Baking has long been one of my personal hobbies. I don’t bake enough that I could pursue any sort of sales, but making a treat for my family to enjoy is one of my favorite things to do.

Looking back on my childhood, baking is intertwined with many of my memories. I’ll even share one quick story: Do you remember when Snowmageddon struck Georgia in 2014? Well, I was in elementary school. I made it home from school before it got really bad, so for me, that day turned into playing outside with my brothers and baking my go-to: Chocolate chip cookies. 

But I specifically remember being disappointed and, frankly, appalled when my mom told me that I wouldn’t be able to greet my dad at the door with a warm cookie after work, as was my tradition. He worked at a school an hour away and was going to have to stay there overnight, as driving had become too dangerous. (The danger was only partly the icy roads themselves; half the threat was the other drivers losing control of their own cars and plowing into you.)

Other baking memories that come to mind are making homemade cinnamon rolls with my mom and Grammy, which we always did on the night of Christmas Eve for the next morning’s breakfast, and it is a tradition that my mom and I continue today. Other staples were turning overripe bananas into banana bread, red velvet brownies and the occasional pumpkin muffin.

So imagine the disappointment of telling that young girl that when she turns 21, she’s going to spontaneously develop a gluten intolerance and have to cut flour out of her diet.

Ouch.

But we persevere! For about a year and a half now, I’ve been doing my best not to eat gluten. I’ll go ahead and clarify that I don’t have celiac disease or a gluten allergy, so trace amounts are fine, and the occasional bite of a donut isn’t the end of the world. I just determined gluten was worsening some other health issues, and that cutting it out helps.

When I say no gluten, people’s minds likely immediately jump to the big things. No bread? No pancakes? No cake? But the world’s dependence on flour runs deeper than that.

Fast food, for one, is very tricky. No hamburger buns, nothing that’s been battered and fried, no flour tortillas, etc., leaves me reliant on grilled chicken and salads. Sure, that means I eat fast food way less, which is inherently a good thing healthwise, but those times when time is short or you’re really exhausted and fast food is the move, someone who can't eat gluten has slim pickings.

Now is when I pause to express how eternally grateful I am to not have a true gluten allergy. I never have to sweat about cross-contamination or the random items that contain wheat, like soy sauce and tomato soup. 

Though this lifestyle change turned me into someone with overall healthier eating habits, my baking hobby took a hit. But in recent months, I’ve been trying to find ways to work without wheat flour, and it’s become an exciting challenge.

For one, I tried Aldi’s gluten-free brownie mix (I know, this isn’t from-scratch baking). But Aldi’s “LiveGFree” brand has a couple of good products, and these brownies are among them—as long as you trust the process. 

When you make brownie batter, it’s typically a runny mixture, like cake batter and pancake batter, while cookie dough is thicker. Well, LifeGFree brownies are going to have a batter that visually reminds me of the wet mortar that goes between bricks.

But you have to trust the process! They bake just fine and are a fudgey brownie, so if you’re looking for light and fluffy, this probably isn’t for you. But who doesn’t love their brownies a little dense?

I also tried the LiveGFree pizza dough, and it was good too! Unfortunately, I’ve only seen it in the Covington Aldi once, so do let me know if it ever makes a reappearance.

Another mix I tried was from Walmart. As previously mentioned, pumpkin muffins are nostalgic for me, so when I saw the Miss Jones Baking Co. gluten-free mix on the fall treats display, I had to grab it. (I have only ever had the muffins made from scratch with the canned pumpkin in them, and this was a dry mix, so it did occur to me that I have no idea what could possibly be making these pumpkin, but I digress.)

What’s funny to me about these muffins is that while they ended up tasting just fine, they had kind of a green tint to them that you just have to look past. A similar thing happened when I made banana nut muffins using the Bettergoods mix from Walmart.

Now you may be wondering, what makes the mixes gluten-free? How do you make a baked good without flour? Short answer–you don’t.

Though gluten often gets equated to flour, it is specifically wheat, barley and rye. Some of the gluten-free flour substitutes I’ve come across include rice flour, almond flour, chickpea flour or corn-based goods for things like tortillas.

Almond flour is my least favorite. It, in my limited experience, has been the most grainy and dense. My aforementioned Bettergoods banana nut muffins were made with almond flour, and I recall a grainy thickness that didn’t align from the light and fluffy characteristics you hope to see in a muffin.

I encounter rice flour more in baking; chickpea in pastas. My current go-to substitute is the Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour, which uses sweet white rice flour and whole grain brown rice flour, plus some tapioca flour as well.

In fact, I’ve used this mix to make gluten-free banana bread, which is my favorite sans-gluten recipe so far. You couldn’t even tell a difference between it and a wheat flour banana bread, in my opinion.

Bob’s Red Mill makes an array of gluten-free mixes that don’t require from-scratch baking if you’re interested in something simple. My dad recently made me gluten-free coffee cake with one, which brings me to my final point:

This holiday season, if you have a gluten-free relative who will have to sit longingly to the side while the rest of the family delves into an assortment of cookies, danishes and holiday treats, you could put a big smile on their face by taking an extra hour to whip up a special gluten-free treat. They always say the best gifts are the ones that say “I see you,” so how about one that says “I see you longing for a gluten-free dessert!”

Kate Verity is the news editor of The Covington News. She can be reached at kverity@covnews.com.