I cannot believe Christmas is a week away! 

So I'm sure if you're like me, you're getting invited or hosting a lot of parties that involve food. :D

About three years ago, I was diagnosed with celiac disease. I was mostly vegan/vegetarian when out dining before that, and having celiac on top of that was not easy, since a lot of vegan dishes have gluten in it. Some articles I've encountered during my research even said being vegan and eating a lot of those textured vegetarian proteins could trigger celiac disease if you already have genes for it. 

So now I'm technically not vegetarian anymore, although I still don't like to eat meat and stick to tofu and vegetarian dishes at home. These cookies I'm about to share with you are not vegan.

When I get invited to potluck dinner parties, I always bring my own desserts but I make sure that other gluten eaters enjoy them too. I sometimes bake them from scratch but most of the time, I use this mix.

Betty Crocker now has a line of gluten free mix products now and I've tried this cookie mix and the brownie mix. They're surprisingly really good! My gluten eater husband and friends didn't even notice they were gluten free. When I make them, I do add a bit of cinnamon for taste. Other than that, I just follow the instructions exactly, and they come out perfect.

(BTW, did you know Betty Crocker is a made-up character??)

If you want to fancy it up more than that, you can try dipping the cookies in more chocolate and nuts after the cookies are done, like this.

Now on to storebought cookies.

These are chocolate chip cookies from Tate's bake shop. I used to only see them at Whole Foods or Bristol Farms stores but now I see them everywhere, even at Ralph's. 

The cookies are thinner so the chewy factor is pretty low, but they're crispy and very very buttery. I do prefer chewy cookies, but these are so tasty I don't mind. A co-worker brought them to work one day (she's also GF) and the entire team tried and finished the entire bag in one day. 

Hello HOLIDAYS~! I found these at a Whole Foods Market near my home and immediately put it in my cart. I took their regular yogurt-covered pretzels on my trip to Korea and loved it! And these were just as good, but just better because it has small bits of candy cane candies! 

Glutino also has an excellent chocolate chip cookies (which are GMO-free) and double chocolate cookies. I usually get chocolate chip cookies but for a recent holiday party for my law firm, I tried getting the double chocolate cookies. Chocolate makes everything taste good, right?

Actually this is true. America's Test Kitchen did a whole episode on gluten free baking as well as publish a gluten free cookbook earlier this year. According to their experiment, chocolate is a wonderful ingredient in gluten free baking because gluten free flour mix doesn't absorb all the grease from butter, so they tend to get greasy when they're out of the oven. So adding chocolate and powdered milk helps absorbing those grease. If you want to try baking from scratch, definitely try this. I tried the waffle and cookie recipes, they're closest thing I came to the PERFECT recipe. And now I have the flour mix that I can use for other cooking too! :)

If you have any dietary restrictions, holidays and parties are hard. I'm so glad gluten free diet is becoming "trendy" so that more people are aware of it and manufacturers are kinder to people like me who actually need to be on gluten free diet. 

Disclaimers: I am not affiliated with any of the shops or companies I mention here. I'm just like any other yarn addicts who surf around the internet all day long looking for the perfect yarn or accessories to try next. These products I mention are in fact in my shopping cart, at each of the applicable websites. Whether I'll actually buy these or not, we will never know! In other words, no one pays me to write this.