Gluten-Free, Egg-Free Cinnamon Rolls

Hi friends!

Yesterday, I made some allergen-friendly cinnamon rolls and I’d love to share the recipe on here. It far exceeded my expectations!

A note on allergens: This is NOT dairy free because I personally do not struggle with eating dairy in baked goods. If you have a sensitivity, feel free to exclude and replace with your plant-based dairy product.

Ingredients:

  • 2 1/4 cups gluten-free flour blend (I used Namaste, which I got in bulk at Costco for $9.99)
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 1/4 cup white sugar
  • 2/3 cup warmed milk I actually ran out of milk during making this, so I did 50% milk, 50% water. I’m all about improvising in the kitchen here. 🙂
  • 1 tablespoon yeast
  • Egg replacer for 1 egg (or 1/4 cup of applesauce, or just use one egg if you don’t have restrictions)
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup oil
  • 1 1/2 tablespoon cinnamon
  • 1/3 cup butter softened

Directions:

  1. Dissolve the yeast into your bowl of warm milk, it should bubble a few minutes. Mine actually didn’t, either the milk wasn’t warm enough or my yeast was old. That’s okay, I just kept going anyways and it came out perfectly.
  2. Add white sugar, oil, butter, vanilla, and egg replacer to your yeast milk. Stir.
  3. Add flour, baking powder and salt to mixing bowl. Now, my dough was too dry and crumbly so I added a little water. Working with gluten-free dough is so different, the texture is heavier and crumbly, but again, it still tastes amazing when it’s done!
  4. Let your dough rest while you preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
  5. Tape parchment paper to the counter, place your dough on top. Place another parchment sheet on top. Roll out until about 1/4 inch thick. Go slow. Your edges will not look smooth, the shape may not be even either. Don’t worry about it. I’d fuss more over making regular cinnamon rolls since I can control the dough easier. The gluten free dough needs to be thick enough to roll.
  6. Spread warmed butter on top after removing your first parchment paper. Sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon mixture on top of your buttery dough.
  7. Using a pizza cutter, cut the slices to the size you want. The original recipe for this that I adapted from the Namaste website wants you to roll it into a log with the parchment. You’re welcome to try it that way, but as crumbly as the dough is, I’d choose the pizza cutter hack.
  8. After cutting, slowly roll your dough slices. This part isn’t tricky as long as you keep in mind that it’s not going to look pretty. The dough will snap or crumble, it did not give me a lot of bend. I just went slowly in rolling, trying to smooth out the breaks on the dough.
  9. Have a pie pan prepared (with butter or nondairy alternative) next to you, so you can quickly transfer each roll from counter to pan. I didn’t want to risk the rolls breaking any more than they were.
  10. Bake in oven for about 20 minutes.
  11. If you like glazed rolls, use 1 cup of powdered sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, and 4-6 tablespoons of water or milk.

It was so sweet and tasty! Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

My Experience with HealthShare

We all grieve together on the pains and struggles of traditional insurance, with monthly payments, and insane deductibles, and co-pays, and the premium. Once I aged out of my parents plan, I knew that I wanted to find an alternative, and I found one. Healthshare.

What is HealthShare?

HealthShare offers people an affordable way to manage medical expenses. They are not insurance, but a nonprofit organization where they help facilitate the voluntary sharing between members to pay each other’s medical costs.

It’s easier to share my experience than to try to explain it. It took me quite some time to understand it myself until I asked others who were participating in it.

I am a member of Samaritan Ministries, a Christian HealthShare organization. There are many organizations out there, but I went with Samaritan for various reasons. There are many HealthShares out there that are not Christian, but one key reason I went with Samaritan is because they are.

In order to be a member of Samaritan, I had to agree to a Statement of Faith (belief in God, belief that Jesus died for our sins, belief that all people have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, etc) and Membership Agreement (agree to attend church regularly, belief that Christians should share each others burdens, agree to not using drugs, abstain from sexual activity outside marriage, agree to practice good health in accordance to the belief that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, etc.).

My monthly payment, or “share”, is $160 a month.

If I have a medical need, I upload the bills (which are usually discounted 40% because I’m flagged as a cash payer), explain the health issue, explain the treatment, if the medical need is fulfilled or still ongoing, and an opportunity to share info for a prayer request. The medical need is reviewed and when/if approved, it’s labeled “shareable”. Your medical need would be split between other members and shared with them. They would then mail or PayPal you their monthly “share”.

Seems weird right? Or too good to be true? I was hesitant too! To be transparent, I always have this deep hidden fear that something will go wrong and I’ll suddenly be faced with a large medical bill that I have to pay for myself…but I know I had dealt with the same type of fears with traditional insurance.

My son ended up being on Healthshare with me for a few months and we had to submit a need after a trip to the ER. The total bill was over $2,000. We received a large discount, and the final bill was $1, 037, which we submitted to Samaritan as a Need. It was approved and then we waited a little over a month while Samaritan did the rest. They sent 10 members our info and prayer request. Those members wrote their monthly payment, and mailed it to our address (along with adorable cards and encouraging notes and prayers). Throughout that month, we received all 10 checks and marked that we received it on the Samaritan website. We deposited the checks into our account and payed off the medical bill. If someone did not send a check, Samaritan would be in charge of reaching out to that individual and fixing the missing funds. We paid zero dollars.

This past summer, I injured my shoulder pretty badly, right after Samaritan had to change their policies due to the rising increase of healthcare. Now, every medical need you are required to pay $400 and the rest is covered. A trip to urgent care, follow-up, xrays, physical therapy…the bill was quite high and we paid $400 even. From the stories I’ve heard from fellow members, even when the bill is 20k, they only pay $400 as their deductible as long as it’s all under one medical need like heart murmur, brain tumor, or pregnancy.

Recently, I had to call and ask questions about our plan because I was re-adding my husband. I didn’t have to wait very long for a customer service agent, the call was a million times better than calling larger providers, and at the end the lovely woman on the phone asked if there was something she could pray for in my life. At the time, a young mother was on my mind who was faced with challenges in life, so I brought it up, and the service agent prayed right there on the phone.

While my husband was using his work insurance, he had all of these co-pays each visit, bills that followed, and having to spend half the day on hold to connect with an agent.

If you are looking for insurance for the new year, I’d consider looking into healthshare – it does’t have to be Samaritan, there are dozens out there that are all similar.

Here are a few things to remember:

*HealthShare is not insurance. You are 100% responsible for your healthcare bills, viewed as a “cash payer” to the healthcare provider. You are in charge of negotiating to lower prices. Then, you are reimbursed by your HealthShare provider.

**HealthShare does not usually cover preventative healthcare like an annual checkups. This policy is in place to keep costs lower and helps encourage searching for a budget-friendly provider. It’s my only complaint about healthshare, but we’ve never had to pay a lot for preventative health. A good example would be a sports physical – a well-known hospital clinic can run upward of $400 for a simple physical, not including any labs. If you do a little research, you can find plenty of places that offer a sports physical for a fraction of the cost. We’d go to a reputable clinic that charges $49, and I’ve heard a walk-in sports physical at CVS is $69.

***Healthshare usually doesn’t cover prescriptions. I have a discount prescription card, and if I need medicine for an illness it’s not horribly expensive. If I had longterm health issues like diabetes, I would consider leaving a healthshare program. Though I feel this is my own personal opinion because I know there are several members who are going through cancer treatments who have stayed on healthshare.

****I have no network limits. As long as the medical provider is a real, licensed provider, you can go to them.

I hope this encourages you to do a little research on healthcare and healthshare

Here’s more information on the healthshare our family uses.

with love, Samantha