Christmas Baking: A Trial Run

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted.  Drat being employed, it so gets in the way of my blogging habit...

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.

Vegan Gingerbread Cookies

This recipe has been used by my family for as long as I can remember.  Unfortunately, it's not gluten-free.  But it is vegan; and more than that, it's tons and tons of fun to make.  The batter itself is my favourite part, because it makes use of the baking soda-vinegar foaming reaction.  My mom, on the other hand, prefers the fun of rolling out the dough and cutting out the cookie shapes.  (We make a pretty awesome baking team!  She is also the cake-decorator in the family to my cake-baker).

The dough in this recipe needs to chill for a minimum of several hours before it can be rolled.  At first, this may seem like an inconvenience; but in my opinion it's really a blessing in disguise, because the dough can stay chilled for extended periods of time.  (We've left the dough in the fridge for up to a week with no ill effects.)  Our general strategy is to make huge recipe in one go, and then portion into smaller batches of dough we can roll, bake and eat as we need it and/or as we have time.  Once I left home, I would generally do my favourite part (the mixing), stick the dough in the fridge, and then bring it home with me when I went back for the holidays so my mom could have fun cutting out the cookies. 

The short baking time also makes these cookies ideal for classroom (or Sunday school) use - bring in the dough, pre-made and chilled, and let the kids have fun rolling, cutting, sprinkling, baking, and eating!

Cookie Shenanigans!

Brown rice flour cookies!

Last week was a week of crazy baking.  A couple of weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to learn how to make wheat- and gluten-free cookies.  Since giving up wheat, I'd primarily restricted my baking to cakes & muffins, but I was starting to crave a good cookie.  So I went on a googling spree.  After finding a surprising number of good recipes, I made a short list, and on Monday last week I went shopping.  And Wednesday I started baking.  Well, by Friday, the cookies were all gone, so what was I to do to make more?  So many cookies...by Saturday I definitely had a headache from eating cookies in place of real food.  But, both recipes turned out pretty well, so I thought I'd pass them along.  (Both recipes contain almond butter, by the way, so anyone with nut allergies may want to pass up on this post - sorry!)  See below for spelt-flour super-energizing cookies, and my first stab at a (pretty much) gluten-free chocolate chip cookie (seen above)

Vegan Recipe Archives

I recently discovered that wheat has joined my list of forbidden foods.  However, for the past couple of years, when I could still tolerate gluten on occasions, I discovered a whole host of amazing, easy, soy-free, vegan baked goods.  So this is a collection of a few of my favourite vegan baking recipes, in hopes you will all enjoy them even though I no longer can!