Christmas Baking Revised

One of these days I may share my gluten-free story, but for now suffice it to say that since I was last posting regularly (umm, almost a year ago...) I have discovered the need to remove gluten from my diet - and I'm feeling much better for it! So, I've been gluten-free since October and have been busy trying to come up with some substitutes for the baked goodies I can't have anymore.

I tried several bread recipes and a few muffin recipes that were sadly lacking (in taste or texture and sometimes both) Luckily, shortly before Christmas, I found the book Gluten Free Baking Classics by Annalise Roberts. Wow! This book is amazing. The bread recipe can almost trick me into believing that I am eating wheat based white bread. The author also has a blog here with the same bread recipe from the book.

So for Christmas, I baked up some Christmas goodies with recipes from the book.

The kids helped cut out the gingerbread men.

...and then I sprinkled them (and the vanilla cupcakes) with powdered sugar, yum!

I made banana muffins to give to our Christmas Eve guests (no picture) and Lemon Coconut Muffins for Christmas morning...soooo good!

Oh, and for Christmas morning breakfast I also made up this recipe the night before and baked it in the morning. I have been trying different make-ahead casseroles (unsuccessfully) since we have had kids at Christmas. I have finally found a keeper! So easy and so good...for the first year I can remember: everyone ate it and I didn't throw away any leftovers.

More Bibs

Finished up a bunch of bibs made from the Bend the Rules Sewing pattern.

Christmas Stockings

These stockings were made the week before Christmas, with help from my Mother-in-law.





Here are some close ups of Henry's stocking. He couldn't decide on sock monkeys or baseballs, so I lined it with the baseball fabric.









I used this tutorial to help me figure out how to construct the stocking. I drew my own pattern by tracing an old stocking (plus some seam allowance) and I used heavyweight fusible interfacing instead of fusible fleece (so my stockings were pretty stiff, which I actually like). With the exception of Gwyneth's stocking (Candy Canes), all of the stockings were made from fabric from my stash.