"Island of Blue Dolphins"

FIRST, sorry it's been so long everyone. Homeschooling has way occupied our time the last few weeks. Decided to take a little break this week. The first full week we've taken off since Christmas. If my eldest didn't love school so much, I'd take breaks more often! FINALLY posting something I started WEEKS ago!

Recently, my beautiful 7 year-old has her favorite thing of all - Book Club. We read "The Island of Blue Dophins" by Scott O'Dell. It is a historical fiction about a woman found on the Isle of San Nicholas in the 1800's. It's a beautiful story. Very touching and heartwarming. I thought that she would struggle with all of the tragedy in it, but she seemed to do well and understand a lot of it. It's a 5th grade reading level and she read it like a champ! She and I alternated, I read some to her, she read some to me. Granted, I had trouble a few chapters because I would start to cry. Poor kid. SO GLAD she didn't have to read the Velveteen Rabit, still can't get thru the part about becoming real by the Skin Horse without crying my eyes out! I'm a sap, what can I say.

Well, in our monthly adventure to the local 6-finger country flea market and junk swap a couple weekends ago proved fruitful. We stopped at the cookie cutter vendor who had well over 800 different designs available for sale. We got 3 cookie cutters for $2.50!!! We got a dolphin, a shell and a german shepard cut out. This guy litteraly had every cookie cutter shape you could imagine. I don't think I'd ever seen so many.

Well, how do you make cutout cookies gluten free? My "google" search turned up a ton, and I didn't have to do any thinking at all, our friends and Land O'Lakes have thought of EVERYTHING. I was REALLY impressed with how easy this recipe was to make, and how well they turned out. Cruncy/chewy sugary cut out cookies. The shells didn't work to well....and I did determine if you made them too thick, they spread out way way tooo much. So I suggest getting as close to 1/8" inch as you can. I put mine between two layers of wax paper and then flattened them. Seemed to work very well. It makes A LOT OF COOKIES.

Land O Lakes Gluten-free Cut-Out Cookies

When you're there, make sure to checkout the other gluten-free recipes that they have. They are well worth the look. I did use their flour blend, and it worked beautifully. I daresay, I'm going to make a big batch of their blend and keep on hand. It worked so well. I cannot wait to try the pound cake! :D

Less of a quandry was the frosting. I always use the same recipe for icing sugar. I like it because it adds a nice sweetness to the cookie and it dries so shiny and hard that you can stack the cookies on each other between layers of wax or parchment paper. Once the icing is hard, they travel really well.

Vanilla Glaze Icing

While at Diana's Kitchen, be sure to check out some of her other recipes. It's got a lot of stuff on the site.

I realize this post is quite a cheat, but I haven't been doing much cooking or baking lately. The heat wave we had here really squelched any urge I had to bake. Any urge I had to do anything, really!! THANK GOD for grilling out. :D