Sweet Potato Coffee Cake- and a love story

Winter in Northern New Mexico- my view.

It's been snowy, windy, cold- you name it. From all the tweets I've been reading over on Twitter lately, I'm not alone. Far from it. This has been one crazy snowy month. So what does a gluten-free goddess do when she gets stuck in the middle of the desert with no buckwheat flour, no sorghum, and no four-wheel drive? (Note to self- if you're going to live in rural Northern New Mexico, Darling, a cute and thrifty little Honda Fit won't cut it.)

Snowed in and hungry she does the only sensible thing.

She scans the pantry and pulls out a Whole Foods gluten-free cake mix and starts stirring things up. She starts imagining dirt bombs. And bakes up a coffee cake worthy of the winter holidays.

The love part of the story?

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Christmas Ornaments

Some pics of Christmas ornament cookies...
I was going for a Tiffany-blue here, but I don't think it quite worked. I mixed Sky Blue and Leaf Green.
I think the gold sparkling sugar adds a lot to these cookies. They looked a little plain to me before adding it. (Now that I am typing above all those dots and squiggles, it seems funny to call them plain, but trust me here.) :)

Here's a picture of my "sanding sugar station." In the silver cup, I have a mix of meringue powder and water. With my kids' paintbrush, I paint on the mixture and sprinkle on the sanding sugar over a coffee filter. After a several cookies, I use the coffee filter kind of like a funnel to pour the excess sugar back into the container. It doesn't roll off like it would on a plate or a paper towel.

Ateco is the brand of meringue powder I use. It is difficult to find since Sur La Table quit carrying it (grrr!), but instead of driving down to the cake decorating store, I ordered it from Amazon. It ships from a different company and I was thrilled when I ordered it on a Monday and it arrived on Friday!!! I highly recommend it!