Gluten Free Candy Cane Christmas Cookies  

Posted by Heidi in


I did it! I successfully altered a favorite recipe and made it gluten free. Woo hoo! Candy cane cookies are a bit difficult and delicate even using wheat flour because the sugar is all confectioner's rather than regular table sugar. Using the lighter flours accentuated these challenges but it was worth it in the end. For those who don't need the gluten free recipe, here, to start off with, is the regular one (make these today, you won't be sorry!)
My Mom's Candy Cane Cookies
1/2 cup soft shortening
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sifted confectioner's sugar
1 egg
1.5 teas almond extract
1 teas vanilla
2.5 cups sifted flour
1 teas salt
1/2 teas red food coloring
(yes, I used green for the gluten free versions--I would like to say it was because I was thinking ahead and needed to tell them apart from the regular version but it was simply because none of the three boxes of food coloring rattling around in my cupboards had any red left)
1/2 table sugar for sprinkling mixed with 1/2 cup crushed candy cane
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Mix thoroughly the shortening, butter, confectioner's sugar, egg and flavorings. Sift together flour, salt and stir in. Divide dough in half.
Blend red food coloring into 1/2 of dough. Roll 1 teaspoon of each color dough into a long strip about 4" long. Place strips side by side then twist together to form rope. Place on ungreased cookie sheet and make into candy cane shapes. Bake about 9 minutes. Sprinkle with mixture of 1/2 cup crushed candy cane and 1/2 cup sugar.
As I said, make these pronto and enjoy sweet, flavorful, tender cookies. They get a bit frustrating because of the rolling between your hands and shaping and sometimes, no matter what you do, they break in your hands and often when you remove them from the cookie sheet after baking, but they are worth it.
Gluten Free Candy Cane Cookies
Use the recipe above but switch out the wheat flour for two cups Brown Rice Flour Mix (I'll explain in a bit), 1/2 cup sweet rice flour (see below for where to buy) and add 1 teaspoon xanthun gum.
Before forming the canes, chill the dough for three hours or overnight as the dough is very soft. Work with only small amounts of dough at a time. If it gets too soft, return to the fridge or freezer before continuing. When you have all the canes formed, put the entire sheet into the fridge for at least ten minutes to stiffen before baking as these are even softer and more delicate than the wheat variety. However, they are even more tender and melt-in-your-mouth, too. I actually ended up adding a bit more vanilla and almond flavoring, also, as the xanthun gum adds a bitter taste to the dough. They spread out a bit more than the wheat version but it's what they taste like that matters.
I learned about Brown Rice Flour Mix from Annalise G. Roberts as seen in her cook book "Gluten-Free Baking Classics". The mix is made of 2 parts brown rice flour, (extra finely ground), 2/3 part potato starch (not potato flour) and 1/3 part tapioca flour. The potato starch and tapioca flour are easy to find but the extra finely ground brown rice flour she recommends can be purchased only at Authentic Foods in Southern California. Fortunately they ship. The Sweet Rice Flour is also available at www.authenticfoods.com. These finely ground flours are a bit expensive but they are the difference between dry, heavy baked goods that fall apart and light and tender ones that hold together better. Merry Christmas!!!

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A Little Christmas Tour Through a Little Christmas House  

Posted by Heidi in

Winter Wonderland














Deck The Halls












O Christmas Tree










Santa Claus is Coming to Town






Hark the Herald Angels Sing




O Holy Night



Merry Christmas to one and all! I love you~
to read a post about silver leafing the brass candelstick lights on my mantel, go HERE
to see last year's Christmas decor tour, click HERE
to see 2008's Christmas decor, click HERE




























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While Visions of Sugar Plums Dance in My Head  

Posted by Heidi in



I was leafing through some old blog posts (if it can be said that one leafs via computer screen--if one can’t, I am hereby officially filing a protest against technology and how it’s making so many lovely words useless, obsolete and no longer needed whilst adding some pretty ugly words to the vernacular such as "blogger", "webinar", "blogosphere" and all those products that start with the lower case letter “i”, a fact that has my 9 year old utterly perplexed) (sorry, Lara, for the lengthy interjection) and even chuckling at a few of them, causing my blue mood over the Christmas tree lights that have gone on strike, the pain in every part of my body due to the coming rain and the fact that there is no magic wand that can turn my favorite holiday cookies into the gluten-free version, to lighten perceptibly.

One post, in particular, really made me laugh which is a mean feat in light of my light-less, pain-filled, candy-cane-cookie-free Christmas and I feel prompted to repost it. However, one cannot underestimate one’s appreciation for one’s own words, regardless of their true worth and, therefore, can’t guarantee that YOU will be glad one took time out from her pity party to post a rerun. Yet, here I am in full-wallow (though, as I said, that in which I wallow has become less deep) with an old list of search word terms (a word or group of words a person typed into a search engine that led them, for better or for worse, to my blog) spit out by my google watch-dog, as well as a few newer ones I thought worth including.

Super Romance a fake? (remember the fake My Super Romance blog? How I got hits on that is rather remarkable but it just goes to show how interested everyone was in the whole darn thing—kudos to Sue!)
Iconic eyebrows (yes, I have one)
Problem children refusing to be clean (I’m an expert in this one)
Best tattoos ever
Tom Welling dressed in Superman clothes (good luck, but if you find one, will you PLEASE forward it to me?) (Two years later, I’m still interested.)
Totally shocking (but not surprising)
Clone Avril Lavigne (must we?)
Best tattoo Switzerland (I really must stop posting about tattoos)
Squirting twin sisters (I don’t want to know)
Burning alcohol fumes drunk (I am leading a whole generation astray)
Anglophile living in England (is possible? Well, yes, if I moved there, that’s exactly what I’d be)
Can’t take him anywhere (amen sister!)
How wheat was made (I’m scared)
William Shatner illness (now I’m worried—a world without WS is a world without, er, um, Shakespeare. Am I right?)
Wheat brain (and here I thought it was only me)
Young and tender (we’re talking about edible plant shoots here, right?)
Feet in your face (this one is becoming a perennial favorite)
Drunk off alcohol fumes (fumes happen)
Men like romance (good to know)
Steal child (please don’t)
Is being whiny contagious (an emphatic yes!)
My mind go blank (clearly)
Obsessions with illness in head (me too!)
Wheat I say to my mother in anniversarys mothers day (original spelling preserved)
Dunhaven key chain (I want one!)
Humid seat hot (indeed it is!)
Bichons with curly hair (if your bichon doesn’t have curly hair, what you’ve got there is an imposter, otherwise known as a Maltese)
Methinks she who said it (it probably was)
How many pounds Tom Welling? (is nothing sacred?)
You-tube family members in polymer clay (this seems a good way to bend people to one’s will)
Peer gynt syndrome (I had no idea, but I probably have it)
Why does my mind go blank? (I can’t remember)
How to create my blanks ( )

And here are some of the more recent gems:

What is a romantic idealist (someone who lives life in torturous emotional pain)
Idealists easily hurt (see above)
Extension cords from Christmas vacation (I hadn’t realized this phenomenon existed only for those lucky enough to vacation at Christmas)
Messy house and laundry everywhere OR messy house OR messy kitchen (I get ‘em all and lots of ‘em but my favorite one is “messy house because of fibromyalgia”-- as if anyone needed to google it to make sure their house was indeed messy because of unremitting pain greatly exacerbated by cleaning the house)
Avril Lavigne car (or husband or boyfriend or hat, either way, I seem to be the source of all things Avril)
One computer by child (I believe it)
Romantic tombstone (I’m probably the only blog that came up on that list)
Buy Martha Stewart ironstone white paint (Do!)
Font a Lolita scorned (I very much want and must have a font that smacks of “Lolita scorned”)
Are teens really incapable of cleaning their rooms (let’s be fair and look at the evidence .. . yes, they are)
Miss awful the book (trying not to think too much about that one)
Take girl feeling blue (yes, please!)

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The Thanksgiving Post, Better Late Than Never  

Posted by Heidi in


There are times when I have to remind myself to be grateful for this heap of bones that passes for a body. I mean, really, who is grateful for a body that translates sugar directly into pain? (I’m in a lot of pain these days. Pretty much constantly. I love sugar.) (Too bad sugar doesn’t love me.) (But I’m okay with that. I’m not going to do anything drastic like go on a sugar strike until it changes it’s mind.) (Meanwhile, if I imbibed sugar via a drip line, it couldn’t make its way into my blood stream any faster than it is already.) My thyroid gland just can’t seem to get leveled off, my gluten problem is making it hard to cope with my troubles via comfort food and, this time of year with this cold, wet weather, I’m not able to do much due to the afore-mentioned pain and ensuing exhaustion.

It’s times like these when I wish my body could handle a bit of hard work. In this age of computers and technology, few of us know what it means to work hard, to use our bodies to labor, day in and day out, since machines do most of the intense physical labor for us. (I'm assuming that none of you reading is a construction worker.) (Or on a chain gang breaking up rocks in Siberia.) (Or run a daycare center.) As for me, the most intense labor I engage in is the peeling of that darn silver paper off of one Hershey Kiss after another. It’s sweaty work for a wimp like me but it’s not enough. When I do feel that the need to get something done outweighs the pain I’ll experience afterwards, I often find myself thinking of my neighbor, the one whose backyard bordered on mine when we lived in Littleton Colorado.

We lived in the Alamo district, the “old” area of town, amongst a group of garage-less, mostly brick houses, all built by the owners way back when. Each house was different than the next (though, like I said, lots of red brick) and there were few fences. Somewhere along the way, someone put up a three foot high chain link fence that separated our enormous backyard from the lane behind it. I don’t think Newt, my backyard neighbor, had any fence at all.

We often saw Newt out in the yard, digging in his garden. This was rather remarkable since Newt was 94 years old at the time. During his life he had married, taken care of, nursed and buried two wives (they were sisters—the second one never married until her sister left Newt to her in her will (just kidding)—this made a big impression on me), worked in a factory, made gorgeous furniture and dug in his garden—all with only one arm. It was almost hypnotic to watch him through our kitchen window as he turned over a spade filled with dirt, jammed the shovel back into the ground, kicked it down good and hard with one foot, then turned it up and out, over and over again, the empty sleeve of one shirt fluttering with the movement of his efforts.

Sometimes we could hear the whir of machinery as he turned the legs of wood furniture down in his basement. He did this when it was too cold to go outside and dig. He knew that if he were to survive another winter, he needed to work and work hard. And he did. Every room in his house had been transformed by a wall that was either moved, taken down or added in. Most of his furniture was of his own creation. His assortment of brass bells and candlesticks, which was acquired after he was no longer allowed to drive, was collected by riding his bike, one armed, from garage sale to garage sale.

One day we could see that Newt had a visitor. I thought maybe it was an old crony of his. The man was a bit stout and had shock of gray hair. We sauntered across the way to chat and learned that the man was Newt’s grandson. It was quite shocking to watch this grandson who looked almost as old as Newt. It was even more shocking to know that he was letting his grandfather do all the digging. He must have known Grandpa too well to offer to do it for him.

I haven’t laid eyes on Newt for eleven years but I still have a lot I can learn from him.

I am grateful for my body. Work hard. Be self-reliant.

Thanks, Newt.

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