Cupid's wings

When our eldest daughter entered preschool, it didn't take long before she began asking me for pink clothes, preferrably with bows, ribbons, petticoats, lace and such. Not surprisingly her costume of choice at this year's carnival was that of a ballerina. For her little sister she had something else in mind though: little Lucie was to be dressed up as... Cupid :-)) Need I mention I was happy to oblige? I took some pictures during the process, so here's my tutorial for making a pair of little angel wings. Might come in handy later this year, no? If you need inspiration or a style to choose from go visit Karen Hatzigeorgiou's site, and while you're there, DO take a look at her other pages, she does incredible things with books. Wow!

Fab

Awww, my little one has just turned two!
The past year wasn't easy on her, or on any of us for that matter. In spite of our best efforts and intentions, she still got glutened at times, and was sick and cranky a great deal. I lost so much sleep that I got pretty desperate. But still, every time things got a little better, I focused ferociously on this one thing: gluten free baking. I need safe foods for my baby, and they have to taste just as good or even better than the stuff that makes her ill! My family and friends were recruted to evaluate what progression I made. I learned a lot. Not only about nutrition and good eating, but also about love. People all over the world are struggling with food intolerances! Many of them enjoy cooking and baking and their willingness to share and help is truly amazing. Every yummy gluten free (or other allergen free) recipe posted is a wonderful gift to all of us. I'm awed and thankful that there's so much love around!
Time to do right by you and post a few links to some fabulous recipes I encountered.
Here's for: quinoa pancakes, avocado ice cream, peanut butter granola bars, blueberry muffins, chocolate chip cookies, and white bread.
The cookies in the picture are by my own recipe I am still working on. The 'white' ones have almond flour, coconut flour, teff and glutinous rice flour in them, the dark ones contain cornstarch, brown rice flour and chestnut flour.
When I'm truly and permanently satisfied with the result, I'll post the recipe on Recipezaar (and let you know ;-))
EDIT #1: The first cookie recipe, for dark chocolate chestnut flour cookies is now available on Recipezaar!

EDIT #2: And finally: here's the second recipe: gluten free butter cookies! Enjoy!

Delightful kids crafts

These measure only 1,5 inches and were such fun to make! The idea came from Making Friends.com, where all kinds of delightful crafting projects for kids (and their parents) can be found. Originally it called for wooden spools and beads, which I didn't have, but luckily paper beads are easy and quick to make. Just roll up narrow strips of (black) paper with some glue brushed on. There's a clear tutorial on this at: www.tappi.org .

Sweet potato truffles

The Gluten free Easter bunny breads I tried to bake (twice) turned out not pretty enough to blog about, and for comfort I indulged in... making truffles! I've been intrigued by baking with hidden vegetables lately (you know, chocolate beet cake, zucchini muffins, that sort of thing) so when I stumbled upon a recipe for making sweet potato truffles, it kept ringing around my brain; I just HAD to try this! They weren't very hard to make, but coating them evenly with molten chocolate proved a bit tricky. I used candy molds to freeze the batter in because the mixture wouldn't firm up quite as much as I had wanted it to (could be due to slightly tweaking the recipe, but it worked out fine this way too). The recipe is by Ricky of Diet, Dessert ' Dogs .
For a gluten free version (she used spelt flour) I substituted Annalise Roberts' GF cake flour mix, the recipe is found at the Celiac Disease and Gluten-Free Forum .
Wishing you all a happy Easter!

Letting go...

When I was expecting my first baby, my mom came to visit me one day, bringing with her this HUGE bag of baby clothes. Cute, tiny newborn clothes me and all my sisters had worn more than three decades ago, a lot of them made by herself. We had moved at least six times during those years and she must have packed them carefully each time, not being able to part with them. I was filled with wonder and very moved when she gave them to me. Now I'm a mom myself I understand. Letting go is so hard. But: here's a cheerful way to recycle those cute baby socks no baby will ever wear again. Mini doll sweaters! When searching for the site where I originally got the idea from (I must reorganize my bookmarks, I truly must) I stumbled upon another too cute sock project: a dog sweater made from a sock. Drool.

Oreos? Not!

Why on earth I wanted to bake Oreo cookies in the first place I can't remember. Even my local health food store sells gluten free Oreo-like cookies that taste nice, so why bother? But one way or another, I had my mind set on them. Don't they look lovely in the photograph? That is an illusion, I tell ya. These (being my fifth try already) turned out very soft and crumbly, and although they taste quite good, they . are . definitely . not . it. Having tried three different recipes and messing up twice, once forgetting to add the sugar (those resembled leather) and once one of the flours (that one came out of the oven never firming up, hmmm, I think I'll crumble that into the fresh home made ice cream I'm planning to make) I declare I have given up on trying to bake gluten free Oreos :-(
That is unless some enlightened soul directs me to a recipe that works, without rice flour being the main ingredient (I strongly dislike the taste of too much rice flour).
What did work was the recipe for the filling, by the way. It is by LindseyKay on Recipezaar. I LOVE LOVE LOVE that site!!!
EDIT EDIT EDIT: Ooooh! How could I have overlooked this recipe?! I love Kate's blog!

New play dough!

This was a perfect activity for a cold and drizzly winter afternoon: making gluten free play dough! It kept two quarrelsome four year olds enthralled for at least one and a half hour :-))
The recipe is all over the Internet really, but I found it at: Coeliac UK.
Have fun!

So: gluten free it is now...

I had already been wondering for some time if Lucie had some kind of food sensitivity. She never yet managed to sleep through the night, and not because she didn't try, but because her intestines where troubling her (or that's what my observations where, she cannot tell yet, poor dear). The aftermath of her first birthday (she woke up screaming, at least 12 times that night) left me convinced. She had always been such an sweet and easy child, and her frequent colds nor her first four teeth coming through had influenced her cheerful mood. But something in her food had. Of late she had become increasingly irritable, her appetite dwindled and she had gotten so restless and hyperactive she resembled a human bouncing ball. I turned to my invaluable Mothering Dot Commune to look for clues, and the allergy board provided some enlightening information on the subject. What if Lucie's digestive system didn't agree with wheat/gluten, eggs or diary? She had hardly been interested in eating any solids until 10 months of age, and that exhausting night it finally dawned on me that her foul mood and colicky behaviour had also started -and gotten worse and worse- over those exact two months, just as her intake of solids had increased little by little. She still nursed a lot and wasn't eating anything fancy: some 'safe' fresh fruits and vegetables, potatoes, bread and occasionally a little plain yogurt. But at her first birthday she had enjoyed rather a large piece of her birthday cake, and when I came to think of it: all three suspicious foods were in there: wheat, eggs and diary. Obviously we needed to get to the bottom of this. I would keep her gluten free, egg free and diary free for some weeks and see what happened, and then one by one introduce them again. She improved quit a bit the first few days: night wakings were reduced by some 80%, and her mood cleared up immensely. After 4 days we experienced a setback that seemed to last and last, and I reckoned that since breast milk is still a major part of her diet, I'd better go gluten free too. Anything to resolve this, and get some sleep! And then the miracle happened. She only woke up once or twice a night to nurse, rolled over contentedly and slept on!!! When we cautiously re-introduced eggs: nothing happened. We also found out she can have hard cheese, plus lactose free milk. So: dairy is in, gluten is out. Over the past 6 months we've been busy getting used to our new gluten free life and although we had many a setback, once we got the hang of it gluten is no longer the party pooper at our house ;-)
Which has left me with a new challenge: gluten free baking! I'll be posting links to some real fabulous recipes I tried, but for now here's a pic of my first try at a flourless chocolate cake. This recipe is found at: thirtyfivebythirtyfive.blogspot.com Baking it, sad thoughts of a life-long diet made way for shiny new horizons: there are thousands of recipes out there, just waiting to be tried (and/or modified)!
Our sweet Lucie is going to eat well, and her home will smell of freshly baked goodies ever so often!