Some of my fondest holiday memories involve taking a hammer to a month-old, stale-as-all-get-out gingerbread house and watching chunks of dry gingerbread, rock-hard gum drops, and royal icing fly in every direction across the kitchen floor. If you’re also reminiscing about the utter destruction of something so beautiful and yet so inedible, this is a post for you. After years (a decade?) hiatus, we decided that we should make a gingerbread house this year. Being older and oh-so wiser, we figured we should construct an epic house, from our own template, with homemade gluten free gingerbread that we carefully piece together with hot caramel instead of the takes-forever-to-set royal icing.…
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Gluten Free Decorated Gingerbread Cookies
These may some of the most iconic cookies known to children across the Christmas-celebrating world. From finger-painted gingerbread people at age three, to a one-legged gingerbread fellow in Shrek, decorated gingerbread cookies hold nostalgia and holiday cliche in the perfectly-spiced, cookie-cutter package. So it seemed only appropriate that this year, of all years, we go back to our deepest, nearly-forgotten family traditions and make a truck load of gingerbread cookies and spend an entire evening decorating them and turning the kitchen table into a royal icing Jackson Pollock. This was actually our first time making homemade gingerbread dough in recent memory, so we totally underestimated how many gingerbread cookies could…
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Gluten Free Banana Pudding with Nilla Wafers
For this gluten free banana pudding with nilla wafers we are giving a huge shout out to Simply Delish for this recipe inspiration! Full disclosure – we joined the Simply Delish affiliate program which essentially entails them sending us a box of their gluten/dairy-free pudding and jel boxed mixes every few months, and us coming up with recipes that involve those boxed mixes as an ingredient every month, so you’ll see a few other Simply Delish-inspired recipes on here once in a while! This one uses their BRAND NEW banana pudding boxed mix and if you’re into it, use our specific link here to go check out their products, and use our 10% discount…
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Gluten Free Toasted Coconut Custard Pie
Custard pie has been one of my absolute favorite Thanksgiving dessert table treats since I can remember. To give you a bit of background – my mother hails from Alabama (moved to Oregon when she was in 8th grade), so we continue to ride the long coattails of southern cuisine, from pecan to karo to custard pies, to green jello salads (I had a MIND-blowingly-good one when we visited family outside of Montgomery when I was five and still think about it *sigh*), to hush puppies and family-secret barbecue sauce. Custard pie is arguably one of the simplest ones on that list, but it’s just so dang good! Now, after…
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Gluten Free Bourbon Balls
Thank goodness for Instagram, or I wouldn’t have even thought to make these delightfully indulgent holiday goodies last week! Calgary Glutenfree, another top-notch gluten free blogger, mentioned that their favorite way to use bourbon in baking was bourbon balls, and that sparked a full-fledged recipe hunt for how to make our own! I’d heard of these southern delicacies before but had regrettably never tried them, and after perusing various recipes, determined that I had everything I needed to make them right then and there. So I did. And I’m not disappointed with the result – quite the opposite! Now, apparently, the original bourbon ball was created by Ruth Hanly Booe…
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Gluten Free Cranberry Apple Pie with a Flaky Crust
Gluten free pie crust has been my nemesis for 16 long years. Either it’s a soggy bottom, or too tough, or too mealy and damp, never flaky, never buttery, I mean come on, it turned into a half-ass attempt to carry the actually-good part of any pie: the filling! I would reluctantly pull out my food processor and do what I’d always done and come out with the same dry, crumbly crust that I would (if we’re being honest) throw away after scooping off spoonfuls of custard or pecan or karo. Crisps were a much better match: tons of fruit, tons of spiced, nutty, crumbly (because it was supposed to…
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Gluten Free Parsnip and Ginger Tart
Parsnips are far and beyond one of the most over-looked root veggies when it comes to sweet dishes (anything, really, or maybe we just haven’t gotten the memo), and they’re AWESOME. They look like white carrots, and taste similar, with less bitterness and more sweetness which makes us wonder… why did carrot cake overtake parsnip cake as one of the top 5 most common cake flavors in the US? It’s a mystery to us, so we’re making it our mini-mission to find great and wonderful reasons to start picking up these colorless carrot cousins more often on your grocery runs. And they’re just as good on the savory side! We…
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Gluten Free Angel Food Cake with Berries and Cream
Anyone else remember the little filled-in-donut shortcakes they sold in American grocery stories, stacked amid clamshells of summer strawberries and spray cans of whipped cream? Thinking back, I don’t think they were actually angel food cake, but I always sort of thought they were, and a personal angel food cake blew my mind. Angel food cake has always been a favorite. But a favorite in the sense that I’ve only actually eaten it a handful of times and always considered it too ethereal, hard to make, and special to ever consider having for every birthday, holiday, or weekend. Which, I now realize, was a HUGE mistake. Because I LOVE angel…
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Gluten Free Peanut Butter Monster Cookies
Happy election day, USofA! Today is a stressful day for millions of Americans – those especially whose rights, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (and love) are teetering on the edge of oblivion. We have already voted, in two different states – Kendra in Oregon and me in California. Ballots cast into the great pit of representative democracy (heads up, the US has never been a true, cut and clean direct democracy, for better or for worse). We voted on behalf of so many who aren’t eligible but who support every detail of the running of this country nonetheless and deserve our support in kind. We voted on…
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Gluten Free Chocolate Coffee Walnut Layer Cake
Walnuts are the ones that are always left out. They don’t have a whole pie dedicated to them at Thanksgiving, they don’t supply millions of school children (and children at heart) with America’s favorite sandwich, they don’t even make milk (apparently even cashews do now!)! But they are one of my favorite nuts. Arguably the most delicate nut, buttery, with a light crunch and a hint of bitterness that rounds out any treat. I used to add them to my morning bowl of yogurt and berries every day, and still have a strong affinity for their papery skins and carefully-folded contours. So, when we visited friends in Paso Robles a…
