Day 12 - Many happy trial and failures

Today was a mass of things to do!  I wanted to make sure to give a couple of goody boxes at my youngest's school, so I started making Apple Empanaditas as soon as I got home from dropping her off!  Remember this:

If you are on my FB page, you do!  This, and making the dough, are my initial steps.  I was a little nervous about how my trademark empanaditas would turn out after my snowballs flattened out like a Snowman in Virginia weather!  But, I carried on!  The snowballs tasted excellent, too!

I rolled out the dough.  I usually roll it to about 1/4 flat to give some room to spread the dough a bit like a pizza.  The glass is a good size for cutting these circles, but not perfect.

Then I put the dough rounds on a non-stick sprayed cookie sheet, add about 1 tbsp of filling, wet the edges and fold over.  I crimp the edges with a fork to hold it in better.  Be warned: some juice will leak from the tiny cresent-shaped goodies.  It is really no biggie, I promise, so don't be alarmed, just prepared!

After they cook for 15-17 minutes, I roll them in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar.  I used Sugar in the Raw and some white sugar this time around.  They seemed to coat well, but the turbinado (raw) sugar mostly caught on the edges or wet spots instead of the entire crust.

They turned out beautifully and tasted wonderful!  I'm so happy!

I took a nice little plate of puppy chow, snowballs and empanaditas to two teachers at the school.  One is a teacher that I've spoken to in the past that is low/no gluten and the other was my daughter's teacher who also turned out to be gluten-free!  It was a happy coincidence that I'm thrilled of.  I tend to worry that if I tell someone who is not following this lifestyle that the food I'm feeding them is low/no gluten, they will turn up their noses (much the way my hubby does whenever I use ANYTHING but enriched/packaged foods).  I am absolutely thrilled with how it worked out and got some great hugs and appreciation for my efforts.  The next test will be when I hand out goodies to the neighbors and NOT tell them it is a modified recipe.  That will really be a measure of the success of this endeavor.  I'm hopeful though!

That's right people, eat up or I will find another use for those snowballs...