Anyway, I have a few recipes I've made since then (vegan "shepherd's pie", apple-cranberry crisp, gluten-free apple pie, and even some Thanksgiving recipes) which are hanging out in the back-log, but I thought I'd jump back into blogging with something a bit more relevant. Namely: holiday baking.
I got thrown into the holiday spirit fairly early this year; my roommate decorated our entire house for Christmas (including a giant Christmas tree) on the 30th of November. Plus, the week before that, we had a huge snowfall (like, 10+ cm). Now, in Vancouver, it doesn't snow. Certainly not often, and most definitely not in November. So the minute I see snow, I immediately think Christmas, because the earliest it normally ever snows is the week before the holidays. All of which is to say, after spending most of November fighting the oncoming holiday fever with every bone in my body, I've now jumped solidly on board. I haven't sent out my cards yet, or bought presents, but I have started my favourite part of holiday preps - baking.
Every year, I tend to do a "trial run" of my baking a few weeks before the holiday parties start up in full swing. I'm a very experimental baker, as I'm sure has become evident - even before the gluten-free or vegan baking challenges, I used to experiment with which recipes could stand up to the addition of candied ginger (the answer: all of them), how much healthier I could make the baking through substitution, and how on earth I could use up all my leftover candied peel. My baking would then be tested by roommates/coworkers/family, and the leftovers of successful recipes would be frozen, to whip out for future parties.
Over the past two years, I got very good at vegan Christmas baking. A few of the most successful recipes, which I can no longer eat but wanted to share for those of you who can:
- An incredibly decadent chocolate spice cake (and I definitely used whole wheat flour when I made it)
- Spiced oatmeal cranberry cookies (these ones were a huge hit with my mom)
- Chocolate spice cookies (I used 3 tbsp cocoa, and decreased the flour by 2 tbsp to compensate. A little dry, but oh so delicious if dipped in coffee, tea or hot chocolate)
- My mom's gingerbread recipe, which awesomely happened to already be vegan.
But this year is a whole new ballgame. No longer is gluten something I can tolerate, especially not during the already system-taxing excesses of the holidays. So I'm having to start all over again with my Christmas baking collection. I've spent the past few days googling non-stop, and while I haven't turned up as many recipes as I'd like, I still have a few good places to start. So stay tuned while I find out the best, and worst, gluten-free vegan baking has to offer the Christmas season
No comments:
Post a Comment