By Guest Blogger, December 17, 2009 6:35 pm

This post is an Authentic Foods Customer Spotlight.  It was written by Michie the GF Chef.  Michie is an Authentic Foods customer and gluten free baker.  She grew up in Eugene, OR.  She, her mom and her brother have all been gluten free since 1995.   Michie has loved to cook since she was little and has ambitions to one day open a gluten free coffee shop.

 Michie’s mom, Karen, found Authentic Foods Multi-Blend flour when they were still looking for a premixed flour that was versatile.  That was over 5 years ago and they haven’t looked back.

I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease 14 years ago which led to the diagnosis for my mom and brother as well. We vowed that we would not let CD keep us away from the foods we love and for the most part it hasn’t. With patience and a lot of trial and error I truly feel that we never truly missed out on anything.

This year I decided to make gingerbread cookies for the first time since going gluten free. While I have experimented with all sorts of other cookies and cakes, I have not had gingerbread cookies since before I was 14. I was really nervous about making them. Most of the recipes I use are ones that I have been using since before going gluten free so I know the recipe and what I need to change to make it work. For the gingerbread cookies I had to find a new recipe and figure out how to roll out the dough since I really wanted the gingerbread person shape. The one thing I felt confident about is that so far I have found that with the Authentic Foods Multi-Blend Flour and some soy sour cream, I can make any cookie or cake.

I looked at recipes for gingerbread cookies both online and in the many cookbooks on my shelves. I looked at regular recipes, gluten free recipes, vegan recipes. The recipe I chose was the simplest of them all. I figured if anything went wrong with it, there would be that much less for me to try adjusting. It turned out to be such a wonderful recipe that even though I made a mistake each time I made the recipe (maybe I shouldn’t have the TV on while cooking), the cookies still came out perfectly. The following recipe is not exactly what I found in the book; I have made several changes both to make it work as a gluten free recipe and to make it my own.

GF Chef’s Gingerbread Cookies

Ingredients:
2 ½ Cups Pre-Sifted Authentic Foods Multi-Blend Flour
4 Teaspoons Ginger
1 Tablespoon Cinnamon
½ Teaspoon Cloves
½ Teaspoon Nutmeg
½ Cup Butter
½ Cup Molasses
2 Heaping Tablespoons (1/8 of a cup) Dark Brown Sugar
6 Tablespoons Granulated Sugar
2 Heaping Teaspoons Soy Sour Cream
¼ Cup Hot Water
½ Teaspoon Baking Soda

Directions:
Sift together flour and spices (yes, the flour gets sifted twice- once before measuring and once after measuring) into a bowl and set aside. Melt the butter in a medium to large sauce pan over low heat. When butter is melted, remove pan from heat and add molasses, brown sugar and granulated sugar stirring until completely blended. Add baking soda to the hot water. Add soy sour cream to butter mix. Alternately add flour mix and baking soda water to butter mix beginning and ending with flour mix stirring and as you add the ingredients. When the dough is thoroughly mixed, put it in a plastic bag or saran wrap and place in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours. At the same time, place your marble slab* in the freezer.

When you are ready to roll out the dough, preheat the oven to 350° F before taking the marble slab out of the freezer and wrapping wax paper around it once. You can lightly dust the wax paper with flour, but that will make the excess cookie dough harder when you reroll it. Take the dough out of the refrigerator, pull off a small chunk and place the rest of the dough back in the refrigerator. Roll the dough to between ¼ and 1/8 of an inch thick. Start by cutting out all of the shapes without picking up any of the dough. Once the shapes have all been cut peel away the excess dough, roll it into a ball and stick it back in the refrigerator right away. Then slowly peel the shapes off of the wax paper and place them in a greased pan. When you go to take more cookie dough out of the refrigerator, do not take the dough that you just placed in there- give that time to chill and keep adding the excess dough to it as you go along. The warmer the dough is, the harder it is to work with. When you have filled the pan with shapes, place it in the preheated oven for 13-18 minutes.

Allow the cookies to cool for at least one hour before decorating.

*I bought 2 slabs of marble at our local hardware store for about $12 each. They work great as pizza stones or for rolling out dough. It was my mom who discovered that having a cold working surface makes it a lot easier to roll out pie crusts. Having the cold surface definitely makes a difference with the cookies because it keeps them cold longer.