Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Gluten free adventures

During my senior year of college I began having horrible stomach aches after nearly every meal. It was really awful and annoying to not know what was causing the problem. Around this time I began to hear a lot about people having sensitivity to gluten in food and I wondered if this was maybe my problem. So I headed to the internist to be scoped, praying I wouldn't have to give up bread and beer along with a ton of other foods that have gluten in them. I'm blessed to say that I wasn't diagnosed with celiac disease, in fact I'm allergic to poultry, but that's a story for another day!

Even though Gluten did not turn out to be a problem for me, it is a big problem for a lot of people. Their intestines simply cannot process the gluten and it can make them very sick. In fact, even people who don't have celiac can have gluten sensitivity that they are unaware of. Some recent studies say that about 1 in 200 people have celiac and around 1 in 7 people have some sort of gluten sensitivity. Needless to say, all of us could probably to do eat gluten free every once in a while to give our systems a break. You might even notice how much better you feel when eating gluten free even if you didn't know you had a problem with it!

All this brings me to my fabulous new cookbook from Babycakes bakery in NYC!


Awww, look how happy it is to be joining some of its cookbook buddies on my shelf of favorites! My dear friend Carissa gave me this cookbook as a 1 year anniversary present on New Years Eve (thanks Carissa!!) and I've been baking like mad out of it ever since. All of the recipes are vegan, and most all of them are gluten free.

I have heard so much about the Babycakes bakery and I'm dying to go. And this is coming from a girl that could usually take it or leave it when it comes to desserts! The Owner, Erin Mckenna, found out that she had food allergies and set about baking up some delicious but healthy sweets. The bakery has been such a huge hit in NYC that she opened up another location in LA and get this..a new location in Disney World!! It think its great that Disney would want to bring a gluten free vegan bakery to their theme park. Places like babycakes are helping to mainstream healthier food and I'm sure kids and adults alike will be packing in there! How awesome is it for kids that have gluten or dairy allergies to be able to get a cookie or cupcake in Disney world! Yay! The pic below is of their store front in NYC, its adorable.



So far I have made the banana bread with chocolate chips, the pumpkin muffins, the cornbread, the double chocolate chip cookies and the chocolate chip cookies and they have all been soso good. I had never done any gluten free baking before so I was worried about how it would turn out but I should have known Erin McKenna wouldn't lead me astray. Even Mark loved everything I have made, especially the chocolate chip cookies.

We skipped dessert at the restaurant after our date on Friday night and came home to make these. In the cookbook Erin says that you can make sandwich cookies out of them by putting icing in the center of them. Well, I see your move Erin and I'll raise you one...we put ice cream in between and made ice cream sandwiches! I did plain vanilla in mine and Mark did cookie dough ice cream. Chocolate chip cookie dough inside of a chocolate chip cookie!?? Yep, it pretty much blew his mind too.


I can't wait to try out pretty much everything in this cookbook. None of the gluten free ingredients were very hard to find like I though they might be. A lot of the recipes call for Bob's Red Mill gluten free baking mix. It makes everything super easy instead of measuring out small amounts of several different types of flour you just use two cups of the stuff and I found it at Super Target! The next things to make on my list are the cinnamon apple bread and probably the red velvet cupcakes for Mark because he loves those. Seriously the only downside to this cookbook is my thinking that because the baked goods are good for me that the portion sizes should be gigantic. Half a loaf of banana bread in a day anyone? Just me? I dare someone to limit him/herself to one slice or cookie!

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