Good Eats: Gluten Free Xmas Cookies

Personally, I like to use gluten free recipes that are naturally without wheat--not ones that are full of wheat flour substitutes.  Sometimes they are great, but often I can detect weird aftertastes or off textures.  Not to mention, those fava bean, tapioca, potato starch, rice, etc. flours are pricey!
So, without further ado, here are my favorite gluten free cookies.  NO FLOUR involved!

reindeer belly buttons, peanut butter blossoms, monster cookies

1.  Reindeer Belly Buttons (or pretzel m&m turtles, or reindeer treats, or whatever you want to call them!).  This one's easy.  

Ingredients:

gluten free pretzels (I promise, this is one gluten free substitute that tastes exactly like the real deal!  Snyder's makes the best ones.)

caramel hershey kisses (these might not be okay for full blown Celiac's.  Read here for more info.)

m&m's 

Simply lay all your pretzels on a baking sheet, place a hershey kiss on top, pop in the oven at 275 degrees for a few minutes then pull them out and press in the m&m.

2.  Peanut Butter Blossoms --These were always a favorite of mine growing up.  

I found this recipe from Gluten Free Girl and The Chef for peanut butter cookies.  Just sugar, peanut butter, baking powder and egg!  

Just follow that recipe verbatim and then instead of pressing them with a fork, press in your hershey kiss.  So good.

3.  Monster Cookies  a.k.a.  oatmeal cookies with m&m's and chocolate chips (again, I feel like I should disclose--oats are controversial for Celiac's, as most oats are grown in fields next to wheat fields and can be cross contaminated.  Check your package!)

I can't take credit for this recipe at all--I found it here at Cooking with my Kid.  But I will give this advice:  this recipe makes a TON of dough.  So either cut it in half, or form all your dough balls, bake what you want, and then lay all the rest on cookies sheets. Place in the freezer and once frozen put them in ziplock bags and back in the freezer.  You can just grab some out of the freezer and pop them in oven if you have people coming over!  I only bake as many as we want to last us a couple days and freeze the rest.  The more freshly baked, the better they taste!

Enjoy!

xo

Jayme

**I see a lot of tweets/facebook snark about how people who eat gluten free and/or organic don't need to announce it to everyone.  Well, the organic thing, FINE.  But the gluten free thing is something that needs put out there because, well, if you have a gluten intolerance and you accidently (or purposefully) consume gluten, you GET SICK.  I'm usually embarrassed to have to say anything and I don't think it's cool to eat gluten free.  It is just something I have to do so my intestines don't explode.  Thankyouverymuch.  (end rant)

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