Sunday, December 25, 2011

Gluten Free, Diary Free Cinnamon Rolls

So, I had my first foray into gluten free, dairy free baking. That is right, I over came my fears--I'm no longer a gluten free baking virgin.

I found this recipe on how to make dairy free gluten free cinnamon rolls. It was modified from this cinnamon roll recipe. However, the caveat is the recipe is designed to make something like 80 rolls. I only really needed 4 rolls--and we only ate 1 for Christmas breakfast. So I used part of the dough to make crescent rolls for this recipe (yes, it is apple wrapped in crescent rolls, baked in a ton of butter and sugar---delicious!) The rest I was able to freeze to make future cinnamon rolls, crescent rolls, dinner rolls, or pizza dough. How awesome? One go many uses. It also required no kneading, few dishes, and so little effort--but does require planning and having at least 3 hours to make (2 hours worth of waiting). Even if you make the original version of the recipe, it is awesome to have dough in my freezer for future use.

I used a mixture of Bob's Red Mill gluten free baking mix and bean flour and I added my own 1 tsp of xantham gum per cup of flour (it comes out to 9 tsp). I also used soy free, dairy free butter stuffs called Earth Balance, which can be procured at Walmart.

It also says in the picture direction to bake at 400 degrees; however, the recipe says 375 degrees. I did 375 degrees and it took about 30 minutes to bake all the way through. I did not use her maple frosting from the recipe, but I used this frosting recipe from the clone of a cinnabon on allrecipes.com.

They turned out so well. I was worried and I didn't trust Evan for an accurate review. But my sister's brother-in-law's girlfriend (did you follow that, I almost didn't) had one this morning for her Christmas breakfast, and I heard second-hand rave reviews. So give it a try. It was awesome.

Decking the Halls

We put up our tree the day after Thanksgiving. Aiden went to bed before we were done because he was tired, ornery, and into everything. I tried to get a good picture of him, but that blurry one of his face is the best that I could do. He does not ham it up for the camera like Kyle used to at that age, I need a super expensive fast camera to get good pictures of that quick one.





We had a good time though. The boys have really enjoyed the tree and it was so fun to finally decorate with Kyle and to pull out our ornaments from years passed that belong to him. We put the good ornaments up top and there was one branch on the bottom with ten bells---that was all Kyle's doing. We were able to find a good space in the corner by our front window and blocked it in with our two love seats. It served us well as an awesome setup. I'm sad it is going to need to come down this week.

Thanksgiving Eve Bowling

Saturday, December 10, 2011

First Glimpses of Winter


We had a small amount of snow in the early part of November before all the leaves had even fallen off the trees. Kyle was so excited to go out, and he wanted to make a snowman so badly. However, we did not have that much snow, and there was a ton of leaves below the few inches of snow. But we did go out so that I could shovel the sidewalk and driveway. Aiden did not like it at all, eventually, he was on ground that I had shoveled and I took his gloves off, so he tolerated it. Aiden's displeasure at being outside eventually drove us back inside---where Kyle's displeasure was extreme. I hope we'll get more before Christmas, so that it starts to feel like Christmas :)

October was When?


Way back in October, before Halloween, we went to the pumpkin patch. It was pretty limited and small. The corn maze did not even have any options for alternative paths :) However, it was great for the kids. We went with Evan's brother, Nolan, his wife Zaida, and their son, Ignacio. The picture of them on the haystacks is as close as we could get them. But it was a gorgeous day and Kyle and Aiden both loved the tractors.









We had a monkey of a Halloween! Evan worked so I took the boys trick-or-treating. Not my favorite job and in the future, I'll look forward to Evan doing that. Unfortunately our friends fell thru on going with us, so we headed out as a trio. Kyle had me go up to every door with him so he wasn't alone. We went down three blocks of one street and circled back up the next. He decided when he was done and we did not hit every house. Aiden stayed in his stroller the whole time and at house number 4, he got a dum dum and that kept him busy until we were back home. It was successful, but I'll be so glad when I don't have to do holidays alone while Evan works.