Gluten Free Cookies & A Sigh of Relief

– deeply inhales –

Alright.

– dramatic exhale –

So. It’s been a while eh friends? I’m not sure how many of you out there even care, but for those who do, I’m just gonna give a brief update on what’s been going on in my life. (I say “brief update” but just watch this become a dramatic essay.)

I was just reading my previous post, and I realized that I had written down that it was 8 days before the due date of my dietetics application. Those who know me in real life will know how ridiculously stressed I’ve been over this whole dietetics thing throughout the last three years. Here’s a brief overview of what applying for dietetics looked like for me:

UBC is basically the only place in Western Canada where you can get this degree and become a registered dietitian
Only about 30 people get accepted per year out of a bajillion applicants
You need to submit a cover letter, resume, reference letters, and whole bunch of crap to indicate that you’re actually dedicated to the field and that you really want to be in it
Trust me when I say that there is a shit ton of extracurricular activities involved to even get a decent application package together
If you’re lucky enough to have the proper grades and application package, you get short listed for an interview
You go through said interview and wait for the results
You only get to apply TWO TIMES and if you get rejected both times then TOO BAD SO SAD (and I already got rejected last year)

So it was basically my very last chance to get accepted, but here’s the kicker – they don’t traditionally accept very many guys. There are less than 5 (I believe) guys in all three years of classes right now. So I’ve basically had a shit ton of people breathe down my neck telling me about how difficult it is to get in, how unlikely it is that I’ll get in, and just ALL THIS MOTHER FUCKING CRAP to stress me out.

For the most part, the last six months has been a blur for me – studying my ass off, working my ass off, trying not to rip my head off, and trying to balance all that with work and volunteering. Needless to say the term “social life” had no meaning to me whatsoever. Well anyways, in mid-April I received an email telling me that I was shortlisted for an interview.

See, most people started congratulating me, and told me that I could finally relax. You would think that I would be able to breathe a little sigh of relief, but you’d be so freaking wrong.

I like to think that I’m a level headed person who can stay calm throughout a multitude of situations, but this literally meant the world to me… and that’s when the stress kinda took over. I guess that’s the one downside of being open about what goes on in your life. Everybody knew about my application and literally every day people were asking me about it and it drove me absolutely nuts. I kid you not when I say that pretty much every day I got ready in the morning in the past few years, I would talk to myself and think of potential questions they could ask me at the interview and answered them – and that shit got emotional sometimes!!!

Yeah. Crazy. I know.

So I was basically moody, stressed, and practically dead from studying for all my finals up until the day of my interview. I went in the day of the interview, things went smoothly, and I thought I could finally relax and wait for the results. But NOOOOOOPE. I checked my email about 50 times a day and had the shortest fuse ever for the entire month of May.

But then on the 26th of May…

and I remember my first reaction was just throwing my cat off my lap (sorry Nugget, love you) and trying to decide whether it was more appropriate to scream or laugh. Then I scrambled around to find my phone to try and call my parents (it took me three tries – damn touch screen technology doesn’t mix well with trembling fingers) to whom I just laughed to on the phone for about two minutes and I couldn’t get any words out of my mouth.

They got the message though.

Jesus Christ – see what I meant when I said I knew what was intended to be a brief update would turn into a full blown essay?

Well ANYWAYS, the recipe I’m posting today was intended to be posted during Mothers’ Day but of course my stupid ass was too busy freaking out to post anything, so better late than never right? So this is basically a spin off of my other gluten free rice flour cookies, but with more of a spring/summer twist. Rosewater and cardamom are like super big staples in Persian desserts, and this is just one of those recipes that is so easy to put together because you’re more than likely to already have everything (other than rosewater maybe) in your pantry/fridge.

I chose to colour these just so they’ll be all pretty, but you’re welcome to leave the food colouring out if you want just a pale primrose coloured cookie! Nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

Gluten Free Rosewater & Cardamom Rice Flour Cookies

makes about 20 cookies

Ingredients:

– 1/3 cup of melted butter/olive oil

– 1 tbsp of rosewater

– 1 tsp of ground cardamom

– 2/3 cup of sugar

– 2 1/4 cups of rice flour (not glutinous rice flour)

– 1/2 tsp of baking powder

– 2 eggs

– red food colouring

– shredded coconut for rolling

Directions:

1. Mix everything minus the red food colouring and coconut together until it forms a soft dough. Be careful when you add the rice flour, it’s lighter than regular flour and it WILL fly everywhere and suffocate you. No jokes.

2. Refrigerate the dough for at least 15 minutes, or until it’s hard enough to handle. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 350F

3. Add however much food colouring you want (if at all) and roll the dough into 1.5″ balls. Note that the colour of the finished cookie will be lighter than the uncooked dough – so make it darker than what you want prior to baking!

* I chose to make three batches of different shades of pink, but you could really use any colour. But honestly… anything other than red/pink just seems weird and gross to me. I mean… blue cookies? Ick.

4. Roll the ball in shredded coconut and place onto a parchment lined baking tray.

5. Bake for about 20-25 minutes (depending on your oven) until the tops are slightly cracked and tops are lightly golden. It’s kinda hard to tell when these are done because they’re not made from your typical ingredients that change greatly in colour and texture, so just starting poking them and checking them around the 20 minute mark.

6. Cool, and then eat them all! Or you could share, but you know… up to you!

And as usual, try it out, take photos, and let me know how they turn out!