Gluten-Free Cheese Biscuits

It's a little well-known secret in our household that Christmas always includes a family baking session. Every year, mother and I get together to bake some festive treats for the holidays—and cheese biscuits are always top of the list.

After being diagnosed with celiac disease, I had some trepidation about making cheese biscuits this year because we'd already perfected the wheat recipe...and I was worried gluten-free cheese biscuits wouldn't be quite as tasty. Thankfully, the gluten-free recipe we have created makes delicious biscuits, too.


Ingredients:

225g (8oz) plain gluten-free flour
1/2 tsp of xanthan gum
1 small egg
175g (6oz) of butter
175g (6oz) of grated strong or extra mature cheese (Taw Valley Tickler Cheddar from Morrisons is fantastic for this recipe)
A pinch of dry mustard and cayenne pepper

Method

1) Preheat oven to 230°C (or 450°F), gas mark 8.
2) Put flour, xanthan gum, grated cheese, cayenne pepper, mustard and butter into blender and mix.
3) When the mixture starts to look like breadcrumbs, slowly add in the egg until dough is formed. (It's important that you do this slowly, as the mixture can become quite runny so you may not need to add all of the egg!)
4) Place sheet of baking paper onto tray
5) Take a strip of cling film and place across work space to stop the dough from sticking
6) Roll dough out to roughly 6mm in thickness
7) Cut dough into roughly 5cm rounds and place on tray 
8) Put in the oven and cook for 15-20 minutes until golden.

We also used some of the dough and rolled it out into mini sausages so that we could have thick cheese straws. They tasted incredible when they came out of the oven.

Happy Christmas Eve! x

The End of Summer

I must apologise to you guys for the delay in updating. There's just been so much going on recently that I've been a little overwhelmed, to be perfectly honest! Unfortunately, this summer—alongside gifting the UK with an abnormally rainy August—has dealt a fair whack of bad news to the household. I've handled the problems but there were a few hairy moments along the way—and I was definitely forced to follow the advice I gave out in these blogs!

The good news is that I should have some fun and interesting blogs coming up! I've got lots of exciting trips planned and I'll update you on those over the next few months, as I embark on a variety of interesting new adventures!

I'm also going to continue posting more self-help articles. I always feel like I'm preaching a little bit with those—but I only post things which have positively helped me or friends. I know there’s always going to be things on my blog that people don’t agree with, for whatever reason, because everyone has their own beliefs and thoughts, but hopefully there will be some helpful tips here.

I see life as an empty book where we can write our beliefs and make our own choices—and sometimes we might find a spark of an idea which resonates so strongly within us that we are compelled to ‘magpie’ it, as we create our own life story. There’s so much potential in all of us and each fresh chapter brings with it exciting new experiences for us to try. It is never too late to scribble out old ideas and start again on a fresh blank page.

Since being diagnosed with coeliac disease, I have been on a mission to find delicious gluten-free food and will be adding a few gluten-free recipes to the blog, too. Truthfully, the first few months felt like a prison sentence had been issued (and anyone who says gluten-free bread tastes nice is definitely lying) but things do get easier as your body adjusts to the different tastes.

Note: If anyone has recently been diagnosed and would like extra support, I'm happy to post up advice and helpful tips. Whether you have coeliac disease or gluten intolerance, you don't have to suffer alone!

I've also been dipping into the gaming world again recently. My days of playing Dota 2 on Steam are few and far between now but I've loved indulging in spending more time on the X-Box 360, especially on RPG games (Mass Effect is my newest love since finishing Dragon Age). I can’t pretend to be amazing at any of the games but I definitely enjoy them.

For a while, I've been toying over whether or not to upload some poetry that I've been working on—but I might leave that for now. I've spent the last few months, in between working lots, editing a novel. I’ll probably never submit it to a publishing house (I'm shy when it comes to sharing prose or poetry work—and struggle even with close friends) but I'm proud of myself for sticking with this story. The demon writer’s block has caused so many face-palming moments that I never dreamed I'd get this far. On the bright side, I can tick this off the bucket list for 2015 now!

Anyway, I hope you're having a wonderful Sunday! I'm off to sit by the bay and watch the last rays of summer glisten over the sloshing salty sea waves. Have a lovely weekend!

If you'd like to, feel free to follow me on Twitter (@Alexagirl07).

F. x