Wookie, Gifts and a Cookie Bake-Off

Lesson learned: just serve great cookies and they shall come! My daughter and I both entered a Cookie Bake-Off last weekend and she took first place with a rice krispie gift cookie while I tied for third with my Wookie Gingerbread Cookies.  What made this bake-off fun was that our treats were allergy friendly and they “beat out” full-fledged, nut, dairy, gluten mainstream cookies. My daughter almost fainted when she realized first prize was a $100 gift card! The true glory was that our treats were not considered “tasteless or food allergy boring” and were loved by all nut-dairy-egg and gluten eating types. See our recipes below!
The Wookie Gingerbread man recipe was adapted from Sugar Nerd’s Gingerbread Wookie Cookies recipe and last night, I saw Jenny Sprague, co-founder of the beloved Food Allergy Blogger Conference and founder of the popular Multiple Food Allergy Help website created these little dreams gluten-free!  My batch contained gluten and no dairy, eggs or nuts. She used GF Jules Graham Cracker Mix.  Jules’ site offers amazing gingerbread gluten free recipes and oodles of fun baking ideas…a gluten free must visit site! One of my most beloved downloaded Holiday recipes ebooks is from Jules! Jenny shared that she has also used the Gluten Free Vegan Gingerbread Men recipe from Sarah Bakes Gluten Free.

Here is how I adapted Sugar Nerd’s Gingerbread Wookie Cookie recipe (she is my hero by the culinary way)….

Substitution’s finest hour began with…

• I swapped out butter with the Earth Balance Original Buttery Spread
• I used Earth Balance’s Vegan Shortening Sticks instead of main stream shortening due to the fabulous flavor
• The one egg was replaced with Ener-G Egg Replacer using Colette Martin, author of Learning to Bake Allergen-Free and the Allergy Free Pantry’s method of letting the freshly mixed Egg Replacer rest for about three minutes before a quick re-whisk and adding to the recipe.
• I had fun using Pascha Chocolate’s 55% Chocolate chips as my dark and luscious bandolier. For my first round of Wookies, I used left over vegan ganache for the bandolier.
• I used piping tube number 47-the flat side to make the bandolier.
• Press hard when making the Wookie’s fur–the cookies do puff up some.

My daughter has not given me permission to share her award winning recipe (little stinker), BUT… we adapted the traditional Rice Krispie recipe, added flavor (Madagascar Vanilla–wink, wink). She cut the rice krispies into small packages and shaped into Christmas trees. She used a homemade fondant  and one from Fondarific, which does contain dairy, but is made in a nut free facility, to decorate the packages.

Now where are those people who complain about depriving their children of treats thanks to food allergies?