Peanut butter was a close side kick growing up. In second and third grade, I packed myself two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (on whole wheat seeded bread – pre-celiac days) for lunch every day, and then in fourth and fifth grade after I walked home from school I would scoop out more peanut butter and pair it with a kid-sized handful of chocolate chips for a high-protein snack that my parents probably didn’t approve of. It was just that good. All of this led to my dad mentioning one day that I would “make myself allergic” if I kept up my over-zealous peanut butter craze, and, two years after…
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Gluten Free Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
I gotta say, getting a good, chewy, gluten free cookie is a science. Definitely a science worth studying and perfecting, but who has that kind of time? I certainly didn’t until this three-day weekend and a full day of recipe research, development, taste-testing, and finally, resulting trays upon trays of what I’m now calling a scientific breakthrough: the perfectly chewy oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. We’ve done it, ladies, gentlemen, and persons of the gluten free world, you can all go home and make yourself a batch and be thoroughly glad that you did. These cookies are BIG, BOLD, and BETTER than anything you’ll spend $7/cookie on in stores. They’re studded…
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Gluten Free Raspberry Glazed Shortbread Cookies
That special day is right around the corner, and no matter who or what you spend it with (a partner, a puppy, a good book, or just yourself!), you most certainly deserve something packed with punchy raspberry notes and crumbling with browned butter and sugar. And in that spirit, here are probably the cutest cookies I’ve made thus far. I’ve never been a big sugar cookie person, and definitely not a glazed sugar cookie person, though I’ll admire the handiwork of a good glazer any day. Despite what I deemed a lackluster appeal of these simple cookies, they’re absolutely worth having in your repertoire and are sometimes the perfect pick…
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Gluten Free Browned Butter Millionaire Shortbread
If you’ve never heard of millionaire shortbread (or gluten free millionaire shortbread, for that matter), you’re in for a real treat. The fanciest, most indulgent treatiest treat out there (maybe not but they’re not called millionaire’s for nothing). The theme of these decked out shortbread bars is: why not? Why not slather half an inch of perfectly squidgy caramel over the perfect slab of shortbread, and why not, on top of that, smear the most luxurious dark chocolate you’ll ever snap into? Why not, as a millionaire would say. So why not be a millionaire for a day and make these incredibly rich, melt-in-your-mouth squares to complement your lavish post-college…
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Gluten Free Roasted Hazelnut and Chocolate Snow Cookies
One of my dearest friends now lives a million miles away in the fairy-tale land of Vienna, Austria. Her moving was terrible news, until I considered the fact that this undisputedly meant that I had to travel to said fairy-tale land to visit her at least once a year. Not a bad deal. The first time I visited it was the second week of December, and Vienna, let alone us, was entirely frozen. Nevertheless, the city has a marvelous way of distracting you from the bone-chilling cold by decking itself in heaps of holiday lights and decorations, and by constructing myriad Christmas markets (or Adventmarkt/Weihnachtsmarkt) that seem to magically appear…
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Gluten Free Brown Butter and Pecan Shortbread
When I was first diagnosed as Celiac in 2004, life as a 10 year old seemed immeasurably miserable: no more Oreos, sourdough toast, mac and cheese, Costco croissants, or hotel danishes. No more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! (my staple for packed lunches). It was a rough few months, to say the least, and those few months getting used to the new diet and figuring out what few items in the pantry I could still eat felt like a LIFETIME. Bowls of hot rice with butter felt like the best I could ever do, simply because the few brands in the US that were producing anything gluten free were woefully…
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Dark Chocolate Peppermint Cake Truffles
Ever develop a new recipe that you know will be a success, and then something goes terribly, horribly wrong? These truffles are the spiteful result of just that – though honestly, the only thing that was truly a disaster was the Italian buttercream frosting that I completely flubbed to top the chocolate peppermint cupcakes I had made. The cupcakes themselves were divine, the perfect mix of deep dark fudgey chocolate and crisp, winter peppermint that feels like candy canes and hot chocolate and everything lovely about the holidays. You’re more than welcome to make a dozen cupcakes out of the cake recipe below (or double it for a normal, two-dozen…
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Gluten Free Pumpkin Madeleines with Pumpkin Spice Glaze
Need some fancy pants desserts to wow your out-of-town relatives tomorrow? Or just want to have a pre-Thanksgiving high tea fit for queens? We’ve got you covered with these gluten free pumpkin madeleines. And these aren’t just any gluten free pumpkin madeleines, they’ve got brown butter (a glorious ingredient I recommend putting in nearly everything), AND pumpkin spice glaze. As background for this post, I’ve actually tried making madeleines twice now with different recipes and equally disastrous outcomes. Either they were too stiff and so didn’t fit the delicate mold and just ended up looking like lumps of raspberry coal, or the batter was too thin and rose too quickly,…
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Pistachio Snow Cookies
My mother makes a mean chocolate crinkle cookie, and a lemon version as well. Whether you call them crinkle, earthquake, or snow cookies, they’re one of the most visually delightful cookies with satisfyingly geometric splits and cracks that come from the dough being rolled in copious amounts of powdered sugar before baking and melting into this white-clad form. The earthquake title was recently brought to my attention by a coworker who only knew them by that name – but, as we’ve referenced before, a rose by any other name… This pistachio version looks quite similar, except for the telltale green hue that comes from heaps of ground the ground green…
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Classic Pecan Pie Bars
Sometimes a baked good just exudes coziness. Oozes curled up evenings under the covers with a good book (or four) or with the projector on and a Harry Potter movie playing out on the canvas of your apartment wall. These pecan pie bars do just that, with a kick of wickedly sweet corn syrup custard and the nutty fall crunch of caramelized pecans held together by the flakiest of shortbread crusts. If this sounds like the perfect Saturday evening, then by all means, read on. And, if you toss them in the oven before dinner, they’ll be done just in time for that movie night, or start them on the…
