It’s My Last Holiday Post, I Swear.

I baked for six hours on Saturday.

Gingerbread. Sugar cookies. Chocolate chip. Seven-layer bars. Brownies.

I’d like to say I did it because I’m a slave to the Christmas baking tradition, but that’s not exactly true. The holiday season is just a happy excuse to plug in the Kitchen Aid mixer, switch on some music, and bake for a long and lovely while. It’s relaxing. It’s cheerful. It makes the house smell heavy with butter and flour, rather than the perpetual aroma of morning pancakes.

Plus, in spurts, I had company. H decorated a “Ginger Daddy.”

…and O iced a “Ginger O, and a Ginger Mama.” According to O, the Ginger Mama was white because “she put on too much lotion.”

Dairy/Egg-free Sugar Cookies

I can’t even begin to tell you how delicious (and easy) these are, courtesy of The Gluttonous Vegan.

You’ll need:

2 cups all purpose flour

a pinch of sea salt

1/3 cup vegan margarine

3/4 cup icing/confectioners sugar

1/4 cup canola/sunflower oil

1 tsp almond extract (optional)

Instructions:

PREHEAT your oven to 325 degrees.

CREAM together the margarine, sugar, oil and almond extract until smooth. Add the flour and salt and mix again until it’s a squishy dough.

COVER a baking tray in some grease-proof paper.

PULL OFF small lumps and shape into balls. Place each ball on the tray and flatten into thin discs.

BAKE for 10-14 minutes. You’ll know they’re finished when the edges are just slightly golden.

ICE and DECORATE at will.

Dairy/Egg-free Brownies

It hurts my heart to say this, since I prefer to bake from scratch, but check out Cherrybrook Kitchen’s allergen-free brownie mix. These brownies are better than any non-mix allergen-free brownie recipe I’ve tried.

Dairy/Egg-free Gingerbread

See Monday’s post.

GB’s Most Excellent Chocolate Chip Cookies*

You’ll need:

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks of butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) of semi-sweet chocolate chips

*I’m leaving out the secret ingredient.

Instructions:

PREHEAT oven to 375° F.

COMBINE flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto an ungreased baking sheets.

BAKE for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

7-layer Bars

You’ll need:

1 stick of butter, melted

1 sleeve of graham crackers, ground

1 can of sweetened condensed milk

1 12-oz. pkg. of semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 12-oz. pkg. of butterscotch chips

½ cup coconut flakes

½ cup chopped pecans

Instructions:

PREHEAT oven to 350 degrees.

POUR melted butter into a 9×13-inch baking dish.

GRIND the graham crackers in a food processor, then pour evenly over the butter, pushing down to make a crust.

POUR sweetened condensed milk evenly over the graham cracker crust.

ADD the semi-sweet chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, coconut flakes and chopped pecans evenly, one ingredient at a time.

BAKE for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown around the edges.

The best part was packing up the cookies and giving them away. Now, I have an excuse to bake again in a few days.

~*~ Find me on Twitter @36×37
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The Fall of the House of Gingerbread

If history has taught us anything, it’s that great houses tend to fall: The House of Tudor, the Ming Dynasty, the Roman Empire, France in the Time of Napoleon—all of which rose and collapsed in a blaze of glory.

So, too, will gingerbread houses rise and fall when you totally wing their construction. I speak these words of truth.

And I can only blame myself.

For the record, I am not a fan of written instructions. I’ll follow a recipe only if it’s short, and I’ll put together a bookcase solely by instinct. I jump feet first into the fray without considering the proper order or outcome of things. Sometimes, I even get away with it and nod smugly at myself, knowing I wasted no time.

I thought this was one of those times, because this is how our (very first ever) gingerbread house looked.

Hold your uproarious applause and accolades, though, because 38 minutes later, it looked like this:

~*~

The Gingerbread

It all began with a lovely (dairy-free/egg-free) molasses dough (courtesy of food.com):

Ingredients:

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 1/2 teaspoons ginger
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cloves
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 cup margarine
1 egg, beaten (or 1 ½ tsp Ener-G egg replacer + 2 Tbs water)
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Directions:

1. In a medium saucepan, heat sugar, molasses, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves to boiling, stirring occasionally.
2. Remove from heat; stir in soda (it will foam up).
3. Stir in margarine till melted.
4. With a fork, stir in egg (or egg replacer), then flour.
5. On a floured surface, knead dough till mixed. Divide dough in half, wrap half with plastic wrap; set aside.
6. Roll half the dough, with a rolling pin, slightly thinner than 1/4 inch.
7. Cut your house shapes.
8. Bake at 325F on a cookie sheet for 12 minutes; cool on a wire rack.

I carved the dough into six 3×5 rectangles: 4 for the walls, 2 for the roof. That was my first mistake. The roof slats needed to be taller than the rest of the pieces—construction basics I did not know.

~*~

The Lessons Learned

There were lots of other mistakes I made along the way. I could have saved the construction team—me, GB, the boys, my brother SC and his sweetheart, Kelli—a lot of trouble if I’d just done my research.

I don’t want you to make the same mistakes and then watch your hard work topple into disrepair. So please, heed this advice I’m paraphrasing from How to Assemble a Christmas Gingerbread House on eHow.com:

1) Prep like a pro: Make sure all your tools are at your fingertips.

2) Pick your platter: It should be flat and sturdy, like foil-covered cardboard or a pretty dish. Lay a piece of string across the surface.

3) Lay your base: Place a dab of icing in the center of your base, then place a small box on top of the dab. Make sure the peaked walls run parallel to the string.

4) Frame up: Dab icing along the sides of the box, then pipe the corners. Press your walls firmly against the box.

5) Raise the roof: Smooth icing along the top edges of the walls, then use those edges to help prop the roof pieces against one another to create two slopes. Pipe icing along the peak.

6) Tie it: Pull the ends of the string up and over the roof, then tie them at the peak to secure the roof and wall frames while they dry.

7) Be patient: Wait an hour or so, then remove the string and decorate.

The Hope for a New Tomorrow

Although it was a blow to watch our empire tumble, all was not lost. Amid the smoldering embers of catastrophe, the gingerbread men and women persevered.

It is for them—and only them—that I shall forge on in my efforts and try again next year.

Gingerbread Kelli and SC

~*~ Find me on Twitter @36×37
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Other Firsts: The Allergic Kid Shall Eat Pie

 

Courtesy of whatscookingamerica.net

If I could, I would personally thank the guy who invented pumpkin pie. I’d walk right up, pat him on the back, and congratulate him for doing his part to make Thanksgiving—and the world—a little bit better. I’d also golf-clap for the guy who first whipped the cream and dropped a dollop atop said pumpkin pie, because that was a stroke of genius and creativity I can’t even comprehend.

I know I’m not alone in this. People are freaks for the pumpkin pie. Case in point: A few years ago, we met up with some friends to attend the Circleville Pumpkin Festival. We arrived promptly at 8 PM, but by then, not a single slice of pumpkin pie remained. Not a flaky morsel of crust, not a smudge of pumpkin filling—it was as though the whole concept of pumpkin pie had never really existed. We walked from display to display, only to be greeted by empty countertops. The disappointment, it was too much. Shame, shame, Circleville Pumpkin Fest. Shame, shame, I know your name.

And that is how I feel about pumpkin pie.

My five-year-old is allergic to dairy and eggs. This means he has never had a slice of pumpkin pie (!!!), and this wounds my heart in ways I can’t explain. I searched and searched for a good allergen-free recipe, gave up, and then stumbled across one last week. And so, today, at approximately 6PM, my boy will seize his fork and claim the same pie-eating freedom the rest of his fellow countrymen enjoy–all because some other guy, who probably also had food allergies and couldn’t eat the goodness, found a way to make sure he could.

How’s that for American ingenuity?

~*~

Dairy-Free, Egg-Free Pumpkin Pie!

Crust

1 cup ground graham crackers
½ cup dairy-free margarine, melted
2 Tbsp sugar

Pie Filling

2 cups canned pumpkin
¾ cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 ½ cup water
6 ½ Tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp allspice
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp ginger

Process

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Mix crust filling, then press into a pie pan.
3. In a medium saucepan, combine all ingredients for the filling. Cook over medium heat until mixture begins to thicken, stirring constantly
4. Pour filling into pie crust.
5. Bake 30 minutes until firm.
6. Pile on the whipped cream and dig in.

~*~ Find me on Twitter @36×37
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