baking

Gluten Free Cinnamon Rolls

0 · Dec 28, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Originally published January 14, 2009 and updated on December 28, 2012.

In 2009 we hit upon a really good gluten free cinnamon roll and in 2012 we still think these are great. Here is how you make these not-too-sweet cinnamon rolls. Make the dough for dinner rolls described at the Book of Yum website , omitting all flavorings except the salt (don’t use rosemary, sun-dried tomatoes, or any of those sorts of things) to make a plain dinner roll dough:

http://www.bookofyum.com/blog/adeenas-gluten-free-rosemary-teff-dinner-roll-recipe-1478.html

Then proceed as follows:

Make a mixture of 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon and set aside (you may need more of this mixture depending on how much you put in each roll.) Get out some yellow raisins and set aside.

Put a paper muffin liner in to each part of a 12-cup muffin pan and 6 more cups from another pan (total of 18).

Put about 1/2 cup mochiko rice (sweet rice) flour on a large piece of wax or parchment paper. Make 3 rolls at a time as follows, take about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of the mixed plain roll dough and plop it onto the rice flour. The mochiko flour should be nice and thick on the paper to keep the dough from sticking.

Pat the dough into a rectangle about 7 inches wide by 4 inches tall, and a little less than a 1/2 inch thick. These are rough measurements. Dot the surface with butter (6 small bits of butter, totaling about 1 Tablespoon.) Sprinkle the surface (the whole surface of the rectangle) with a few tablespoons of the brown sugar/cinnamon mixture, and sprinkle with 8-10 raisins, distributing evenly. Very gently, roll the rectangle up like a jelly roll (from the 7 inch side), so that in the end you have a 7 inch long roll. Slice the roll in to 3 equal length sections. Put each section in to a paper-lined muffin cup so that the cut side is facing up. The top of the roll should show some sugar filling. Proceed the same way until you have used up all the dough. As you work, rearrange the remaining rice flour on the paper to provide a nice cushion for the dough.

Set the rolls aside to rise until doubled – this takes about 1/2 hour to 1 hour on a warm radiator. Bake to rolls at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.

Allow to cool briefly, then slather each one with some of the following mixture.

2 Tablespoons softened butter
2 cups confectioner’s sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
enough fresh orange juice to make a nice frosting

Another excellent recipe for Cinnamon Rolls – Gluten Free – is available here: http://www.food.com/recipe/cinnabon-ish-cinnamon-rolls-gluten-free-376575/review

Gluten Free Fruitcake

0 · Nov 29, 2011 · Leave a Comment

The Best Laid Plans of Mice[i]….

By Alice DeLuca

The black-and-white “tuxedo” cat who moved in recently is sleeping on the radiator, as an early snowstorm downs trees and power lines outside, and there is no sign of any mouse in the kitchen. At this time of year, just before guests start arriving for holiday meals, hordes of country mice would usually flood the house from every hole that is larger than a dime. They are Old World house-mice and little New World white-footed mice. These tiny half-ounce creatures can run at 8 miles an hour and jump vertically to distances of a foot and a half. The speed and agility explain how the fabulous mouse athletes got in to the chocolate, and also why we have a cat. Quite directly related to the presence of this cat is the very sparse influx of mice for the 2011 holiday season.

These are “The Misses Cheddar,” from a series of costumed mice called “Mice Named After Famous English Cheeses” obtained in Britain in the late 1990s. They are shown alongside an American dime, to demonstrate that a dime-sized hole, through which mice can pass, is very small.

Some mice sing[ii] – a lucky person who lives near mice will have heard this unforgettably sweet song once or twice, and there are scientific references from long ago alerting us to the fact that mice are known to sing. Despite this long-standing human knowledge, the internet abounds today with seemingly authoritative articles stating “It was recently discovered that male mice produce complex, ultrasonic songs” [iii] – but this is not news to anyone who lives around these delicate, small but annoying creatures.

The beautiful soprano warbling song coming from the silverware drawer late at night leaves me with mixed feelings. On the one hand having mice in the kitchen is disagreeable – since they rarely venture more than fifty feet from their established nest, have hundreds of offspring, spread disease and inadvertently cause expensive damage when they nip through electrical wiring and such. I do not blame them as they are just trying to live their lives, but when they nested in the seldom-used oven broiler, the conflagration of the nest caused a smoky incident that brought 3 fire fighters decked out in full turn-out gear to the house. There followed a visit from an extremely well-compensated stove repair technician who nonchalantly advised me to “turn the broiler on at least once a month just to discourage them.” He said he “saw this kind of thing all the time.”

A cascading mouse disaster also led to the expensive replacement of an automatic dishwasher – a mouse nested in the dishwasher insulation; the cat yanked off the bottom panel of the dishwasher to get at the mouse; the plumber who installed the new, replacement dishwasher said there was no point in plugging up the holes in the floor – “they can get in anywhere. It doesn’t matter what you do.”

Even while the mice cost us untold thousands of dollars and un-ending work, the presence of mice who have come in from the cold signals the start of one of the best food seasons of the year. It is a good season for roast pork, chicken and duck, and though many people today have lost touch with its glories, fruitcake.

A really good fruitcake made mostly of fruit, and soaked repeatedly in vast quantities of distilled liquor, is a great treat – very expensive and a required food for the winter season. The creation and production of a fruitcake marks the passing of time in the dark months. To have a fruitcake ready for the Christmas season, it is necessary to start working on the project now.

There follows a recipe for a terrific Fruitcake based on instructions from Darina Allen and Rosemary Kearney in their authentic and down-to-earth cookbook Healthy Gluten-Free Cooking. I have interpreted their instruction to season with “mixed spice” through research on such mixtures curated by the authoritative Elizabeth David, and I have adulterated the cake by completely saturating it with copious quantities of high quality gluten free Irish whisky*. (For the gluten free status of this whisky, see: http://www.jamesonwhiskey.com/Distillery/Meet-the-Distillery-Masters/FAQ.aspx)

1. Prepare an 8 ½” inch round, 3” deep pan, buttered and then lined with parchment. The parchment should stick up at least 1 ½ “ above the top of the pan. We have used one pan that was originally purchased to make cheesecake during the cheesecake mania of the early 1980s and have also used a spring-form pan effectively.

2. Mix up a batch of Mixed Spice (there will be some leftover after you use a teaspoon to make the cake so you can store that in a bottle for other uses). This mixture is based “loosely” on one from Elizabeth David’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery. I say “loosely” because I made a careless error in transcribing it at one time or another, and doubled the ginger. The error has persisted and this is the mixture I use. Again note that this will yield 3 teaspoons of which you will use only 1 :

1 teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon cloves
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon cinnamon

3. An important and informative note on Whisky: We use the better part of a quart of Jameson’s Irish Whisky for this cake. I would recommend that you use an Irish Whisky that does not have any smokiness to its flavor. Some Irish whisky is “enhanced” by smoked peat and frankly that flavor would do nothing good to this cake.

4. Use a kitchen scale to weigh the ingredients for this recipe.

5. Macerate the Fruit ingredients for an hour or so – the timing is truly irrelevant as this is not science and very little whisky is involved at this point in the recipe:

2 ounces sliced almonds

2 ounces finely ground almonds

12 ounces brown raisins

12 ounces golden raisins

12 ounces dried currants

1 cup (8 ounces) glace cherries (leave whole or cut in half but no smaller than half. I have successfully used dried cherries that have been rehydrated and cooked in a sugar syrup)[iv]

½ cup (4 ounces) candied citron – you can use homemade candied citrus peel instead[v]

Shredded rind of both an orange and a lemon

2 Tablespoons of Jameson’s Irish whisky (Jameson’s is an excellent choice – a whisky that does not have heavy “tobacco” notes – and noted as gluten free on the manufacturer’s website 2011-11-29)

Note: You want a total of 3 pounds of dried fruit, with vine fruits predominating. Candied Pineapple can be added successfully, providing a nice textural nuance. Currants are a required ingredient. Much different from raisins, currants are sugar-packed and have a crystallized texture that cannot be achieved with any substitution.

Raisins and Currants ADeLuca 2011 — Vine Fruits Predominate in a fine fruitcake

6. Preheat oven to 350 F.

7. Mix the Wet ingredients:

Cream 8 ounces of sweet butter, then stir in 8 ounces of brown sugar and beat until “pale and light.” Add 6 eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.

8. Mix the Dry ingredients:

Mix one teaspoon Mixed Spice[vi] with 8 ounces of finely ground almonds, 4 ounces of white rice flour (finely ground rice flour is available in Asian groceries – make sure it is rice flour and not sweet rice flour), 2 teaspoons of xanthan gum[vii], 1 cooking apple shredded (Golden Russet, Baldwin, Yellow Delicious).

9. Mixing and Baking:

Stir the Wet ingredients in to the Dry ingredients, and then add the Fruit ingredients. Do not overbeat. Scoop the very thick mixture in to the parchment-lined pan. Wet your hand and use your hand to smooth the top. Bake the cake for one hour, then reduce the heat to 325 and bake the cake for another 2 hours until a skewer comes out clean. The cake will be very dark. The original recipe calls for more baking, but I have found that it is important to start checking the cake after 2 hours.

10. Soaking:

Remove the pan from the oven and pour 2 ounces additional Irish whiskey over the cake. Let cool in the pan overnight.

11. More Soaking, a critical addition to an excellent recipe: Remove the cooled cake from the pan and remove the parchment. Wrap the cake in cheesecloth, and then soak the cake liberally with an additional ½ cup of Irish whiskey. Wrap the cheesecloth covered cake in an outer layer of tinfoil to completely cover the cake, then store the whiskied-up, tinfoil-covered cake in a tin or other container. Every 1-2 weeks, or whenever you remember, remove the cake from its tinfoil wrapper and soak the cake liberally on all sides with additional Irish whiskey. Restore the foil and put it back in its storage container. Continue soaking the cake every couple of weeks until Christmas.

12. In the original Allen/Kearney cookbook, there are elaborate instructions for adding an almond paste coating that I have never tried. It sounds like a good idea, but since we soak our cake in whiskey we have not felt the need for the almond paste coating.

Our fruitcake will be safe from the mice this year, well-wrapped and now protected by the feline security system. The cat has shown the discouraged mice the door, and they have packed up and moved their residence outside to the car. They continue to be very expensive tenants, however, and I have just received the car repair bill – $99 for removing a mouse nest from the engine.

Mouse Nesting in the car engine - a very expensive problem

The cat brings his own set of problems and expenses, but he is a charming and effective mouse-deterrent. He is good company, and does not eat and contaminate all the stored food, such as the all-important fruitcake – a medieval gourmet treat that marks the coming of the darkest season with the hope of new fruit on the vine the following summer.

[i] Burns, Robert. “To A Mouse. On turning her up in her nest with the plough”, November 1785. Accessed November 29, 2011 http://www.rbwf.org.uk/poems/translations/554.htm.

[ii] Dice, Lee R. 1932.”The Songs of Mice”, Journal of Mammology, Volume 13 Number 3. Accessed October 31, 2011 http://www.jstor.org/pss/1373992.

[iii] Ballenger, L. 1999. “Mus musculus” (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. Accessed October 31, 2011 http://www.animaldiversity.org/site/accounts/information/Mus_musculus.html.

[iv] Witty, Helen, and Elizabeth Schneider Colchie. Better than Store-bought: a Cookbook. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Print. This book contains extensive instructions on candying a variety of fruits.

[v] Witty, Helen, and Elizabeth Schneider Colchie. Better than Store-bought: a Cookbook. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Print. This book contains extensive instructions on candying a variety of fruits.

[vi]The following mixture is based on reading David, Elizabeth. English Bread and Yeast Cookery. New York: Viking, 1980. Print. …and several other books.. and then making a transcription error many years ago.

1 teaspoon ginger

½ teaspoon pepper

½ teaspoon cloves

½ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon cinnamon

[vii] The Xanthan Gum compensates for the lack of gluten in rice flour.

Gluten Free German Torte Cake base

1 · Jan 24, 2011 · Leave a Comment

German tortes can have a cake base with a cream filling, and maybe fresh fruit on top. Here is how to make a gluten free German sponge cake (this one is made with almonds and cornstarch) that will work well as the base for a torte with a cream filling.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line the bottom of a 9 inch spring-form pan with parchment paper, then grease the sides of the pan with butter. Set this prepared pan aside.

You need 3 bowls – like Goldilocks and the Three Bears! One great big bowl, one medium sized bowl, and one little bowl.

You need a kitchen scale to weigh the ingredients. Be sure to zero out the scale each time you measure something.

3 eggs, separated
3 Tablespoons cold water
75 grams Sugar
50 grams Cornstarch
65 grams Almond meal (Bob’s Red Mill makes the one we used)
1/2 teaspoon gluten free baking powder (measurement is for American baking powder. If using German baking powder, use slightly more.)

Beat the egg whites with the cold water in a large bowl until stiff. In the medium sized bowl, beat the egg yolks until light lemon colored and fluffy.

Beat the sugar in to the beaten egg whites, then fold in the beaten yolks.

In a third little bowl (capacity 2 cups), mix the cornstarch, almond meal and baking powder. (The volume of cornstarch and almond meal will be about one cup combined).

Fold the cornstarch/nut mixture in to the egg mixture. The mixture will be light and fluffy.

Carefully distribute the batter in to the prepared spring-form pan.

Bake for 35 minutes at 300 degrees until the cake springs back to the touch. Remove from the oven, slide a knife around the sides to loosen the cake, then remove the sides. Allow the cake to cool completely. Remove the cake from the pan. You can cut it horizontally in to two layers using a bread knife, if you need 2 layers.

Make sure your ingredients are all gluten free!

Gluten Free Lace Cookies

0 · Jan 18, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Lace cookies are quick to make, and require few ingredients. It is just as easy to make them gluten free if you substitute cornstarch for the wheat flour in the recipe.

In a 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup, put the following ingredients – then microwave on the setting you would use for 1 cup of coffee, until the butter melts and the mixture bubbles.

2 Tablespoons butter
1 1/2 Tablespoons corn syrup
2 Tablespoons dark brown sugar

Remove from the microwave, then stir in

2 Tablespoons cornstarch

Deposit the batter in teaspoon-sized circles on parchment paper lined baking sheet. Be sure to leave 3 inches between each cookie, and make only about 6 cookies at a time if you plan to roll them in cylinder or cone shapes because you will have to work quickly.

Bake the cookies 6 minutes, until spread out, brown and bubbly. Watch them carefully to make sure they don’t burn.

Remove the sheet from the oven. If you are going to make cylinders or cone shapes, allow them to cool about 15 seconds and then start working with them. Otherwise, wait about a minute and the parchment paper will be easy to peel right off the cookies! As you can see from the picture, these cookies spread quite a lot. I have included a quarter in the photos so you can compare the size, uncooked and cooked.

and these cookies are delicate like glass. Here are about 7 of them stacked on a Heath Ceramics coffee cup – (cup color is Moonstone.)

More thoughts on Gluten Free Pie

1 · Nov 18, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Some of the most popular posts on this website have to do with pie!

How to make gluten free pie crust (see this link for the recipe) is a key interest for the gluten free community. It turns out that the type of flour you use for pie crust really does matter, so here is some advice on finding good gluten free flours:

Where to find those flours for the pie crust mix? We buy them from Authentic Foods (you can use Amazon.com.) Not even a trip to the grocery store is required; they grind the flour really fine (so it does not have that gritty quality, sticking in your back teeth like dental amalgam ), and their tapioca flour does not taste like boiled lobster.

When you do buy the flours, consider storing them in the freezer – those pantry moths like to eat gluten free too, but they don’t seem to be able to squirm in to the freezer yet.

I’ll sign out with some lyrics from the great Bob Dylan song, “Country Pie”:

“Raspberry, strawberry, lemon and lime
What do I care ?
Blueberry, apple, cherry, pumpkin and plum
Call me for dinner, honey, I’ll be there.
…Oh me, oh my
Love that country pie.”

Gf-Zing! does not guarantee the gluten-free status of products; we rely on the manufacturer to do that. Check the labels, and make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!

Gluten Free “Slowed Down” Pumpkin Muffin

3 · Oct 13, 2010 · 1 Comment

This is a story about “slowed down food.”

We have combined the fat-free muffin with the slow food movement, to make the Slowed Down Pumpkin Muffin. The reason that these pumpkin muffins can be called “slowed down” food is because they are meant to be made with canned pumpkin and jarred applesauce, but we had neither one in the cupboard. So, the instructions here show how you can make them using local squash and an apple, and it also takes more time to make them! The muffins still use processed sugar, so they are not consistent with full-bore “slow food” cooking.

We won’t pretend that these muffins, which have no oil in them, are non-fat because once you have slathered your pumpkin muffin with butter, all that “no fat” stuff goes out the window! We also make these gluten free, doubling the flavorings to combat the black hole, flavor-neutralizing quality of gluten free cooking. Note: Some people who eat gluten free avoid bean flours such as chickpea flour, so check with your gluten free friend before using this recipe.

How to prepare the squash (pumpkin) and apple:

Find a winter squash (pumpkin, butternut, buttercup, acorn – whatever), and a baking apple. For a baking apple, you could choose a nice big Cortland, or a Northern Spy. In this case, we used a butternut squash (long-necked pale orange squash) and a Northern Spy apple.

Cut off a chunk of winter squash, about 12 ounces should do it. Poke several holes in the apple with a fork. Microwave the squash and the apple on the setting you use for baking potatoes, until they are cooked through. Cool them so that you can peel them without burning yourself.

Peel the cooked squash and apple and remove and discard the apple core and its seeds and the peelings. Mash the cooked squash and apple separately. You need 1/3 cup of each. If by chance you have too much of one, and not enough of the other, simply use enough of each to yield a combined total of 2/3 cup mashed material.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Soak 1/2 cup raisins in boiling water while you mix the batter:

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl:

1 1/2 cups plus 1 Tablespoon Gifts of Nature gluten free All Purpose Flour Blend (INGREDIENTS: Brown rice flour, potato starch flour, white rice flour, chick pea flour, sweet rice flour, tapioca flour, xantham gum)

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 teaspoon each: baking powder, baking soda, salt

1 teaspoon each: ground cinnamon, grated nutmeg, ground cloves

Mix the wet ingredients in another large bowl:

Mix the 2/3 cup cooked squash and apple with:

2 eggs

Stir the wet ingredients and dry ingredients together using a fork. This will be an interesting task – at first it will appear that there is not enough liquid, but as you mix the batter it will quickly become the consistency of a proper muffin batter.

Drain the almost-forgotten raisins (throw out the water, save the raisins.) Add the raisins to the muffin batter. Stir well.

Line 12 muffin cups with paper muffin liners. Fill each muffin liner to the top. You may be used to filling muffin liners 2/3 full, but in this case you can fill them right to the top. Use up all the batter for the 12 muffins. Distribute the raisins evenly, to make sure each muffin has its fair share of raisins.

Bake for 30-35 minutes until the tops are dry and the muffins seem done. You can poke them with a toothpick – toothpick should come out dry. Take cooked muffins out of the oven – the tops of these muffins have a chewy, caramelized quality and the muffins taste great with butter. Technically, you should allow these muffins to cool before eating.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!

Susie’s Cheesecake

0 · Jul 5, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Sue Carnase, of the Bronx, New York, made the best cheesecake ever. It was tested many times in double-blind taste tests and it always came out at the top of the rankings. Here is her recipe, in her own words, with a slight modification that will make the recipe gluten free.

“In a large bowl cream together 1 pound each of cream cheese, softened, and ricotta and one cup sugar and beat in 4 large eggs at room temperatures, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add 1/2 stick (2 ounces) butter melted and cooled, 3 tablespoons each of gluten free flour mix* and cornstarch, and 2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla and 1 teaspoon fresh lemon rind, beat mixture well until well combined. Fold in 2 cups sour cream, pour batter in ungreased 9 inch springform pan and bake the cake in the middle of a preheated moderately slow oven (325) for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

The cake will be soft in the center. TURN OFF THE HEAT (DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR.) Let the cake stand in the oven for 2 hours. Let the cake cool completely in the pan on a rack and chill it loosely covered for at least 4 hours. Remove the sides of pan and transfer cake to a plate. You can freeze it at this point. Remove from the freezer the day before use and refrigerate.

HINTS: Cheesecakes often crack while baking and some rise high and later fall, but these are not matters of concern. Cheesecakes do not take kindly to sudden changes in temperature. SO DO NOT OPEN OVEN DOOR DURING THE BAKING.

I find it much easier to cream the cheeses by putting them through the Cuisinart.”

*original recipe called for wheat flour

Further notes from GF-Zing!: The batter will fill most of the pan and during the baking the cake will rise to the very top of the pan or higher. Do NOT use a smaller pan than called for in the recipe. Full fat ricotta makes a nice cake. We use Friendship brand sour cream because its only ingredients are milk, cream and enzymes. We line the bottom of the spring form pan with parchment paper to make transferring the cake to a plate a little easier.

Shopping List for Susie’s Cheesecake:

1 pound cream cheese

1 pound ricotta

Sugar

4 large eggs

Butter

GF Flour

Cornstarch

Vanilla

Sour Cream

1 lemon

Blueberry Pie sweetened with Maple Syrup

2 · Apr 19, 2010 · Leave a Comment

You can make a fine blueberry pie using dark maple syrup as a sweetener instead of granulated sugar. This pie is refreshingly fruity and not as sweet as the more common sugar-sweetened pie.

Here are the general rules:

for 5-6 cups of Maine wild blueberries, add the following in a large bowl:

1 cup of pure maple syrup

2 Tablespoons of cornstarch

3 Tablespoons of flavorless tapioca starch (Authentic Foods offers a tapioca starch) or 1/4 cup instant granulated tapioca. If you use instant granulated tapioca, let the whole mixture sit for 15 minutes before constructing the pie.

1/8 teaspoon salt

3-4 Tablespoons of fresh lemon juice to offset the maple syrup

1/4 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

Use a 2-crust recipe for pie crust, and use a 9 or 10 inch glass pie dish. If you use a larger pie dish, the pie will have less depth, and if you use a smaller pie dish then the pie will be more “heaped up.” Line the pie dish with 1 piece of crust pastry, fill with the blueberry mixture, top with the second crust. Sprinkle the top crust with 1/4 cup of granulated sugar.

Bake in preheated 375 degree oven for 1 hour. If the blueberries are frozen, the pie may need a few extra minutes. Cool the pie on a rack before cutting.

Use all gluten-free ingredients!

White Chocolate and Strawberry Dessert

1 · Jun 11, 2009 · Leave a Comment

For this dessert, you need fresh local strawberries, high quality white chocolate (gluten free) in a bar form, and gluten free orange liqueur.

Find a bowl that will hold 3 cups exactly when filled to the top with water. This will be serving dish. Set it aside.

Melt a 4-ounce bar of gluten free white chocolate over hot water. Take it off the heat, add 1 Tablespoon sugar, 1 Tablespoon gluten free orange liqueur, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and 1 ounce of cream cheese. Beat well until mixed.

In a different bowl beat 1/2 cup of heavy cream until stiff. Fold in the white chocolate mixure.

Put enough strawberries (or other berries) in the serving bowl to cover the bottom of the bowl. Spoon the whipped cream/white chocolate mixture on top. Smooth the top and chill the dessert for 3 hourss or overnight. This will serve 3-4 people.

You can triple the mixture, make a crumb crust in a spring-form pan, and triple the amount of berries, put the berries on the crust, add the cream mixture, chill, then cut the dessert like a cake (since it has a crust.)

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free.

Carrot Quick Bread

0 · Feb 17, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This is an excellent loaf cake, mostly made of fruits and nuts, with a little gluten free flour to bind it together. It is delicious and has a great texture. We used the white rice flour that you get in asian grocery stores, and the tapioca starch made by Yoki, a brazilian brand (Harina De Mandioca).

1/2 cup butter, melted

2 eggs

1 Tablespoon orange or lime juice

1 cup sweetened shredded coconut (gluten free)
2/3 cup chopped walnuts (break up the walnuts by hand or chop them)
1 cup golden raisins (golden raisins are really better than brown for this bread)
2 1/2 cups coarsely grated carrots

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1 teaspoon powdered ginger
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 1/4 cup flour mix – (mix 2 cups white rice flour, 2/3 cup potato starch, 1/3 cup tapioca starch and 1 teaspoon xantham gum, stir together and use 1 1/4 cups of it, store the rest) – alternatively, use Authentic Foods GF Classical Blend plus 1 teaspoon Xantham Gum.
1 tsp baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9 x 5 loaf pan. Line the bottom with parchment paper.
In a pyrex measuring cup, melt the butter in the microwave. Remove and let cool slightly, then stir in the eggs and orange juice.
In one bowl, mix the spices, gluten free flour, baking soda, salt, brown sugar, shredded coconut and chopped walnuts. Add the raisins and carrots. Stir to make sure everything is evenly mixed up.
Stir the wet ingredients from the pyrex measuring cup in to the dry mixture that contains the fruits. Stir everything until well mixed.
The finished batter will have the consistency of a muffin batter.
Spoon the batter immediately into the prepared loaf pan, smooth the top, and bake for 60-70 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.
Cool in pan for ten minutes, then turn out to cool. Slice with a bread knife.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!

Pumpkin Molasses Cake with Maple Frosting

0 · Nov 24, 2007 ·

This is a gluten-free version of a pleasant old-fashioned spice cake, with the exciting addition of a cream cheese maple icing.

In a food processor, mix until smooth:

¼ vegetable oil or melted butter
2 eggs
1/3 cup molasses
1 ¼ cups cooked pumpkin, mashed and drained of excess water

In a bowl, mix:

1 ½ cups brown rice flour
½ cup potato starch (katakuriko)
¼ cup tapioca starch
1 teaspoon xantham gum
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder (see recipe for homemade version)
¾ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg

Baking Powder – Make your own!

0 · Nov 24, 2007 · 1 Comment

Did you run out of baking powder like we did, on the holiday, when even the convenience stores were closed? You can make your own, and it will last about a month in a bottle on the shelf. Cream of tartar is a bi-product of making wine, for those who like to know the origin of everything they eat.
Mix together:

4 parts cream of tartar
3 parts cornstarch
2 parts baking soda

For a small batch, use a teaspoon as the measure – this will yield 3 tablespoons of baking powder (9 teaspoons), which is less than a quarter cup.

More about Gluten free Donut Muffins

0 · May 31, 2007 ·

A while ago we did a gluten free muffin round up, and the hands down winner was the Donut Muffin recipe from Bev Lieven of Milwaukee Celiac-Sprue Crew. The combination of cinnamon and nutmeg in this recipe, plus the sugary topping, yields something very close the fast-receding memory of donuts that we used to crave. The muffins are great, and they are asked for by people who don’t have to eat gf. Now that we stop to think about that statement, is it somehow a greater endorsement that the non-gf world thinks those muffins are great? Perhaps so, because they can choose to eat regular donuts as well and don’t have to “settle” for the gf variety.

In the months since we first put the Donut Muffin recipe on the web, it has been referenced by other blogs – or “glogs” as we like to call the gluten-free websites. Meanwhile, we have been playing with the recipe to see how much refined sugar we could eliminate. We have successfully substituted 1/4 honey and 1/3 cup sugar for the original 2/3 cup sugar in the dough, and for the topping we cut the sugar down to 1/2 cup and kept the 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. We used buttermilk instead of regular milk. We used our favorite cookie flour mix for the flour. Lastly, we just mixed the dry ingredients, then dumped the wet ingredients on top and mix with a fork. These adjustments yield an equally good muffin.

Slightly Revised Donut Muffin:

Combine:

1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups gluten free flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 tsp. xanthan gum (opt.)

Mix with a fork:

1 egg

1/4 cup honey
1/2 c. buttermilk
1/3 c. melted butter
1 tsp. vanilla

Add to dry ingredients. Mix to moisten. Fill lightly muffin pans lined with paper liners. Sprinkle w/ cinnamon sugar (Mix 1/2 c. sugar, 1 tsp.or more ground cinnamon.) Bake at 375º for 15-20 min. Makes about 11 muffins.

Vegan Cupcakes

0 · Apr 22, 2007 · Leave a Comment

We tried a new cookbook, it’s not a gluten free cookbook, but it’s really fun, and the recipes are good and easy to convert to gf and there are two Gluten Free Cupcake recipes included in the book. The book is Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. On the back of the cookbook is the header “Prepare for Total Cupcake Domination” which gives a hint that the author has a sense of humor.

For a test, we tried Toasted Coconut Cupcakes with Coffee Buttercream Frosting. For this recipe, we substituted 1/2 cup cornstarch and 1/2 cup gluten free cookie flour mix and added 1/2 teaspoon extra xantham gum to the batter. It took a little longer to bake these gluten free cupcakes than the instructions noted in the book – so test those cupcakes with a toothpick to make sure they are done.

We did not have “coffee extract” so we made our own using 1 1/2 teaspoons instant coffee and a small amount of hot water. The cupcakes were yummy, with an interesting mochi-like texture, for those of you who like mochi – it’s chewy. We can’t wait to try other recipes from the cute little book.

Cardamom Currant Pound Cake

0 · Apr 17, 2007 ·

Gf-Zing! has been experimenting with the 123 Gluten Free Pound Cake mix, and we have hit on an excellent set of additions. Make the mix as directed on the package but use grapefruit soda, and add 3/4 cup of dried currants, and 1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground cardamom seeds. It is important to use freshly ground cardamom seeds. Use dried, green cardamom pods, crack them open and take out the seeds, discarding the shells. Crush the seeds in a mortar and pestle until you have a powder, and then measure 1 1/2 teaspoons.

We make the cake in an angel food cake pan, with a cookie sheet underneath on the oven shelf below to catch any drips. We dust the greased cake pan with mochiko (sweet rice) or tapioca flour. It takes 1 1/4 hours to bake.

The additions of currants, cardamom seed and grapefruit soda make an excellent cake. Try it with a cup of darjeeling tea!

Flour substitutions for gluten free cooking

0 · Jan 31, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Gf-Zing! received the following questions about flour substitutions from a reader named Melissa:

I’ve read that as a substitute for wheat flour in a recipe that you can use chickpea flour for a substitute in a 1:1 ratio without any further changes to the original recipe. This seems too easy – do you know if this is true?

Here’s our answer: Chickpea flour can be substituted for wheat flour 1:1 for dusting meats that are going to be fried, but it has a pretty beany flavor so it is not the right choice for substituting in baked goods. We would not use large amounts of chickpea flour in baked goods because of this beaniness.

For frying meat, you might also try using mochiko flour (this is sweet rice flour), especially for making something like Coq Au Vin for which the flour is a vital thickening agent in the sauce.

I’ve also read that 1 cup of the following (after mixed very well) equals 1 cup of all-purpose flour, is this also true and how does it taste? 1 cup of cornstarch or arrowroot, 3 cups of rice flour, 3 cups of potato starch flour, ½ cup soy flour

Here are some effective flour mixes for various baking projects. Gf-Zing! prefers the following general mix (except for pies), and if we are making a cake we add extra xantham gum to the batter:

General Flour Mix

2 cups plain brown rice flour
2 cups plain white rice flour
1 1/2 cups sweet brown rice flour (this is a different kind of rice flour – you could also use sweet white rice flour – also called mochiko)
1 1/3 cups tapioca starch or tapioca flour
2/3 cups GF corn starch
1/2 cups rice bran or rice polish
2 teaspoons xanthan gum

For Pie Crust:

1/2 cup tapioca flour (tapioca starch)
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup potato starch (katakuriko in Japanese stores – this is NOT the same as potato flour)
1 cup sweet rice flour (mochiko flour – not the same as white rice flour)
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar

For Cupcakes:

1/4 cup tapioca flour (flavorless variety)

1/4 cup potato starch (katakuriko)

3/4 cup brown rice flour

2 Tablespoons pure powdered egg white

For Biscuits and Cinnamon rolls that use baking powder and baking soda for leavening agents:

1/4 cup potato starch

3/4 cup cornstarch

1/2 cup brown rice flour

2 1/2 teaspoons Xantham gum

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free. Mix all the ingredients together in a large container or bag. Use as much as you need for your recipe. Store the rest.

Hope this helps!

Quiche – gluten free!

0 · Feb 13, 2006 · 1 Comment

This recipe was developed by Gf-Zing! , which celebrates flavor in the gluten free world.

For this quiche, you will need an unbaked pie shell – use 1/2 recipe GF Pastry Crust. Save the extra 1/2 egg from making the pie crust for the filling. Roll out the crust between two sheets of waxed paper until it fits the pie plate. Then remove the top sheet of waxed paper, flip the dough over in to a 9″ deep-dish glass pie plate, then carefully remove the other sheet of waxed paper. Repair any tears in the dough and set this unbaked crust aside.

2 onions, minced and fried in 1 Tablespoon gf butter (you can use leeks, shallots, some garlic, whatever oniony root vegetable you prefer, or a combination)
6 strips bacon, chopped, fried until crisp and drained of fat (you can chop the bacon with kitchen scissors before frying it. )
2 Tablespoons chopped fresh flat leaf Italian parsley
Cooked spinach, broccoli, asparagus, mushrooms (fry and drain) – choose one of these, or none of them, as you like
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1/2 pound grated gruyere cheese (about 2 cups grated, and you can substitute other cheeses that are lurking around the cheese drawer)
4 eggs plus the leftover egg from making the pie crust
1 1/2 cups liquid (you can use any combination of milk, almond milk, rice milk, sour cream, yogurt, cream cheese, heavy cream, light cream, gf chicken stock etc. for the liquid, and if you use chicken stock use no more than 1/2 cup of that)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Into the bottom of the unbaked pie shell, sprinkle and evenly distribute the fried onions, bacon pieces, marjoram, parsley, vegetables (if you are using them), and finally the cheese.

In the food processor, combine the eggs and the 1 1/2 cups of liquid, salt and pepper. Whir this mixture to combine, then pour on top of the things in the unbaked pie shell.

Bake at 400 for 40 minutes, until puffed and browned on the top. Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 5 – 15 minutes before serving. Keep any leftovers in the refrigerator.

Note: Vegetarians can substitute a small amount of gluten free chipotle chilis in adobo for the bacon – this will make the quiche spicy.

Remember to use only gluten free ingredients!