Happy Holidays - and Betty Crocker's Ginger Creams, Gluten Free

 Hope that everyone is enjoying a wonderful holiday season with friends and family! I hope everyone eats a ton of wonderful food as well!

My husband and I made Christmas cookies last weekend - one of his requests was a cookie that he had fond memories of from childhood, but we'd never made (even pre-gluten free days). Ginger cream cookies. I dug out my mom's old Betty Crocker cookbook for the original recipe (if you don't have a Betty Crocker cookbook from the 60's, the recipe can be found online here). I only very slightly modified it to be gluten free, but it was delicious, and neither of us could tell it was gluten free - no chalky texture and aftertaste that I associate with many gluten free cookies.

Gluten free Ginger Creams

Anyway, here is the recipe that I ended up using.

Ginger Cream Cookies

• 1/3 cup shortening
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup white rice flour
• 1 cup potato starch
• 1 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 tsp xanthan gum
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1. Mix shortening, white sugar, egg, molasses, and water thoroughly. Sift together flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, baking soda, and spices and blend in. Chill dough until firm.
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C).
3. Drop dough by teaspoonfuls about 2 inches apart on lightly greased baking sheet. Bake about 8 minutes, or until almost no imprint remains when touched lightly. While slightly warm, frost with icing. 

Frosting 
What Ginger Cream cookie would be complete without frosting? Here, I used what I had on hand and decided to use the frosting recipe from Adventures of a Gluten Free Mom. 

• 1/4 cup Butter, softened
• 2 cups Powdered Sugar
• 1 tsp. Vanilla
• 2 Tbs. Milk (I used 2%)

1. Mix ingredients together with a hand mixer. Frost cookies when cool. 

Make sure to store them in the fridge to keep the frosting hard, and take them out a couple of hours before you eat them.

First post in a while.

It's been a while! Toward the end of the semester (well, trimester really) my computer died. It figures that it would be in the middle of a deadline for school! I have been doing most of my stuff from my iPhone, but blogging on that is a little difficult, and since I didn't want to use my work computer for obvious reasons... cue radio silence.

I'm not quite sure where to begin, so I guess I'll just update on the high points of what I've been up to in the past few weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to update this more frequently going forward. :-)

• My marketing class has completed. I had to write an individual research paper on a marketing topic of my choice, so I chose to write about the impact of the rising popularity of gluten free foods on the restaurant and commercial food industry. I didn't do too badly - 97% - but I'm convinced this professor doesn't like to give perfect marks on anything. I'm just a wee bit of a perfectionist, though, so that always bugs me. ;-) 
• I've been going to Zumba classes 2x a week and I am about to start going 3x/week (one will be a 90 minute boot camp class with Zumba and Butts and Guts). Hopefully this keeps me on track over the holidays! So far I've seen a difference in the way my clothes fit, though the scale hasn't budged an ounce. 
• I found out that a new Chipotle is coming to Niskayuna, right across the street from Mohawk Commons. AKA 10 minutes from my house, very very dangerous - My husband and I love, love, love their food - and their gluten-free-friendly policy is very nice too. It was originally scheduled to open this week, but the opening has been pushed back due to some power  problems.
• My mother's birthday is this weekend. I'm making my parents dinner to celebrate - Skillet jambalaya from the America's Test Kitchen cookbook. Yummy! I use Bilinski's chicken andouille sausage, and double the cayenne, but otherwise don't change the recipe in the least. It's a favorite, and requested by my mom. I scored some nice deals for her birthday on Black Friday weekend, but just in case she reads this I won't say what I found! 
• With the holidays coming up, I've started thinking about high-calorie, festive food (thank goodness for those boot camp classes). The gluten-y thing I miss the most is spinach dip in a rye bread bowl. I would love to figure out a way to make this and bring it over to my in-laws' for the holiday. 

That's about all - will try to write more about food soon. :-)