Caps and wall plugs

After watching this film about the rather bizarre competition for the title of Meilleur Ouvrier de France I had images of pastry and sugary stuff on my mind for days. And hey, my girls could do with some nice cakes for their beloved pet shop figurines, so you can see how I had to give this a try :)
Here you're looking at bottle caps, toothpaste caps, beads and lots and lots of nailpolish. Plus a small dental sticks box and some wall plugs that made for a table.
If you take pride in baking, watch the trailer of the film: it's on youtube. Enjoy!

She's off...

Time goes by so fast... In the blink of an eye she's already gone off to explore new horizons! Leaving her mom feeling more than a little ambivalent and with not that much to say. Unabashed by the significance of her milestone and with help of her 'big' sister she worked enthusiastically on preparing farewell treats for her friends in kindergarten. The idea for the astronaut is from MakingFriends.com where many a delightful project for a rainy day can be found. Instead of using salt dough for the mound, we made our little adventurers stand on chocolate chip cookies, sticking in the flagpoles when the cookies came right out of the oven and hadn't firmed up yet. The recipe for the gluten free CC cookies is found at Food.com, but at the moment that site seems to be down, so I'll edit this post later to add the link.

EDIT: this was the recipe I used

And then there was the silver lining:

In gluten free baking there is many a dark cloud. When I wanted to bake some cupcakes real quick, trying to adapt a favourite wheat flour recipe, the cakes didn't tumble from the mold like in the old baking days. Instead I had the whole batch crack and fall apart into crumbs. Ugh. But then these days we have the internet, now haven't we? Just typing in 'what to do with chocolate cake crumbs' led me to The Pioneer Woman.com. I was so enraptured I could hardly wait to try my hand at her flower pot desserts, so I made 'em for our daughter's birthday dinner. Thanks Ree. You've really made our day ;-)

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.