Sarah Walker The Curated House, Author at The Curated House

Redeeming a Sweet Tradition | Gluten Free Sugar Cookies

As many of you know, I’ve chosen to go gluten-free as a part of a more anti-inflammatory way of life. What I haven’t share with you before now is why. I’m doing this because I’m recovery from a couple of serious car accidents and I want to give my body all the tools it needs to heal. What I’m learning along the way is that everyone’s journey to going gluten-free is different. I have friends with Celiac disease who are gluten-free because they have to avoid all gluten in order to stay alive. I have friends who are gluten-free for the sake of their figure and find it an amazing tool for staying slim. And I have friends like me whose bodies “tolerate” gluten but aren’t the happiest when they eat it. For all of us, we get to learn together.

I feel like saying that I haven’t made this choice to jump in on a trend. I’ve chosen to go gluten-free {on the recommendation of my very lovely naturopath} for the sake of greater health, and I’ve decided that this will NOT be a process of denial and punishment. Rather than thinking of it as a list of “no no’s,” I have chosen to think of it as an adventure in recreating recipes and finding new foodie loves.

Holiday baking being a classic tradition, I decided to reinvent a simple, classic Sugar Cookie recipe to create a holiday treat that is “safe” for me and all of my gluten-free friends. And what better way to make those sweet treats than with friends!

PHOTO BY GABRIELA HANSEN

The star player in our gluten-free baking adventures so far has definitely been Cup4Cup flour. The dough this product creates {from pie crust dough to cookie dough} is insanely beautiful to work with. In fact, I prefer it over regular flour! Seriously. The result with these sugar cookies not only tastes great, but the edges are so clean that my baking queen of a friend Natalie asked if I’d cut them twice {once before and once after baking}! I seriously think you’ll love working with it.

PHOTO BY GABRIELA HANSEN

My other secret weapon? Coconut sugar. OK, so I guess this makes these sugar-free Sugar Cookies! A rather lovely twist in the plot if you ask me! So why do I use coconut sugar instead of regular cane sugar? A) It is anti-inflammatory and super low on the glycemic index, and B) I actually have an anaphylactic allergy to cane sugar, so it’s kind of a non-negotiable for me. {Please celebrate this one with me as it is actually the BEST anti-aging allergy I could possibly have. I seriously feel blessed with this one.} Coconut sugar has quickly become my favourite cane-sugar-substitute, and the great news is that you can now get coconut sugar in bulk at Costco!! It makes me so happy to see healthy living becoming increasingly accessible for everyone.

The amazing thing about the way the coconut sugar performs in this recipe is that it seems to caramelize as it bakes, giving the cookies a maple shortbread kind of flavour without a drop of maple syrup or maple sugar involved. SUPER yummy! And the cookies are actually soft. That’s right. Gluten-free cookies that are not as dry as the Sahara. Even my non-gluten-free family and friends love these little lovelies! Now that is a triumph. Here’s how we made them:

THE RECIPE

1 1/2 c softened organic butter

2 c coconut sugar

4 eggs or egg substitute equivalent {I used egg substitute as this is another allergy for me}

1 tsp vanilla extract

5 c. Cup4Cup flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

THE METHOD

In a stand mixer, cream together the butter, coconut sugar, egg substitute and vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix together the dry ingredients and then slowly add them to the wet ingredients until fully combined. Wrap the dough and chill for an hour {or overnight}. You can even freeze it in balls to bake one batch at a time if you’d like!

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Roll the dough out onto a lightly floured surface until it’s about 1/4″ thick. Use your favourite cookie cutters to cut out shapes and place the cut cookies on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 6-8 minutes and cool completely before icing.

PHOTO BY GABRIELA HANSEN

Oh yes, I nearly forgot! What does a sugar-free girl do about icing, you might ask? Well, my friend Jenn was the problem solver on this one. She gave me the idea to create a cream-cheese-based icing and pipe that on instead of Royal Icing. That’s just what I did and it worked like a charm! I just mixed one tub of spreadable light cream cheese with about 20 drops of Stevia and 2 TBSP of honey {I didn’t use coconut sugar here because I wanted the icing to stay white}. As you can see, no one would ever know it wasn’t Royal Icing just to look at the finished product. Yes, the icing has a cream-cheesy flavour, but I actually like that a lot. For my next batch I might experiment with a bit of lemon juice or lemon zest added to the icing for a refreshing twist, though I think I’ll have to go with a full-fat cream cheese to keep it from getting too runny if I do that.

See? There are most definitely creative ways to reinvent the old classics! No need for total self-denial or missing out on holiday traditions! What are your favourite holiday treats? Any gluten-free baking tips from all you veterans out there? I’d love to continue learning together!

Wishing you all a wonderful {gluten-free} Wednesday.

xo
s.

By Sarah Walker The Curated House|December 19th, 2012|6 Comments

Holly Becker | Decorate Workshop

I have a confession to make: I do not believe in interior design by prescription. I believe in spaces that reflect the unique individuals dwelling within – their personality and their need for comfort, inspiration, restoration and embrace. As an interior designer, I seek to create spaces that are authentically sacred for the clients with whom I work.

The challenge for many is to find the language to translate who they are as people into the form and function of their physical space. Interior design and decorating are often an unfamiliar medium, which is why we need visual tools and a means of “cracking our own code” to help us communicate what it is that truly inspires us.

Enter Holly Becker. In a sea of decorating and design books that would prescribe one designer’s aesthetic as the formula for everyone’s home, Decorate Workshop is more of a manual for self-discovery. This newly released book is a brilliant resource for designers to give to their clients, for clients to share with their designers, and for decorators exploring and adventuring on their own alike.

I have fallen in love with Holly’s inspired approach to helping each of us find our own unique decorating personality, and clearly I’m not alone. As a world-renowned design blogger, Holly has developed a beautiful design resource with her blog Decor8, providing inspiration to more than 48, 000 daily viewers from across the globe. Holly is already a best selling author with her first book, Decorate.

Holly was gracious enough to do a wee transatlantic interview with me so that we could all get to know the woman behind the book and the blog a bit better. I think you’ll find she is “our kind of people” – the kind of woman we’d all love to just sit and have coffee with weekly if only she lived right around the corner.

Here is our inspiring intercontinental conversation:

1. How do you challenge yourself to have a constant sense of adventure and evolution with your decorating?

I’m very open to new experiences and try to say yes more than I say no when it comes to trying something new. I also have a diverse group of friends – not everyone I’m around is into design or is even that interested in creative living – but I learn so much from their lifestyle and often find lots of new interests that I wouldn’t have found if I’d only surrounded myself by those within my field.

2. What has been your most unexpected source of inspiration?

Myself. Until recently, I always relied on outside sources since I’m an extrovert and I get my energy from outside {introverts tend to get it from within}. Moving to Germany, I found that I really needed to rely on myself more for everything. Living outside of your culture for several years changes you in many ways. Confidence you may have lacked prior to an international relocation definitely kicks in the second you’re standing in line at a bakery and need to order a cake in another language – and you do it – and leave feeling an overwhelming sense of pride. The more experiences you have ike this, the more your self-esteem is affected and this cannot help but influence other things in your life, too. I’m inspired more and more just by sitting down and have a simple cup of coffee and thinking. Really thinking. No iPhone, no iPad, nothing… Just thinking long and deep. I start to find all of these ideas hidden or feelings I’d thought I’d lost for something and suddenly I’m in a creative spin again. Of course, I still need outside stimulation first and foremost to keep my gears turning, but I like knowing now that I don’t need to be stimulated every second to gain inspiration.

3. Whose sense of style do you most admire and why?

People who don’t care what others say about them and just do what they want – they follow their own compass, not some trend report or magazine. When I’m in London, I’m always so inspired by the way people dress because there isn’t really a “London look.” Most cities have a look. But London is so eclectic and they really embrace their individuality.

4. What is currently on your “must see/do/watch/listen to” list?

I love watching “New Girl” because it’s funny and has nothing to do with my work, so that gives me 30 minutes to not really think – to just giggle at Schmidt and the outlandish things he says…

5. If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be and what would you be doing?

I’d like to be in a beautiful country home in Scotland right now with a fireplace roaring. I’d be baking cookies and my husband would be reading by the fire. The snow would be piling up outside and neither of us would care because we’d be together and cozy and most of all, on vacation. Ah, vacation. I can hardly wait until December 12th because I’ll be on vacation until the beginning of the New Year and it’s one of my favourite times of the year. I catch up on so many thins in my personal life – I love approaching a New Year feeling like I’m rested and ready!

If you or someone you know is planning a decorating project for 2013, you will want to make sure you have a copy of Holly’s new book in your hand or wrapped and ready for giving under the tree. More of a compass than a clearly defined roadmap, Decorate Workshop will have you thinking outside the box, exploring new ways to bring soul to your space through a journey of self-discovery.

Wishing you a happy and restorative vacation, Holly! And wishing all of you lovely readers an inspired journey of designing and decorating, filled with wanderlust, exploration and the art of discovery.

xo
s.

By Sarah Walker The Curated House|December 18th, 2012|3 Comments

Make Something Mondays | Graham Blair Woodcuts

For today’s edition of Make Something Mondays, I am sincerely delighted to feature a printmaker hailing from the salt-of-the-earth East Coast of Canada. Based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Graham Blair specializes in woodcut prints made using methods in keeping with the oldest form of printmaking.

This beautiful video offers a glimpse at the delicate and tender process of creating Graham’s art prints.

I am rather swoony for the authentically Canadian content of Blair’s chosen subjects – truly a collectible body of work. All of Graham’s limited edition prints are hand-carved and hand-printed without the use of a press, and once the limited edition prints are sold, the image is no longer available. Blair begins with a sketch transferred onto a raw piece of wood. As you can see in the mesmerizing video above, he then meticulously uses a variety of knives and gouges to carefully carve the relief image. Finally, in the style of Japanese printmakers, Graham uses the warmth of a bamboo spoon to burnish the print onto heavy paper.

I hope Graham Blair’s beautiful process and has inspired in you a deep appreciation for the value of the handmade process that makes his work so lovely. The beauty of his subject matter, his process and his art all make me truly proud to be a Canadian.

By Sarah Walker The Curated House|December 17th, 2012|0 Comments