Oct.4: St. Francis of Assisi

Catholic Cuisine had such an adorable idea for St. Francis' feast day, that I decided to make it even though it does most definitely contain gluten. Those who really can't have any gluten ate left-over rose cupcakes instead (see, there was an advantage in being tardy with St. Therese's feast day!) We made the wolf paw cookies and I read them the story of St. Francis and the wolf.

Catholic Cuisine also has a new idea to honor St. Francis: making a tonsure cake. Betty Crocker has a gluten-free chocolate cake mix that I think would work well for this cake. We haven't tried the new mix yet, but, if it is as good as the yellow cake mix, it will be delicious!

Oct. 2: Feast of the Guardian Angels

This was another feast day we were tardy for (it was a busy weekend, obviously). By way of make-up, we made the adorable little angels from Hershey Kisses on Our Domestic Church's site. I couldn't find the sequin wings, so we just made our wings from pipe cleaners. As we got hot glue onto the chocolate itself, these are NOT edible, at least not in our house. But they look darling!

My middle son made a priest out of a Kiss as well. He felt like a priest belonged in the army of St. Michael.

Oct. 1: St. Therese, the Little Flower

Okay, confession time. We actually missed St.Therese's feast day on the 1st. However, I read that Oct. 3 was the traditional feast day for this lovely little saint, so we had a make-up day on the 3rd. To make it up to her, we really went all out: white tablecloth, sterling silver, and a LOT of special things in honor of her day.

The main course was beef bourguignon, in which I simply used a gluten-free flour (also substituted fresh mushrooms and onions where it called for canned, and added them at the same time as the other vegetables so they'd have time to cook). With this, we had steamed asparagus and a spinach salad. To drink, we made a red-tinted fruit punch.

The piece de la resistance was the dessert: rose covered cupcakes. We got the idea from Catholiccuisine.com I used the new Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Cake Mix and it was delicious. I added 2 tsp of strawberry jello (for color and flavor), and I added a bit of orange extract the the batter as well. Honestly, we couldn't tell them apart from glutinous cup cakes. My son made a buttercream icing to go on top, and then we crafted the little roses and leaves out of fruit roll-ups. They looked even better in person than they do in the pictures.

The last treat of the day was the chocolate rose bouquet made from Hershey's Kisses (this idea also came from Catholiccuisine.com). I decided to use the bamboo cooking skewers for the stems. We just kept the roses on display as they were too pretty to eat, but if you can handle the dairy in the milk chocolate, they are completely edible.

All in all, it was a lovely feast day, even if it was a little late.

Sept. 29: Michaelmas

I have been a bad blogger. We've been so busy celebrating feast days that I haven't taken the time to write about them. It's time to play catch-up!

September 29th: Michaelmas

The feast of St. Michael is a favorite in our home, where boys are drawn to heroic figures brandishing swords. Roast goose is traditional for this feast, but we substituted roast turkey instead (it's surprisingly hard to find a goose in TX. We did find a listing for geese in the pet column, but that would have just been wrong). The turkey was supplemented with gluten-free bannock bread (or Irish Soda bread), which was a great success! I got the recipe from Karina's gluten-free site. The main act was, of course, dessert. I made a g-f, c-f blackberry cobbler with a recipe I got off the web. Unfortunately, the batter was too liquidy and never set up properly. I compensated by adding a layer of sugar on the top, which browned to a crispy crust and helped a little with the lack of texture. Next time I will try a different recipe.

Funny thing about the blackberries: I had thought they were traditionally eaten on Michaelmas, but I happened to read (as my cobbler sat in the oven, not setting up properly) that one should NOT eat them on Michaelmas because the legend is that the Devil stepped in the blackberry patch on the eve of Michaelmas and now the berries are poisoned. Well, I found a way to compensate for this: lashings of whipped cream. Pure white mounds of whipped cream enveloping the devilish berries seemed a fitting metaphor for the day!