GFCF Christmas Cookies & Apple Tart

We had a wonderful Christmas this year and now we're enjoying some fantastic family chill time....even the kidlets are happy to be in on it and are quietly playing.  I hope you have had a great weekend too!

But, let's zip back in time a touch to Friday morning, Christmas Eve.  I did not get to holiday baking this year, but I had picked up a bag of Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Shortbread Cookie Mix. 

And I was treated to a fabulous early present........hubs got up with the kidlets and by the time I dragged myself out of bed, he was already baking Christmas cookies with them!  (Hubs made two small alterations to the recipe on the bag. He used ghee, instead of butter to make it casein free (CF) and two egg yolks, instead of one.)

Our sweet boy made GFCF shortbread Christmas tree cookies.

And wee girl was all about making stars.

And then hubs got creative and decided to roll out enough of the left over dough to try using it for a GFCF apple tart.  This is a pic of it before it went into the oven.  I was madly wrapping some presents before my inlaws arrived when it came out, golden in color and smelling quite delish!

And of course, Santa and his reindeer needed their treat to keep them fueled up for all the houses they had to hit in one night, right?!  I got quite a chuckle when I saw what Color Me Katie's little brother left for Santa, his reindeer, and the iguanas along for the ride!

Hope your holiday was fantastic and full of smile worthy moments!

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Disclosure:  The cookie mix link is an affiliate link.  If you choose to use the link it might cover a few bites of those yummy cookies....if my son will share the last one with me. :>

GFCF Daily {love}

Twitter has proved to be a huge gluten/casein (& other food allergy/sensitivities) free resource!  @GlutenFreeDee is an amazing resource, pulling together information from the #GF, #GFCF, #celiac, #autism, #glutenfree, #gfree hashtags (hashtags are groupings or categories within twitter & its tweets).

The GF/CF Pumpkin Bread I made & blogged last year, was featured in today's #GFCF Daily.  Yay! :>

I also want to take a minute to highly recommend checking out Adventures of a Gluten Free Mom, the creator of the GFCF caramel apple & caramels featured in today's GFCF Daily.  Her site is fantastic and she creates & accommodates for many food allergies.  Some of her dishes (especially older recipes) are just gluten free, but more recently, there are casein & egg free recipes as well.  I found her via Twitter (@adventuresgfmom) and am able to see what she's up to almost daily since I 'Liked' her fan page on Facebook as well.

I hope everyone is having a great weekend!  We just finished eating a scratch (including the stock) GFCF chicken, veggie & brown rice soup that Hubby had cooking on the stove all day.  And on a non-GFCF note, I'm looking forward to watching Pioneer Woman's Thanksgiving Throwdown with Bobby Flay on the Food Network in an hour as I missed its first airing earlier in the week.  Have you seen it?

GF/CF Pumpkin Bread

Yes! You are in the right place! Today, I crafted some time in the kitchen with my daughter to bake some delicious pumpkin bread!

Our son has a restricted diet and eats gluten and casein (the protein in dairy) free, mostly soy free, msg/nitrite/nitrate free, low sugar (almost no refined sugars), as preservative & chemical free and organic as we can get. With that being said, I read every ingredient label, am constantly making substitutions, spend a good deal of time grocery shopping, and have learned a lot in the last almost two years that he has been eating this way.

While the entire house is not always gf/cf (plus everything else), our family meals are, and when it comes to baking......well, we do not keep any gluten flours in the house at all. Flour gets in the air and will contaminate everything. So, when my Princess wanted to use the canned organic pumpkin we bought at Trader Joe's yesterday, I set about looking for a recipe online that we could all eat and love.

I found a GF/CF (gluten free/casein free) blog through a google search and found this recipe as a great place to start. We rarely use any refined sugar, even in baking (though I do have an emergency stash of organic cane sugar for recipes that just do not work with sugar substitutes), so I headed here for sugar substitutes and their equivalents. I chose to use a combination of honey and agave syrup. Here's my version of Kathi's recipe for our gf/cf pumpkin bread:

Yummy GF/CF Pumpkin Bread

1 c. Quinoa flour *

1/2 c. Sorghum flour

1/2 tsp. Sea salt

1 1/2 tsp. Baking soda (aluminum free)

1 tsp. Xantham gum

1/4 tsp. Freshly grated nutmeg

1 heaping tsp. Cinnamon (we use Ceylon cinnamon) *

1/4 tsp. Ground Allspice

1/8 tsp. Ground Ginger

1 1/4 c. Pumpkin puree *

1/4 c. Vegetable oil (usually we use Canola for this to avoid the soy, but I was out)

1/4c. Ghee, melted, but not hot (essentially it is clarified butter, with all the solids removed, taking out the casein/proteins) *

1/4 c. Honey *

1/4 c. Agave Syrup *

2 Eggs, beaten *

* denotes items we used that are organic

Preheat oven to 350. Mix dry ingredients together in large bowl. Mix wet ingredients together. Mix wet ingredients into dry ones until combined. Do not over mix. Pour into a greased loaf pan. Bake 50-60 minutes. Remove from loaf pan and cool on wire rack.

Guess what?! I do not miss the gluten, the sugar, or anything else in this pumpkin bread! It is scrumptious.........so much so, that I imagine it will be gone mighty quickly. My daughter and I had it with lunch and it is on the menu to accompany our dinner as well.

Next, I want to find or come up with a good pie crust recipe that fits our requirements so that I can make some pumpkin pie for the holidays that everyone in the house can eat!