All the….Fall things…

It’s mid-October, and it’s definitely all the fall things around here! And don’t even pretend you aren’t singing that in your best Blink voice, cause I know you’re lying if you say you aren’t.

We’ve been busy at our house——Summer flew by, school started and we’re right back into the swing of things. It’s a lot—-early wake up times for school, packing lunches, sports practice, homework, showers, bedtimes. Seems like there isn’t much time for anything else. BUT…don’t forget, it’s pumpkin season. And me being the proud basic b**** that I am, I will find time to have all the pumpkin things (plus all the apple things, obviously).

I’ve had lots of little helpers in the kitchen lately. Four little helpers to be exact, and honestly my kitchen gets destroyed each time and there’s a lot of clean up, but it’s worth it and always fun to watch them learn. One of the cutest questions I was asked by one of my little bakers recently is “do we have any split sugar?” I responded “Split sugar? What do you mean?” in which she explained the recipe called for granulated sugar, divided. I loved the logic, but unfortunately I had to tell her we had just run out of split sugar, and only had whole that day.

So oddly enough, my T1, celiac daughter has really started to enjoy baking and has been asking to do a lot more on her own. It’s really only odd to me because in the past she could have cared less about the actual baking, she just wanted to eat the treats. But maybe that’s not so odd actually, since baking these treats tend to taste SO much better than what we find at the store. She’s really taken a liking to making pumpkin cookies—-once just plain, and the other time she added in some mini chocolate chips. She’s had some good luck with just googling recipes and using the King Arthur cup for cup gluten free flour in place of regular flour in the recipe. I’m guessing the pumpkin and butter in it kept it moist enough so that the dough didn’t really have to sit. There was zero grit to these cookies——in fact, they were absolutely delicious. She did everything on her own aside from getting mixing bowls down, and taking hot pans out of the oven. Her older sister took the pictures of the cookies——maybe I’m biased, but I think they both did a fantastic job.

Pumpkin rolls are another treat we love in our house. Somehow I’ve made it this far in life and have never made any sort of sponge cake/roll. That had to change. I always pictured the roll just hardening up too much after it cools and cracking, but I was so far off. The hardest part about this recipe was finding the right size pan—-I eventually did in the WAY back of the cupboard, which was a 10x15 tray, but I think I may need to go shopping and buy an actual jelly roll pan at some point. Either way, this worked beautifully. I used the the recipe off the Loopy Whisk since I seem to be having great luck with her recipes overall. The sponge was incredibly easy to make, and even in my oven that is circling the drain and not holding temps like it should be (I have to keep resetting the temperature throughout baking, which is realllly not ideal for baking, but it’s what I have for now) it was the perfect color and consistency. I let it cool in the pan for a bit, just as the directions suggested. For the filling, I used the recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction. I like the thicker cream cheese frosting type filling. The one from the Loopy Whisk recipe called for heavy cream, and when I made it, the filling just seemed a bit thin for my liking. To each their own….my vote was for Sally’s filling.

Not much more to it than to spread the filling and roll it up. The bummer here at the end was that I had powdered sugar to put on top, but if I wanted it to look prettier I should invest in some snow sugar—-basically powdered sugar that won’t melt into the baked products, like mine did. But whatever, first try…not bad, and it taste JUST like the ones you’d buy at the store, all while being significantly cheaper and gluten free. I call that an absolute win.

What else have we been up to? Apple crisp has been a staple here lately——we buy gluten free oats from Walmart and then just follow the basic recipe for apple crisp. I do tend to double the topping because the crisp is my favorite part, so why not? We went a little crazy one day and even tripled the crisp. I didn’t think it was possible, but it may have actually been a bit too much. Learn from my mistakes—-double it, don’t triple it. Add some vanilla ice cream, a drizzle of caramel sauce, and voila * chefs kiss *.

Cut out cookies are a must-do activity around every holiday here. We’ve upped our game recently, and started to make royal icing. Another thing that kind of always was a bit daunting to me——and honestly, I have no idea why. It was seriously the simplest thing to make, and the cookies came out so much cuter. Again, lots of little helpers with these…actually they did all of these…but I thought they did amazing work. I love how creative they get with each of their cookies, and it’s just such a fun activity to do together——but we’ll keep practicing! We used Chef Alina’s sugar cookie recipe, but definitely left out the cardamom. I’ve tried it with it before, and the spice that it put in the cookie just wasn’t for me. We added in about a teaspoon almond extract to both the royal icing and the cookie dough, in addition to the vanilla extract that it called for.

As far as dosing for all of these treats? I’ve kind of let my 10 year old take the reigns on that. I know it sounds crazy, but she’s really caught on to how much she should bolus for treats. Rarely are our guesses off, and typically if she does what she thinks—-she’s spot on. Her numbers have been in range more lately than when I tell her what to input. So if she is taking, for example, a slice of pumpkin roll, and I say do 30g and she argues it’s more like 45g, I let her do what she thinks. She’s more aggressive with her dosing than I am, and doesn’t mind sipping a little apple cider if needed to bring her blood sugar back up if she gives a little too much insulin. I’m in awe of how in tune she is becoming with her body and what it will need. Impressed doesn’t even begin to describe my feeling, and it’s such a relief to be getting to this point with her.