Gluten Free Gingerbread Cookies

Normally I am too lazy and hungry to get past the cookie dough stage in baking, but seeing as Christmas is nearing and I have this weird need to be motherly I wanted to try my hand at a holiday favourite. Gingerbread cookies to me taste like happiness. They remind me of the white snowy winters we would have living overseas and snuggling up by the heater Christmas morning. Here, the sweltering heat will more likely cook them before making it to the oven and you're more likely to wash them down with a cold beer than a mug of hot chocolate but they still represent Christmas to me. 

Seeing as my family and everyone else these days are coeliacs I wanted to trial a gluten free gingerbread recipe. A lot of gluten free biscuits I find however are either too dry and fall apart or you have to mix ten types of rice, corn or almond flour together. As mentioned, I am lazy. So I searched around for a recipe that pretty much just substituted the one flour ingredient but still maintained some type of texture. 

I thought I would also share a small review of this recipe after making and tasting them so you don't have to waste your time making cookies that crumble like dust. These don't, FYI. 

Ingredients

• 2 cups gluten-free flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 egg
• 125 g butter
• 1/4 cup golden syrup
• 1/2 cup brown sugar

Method

1. In a bowl cream the butter and brown sugar
2. Add golden syrup and egg and mix till combined
3. Ina separate bowl sift together all the dry ingredients, then add to the wet ingredients
4. Mix together and then refrigerate for 1 hour 
   
5. Remove dough from refrigerator and place onto a floured surface and knead lightly
6. Roll out to 5mm thickness then cut into shapes using cookie cutters
7. Bake in 170 degree celsius oven for approx 15 minutes or till well browned 
   
8. Leave to cool on trays for 5 minutes then transfer to cooling racks
9. When cool ice with icing 

Review & Thoughts

• I thought I would need to tweak a few things to get the nicest texture or flavour but honestly this recipe is so simple and delicious there's no changes required; just a couple tips I wish I knew before making them. 
• I would knead for the shortest time possible as the dough warms up extremely quickly then its hard to transfer onto the baking tray. 
• And while one tray is baking, I would recommend putting the unused dough back into the fridge to harden back up so the next shape cutting is easy. 
• For chewy cookies, cook for about 12-13 minutes. For harder, cook for the recommended 15-17 minutes or until well browned. 

DIY: Up-Cycle Your Old Greeting Cards

For a lot of the birthday, christmas, valentine and other greeting cards I have received over time I tend to hoard and box away for sentimental reasons. I never refer to them; only re-reading them once a decade when I happen to stumble across them during another house move. I feel that if I threw them away, I would be discarding the well wishes that were written with care by those who I love. 

A couple months ago I was perusing the interweb as I do, and came across an incredibly sweet and creative article post on Good Housekeeping about different 'things' to frame to create your own wall art. After our engagement, wedding, pregnancy announcment and birth, we had accumulated an extensive collection of cards. Rmemebering the post, I decided to put them to good use. 

I thought I would share a brief How-To to obtain a very unique piece of art in your house and show you what I ended up doing in my own home. For the purpose of the tutorial, I made it small-scaled but depending on how many cards you have, it can be as small or as large as you like. 

The first step is to choose a shape to cut out. This can be anything; a butterfly, star, heart, geometric shapes, flower, animal, etc. I chose a heart. I used a post-it note and drew an outline of the shape/template on it so that I could simply stick on top of the card I was using. For a heart, I folded the post-it over so that I was symmetrical. 

Here, I simply cut out the hearts without having to draw ontop of the cards. This ensures the template stays in place. Do this for as many as you need. If the 'stickiness' wears off, copy the shape onto a fresh post-it. 

Choose a frame size that can accommodate the number of shapes you have. As mentioned, for this tutorial I had only two so I used a small frame. For a backing colour I simply applied a pink sheet of paper. The glue is to stick them to the paper so they don't move while you are adjusting everything (a lot more helpfull with a larger frame)

The End Result

It's not very hard or high tech to create and if anything it's a lovely rainy day craft idea. If you have any simple craft ideas of your own that you think I would enjoy please let me know or leave a link! Being on maternity leave gives me a little more time to tinker. 

This is what I had created a few months ago out of our wedding cards:

I also included our wedding invitations in two of the hearts and a picture of Eddie and myself.