Success!

Okay so I know I already sang the praises of Betty Crocker’s new GF line of baking mixes…but now I have pictures!

My third foray into gluten-free baking was a delicious success earlier this morning when I decided to brighten up a weekend destined to be filled with school work with sweet, caloric, chocolate-chip cookies.

I’ve tried to make GF cookies before. I preferred oatmeal butterscotch because I hoped the oatmeal would help hold the cookies together. See, the real challenged in GF baking is keeping it together, literally. It’s easy enough to find alternative flours (potato, rice and millet flours are among the most popular), but none of these can mimic wheat flour on their own. They need something to bind them together. In most GF baking the binder is xanthan gum or guar gum.

Really, who the hell wants to willingly eat anything called guar gum? All I can think about was Gwar, that awful metal band who dress up like aliens and spray fake blood on their concert-goers.

My from-scratch GF baking adventures consisted of me trying to measure out the correct amount of xanthan gum, which I had acquired from a health food store, delighted to find that it had a powdery, not gum-like consistency. But I must have done something wrong, because my oatmeal butterscotch cookies didn’t say together, didn’t rise, but flattened onto the pan like little lace doilies. Tasty, but not presentable.

These cookies, however, are beautiful as box-o-cookies go. If I planned on leaving the house this weekend I might even venture to share them with people. I might not even tell them it was gluten-free!