It’s the Holiday Season!
That title totally got you singing that Andy Williams song, didn’t it? I don’t blame you…I’ve been listening to Christmas music since the day after Thanksgiving. I absolutely love this time of year! And here we are, already at Christmas. Where the heck did December go?!
We attended a few different cookie decorating parties. For the first one, I did great. I baked cookies ahead of time, and had them ready to decorate when we got there. Much to our delight, the hostess had actually baked gluten-free cut outs too because she knew my daughter was coming. The kindness of others is amazing because I know it added quite a bit of work for her. The frosting was gluten-free, as were the decorations, so we were good to go. Just kidding….what I didn’t consider was that the frosting bowls are shared (duh!), when then would contaminate them with gluten (suddenly my plan is thrown off and I’m slightly panicked). Luckily (and this is so simple I’m embarrassed I didn’t think of it in my panic) another mom was like “just put a bunch of globs on a plate of the different colors before it’s used by anyone else”. And just like that, we were good to go again.
Fast forward a few weeks later——and we went to another cookie decorating party. And this time, I TOTALLY forgot about baking cookies. We tried out an amazing sugar cookie recipe the few weeks prior by Alton Brown, and they were so good. Such a nice texture, tasted amazing, and so easy to work with. But they were a bit of work and time. Luckily, someone (I don’t know who actually brought it over at this point) had brought over a bag of sugar cookie mix. I gotta say—-these were great! No sitting time for the dough, super easy to work with, and a very nice flavor. I still prefer the homemade ones, but in a crunch and for minimal effort, these were a life saver.
Game changer when you’re in a time crunch! Didn’t compromise flavor, and was simple and quick to make.
I was pretty cookied out by this point. We had made cut-outs at home to decorate, and then attended 2 cookie decorating parties. Think we’re good. I decided I would take it easy since I was already busy with other stuff, and skip making the other cookies this year. But just when I thought I was done, my wonderful neighbor dropped off a beautiful tray of cookies. And we devoured them—-including me even though I knew they had gluten in them. The tray didn’t even last 2 hours in my house. My daughter had some store bought gluten-free walkers shortbread cookies, but that just seemed unfair to me. So——back to baking! Spritz Cookies, Snowball Cookies, Double Chocolate Crinkle Cookies, Pizzelles, and Sun Butter Blossoms. For the crinkles, the only substitution I needed was to use gluten-free flour (I used King Arthur gluten-free 1:1). The pizzelles seemed a little bland, so I ended up doubling the almond extract, adding a teaspoon of vanilla, and throwing in a pinch of salt. For the blossoms, I subbed in sun butter because we also have a peanut allergy in our house, and used King Arthur gluten-free 1:1 flour again.
Celiac disease is harder for us to manage this time of year than the Type 1 diabetes is. We pre-bolused the heck out of her but didn’t limit what she was eating. We’ve actually had better control this month of blood sugars than we have in quite some time, likely because we were fairly aggressive with how much insulin we gave her, knowing there were plenty of treats to bring her back up from a low if needed!
All-in-all, I’d say we had great month, and I’m so thankful for the extra time with family and friends. So in the words of Andy Williams “May the calendar keep bringing happy holidays to you!”