Holiday Cookies

This year I was determined to get some baking done with the girls, and being that things have been stressful and I haven't been feeling well...I decided to cheat a little!

Through my buying club, I bought Cherrybrook Kitchen's Gluten-free Sugar Cookie Mix. Since I had to buy in bulk, I received 6 of them (which ended up being a good thing-lots to practice with!)

Our first batch was done according to the directions on the box, with a few modifications, using canola oil instead of margarine, hemp milk instead of soy milk. The girls have a current obsession with Frosty the Snowman, so our goal was to make snowmen. Once the batter was mixed, I began to add some all purpose gluten-free flour to the mix in order to soak up some of the oil in order to make the dough easier to roll out.

The girls had a blast, and we used Enjoy Life chocolate chips for eyes and some dried fruit and raisins to decorate.

Today we made another batch of cookies, only this time our goal was to make candy cane cookies. I did things a bit differently-I added almost a cup of the all purpose gluten-free flour while mixing the batter, and we also added some peppermint oil for that "candy cane" flavor.

Once the batter was ready, we divided it in half and added red food coloring to half of it. The dough was still pretty oily, so we were not able to really roll it out like traditional candy cane cookies. Instead- I made two long rolls-one white and one red, and then broke off chunks in order to make my candy canes.

The girls really enjoyed this, and made lots of creations on their own.

*The only thing I would do differently next time is add some xanthan gum to the batter when I added the extra flour. I think adding so much extra flour through it off bit, and some of the first batch didn't stick together as well as the second batch (when I sprinkled some in).