Additonal GFCF Treats that should be a hit

September 20, 2009 By

Halloween really is my favorite holiday of the year. Most people, Christian’s at least, tend to love Christmas, and of course I agree that is a beautiful holiday. But I love the draw of Halloween. You get to dress up like someone else and be completely different for one whole day. You can be silly or scary and you get CANDY! Wow, what an awesome holiday, huh? Plus the decorations are really fun.

So I was searching last night for Halloween costumes for my boys. Matthew wants to be a pirate and instead of buying a pirate costume I thought maybe I would “make” one for him. I don’t really want to sew much, but I think I could do this project almost completely without sewing. And I found a great pirate costume on DIY network. But as I was searching I also found a few other great Halloween GFCF treats that I wanted to share with you.

Martha Stewart and her employees are extremely creative and I marvel at all the cool things they come up with.
Here is my new favorite – Invisible Lollipops I plan to make them this year!

Martha also had a great idea to make Meringue bones. These look simple and really good. Naturally GFCF, so there are no substitutions to make. Take a look and see if you would want to make these for your family this year, I know I would.

And while you are at it take a look at her Spideweb Eggs. If you children like hardboilded eggs (Nico loves them) these would be wonderful for a spooky Halloween snack. I love the idea.

Another really great treat that you could send to school is Chex Mix. I made a batch of GFCF Chex mix for Matthew’s birthday party last year and it was a HUGE success. I found two great Chex Mix recipes that should be easy to convert to GFCF:
The Cookie Pizza just make sure you use GFCF “butter” – I like Earth Balance. Also, Rice Chex are GFCF but if you use another type or multiple types of Chex mix verify they are also GFCF. Use Tropical Source GFCF chocolate chips OR go bitter sweet instead of semisweet and you should be OK. I like bitter sweet Ghirardelli chocolate. And Lastly I’d suggest using Frutabu Fruit leathers because they are GFCF and organic.

They also have Caramelized Crispy Chex Mix which is easy to doctor up and make your own. Because I was unsure of the Corn Chex Mix called for I used Gorilla Munch cereal instead. And because I was doing it on the fly, I didn’t have enough of either cereal so I added Gluteno Pretzels and Perky O’s (GFCF Cheerio type cereal). This gave it a nice texture and made it even more interesting. I also skipped the candy pieces since I couldn’t find a good GFCF brand. And of course I used GFCF butter such as Earth Balance. It was so good I ended up needing to make 2 batches because we ate most of the first batch before the party.

Of Course you can not forget about Rice Krispie Treats. It is 3 Tbs of GFCF “butter” like Earth Balance, 1 bag package of GFCF marshmallows or your homemade fresh marshmallows, and 6 cups of GFCF crispy rice cereal (Rice Krispies are NOT GFCF). Melt the “butter” and marshmallows in a very large bowl in the microwave for 1 – 2 mins. Stir to combine mixture. Add rice cereal and mix to coat. Pour into a “buttered” dish or out onto parchment paper. Let it set up and cut. There are lots of variations of this that are easily adapted to the GFCF life. Just play around with your favorite recipe or hope over to the Rice Krispies website and see what you can come up with.

I hope some of these are recipes you can use this year. I know we are all so busy, but maybe these will make Halloween a little sweeter for your GFCF family this year.

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GFCF Halloween Ideas

September 19, 2009 By

Since we have gone back to the GFCF diet (thank the Good Lord!!!) I have been trying to come up with fun Halloween treats for the boys. Both boys will need to take in Trick or Treat bags for the kids in their classes and I wanted to provide them with better Halloween treats (at least better than those store bought confections full of preservatives, dyes and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)).

I was thinking about making Organic Candied Apples – by taking organic apples and making my own candy to dip them in. The recipe is quite simple:

Ingredients:

  • 12 red apples
  • 12 wooden ice-cream sticks (or even better , beautiful, washed and partially peeled sticks from your yard)
  • 4-1/2 cups organic raw sugar
  • 3/4 cup organic light corn syrup
  • 1 teaspoon red food coloring (organic, natural coloring found in health food stores)
  • 1-1/2 cups water
  • 1 cup chopped peanuts (optional)

Preparation:

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside. Wash and dry the apples. Insert a stick through the stem of each, leaving about 2 inches of the stick for gripping. Place the chopped peanuts in a deep bowl large enough to roll apples in.

Place the sugar, corn syrup, food coloring , and water in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Bring slowly to a boil while stirring constantly and cook until the ingredients are dissolved.

Insert a candy thermometer into the liquid and continuing cooking, without stirring, until the temperature reaches 290 degrees F. This should take about 20 minutes.

Remove the syrup from the heat and dip the apples , one by one, coating each evenly. Work quickly so the sauce doesn’t harden. As you finish dipping an apple, roll it in the peanuts to coat evenly. Place each apple standing on the prepared cookie sheet. Let the apples cool for at least 1 hour before serving.

Another great idea are GFCF marshmallows cut into pumpkin shapes and dusted with orange sanding sugar, of course using organic food colors.

My parents want to make popcorn balls for the boys. Using 11 cups of popcorn, 1 package of mini marshmallows (not organic, but at least GFCF) and 3 Tbs of GFCF margarine. Prepare popcorn and remove un-popped kernels. Place in large bowl. Heat marshmallows and margarine in microwave for 1.5 minutes so that marshmallows are melted when stirred. Pour over corn and mix. Wet hands with water and shape popcorn mixture into balls. Serve immediately or wrap in plastic wrap or parchment paper (better choice) and distribute.

I hope these give you some ideas of fun foods to prepare for your little GFCF ghosts and goblins this year. You can always make GFCF cupcakes and decorate with organic candies, making them look like spooky Halloween entities. I hope to have pictures of a few of my creations up soon so you can see how ours turned out.

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A Great New Blog for you to Read

September 10, 2009 By

Recently I was turned on to A Year of SlowCooking , a blog dedicated to using your slow cooker every day of the year. Well, to my wonderful surprise this blog is also about being gluten free and many of her recipes are also naturally casein free. You really need to hop over there and take a look around. I can’t wait to try some of her wonderful sounding recipes (since our DAN! doc told us we can go back to the GFCF diet and leave the SCD far behind us!!! but that is another post). Check out the recipes and come back and tell me which ones I need to try too.

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SCD Pumpkin Spice Pancakes

September 6, 2009 By

Now that Fall is creeping up on us I start to long for pumpkin flavored favorites such as pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pie and pumpkin lattes. But for the boys I make a pumpkin spiced pancake. Which can be a little tricky since they are now Specific Carbohydrate Diet compliant. So I took a fairly standard SCD almond flour pancake recipe and tweaked it to make it pumpkin spice.

Ingredients:
1/4 Cup roasted pumpkin or butternut squash, pureed with cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and allspice. (roasting recipe below)
3 eggs
1 Cup Almond Flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 Tbs honey
1 – 2 tsp vanilla (pure)

Heat frying pans (preferably stainless steel), and melt coconut oil in bottom to coat. Do not let the pan get too hot as coconut oil will start to smoke and you will burn the pancakes before they cook.
Mix all ingredients together with a whisk.
Drop small pancakes size portions of batter into hot pans and watch for bubbles. When pancake bubbles, flip. Serve with a drizzle of honey. Yummy.

How to Roast a Butternut Squash or Pumpkin

Preheat Oven to 350 degrees.
Wash outside of squash.
Cut in half.
Clean out center of squash, removing all the seeds and fibers. If you are using a pumpkin remember to save the seeds and roast them (oil and salt seeds in single layer on baking sheet) in a 325 degree oven for about 25 minutes, stirring every 10 mins or so. Eat the whole seed – yummy.
Place squash in a baking dish ( I like the pamper chef stoneware because they don’t leech chemicals such as lead and aluminum) and drizzle with a little oil (I use olive).
Roast for about 40 minutes depending on size of squash. You want a fork to easily pierce the flesh of the squash.
Remove flesh from peel and using a blender, hand blender or food processor, mix until smooth. You can add your favorite pumpkin spices such as cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and allspice to make a delicious mashed “pumpkin pudding”. You can serve this as a side dish to a nice pork loin or in place of mashed sweet potatoes or use it in the recipe above to make pumpkin spice pancakes.

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