Lovely Lemon and Honey Ladies (gluten free)

For Christmas one of my oldest and dearest friends gave me cookie cutters to make gingerbread girls (my boys keep telling me it's gingerbread men that are wearing coats. Right, boys!). I just couldn't wait till next Christmas to make them, and who says you actually have to? So this morning my toddler and I made cookies that taste like summer and that make you smile: lovely lemon & honey ladies (and some scary looking lemon & honey dinosaurs too, because one cannot live without dinosaur cookies ever, of course).

These cookies make a great birthday treat too

Even though I try to bake sugar free as well as gluten free I decided to use cane sugar for these cookies, because it makes them more firm and the gingerbread ladies are quite huge, you don't want them breaking as soon as you pick them up. This recipe doesn't use an insane amount of sugar, so I dared to risk it using cane sugar. 
I made a double batch of dough (as Gijs tends to eat half of it straight out of the bowl anyway) so I had two trays of dinosaur cookies and 5 enormous zingy ladies. We did not decorate them, because quite frankly, they are just lovely the way they are. 

Here's the recipe (one batch).

Ingredients:

• 175 grams (6 oz) of gluten free rice flour
• 25 grams (1 oz) of almond flour
• 50 grams (1.75 oz) of cane sugar
• 50 grams (1.75 oz) of butter
• 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar
• half a teaspoon of xanthan gum
• 1 egg
• zest of one lemon
• vanilla seeds (from one vanilla pod)
• 2 tablespoons of honey
• 2 tablespoons of milk if the dough is too dry and won't combine.

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees centigrade (325 degrees fahrenheit).
2. Put all the 'dry' ingredients (everything except the honey, milk and eggs) in a big bowl and mix well. 
3. Add the egg and honey and knead it into a soft dough using the electric mixer. If the dough doesn't combine, but stays crumbly; add the milk, spoon for spoon until it does. 
4. Do not eat all the dough out of the bowl. Yes, this is very important, because the dough is so wonderful, you might just do that and end up with no cookies at all. 
5. Knead the dough on a (rice)floured surface and roll it out into a big slab. I make them rather thick it makes the cookies nice and fluffy. The thinner the dough, the crunchier the cookies become (that's a bit of a "duuuhhh" I know). My kids like fluffy cookies. 
6. Get out your cookie cutters and knock yourself out making cute & funny cookies. 
7. Put them on a baking tray lined with baking parchment. 
8. Put them in the oven and bake them until they are golden. Depending on the oven it takes 12-20 minutes. The lovely ladies took a while, because they are rather large. 
9. Let them cool on a wire rack and serve them with a cup of tea. 
10. Enjoy!

Gluten free and sugar free Dinosaur cookies

I had forgotten how tough it is to adapt your life to a diet. Cooking, or rather living gluten free has become a way of life in our home. It doesn't matter if I have one person with Celiacs Disease in our home or let's say four, it wouldn't change a thing. We are used to that.
But now that we are limiting our  three year old's sugar intake to see if that helps him, I find myself checking everything in the store over and over again, adapting recipes that were once already adapted and sometimes completely failing at it. It's not as hard as gluten free, because a bit of sugar won't make my little boy sick, as gluten really do make my oldest incredibly sick, but it's still a challenge. Because I want what's best for our son(s).  And so we struggle a bit until this is a regular thing in our household too.

Yesterday my 3 year old an I baked cookies as my cookie dough & batter lover and I often do on Thursday. And not just any kind of cookies, but dinosaur cookies, because both my sons have succumbed to the 'Dinosaurs are cool' virus. We have this favorite gluten free cookie recipe, that we always use, but that contains sugar. Bummer! We decided to change that and turn it into a sugar free version using apple syrup (appelstroop in Dutch). It's a totally Dutch thing that we eat on sandwiches. Yes, us Dutchies, we are weird. We eat sprinkles on our sandwiches and pancakes for dinner. Don't judge us. ;-)

Run, the dinosaurs are back! :-)

Here's the recipe. For my Dutch readers: The Dinosaur cookie cutters were bought at Dille & Kamille.

Ingredients:

• 200 grams (1.6 cup) of rice flour
• 0.5 tablespoon of xanthan gum (to keep your cookies from crumbling)
• 1 teaspoon of glutenfree baking soda
• 125 grams (4.4 oz) of apple syrup. Maple syrup will work too I think!
• orange zest from one orange ( I add 2 tablespoons of gingerbread spices)
• 50 (about a 1/4 of a cup) grams of butter
• 1 egg

Instructions:

• Preheat the oven to 160 degrees centigrade (320 degrees centigrade)
• Put all dry ingredients in a kitchen aid or bowl and slowly add the other ingredients while mixing. Add some extra rice flour if the mixture is too moist, and a bit of milk if it gets too dry.
• Take it out of the bowl, dust the surface and roll out to an even dough, about half a centimeter or half an inch thick. Get out your favorite cookie cutters and cut out about twenty cookies.
• Put them on a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake them in the preheated oven for about 10 minutes.
• Let them cool on a wire rack. If you want, you can decorate them with icing, but my kids love them just the way they are!

Enjoy!

Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Sugar Free Raisin & Rooibos Tea Cake

It has been a while since I blogged a recipe. I've baked (I always bake, it's my second nature), but I just haven't had the time to write my recipes down in my blog, I've been so busy. I've jotted them on little pieces of paper, so eventually I hope they will end up here, in black & white. 

I'm glad the holidays are over and life is slowly returning to normal. Even though I like the time off, somehow the days toward the holidays are just insanely busy. So much to do, so little time. All the Christmas activities at school & daycare (bring this, bring that, don't forget this, don't forget that), the usual baking and then of course the inevitable school Christmas dinner, which means I need to bake or cook for the whole class (as do all parents) and I separately need to create a gluten free dinner for my boy, just so he can enjoy his dinner as well without worrying he might eat something wrong. I'm always exhausted when the Christmas vacation is actually here. 

In the mean time I (well... we as a family actually) have been putting a lot of time & energy into our youngest son as well, who is a cute little whirlwind with a brain that amazes me in many ways. He is so smart, funny and he has the most fantastic imagination, but his amazing, chaotic brain is very confusing to him and us sometimes. So, while we are looking into all that, the doctor suggested to limit the amount of sugar as well. In most things that isn't too difficult a except when I bake. I bake with sugar a lot. Oh and he loves his chocolate sprinkles... hmmm...  Anyway, I'm used to baking with sugar because it tastes great and is common in almost all recipes. So today, as a fresh start, we've baked our first gluten free, sugar free Raisin & Rooibos Tea Cake that so happens to be dairy free as well. 
I probably will still bake with sugar from time to time, but if limiting the amount of sugar will help my little whirlwind munchkin, I will do so. In this case, Gijs loved the batter and that is a good sign & a great motivation to adapt more recipes along the way. Let the gluten free and sugar free baking commence! ;-)

Here's the recipe for the cake that we made today. 

Not bad for a first time!!

Ingredients:

• 125 grams (4.5 oz) of raisins
• 200 ml (7 fl oz) of Rooibos tea
• 50 grams (1.75 oz) of buckwheat flour
• 100 grams (3.5 oz) of chestnut flour
• 150 grams (5.5 oz)of almond flour
• 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar
• 1.5 teaspoon of fiber husk
• 90 grams (3.25 oz) of honey
• zest of a large tangerine
• The contents of one vanilla pod
• 4 eggs
• 100 ml (3.5 fl oz) of olive oil

Instructions:

1. Soak the raisins in the warm Rooibos tea for an hour or so.
2. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees centigrade / about 350 degrees fahrenheit.
3. Put all the flour, cream of tartar, and fiber husk into a bowl and mix.
4. Add the eggs, the zest of a tangerine (you can also use a lemon, but I like the combination of the raisins and the softer, sweeter taste of the tangerine) and scrape the inside of a vanilla pod and add it to the mixture. 
5. Mix it all well and then add the olive oil and the raisins. If your mixture is a bit tough, add a bit of the rooibos tea, but not to much. You want a soft dough with just enough moisture.
6. Put the cake in the oven and bake for about 45-50 minutes. 
7. take it out of the oven, poke in a skewer to see iff the cake has cooked properly 9it will come out clean when it is) and let it cool on a wire rack. 
8. Serve with a cup of (Rooibos) tea and... enjoy!