Grab Your Partner, Do-Si-Do!

No, really, I am willing to square dance right now. Why? Because of these…

Okay, I make no claims or efforts to be a food photographer here, just trying to convey a small piece of my joy via the iphone camera.) These are Peanut Butter Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies, known (in their commercially produced form) in circles of girls wearing green uniforms and sashes as “Do-Si-Dos.” Except that these little babies are also gluten-free, and you would never know it. The recipe called for a beautiful, whopping pound and a half of butter between the cookies and the filling, so I suspected they would be good before I even started. Gluten-free baking is a sensitive thing, though. It’s much more precise and delicate than baking with wheat flour, because you’re trying to attain the same flavor and texture using anything and everything BUT wheat flour. You know that one recipe your grandmother makes that you remember from childhood? She’s given you the recipe time and time again, and you keep thinking she’s intentionally leaving something out, because it just never turns out like hers? Well, that’s kind of what GF baking has been for me so far, and I know, for plenty of others, as well. (I read about it on the internet, on blogs about stuff like that.) It’s already hard to find time to bake, but for GF folks, it’s also really expensive. We wheatless consumers pay 4-10 times as much for ingredients for something you would normally make with wheat flour. Take, for example, a Betty Crocker boxed cake mix, which is usually the fastest, cheapest way to make a cake. A normal “pudding in the mix” variety costs about $1.20 and makes a 9x13. Betty’s GF version, which, make no mistake, I am EVER so thankful for, costs me an incredible $4.89. Four times? No, no. It makes an 8x8, which is, for all practical purposes, HALF of a 9x13. I pay EIGHT times more for a boxed cake mix from the same company! So, experimenting is a very costly endeavor. Add to that the difficulty of finding things like Potato Starch, Tapioca Flour, Xanthan Gum (which all GF baked goods must have in order to have any kind of stability or chew), and it’s just not that much fun. Especially when ALL you WANT is a COOKIE!! Just a cookie… sniff, sniff. So, anyway, the few times I have tried to make ‘replacement’ foods, meaning foods that normally have wheat as their main component, it hasn’t worked out so well. Then, after I’ve spent all that money and time, and I’ve stood, salivating, with my face pressed up to the oven window, willing to endure at least first degree burns from the hot glass, and I finally get the coveted cookies in my quivering hands and take a bite… it just about makes a girl want to cry. A glob that is supposed to be a cookie… is NOT a cookie. It’s a glob. Sometimes they look like cookies, smell like cookies, and vaguely resemble cookies in taste. Then they leave you with a mouthful of sand (rice flour), or they’re dry and coarse. It’s just heartbreaking, I tell you, especially if you have loved baked goods and been loyal to them, like I have. Now, it’s not hard at all to shop and cook without wheat. If you never try to replace those things, and only eat whole, natural foods, it’s a cinch. We do that, almost every day, for most meals. But, sometimes a person just NEEEEEDS a biscuit! With some country gravy on it! Or a cookie, or a ___fill in the blank with whatever wheat-filled product you want__. So, anyway, when these cookies came out of the oven, and I took my first skeptical bite, I was flooded with joy and relief. Aaahhhhh….. A real-life, honest-to-goodness, peanut butter cookie! It was a tender moment. Filling them with peanut butter cream (peanut butter, butter, and confectioner’s sugar) just made it better. I shared a couple with the kids and boxed the rest up for the freezer. They aren’t aware of it yet, but that’s the last they’ll see of those cookies. I was placing them all delicately into the box in an orderly fashion, when I suddenly felt like Gollum (a nasty creature from Lord of the Rings), hunched my back, and starting hissing, “my precioussss.” I’d like to say I’m kidding, but, Jake knew what that meant and backed away. Now I am finishing my last bite of my, um, “samples” for today. After four, I’m positive they’re good. Really good. And do you know what else? The only flour they contain is almond flour, which I made in my blender from raw almonds. It's more like almond "meal" than the almond flour you would find at the store (if you ever DID find it), but I like the chewiness it lends to the cookie, and it means I didn’t have to hunt down and mix flours, and there is definitely no gritty aftertaste. AND, with over 7 grams of protein per cookie, which is more than the protein bars I buy, I can have them for breakfast. Major. Bonus. The recipe for these gems came from the awesome GF digital magazine Easy Eats (easyeats.com), that I started receiving long before I had any kind of inkling I would need it. They have great recipes and good information for anyone, but especially if you’re GF. (No, they don’t pay me to advertise.) Last issue, they did a whole piece on GF versions of classic Girl Scout cookies, so I still have to try the Chocolate Mint Wafers, Chocolate Peanut Butter Meltaways, and the Whatever-They-Called the Samoas, the ones with caramel, coconut, and chocolate. Mmmmmmm.... Another time, another happy day. It’s time to get dinner ready, but, for some reason, I’m just not that hungry…