VIPs, Cookies, and Misadventures in Gluten-Free Baking

My Last BYU Winter Semester AKA Things I Didn't Have Time to Blog About

Here are some fun things I did this semester that for some reason never made it to the blog in a timely manner (What was I doing with all my time? Oh yeah, studying like a crazy person):

This year at BYU I got to hear two interesting, VERY well-known people speak: Condoleezza Rice and Mark Zuckerburg.

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In January, Condoleezza Rice came. I really enjoyed her thoughts on education. You can read some of her remarks here.

Mark Zuckerburg, the creator of Facebook, came and spoke at my school. He did a question and answer session based on questions left on the BYU Facebook page. Senator Orrin Hatch came and asked the questions. It was great hearing Mark speak and hearing his perspective on things. Here's a link to BYU's news release about it. It has some of the questions he answered, as well as his responses.

Some other important people that came to visit? My family. Not only did my parents come this month to see me graduate, but my Aunt and Uncle also came to Provo to drop my cousin off at the MTC. We had lunch at Jdawgs before he left. Love you Jack!!!

I also made snickerdoodles earlier this semester. I bring this up not because it was particularly unusual, but because I always have the same problem when I make snickerdoodles. Really chewy, warm, and delicious when they come out of the oven. Rock hard an hour later. Seriously does anyone have a tip/recipe to help me out with this?

Even though they got a bit hard, they were still good tasting (providing you had some milk to soften them up).

Speaking of baking projects that don't go quite as planned...

Remember when I had the post called Conference: Sister Edition (Part 1)? Well Part 2 never made it up, but here's the short version. I attempted to make gluten free cinnamon rolls. Silly me, I thought I could simply substitute regular flour for gluten free flour (plus a little xantham gum). Well it's a lot more complicated than that. I looked up recipes later and I realize now that a combination of flour types would have worked better. Oh well! Thankfully I had regular gluten-full bread baking at the same time so we still had a yummy conference treat :)

Sad little gluten-free cinnamon rolls about to go into the oven.

This bread smelled (and tasted) so good! Plus it was pretty easy to make (You can see the recipe here). I didn't even use the bread machine.

Well that's it for now, but there's more to come!

Currently listening to: The Supremes (a favorite of mine)