Monday, April 29, 2013

Gingerbread

Dairy-free, gluten-free, soy-free, no refined sugar


Ingredients
3 1/2 cups blanched almond flour
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 1/4 tsps cinnamon
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 cup grapeseed oil
1/4 cup agave nectar
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup golden syrup
1 large egg

Method
Preheat oven to 180 degrees.  Line 2 baking trays with baking paper.
In a large bowl, combine the almond flour, cinnamon, ginger, salt, baking soda, and cloves.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the grapeseed oil, agave nectar, vanilla extract, golden syrup and egg.
Stir the wet ingredients into the almond flour mixture until thoroughly combined.  Cover the dough and let chill in the freezer for an hour or so.
Roll out the dough to about half a cm thickness between two sheets of baking paper.  Dust with some almond flour if it is a little sticky.
Remove the top sheet of baking paper and cut out the biscuits using biscuit cutters.  It takes a little practice to work with this dough as it's stickier than gluten containing doughs.  You can try dusting your cutters with almond flour or dipping in hot water between cutting each biscuit to help with this.
Transfer the biscuits onto the trays and cook for about 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned.  Let cool on the trays for about 30 minutes.

This recipe is originally from Elana's Amsterdam's 'Gluten-Free Almond Flour cookbook'.  However I have made a few changes to the original. 

Monday, April 15, 2013

Busy

It appears I have been a little slack on my blog lately! It hasn't been intentional.  Life seems to be so busy at the moment.  I always knew that this year would be pretty crazy with two children at two different campuses of school but I didn't realise exactly how crazy it would be!  Last term was all about getting the kids settled into new rhythms.  We had lots of half days and early pick ups as they settled in to their new rhythms.  I am hoping that this term is going to be a lot more settled - no more half days and I have organised for a friend to pick Esme up from Kinder on certain days of the week (doing a 2pm then 3pm pickup was doing my head in!)  Fingers crossed anyway! 

We've all been healthy and happy though.  Jacob has been going really well at the moment.  He's still gluten-free and dairy-free with us monitoring his sugar intake very closely (we choose to use natural sweeteners instead of refined sugar in things we cook for him).  It's been a slow process to find recipes that he is happy with.  While he can be quite fussy, we seem to have developed a repertoire of things that he likes to eat now.  We have a gluten-free, dairy free bread that he likes now and he is happy with cashew milk as an alternative to milk (we are going through cashews like crazy at the moment as we use them in a lot of other things as well!)  It's still a fair bit of work to prepare and plan his food ahead of time but the benefits seem completely worth it.  We haven't even attempted to eat out though as I imagine that will be very hard! 

We've just been back to his biomedical practictioner and are on a slightly different regime.  He's now on a different kind of probiotic as well as his regular SB and gut relief.  We've also added a calcium supplement as well.  We are going to start trialling him on tiny amounts of A2 yoghurt soon.  We have tried in the past, but after discussion with his naturopath we decided that we were giving him too much at once.  So this time around, it's teeny tiny amounts and monitor his reaction. 

He's been seeing the Speech Therapist weekly and we are just about to start seeing an OT to help with some of his sensory overload issues.  He also started doing Eurethmy at the end of last term with his old Kinder teacher.  He still talks about himself in the third person, so we are hoping that both the Speech Therapy and Eurethmy will help bring that awareness into himself. 

Esme is loving Kinder at the moment.  She is in a lovely group and it's great to see them all play together so well (it is a big group of mainly girls in her Kinder this year!)  She has made some very special friendships in the group, ones that will continue throughout her school years.  It's so interesting seeing her socialise and play with the other children as we never really saw that with Jacob. 

Gideon is growing up so quickly.  In just over 2 months he will be two!  I'm not quite sure where that time went.  He is still my 'baby' but is quickly becoming his own little person as well.  He got his first pair of shoes on the weekend.  Up until now he's only been in soft leather soled shoes.  He completely refused to put his foot down or walk in his new shoes in the shop.  I just found it so funny - I think he's going to be my little bare-footed hippy forever! 

I think that's all our news caught up for now!  Hopefully I will be able to do some more regular posts this term although the beauty of having my own blog is that I can just do it whenever inspiration hits!
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