Christmas

Christmas Gift Ideas for Gluten-Free Cooks

Here are 21 gift ideas for gluten-free cooks including useful and unusual kitchen gadgets, fun gifts for gluten-free kids in the kitchen, high-quality gluten-free ingredients and new gluten-free cookbooks for the cookbook addicts on your list. And all gift ideas cost less than $20!

Kitchen Gadgets for Gluten-Free Cooks

1. Nylon Spreader Spatula Set from King Arthur
I use my nylon spatulas every day. This versatile, inexpensive spatula set is perfect for shaping gluten-free bread batter into smooth loaves. New Gluten-Free Sandwich Bread Recipe

2. High Quality Pizza Pan for Gluten-Free Pizzas
Make thin and crispy pizza with this heavy duty pizza pan. Recipe for Gluten-Free Pepperoni Pizza

3. Holiday Pancake Molds
Gluten-free kids love eating reindeer, snowman and elf shaped pancakes during the holidays. Recipe for Gluten-Free Pumpkin Pancakes

4. Mini Pocket Pie Molds
Be sure to watch the video at the Williams-Sonoma link. These little pocket pies Read More »

It is that time of year again! We have shining lights on all the streets, the fire light of Menorahs shimmering through windows and stars twinkling atop 6-foot tall trees.  The winter holidays are by far my favorite despite the accompanied stress they tend to bring.  Personally, I love when the whole family gets together for the holidays. We don’t have any of the often satirized family drama you see on TV and in the movies about family gatherings during the holidays.  The holidays usually bring around a different type of stress for me: how to avoid gluten during all of the holiday dinner parties.  This year, however, this won’t be an issue because my family has figured out how we can tweak our Italian traditions to be totally gluten free. Read More »

The holiday season is upon us! Celebrations all around, and parties abound, but regardless of your reason to have a gathering, if you or one of your party guests is gluten free, make sure you have plenty of beverages available that are not only safe to drink, but are as delicious as the rest of your drink options.

image source: serious eats

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In my pre-coeliac days, canapés were a doddle. Even on a budget. The day before a party I would buy the cheapest bread from the supermarket, cut out as many circles of bread as I could get out of each slice, dip them in olive oil and press them into pattie tins or mini muffin tins and bake.   I would end up with hundreds of little crisp toasts that kept overnight in a sealed box ready to be topped with an array of fresh toppings throughout the evening.

These days, that isn’t an option!  Gluten free bread is too expensive to buy, too small to get more than 2 circles out of (with a lot of wastage), and frequently too crumbly to use.  Home made is better – but that is an awful lot of bread to make, slice and cut.  Just not practical – especially when you have no fridge or kitchen space – or time – for advanced prep because you are running a supperclub!

So this week I was left wondering what I could use as canapé bases for our Christmas Party that would be a) gluten free b) economical c) effective and these are my top three suggestions:

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Fruit Cake seems to be one of those things that you either love, or you hate. Personally I also find them really hard to bake and not have them dry out, so this year was a double challenge to make the perfect gluten free fruit cake without it drying out. Like most recipes it’s a personal taste on what you’d like to add, obviously if you have a nut allergy you can exclude those. If you like your cake frosted with frosting you can also do that too.

Enjoy!

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It’s a season of love, joy, peace. . . and stress? For those us with restricted diets, the holidays can be a struggle, especially when we are sharing meals with those who don’t adhere to the same eating style as we do.    So how do we survive the holidays without sacrificing good times or our well-being?

It’s sad, but true, that many people who follow a specific diet (out of need or choice) opt to “check out” of holiday gatherings. Relationships are of such central importance in our lives, however, that we really shouldn’t let our dietary choices limit our interactions with others.  I’m happy to share that our family has successfully hosted holiday meals in our home for years and we’ve attended family gatherings and Read More »

We’re lucky that there are more and more recipes out there that taste just like the real thing. But for many people, it s easier to make some desserts that happen to be gluten-free, rather than gluten-free adaptations of “normal” foods.

Foods that are naturally gluten free avoid the expensive specialty flours. Personally, I am not a fan of spending a lot for specialty flours when I’m sharing with many non-GF folks. This avoids the inevitable complaints of friends or family who won’t even try GF foods just because they’ve decided they won’t like it.

There are a lot of treats which just happen to be GF, or mostly GF. You can find recipes in normal cookbooks, or maybe you have Read More »

I loved the idea of gifting my homemade cake stands to friends and families for the holidays. (Thanks everyone!)

Thing is – you can’t really give a cake stand to someone without having treats on it, especially if they know that you love to bake.

So I tried to figure out what seasonal recipe I could make for the stands that I could prepare ahead of time, freeze, would appeal to everyone I know (gluten-free, vegan, egg allergies, potato allergies etc), and will stay on the stand with little concern of things breaking.

Tall order, right? Read More »

 
When I heard that Gluten Free Works were encouraging bloggers to contribute recipes for Halloween/Fall it set me to thinking about some apples that I needed to use up.  They had been given to me by a fellow gluten free friend on a recent visit and I wanted to do something with them other than make crumble.

The best kind of gift

 

I have an apple cake recipe that I always use but I wanted to try making smaller cakes, spiced with the flavours that invoke thoughts of Christmas/Thanksgiving and the warm flavours that we love to wrap ourselves in as the weather turns colder.

I have only recently discovered that my pressure cooker is the best thing to use when Read More »