Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Making Gluten-Free Gingerbread

I promised I'd have a full report on this by Monday morning, but I was delayed in my gingerbread experiment.  You can see my previous post on this and get the recipe here.

Having been party to some spectacular gluten-free culinary disasters in the past - chocolate chip cookies that dissolved into puddles of goo when I tried to cook them, cream puffs that failed to puff and baked onto the cookie sheet, again in a puddle of goo - I would not say this was a complete fiasco.

I did succeed in getting most of the pieces shaped and baked for my gingerbread house.  However, it took 2 and 1/2 hours and I didn't even finish rolling out all of the dough.  In my previous glutinous life, I have worked with gingerbread dough, which can be challenging.  Tonight, however, I had to use all of my cunning.  

I expect that much of my trouble could be attributed to the fact that I started baking at 11 PM and that it's very dry in Texas.  But, the dough was quite crumbly.  I was able to roll it out and the suggestion in the directions that  you roll it onto wax paper and then use that to flip it onto the pan was invaluable.  I would not suggest an overambitious house design and that you do cutouts for windows, doors, etc. sparingly.

I think this recipe is definitely usable, but bring your patience and make sure time is on your side.  Allow at least twice as long as you think this will take. 

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