In our house we celebrate Christmas. And one of my favorite memories of my childhood is baking what seemed to be thousands of yummy Christmas cookies every holiday season. My mother had wonderful recipes for peanut butter cookies that we topped with M & M’s, the absolute best chocolate chip cookies (which if truth be told, I like to eat raw even better than when they were cooked), sugar cookies with a slight almond flavor and in our house, the piece de resistance, kolache cookies. They are flaky pastry-like cookies which are rolled up with a filling inside, then dusted with powdered sugar. Traditionally they are filled with lekvar, which as my mother tells me is a prune jam, poppy seeds, ground nuts or other fruit jams. In our house it was always a sweetened, ground walnut mixture, moistened with either milk or water. These took hours to make as we had to hand grind the walnut mixture and hand roll the cookies. They are no more than an inch in length and only one roll wide. I loved grinding the nuts. My father would go to the basement and bring out our old wooden ladder to which he would attach our hand cranked meat grinder (which I don’t think ever ground any meat in its lifetime) and we would grind the walnuts. The house smelled wonderful and my mother always insisted we listened to the local Polish radio station which played Christmas Carols and made dedications in Polish. My aunt, knowing our tradition, would always call the radio station and make a dedication to us. It was a wonderful time of year.
Having my own family makes me long for those wonderful traditional times but also having an Autistic son on the GFCF diet makes it impossible to make some of my favorite Christmas cookies. Well I decided that was OK. We could make our own traditions. So I started searching for yummy cookies that our whole family could love and enjoy. Here is what I found. I hope you love and enjoy these cookies and candies as much as we do. Have the most wonderful of holidays. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! With Love.
The best little meringue cookies can be found at Smitten Kitchen. I used Ghirardelli 100% cocoa bar for the chocolate chips (processed it in the food processor) to stay GFCF and make a wonderful, yummy cookie. I also added a few things to make other versions of the same cookie. I made a mocha cookie by omitting the chocolate chips and adding 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder and 1 teaspoon of espresso powder. That was a lovely, sophisticated cookie. I did another where I used 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder again, but this time I folded in chopped candied cherries for a bit of a black forest feel. You could probably also fold in some flaked coconut and drizzle with melted chocolate for even more pizazz.
One of my dad’s favorites are Peanut Butter cookies and this version of Flourless Peanut Butter cookies just rocks. I used smooth peanut butter and omitted the chocolate chips since I didn’t have any more Chirardelli 100% cocoa bars in the house and I didn’t feel like using Tropical Source’s GFCF Chocolate Chips, although they would have been wonderful in this recipe.
I also tried to make Divinity, but made a fatal candy making mistake. I made a phone call while watching my sugar/water mixture come up to temperature, and since I wasn’t paying much attention I ended up with something more like marshmallows (although not exactly), and significantly less like candy. Try it if you like. I may take the plunge again next year.
Lastly, I made a candy recipe from my husband’s childhood. Potato Candy. Larry’s grandmother used to make it every Christmas and she would color the dough red and green for the holiday. I omitted the food coloring but made the candy just the same.
Other GFCF options, but ones I didn’t make this year, could be Pignoli cookies. I want to make these next year since Larry loves them and they are very Italian (his background). Banh men cookies look really interesting. I love coconut and coconut flour so I think I might try these once. Maybe when the holidays and the pressure to make wonderful things are over and I can be free to make mistakes.
And for Christmas Dessert we are serving Pavlova. I decided to try Pavlova since the boys went nuts for the meringues and they are basically the same. I’ll serve it with homemade strawberry fruit sauce (made from frozen organic strawberries and sugar). I think it will be a nice, light, delicious ending to a traditional GFCF Christmas dinner.
Have a wonderful holiday!
These are great holiday recipes. I hope lots of people find these GFCF treats!