Canteen Almond Mandelbrot, GF/DF

My introduction to baking began as a toddler when I was scooting around on the floor in my mother’s kitchen.  She usually wore cherry red shoes that were always dusted with flour.   I followed those shoes around the room, and like any savvy small fry, knew where the good crumbs landed when she was baking.

As I grew (read: ridiculously tall child) and could reach the counter, she began to teach me how she baked.  There were no real recipes, just a tutorial handed down from her grandmother, to her mother, to her and then to me.

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Lemon Snickerfools, GF

I ate my first Snickerdoodle when I was a small kid.   It was missing something – probably, chocolate.  And all these years later I still think Snickerdoodles are boring and I still don’t like them much.

The cream of tartar flavor is like eating tooth filling material.  And cinnamon/sugar belongs on toast, I think.  But yet I’ve always been attracted to them for some unexplainable reason.  I really want to like them.

Triple Ginger Sandwich Cookies, GF

One of my favorite commercial cookies is was Newman’s Ginger-O’s.   I love the fancy-pants ginger flavor and I am a sucker for sandwich cookies.  But while the idea of never eating those again was sad, it probably was a good thing because they were just a touch too sweet aside from being full of gluten.

But we missed ginger cookies.  I made several GF varieties through the years and not one of them is memorable.  But one day, rather recently, I was looking again for something ginger and came across an Alton Brown recipe.  The recipe called for three different variations of ginger in the cookie.  That would be my kind of cookie – ultra redundancy.  I thought it would be worthy of experimentation to re-do it gluten-free.

Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies, GFDF!

I love cookies.  And, I especially love to bake cookies that are not complicated, take very little time and highlight one or two complimentary flavors.  It doesn’t hurt if the cookie also contains a little chocolate.  I like it even more if clean-up is simple.

There is nothing like the satisfaction of warm-from-the-oven homemade cookies that didn’t leave you ready to hire house-cleaners just to find the counter top again.  Some creations around here manage to use every bowl, utensil and baking pan I own.

Oat Tales: GF Oat Cookies with Coconut, Pecans and Raisins

Oatmeal is a lot like Uncle Fergus – you either love him or run for your life when he shows up at the door.

I grew up hating all things oatmeal. When I was forced to eat the stuff, it was like chewing the inside of the sofa stuffing (don’t ask how I know that). Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the same Quaker Oats container sitting on the pantry shelf had celebrated more birthdays than I had.

I met my first commercially made oatmeal cookie when I bought school-lunch the day the new cafeteria opened.   I loved cookies, but this thing was dreadful. Soft, squishy and stale, it was the color of tired beige with tiny dark specks.  Oats and I were finished.

That is, until I grew up and found out that oats were actually tasty. My mother-in-law, the original granola queen, used oats as much as she used lemons or mayonnaise (which in her house is a food group). She taught me the rules of food-cooperatives and how to chase the good stuff – think organic mills before organic was a type of certified product.

Gluten Free Ultra Minty Thins

Once upon a time, there was not one adorable little Girl Scout in a five-mile radius who had not sold us Thin Mint cookies.  Apparently we became such a familiar sight that when the munchkins saw us walking toward the store entrance where they sold the crack cookies, they started piling up the Thin Mints in anticipation.

Our entire freezer was stuffed with Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies.  Undoubtedly a 12 step program was probably in order.  But that was then.

Flourless and Gluten Free Double Shot Espresso Cookies

I like chocolate.  I like chocolate cookies.  I especially like chewy chocolate cookies.

This recipe is inspired in part by Francois Payard’s Flourless Chocolate Cookies and a top-dog-secret recipe from the pastry chef at The Beverly Peninsula Hotel who gave us the recipe after we begged (literally) for months – a long time ago.

Even then, the recipe was faxed to us exactly as they use it in a hotel kitchen which feeds hundreds daily.  That meant my choice was to either make enough for the entire apartment complex or work on my math skills to convert it to a tiny kitchen recipe.  Since I didn’t have 85 pounds of cocoa in the cupboard, I had to break out the abacus.