Easy Gluten Free Living

Posts Tagged ‘Celiac Disease’

So it is time once again for Girl Scout cookies.  One of the things we Celiacs really miss, are Girl Scout cookies,  (or is it just me ).  Today I’m going to share with you a recipe for a Gluten Free Thin Mint cookie that is in my cookbook, Gluten-Free Get-Togethers.

I first made this recipe back in December 2009.  You can see the original blog post here.

I will be making some other Girl Scout cookie recipes (Tagalongs, and Samoas), this weekend and will be posting about them next week.

If you try these cookies let me know what you think of them.

Gluten Free Mock Thin Mints

1 Cup Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
1/2 Cup Unsweetened cocoa powder + some extra for dusting
1/4 teaspoon Rumsford Baking Powder
6 Tablespoons butter softened to room temperature
1/2 Cup Sugar
1 Large Egg  brought to room temp.
1/2 teaspoon gluten free Vanilla extract

Sift together flour, cocoa powder and baking powder.  In a separate bowl, cream the butter & sugar until pale and fluffy with an electric mixer.  While still mixing add in the egg and vanilla.  Set mixer on low speed and slowly add flour mixture,  so as not to have it pouf out at you.  Mix on medium high speed until all ingredients are incorporated.

Dough will be very soft so cover bowl with plastic wrap and refriderate at least 1 hour or overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.  With a teaspoon,  scoop up a teaspoon size piece of dough and roll in your hands to form a ball.  Place on the cookie sheets 2 inches apart.   

Dip the bottom of a glass into the extra cocoa powder and flatten dough balls into 1 1/2? rounds (about 1/4? thick).

Bake 8 to 10 minutes, until slightly firm to the touch, rotating cookie sheets half way through baking time.

Transfer cookies immediately to a wire cooling rack and cool completely.

Replace parchment paper on cookie sheets.

                                  Chocolate Coating for Cookies

One – 12 ounce bag semi sweet morsels
1/2 teaspoon pure peppermint extract
1 Tablespoon sweetened condensed milk
1/8 teaspoon salt

In a double boiler or a heat proof  bowl,  set over (not in) a pan of simmering water, combine the chocolate morsels, peppermint extract, salt, and the sweetened condensed milk .  Heat,  stirring occasionally until smooth.

When cookies are completely cool, hold each cookie with a finger and thumb and frost with chocolate mixture.  I use the tines of a fork instead of a knife, so as not to get too much chocolate on each cookie.  Coat both top and bottom.  Place frosted cookie on parchment covered cookie sheet and repeat until all cookies are coated.

Place in refrigerator until chocolate has hardened, at least 1 hour.

Cookies can be refrigerated up to 5 days in an air tight container between layers of parchment paper.

Mary

                                                               Today brings us to Friday, and our fifth Halloween recipe.  This recipe is for your adult Halloween party, although if you have kids that like deviled eggs, these eyes may just disappear before yours.  

 These devilled eggs are gruesome looking but really taste great and they will be the hit of the party.  For the best bloodshot effect serve them within 2 hours of preparation.

Bloodshot Ghoul Eyes

 What You Need:

• 3 Cup of hot water
• 2 Tablespoon red food coloring
• 1 Tablespoon of white vinegar
• 6 hard boiled eggs, cracked but not peeled
• 1/3 Cup of Kraft mayonnaise (it’s gluten-free)
• 1/4 Cup of green onions, chopped fine
• 2 Tablespoon cilantro, minced
• 2 teaspoon gluten-free Dijon style mustard
• 12 ripe olives, sliced
• 1 teaspoon ketchup Read the rest of this entry »

Today, I have a main dish entree for your Halloween party. 

These witches fingers will really “grab” your guest’s attention.  The Cajun seasoning gives these strips a bold taste while the cornflake covering helps to keep the chicken moist during baking. 

These chicken fingers are really good, but if you are making them for children leave out the cajun seasoning, as it may be too much bite. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is another recipe for you to use at your Halloween Get-Together.  If you’re looking for a recipe for a scary punch you can find the recipe for Icy Spiders in my Punch here. 

There are other Halloween recipes on this site, just go to the recipes page above and look for Halloween.

Halloween Mini Rounds Read the rest of this entry »

I’m back today with another Halloween recipe for you.  Today’s recipe is Ghoulishly Good Banana Chunks and these treats are easy enough to have your little goblins help make them.

Ghoulishly Good Gluten-free  

Banana Chunks Read the rest of this entry »

I really can’t believe that we are almost to the end of October and Halloween is just next week. 

Are you planning any Halloween parties or going to any parties?  My hubby and I will be hosting our two, 4 year old granddaughters next Saturday night for a sleepover at Granny and Granddad’s house. Read the rest of this entry »

Today I have the recipe for you that my mother-in-law gave to me when I was dating my husband.  He had a severe topical allergic reaction to milk and eggs at the time.  If he touched them he would swell up with hives.  If he ate them, his throat would swell up. 

When my oldest granddaughter, Courtney was diagnosed as lactose intolerant, one of the things she missed was ice cream.  So I dug out my old dairy free ice cream recipe and made it for her while she was visiting this summer.

 If you’re wondering if she liked it, check out these pictures of her after she tasted it.

 So here is the recipe.  I hope you like it as much as she did.

Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free Ice Cream

• 1 1/2 teaspoons Knox Gelatin
• 2 tablespoons cold water
• 3 cups Coffee Rich (found in the freezer section)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Soften gelatin in cold water.  Heat 1 cup coffee rich to scalding.  Add sugar, salt, and gelatin stirring til disolved.  Add 2 remaining cups  of coffee rich and vanilla.  Allow to cool.

Pour into ice cream maker for 30 minutes, then freeze.  Or place in the freezer and stir occationally til frozen.

Let me know what you think of it.

It can be tough being Gluten Intolerant, but it can be really tough being the parent of a gluten intolerant child.  Especially a school age child.  Suddenly not only do you have the regular worries about your child at school, but you have to worry about whether you can keep your child gluten-free while they are away from your watchful eye.

Although my days of being the parent of school age children are long past, Read the rest of this entry »

I got an email from a newsletter reader over the weekend.  I thought it might be of interest to other readers of my blog.  So here’s her question and my answer:

Hi Mary,

 

I just found your website and am pretty excited! I have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and have been reading and hearing a lot of things about gluten possibly exacerbating the symptoms of fibromyalgia. 

 

My question is that I love, Love, LOVE crackers – saltine crackers – plain, with cheese, spiced up with oil and spices, just to sit and snack on them makes me happy.  I looked for a gluten free saltine cracker recipe (to make crackers from scratch) on your website and just wondered if you have one or know where I could find one?

 

Thank you so much!           

I’m sure you’re wondering about the title to this post today.   If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may remember that Courtney, my 7 year old granddaughter, was diagnosed back in December as gluten intolerant.  You can read about that here.

Well, Courtney came to visit from Kansas for 2 weeks at the end of July, and as it turns out she is not only gluten free, she is also lactose intolerant, and has an allergy to peanuts,  (fortunately, not as bad as some children that could die from peanuts), but bad enough that she cannot eat them at all.  So I had to go back to seriously “reading” labels, not just checking to make sure nothing had changed.

I have to say, that I think breakfast was by far the hardest meal to make.  I live on 10 acres, with 10 chickens and 1 rooster, so breakfast at our house is usually eggs, and before she was diagnosed, Courtney loved having the farm fresh eggs for breakfast.  Yeah, I could have fallen back on the cereal and Lactaid milk for breakfast, (and some mornings that is what she wanted), but I really wanted to give her something yummy. 

I actually found some frozen waffles (Van’s) that were gluten, milk, and egg-free.  They were really tasty. 

For lunch we had corn tortilla wraps.  I would steam the tortillas to soften them up and then top them with a variety of things.  One day we had chicken salad made with vegan mayonaise.  Yum!  I usually use Kraft Miracle Whip, but the last ingredient in that is…you guessed it, egg yolks.

I’m not a huge fan of peanut butter, but we always have it in the house.  (My hubby loves it on a spoon, and Charlie, my lab, likes it in his Kong).  Courtney of course couldn’t have peanut butter but she asked for Almond butter.  If you haven’t tried Almond butter yet, you have got to try it.  We had wraps with almond butter.

I made a gluten free/milk free, cream of chicken soup for my crockpot chicken dinner with Lactaid milk. 

Wow!  You parents that have gluten free/casien free children, my hat is off to you.  This is definately not easy. 

I’ll have more info about making food for Courtney coming soon, including a gluten free/milk free/egg free, ice cream recipe coming for you soon.