it's you who brings the morning

today was...hit and miss. gluten free baking is such a pain in the ass! i just need more practice. but i'll get to that later. my oatmeal today was at least right on point.

excuse the iphone pictures. my battery was dead this morning so i had to improvise..

oat bran with
*figs
*bananas
*vanilla
*coconut oil
*cinnamon
*walnuts
*almond milk
*brown sugar

now. baking. where to start? well. the main redeeming factor was that i have this completely amazing vanilla. it makes the food you put it in so fragrant and delicious. i don't think i can ever go back to my old vanilla.

magic

my mission today was to make snickerdoodles from the babycakes cookbook. as you may have guessed, i am a novice to gluten free baking. but it didn't seem so hard...until i actually started.

you will need
*1 1/3 cups plus 1/2 cup sugar
*3 tablespoons cinnamon
*2 cups rice flour
*1/4 cup flax meal
*1 teaspoon baking soda
*1 teaspoon xanthan gum
*1 teaspoon salt
*3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons melted coconut oil
*1/2 cup applesauce
*2 tablespoons vanilla extract

to get started, preheat the oven to 325 degrees. in a shallow bowl, mix 1/2 cup of the sugar and 2 tablespoons of cinnamon and set aside.

in another bowl, mix 1 1/3 cups sugar, the rice flour, the flax meal, baking soda, xanthan gum, salt, and the remaining tablespoon of cinnamon.

add the coconut oil, applesauce, and vanilla and mix with a rubber spatula until the mixture looks something like wet sand. i don't really know what that's supposed to mean but i figured i had something close enough...
cover the mixture and let it sit in the refrigerator for one hour.

the first thing i noticed when i took the dough out of the fridge was how oily it looked.. but i just assumed that's how it was supposed to be and thought nothing of it.

roll the dough into balls and cover them with the cinnamon-sugar. place them onto cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. gently press each cookie down to help them flatten out.

bake for 7 minutes, rotate the sheets, and bake for 7 more minutes.

when i turned the pans, the cookies were looking awful flat but i still had just a shred of hope that everything would turn out in the end. well...

it wasn't a complete failure. this was one of the times when the food looks really ugly, but tastes fantastic. its that mexican vanilla. my life is forever changed because of it.

 flat stanley

and then i remembered that there is nothing that ice cream can't fix. especially when its vanilla island coconut bliss.

i need practice, and i need to make sure everything is absolutely perfect, but i can really see myself getting along with this cookbook. and hell, even if the treats don't look as delicious as they do in the pictures, at least they'll taste just as good, if not better.

because i've got loads of ice cream.

cheers ^^*