Holiday Baking

One of the best parts of the holidays is all the yummy goodies. My mom, since she's on the ball like that, has already started her holiday baking. When I was there yesterday I helped her make my favorite treat - Date Balls! They're made from graham crackers, coconut, dates, marshmallows, walnuts, and sweet and condensed milk. I look forward to that sugary goodness all year!

We have a family party tomorrow night, so I decided to try my hand at making some holiday cookies for Caden to enjoy. I modified the recipe from one I got off the blog of the author of my favorite allergy friendly cookbook - Sophie Safe Cooking. I made the first batch regular and they taste like sugar cookies. I plan to make the remaining dough into chocolate cookies. Caden loved his first little sugar cookie man.

Allergy Safe Icebox Cookie Dough
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup olive oil
2 cups rice flour
1 tsp. xanthum gum
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
up to 3 tbsp. rice milk

Using a mixer, mix the shortening and sugar, adding vanilla partway through. When these are thoroughly mixed, add the oat flour, baking soda, and salt and mix well. The mixture will be relatively crumbly at this point. Preferably with the mixer running, add the rice milk a little at a time, mixing for at least 15 seconds between additions (other wise you won't be able to tell when you've got the right amount of rice milk in the dough). When the dough forms a ball, it is ready to roll out for baking. If you are going to be refrigerating your dough before using it, you may want to add a little more rice milk since food often loses moisture in the refrigerator.