Cookie-A-Day: Day 9 ? Festive Candy Cookies

I started out my day yesterday with hopes of changing up my Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe to make it a little more festive.  I thought that adding Mini M & Ms to the cookies would make them more festive.  I got that butter out when I was making breakfast in the morning to let it soften.  The recipe calls for melted butter, but I have never had success when melting the butter (gluten-free or not gluten-free).  I didn’t get around to mixing the dough until 4:00.  Here is how the first tray turned out:

After this, I promptly stuck the dough in the fridge to chill, hoping that would help.  Not my luck.  A little better, but still spread way too much.  The next tray came out like that as well.  I quickly abandoned any thoughts of making another tray & pressed the remaining dough into a round Pyrex dish & made a round bar cookie.  It came out wonderfully!

Here are the cookies – I cut them into thin bars.  They taste amazing, but look horrible!  LOL!

I was tweeting last night about my flop and Shirley from Gluten-free Easily had a great idea.  She told me to freeze the cookies & use them later for a pie crust!  Brilliant!  I would just need to crush & add butter or oil & press into a pan.  Never throw away your flops – they can be used for something.   These may not make it to the cookie crumb crust – the kids love them!

Tips/Notes

I wanted to show that even though “Life gave me lemons, I made lemonade”.  I turned a potentially frustrating & upsetting situation into a joke & laughed about it.  That is all you can do.  Baking is about trial & error, just like a lot of things in life.  It isn’t just gluten-free baking that is like that, either, though it does seem to require a little more patience at times.  There have been times over the past 4 years that I have thrown in the towel and said I wouldn’t bake again, but I did.  I am glad I did.  It may just be the flour mix or the temperature in the oven.  Or, you may never figure out what the problem was.  Just don’t stop trying. 

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Buddy the Elf showed up again today.  He was hanging from our pot rack in the kitchen!

Hannah got a big kick out of that!

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Did you catch Dr. Oz’s show on Celiac Disease yesterday?  I thought the first 15 – 20 minutes were very informative.  The animation & details about symptoms were just what needed to be shown & said to get the word out to those who may be suffering.  I was a little disappointed when the conversation turned to the gluten-free diet being great for weight loss even if you don’t have Celiac or gluten intolerance.  This seems to lessen the importance of the gluten-free diet for those who really need it.  While it is great to have so much awareness, this shouldn’t be promoted as the newest “fad diet”.  For those who have Celiac, this is the only “cure”.   Cross contamination can make Celiacs sick and cause damage.  I was also curious as to how many people actually lose weight on the gluten-free diet.  I tweeted the question and I received mixed responses.  Some people did lose weight, but others gained.  I gained weight (needed to).  The weight gain most likely comes from the body finally being able to absorb the nutrients that it couldn’t when the villi were damaged. Another very important point that I initially missed – Dr. Oz mentioned trying the GF diet first for a few weeks and then getting tested – don’t do this!  If you remove gluten-from your diet & then go get tested, the results can be skewed.  Get tested first, then remove the gluten.  Dr Oz does have an informative page on his site – lots of good info there.

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Make sure to stop by Diane’s today – The Whole Gang.  She is hosting the Friday Foodie Fix and the secret ingredient is chocolate!  You all know how near & dear to my heart chocolate is.  :)