think outside the breadbox: cookies and holiday madness

Friday, December 17, 2010

cookies and holiday madness

As the holidays approach I'm working on perfecting my cookie skills. I've been playing with some new recipes, mixes and flours. I wish I could say I've been so busy baking that I haven't had time to post but that would be such a fractional truth. I've also been busy knitting hats, working, dealing with change, skiing, enjoying happy hour, watching world cup snowboardcross races, working too many days in a row, grey's anatomy and many reruns of, waking up to happy puppies, testing out new gluten free offerings at Telluride Ski Resort, skiing, playing with the puppy monsters... you get the idea. If I could I'd narrow this list down to playing with the dogs, baking, knitting while watching grey's anatomy and skiing but I have other obligations in life as well. It's sad, even the camera doesn't reflect half of the things we've been up to since the mountain opened on Thanksgiving.

I've long since given up on being able to send holiday cards. I realize that the compressed season of the ski industry and the vast amount of work to be done in the short time between pumpkin carving and Christmas trees barely allows time for posting and puppies, let alone a night of holiday cards.

I also made the best apple pie ever for turkey day... I was inspired by a pie on the cover of Yankee Magazine and did a snowflake crust for our holiday celebration.

The winner of all my baking has been the snickerdoodles from the Bronski's cookbook Artisanal Gluten-Free Cooking. I'm a big fan of their flour blend and their book seems to be my go-to for everything from pizza dough to pie crust to cookies. I've also started flirting with dairy and ultimately cheating and went back to real butter for baking. I've got to be careful with how much I consume but have found that it makes things much prettier and the taste is much better as well. Yes, I cheated for a prettier pie crust and cookies that wow people.