will give me just what I need - no more, no less.

I pray you all had a wonderful New Year's Eve and have glorious plans for 2012.  Thank you for reading my adventures in GF baking.  I did mention in my last post it may become a blog about moving, so sorry for my side bars off the main baking topic.  Until my next baking adventure - Happy Baking!


This is a wonderful cookbook! 

You can find these at the Homeland Store - I shop at the Santa Fe & 2nd store.

This added an extra coffee flavor.  I bought this at Crest on 15th & Santa Fe

The finished product!  So good!!!

From my family to yours ~ HAPPY NEW YEAR ~ 2012

Chocolate Rasberry Torte

Today, 19 years ago, the most beautiful girl entered my life and I took on the new official name of "MOM".  I have loved every year, day, hour, and minute spent with this amazing gift from God.  Sadie has grown into such an independent young lady and our relationship shift to a "friend" level has been a wonderful journey this past year as she is now a sophmore in college.  So of course what better excuse to bake than a birthday!  This recipe came again from the fantastic magazine Living Without, August/September 2011 issue.  The cake is gluten and dairy-free.  It is super sweet though and I did not replace with stevia - I used organic cane sugar.  It is a cake where a TALL glass of milk is required - rice milk for those of you who are dairy free.  It was great enjoying cake and coffee as I caught up on her college life.  My heart is breaking as I realize this will be her last birthday, for now at least, that I will spend with her.  I am thrilled for my new adventure awaiting me as we prepare to move, but the thought of being 14 hours away and no more Sunday lunches creates a little hole in my heart that hurts always.  Special days like this will be so difficult this first year apart, but I will just cherish the times we are together even more. 

As Christmas quickly approaches, I am not sure what time I will have to get to much more baking in.  I would love to get some cookie dough made and in the freezer to bake on the winter break, but time seems to be fighting me.  As our house is quickly transforming into the "under remodeling" mode, it seems like there is to much other things to get done and no time for baking.  My blog may switch to an "Adventures in Moving" mode for a few months, but I hope to get some baking time in.  I wish you a very Merry Christmas and Safe & Happy New Year.
To my precious Sadie, I love you and pray many happy more years for you as you continue to experience life.  My number one prayer for you - is to continue to keep God #1 in your life above all else.  You fill my cup daily with happiness!  Love Love Love you!!!!!
Happy Baking!

Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving ~ 2011
I LOVE this time of year.  The cooler weather has arrived and a nice break from work to spend time with family and to focus completely on being thankful.  This year has been one of so much heartache, so it was nice to focus on what I am thankful for in my life.  How easy it is to lose track of the good and spend to much energy focusing on the negative.  Although it has been a tough year, so many great things have also happened.  As this year wraps up, I will make a committment to focus 2012 on positive, even in the storms.  I will work to let go of my crazy type-A personality and let my hair down to enjoy the simple day to day things God has blessed me with.  My quick one minute brainstorm of current things I am grateful for:
My family, Sadie home for more than a few hours, Sadie will be a blessing to the people of Tanzania this summer, the farm, my mom's heart procedure was successful, JR didn't suffer long with Lou Gehrigs (although my heart misses him deeply), I have a job, Jim doesn't work for a cut-throat company anymore, I am healthy... Short list, but one minute does go fast and this is a cooking blog, so let's get to it~

I am so thankful my gluten-free cooking has actually gotten better.  This year our entire thanksgiving meal came from the best magazine ever, Living Without, the Nov/Dec issue.  If you live gluten/dairy free this magazine is for you and you can get a copy at Barnes and Noble.  So for copyright reasons, I can't share those recipes here, but I will tell you it was my BEST meal ever.  It was a pear based meal.  Here was our menu:
Butter/Lemon rub Turkey
Fresh Herb & Pear Gravy
Sausage/Pear Stuffing
Cranberry/Pear dish
Herb Popovers
and of course the traditional (not from magazine, but can't have a Thanksgiving without)
Green Bean Casserole - made GF with Pacific GF Cream of Mushroom and homemade french fried onions
Sweet Potato Casserole

As I have blogged before, I cannot master the pie crust :( 
But my family loves Pumpkin pie, so I just bought a frozen pie for them.  I really need to master the pie crust though so I can enjoy pies.  I do love them!

One of the things I am never a huge fan of for the Thanksgiving meal, but is a must is stuffing.  Well the Sausage/Pear stuffing I made was amazing!  I made it the day before so the pear flavors could soak in and then I baked it for 2 hours on low heat.  WOW ~ so good and so moist.  I cut the recipe in half because the one in the magazine served 14, well there are only 3 of us in the family so full amount seemed extreme.  But I wish I had made the full amount.  It was the first leftover that was completely gone the next day. 

Green Bean Casserole - I buy the Pacific Brand GF cream of mushroom soup at Target.  They also have Cream of Chicken GF.  Thank you Pacific Brand!  I use the traditional recipe, but I don't buy the can of french fried onions.  If you cut up onions in thin slices, coat them in brown rice flower by shaking them in a ziplock, and fry them over low heat until golden brown and crispy, they taste great.  I use Coconut Oil, which is pretty much all I use to cook with.  It is a solid oil at room temp, but will liquidfy when heated. 

Sweet Potato Casserole - The recipe I use was given to me by our neighbor when we lived in Hawaii - Thank you Kristen Tidwell!  It is like eating candy and so good.  Here is the recipe:
2 large cans of yams, drained
1 Cup sugar, I use rapunzel pure cane.  You can even do 1/2 cup pure cane and 1/2 cup stevia
1 stick butter
1/4 Cup Flour, I use my homemade flour blend (brown rice flour, tapioca starch, potato starch)
1 T nutmeg
3 eggs
1 can Pet milk
GF marshmallows
Put potatoes in mixer and add all ingredients.  Mix well.  Pour into a greased casserole dish and back uncovered at 375 degrees for 1 hour or until firm.  Remove from oven andpour marshmallows on top.  Return to oven just to melt - only takes a few minutes.

Well enjoy the pictures of our Thanksgiving food.  If you are on a gluten free adventure I hope you had a great Thanksgiving meal too.  As 2011 wraps up, I am looking ahead to 2012 and what I can do to advance my healthful eating.  I feel very comfortable with the no wheat and gluten diet and do pretty good cutting sugar, but can do much better here -- I LOVE chocolate.  But feel my new focus will be to work on cutting cow dairy.  I occasionally have stomach issues and when I trace back what I have eaten, it is usually dairy that I can link it too. 
Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Baking!  Time to start planning Christmas and New Year's meals. 

Green Bean Casserole - Gluten Free Style

Sweet Potato Casserole

Sausage/Pear Stuffing

Herb/Pear Gravy

Cranberry/Pear Dish

Cookies Galore

How time flies!  Well school is back in session and I got to do some gluten free baking for the incoming Oklahoma Christian lunch at Memorial Road Church of Christ about a month ago.  I made peanut butter cookies with that yummy hershey kiss on top; m&m cookies; rice krispy treats (so happy to have GF rice krispy cereal now).  I am finding that I can take pretty much any recipe - use my flour blend I keep in the fridge from the Gluten Free Baking cook book and a little zanthum gum to hold it all together and it is as good as any other dessert made with regular flour.  I am so happy to see business doing more catering to a GF eater.  I must say I feel great - still need to work on cutting all sugar, but that is a tough one for me.  I do have a sweet tooth, but I do a good job for the most part with portion control.
If you are still on the fence about trying GF baking, go for it!  You will not be disappointed.
Enjoy the pics and happy baking!

Angel Food Cake and Mango Cake

I haven't posted in some time now, but it doesn't mean I haven't made a few gluten free items.  Shortly after the 4th of July, I started craving an angel food cake with fresh strawberries.  So it was time to master a gluten free angel food cake and the picture below is the delicious outcome!  Sorry the picture is sideways, not sure what happened there??  But I think you can still get the idea of how the yumminess!

So then I got my new "Living Without" magazine it had recipes for some great cakes.  I decided to try the mango cake and WOW was it moist.  Of course I can't eat an entire cake on my own, so my friends got to share in the wealth.

I have a few more items to get made before I head back to work in a few weeks.  I did make some delicous blondie bars for our teacher luncheon today.  They were also very good and so easy to make.  I will get pictures on soon. 
Enjoy your summer and I hope you are not melting like I am - praying for some relief from the heat!

Pie Time

Well my dear friends, making a gluten free pie crust was much harder than anything else I have made to date.  I was just craving a yummy strawberry pie.  We had signed up to bring a dessert to a 4th of July BBQ, so I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to make that pie.  Well almost 5 hours later after try 2 of making a crust, I broke down and switched to making brownies.  So sad!  I have been successful in all my gluten-free adventures, so to have a recipe not turn out was a huge disappointment.  I did finally get a crust made, but it doesn't roll out like  normal pie crust.  I have my crust in the freezer, because once I did get one made that looked half way decent, I just was in no mood to make the filling.  Maybe later this week I'll whip together a banana cream pie or something, but the initial craving for strawberry pie - GONE!  I will say, the first crust I made - that just crumbled the moment it was touched - turned into an amazing dessert topping crumble.  So it was time for snacks with my niece and nephew and we cut up some cherries, put a big scoop of Coconut Milk ice cream into a bowl and then my pie crust crumble.  I can only say DELICIOUS!  So for my friends who want to go dairy free - coconut milk ice cream is sold at Walmart.  It is dairy and soy free.  Walmart carries Mint Chip and Vanilla Bean flavors.  It is very tasty.  Well my friends, my summer of baking has not been as adventurous as I had hoped with all our traveling, but I will continue to bake as often as possible.  Enjoy our 100 degree heat days by staying cool.  Happy Baking!

Cookie Picture

Forgot to add this picture with my last post.  Yum Yum!