Category Archives: Gluten-Free
Mmm…French Toast
Topped with the last few strawberries. Alas, I forgot the whipped cream!
Well, to make up for the lack of whipped cream-here’s a frog for you.
Cake and Cookies
Last night was spent baking. Dark Chocolate Cookies are pretty simple:
Dark Chocolate Chip & Walnut Cookies
Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies
(this is a half-batch)
- 1 stick butter
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- dash of salt
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 cup flour
- 1 cup 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chips
- 1 cup walnut halves
mixing bowl and cookie sheet
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Cream together butter and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla, mixing well. Sift together salt, soda, flour and cocoa, then add to butter mixture, blending well. Add nuts and chocolate chips. Spoon onto cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Cool on cooling rack.
Nigella Lawson's Clementine Cake
Nigella Lawson’s Clementine cake came out well. It’s very crumbly and moist, as you’ll see in the next picture. It is so easy to make and everyone thinks it must be some difficult gourmet cake because of the texture. They couldn’t believe it had no flour and no butter or shortening. Which also gives it the added bonus of being gluten-free.
I took that picture a few minutes ago at the office. I don’t think there is going to be any left when I go back to the kitchen.
I have no idea what tonight’s menu is going to be, but hopefully I’ll see you back here tonight for the Thursday Night Menu. Until then….
Gluten-free muffins
Since my last post was bordering on a rant of things I don’t like, I thought this time I would be more constructive and talk about something I do like. I’ve found a book that has a lot of promise for baking many delicious gluten-free items.
Gluten-Free Baking Classics by Annalise G Roberts.
To tell the truth I haven’t gotten past page 31. I just keep making pumpkin muffins and carrot spice muffins over and over again. Of course, I take liberties with the recipes and add whatever I’m in the mood for, usually raisins, dried apricots, cranberries, walnuts, cardamom and the like. They make a perfect breakfast food. There is no compromise, these are as good, if not better, than any muffin I have ever had. Texture, moisture, and taste are all there.
I have never been much of a baker and I don’t have a lot of patience for the precision of measurement many people take in baking and these recipes have survived my haphazard methods. I do intend to try more of the recipes but just haven’t gotten there yet.
Roberts’ basic premise revolves around two basic flour recipes, one based on brown rice flour with potato starch and tapioca flour for most baking and another on a mixture of millet and sorghum flour plus cornstarch, potato starch and tapioca flour for bread.
I’ll see if I can assemble a workable muffin recipe for you, but my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants methods may not translate well into a reproducible recipe. I’ll see if TaMara can help me with that.
LFern7 intro – Gluten-free bread
I’ve been asked to try my hand at blogging, so here goes, my first post…
I’ve been avoiding gluten for about 4 months now, far from an authority, but ready to share my initial impressions. First gluten-free bread – ha, I’m not impressed. In fact I prefer to do without and only turn to the bread products when I am truly desperate. In fact one day as I was toasting one commercially available bread, my husband wanders down and asks, “what smells like a wet dog?” Yes, that was my (crazily expensive) bread and I’ve barely been able to eat it since. So what do I do instead? I like an open sandwich, sometimes I’ll use lettuce as my bread, often I’ll just munch on the filling materials. I like many of the gluten-free crackers on the market, and will use corn tortillas if I really need a wrapper. The gluten-free wraps made by La Tortilla Factory from teff and millet are pretty good, once you get used to them, but no, none of them are bread. I guess in the end my solution is this: Since I don’t have an allergic reaction to gluten, just the IBS type symptoms I’ve lived with most my adult life, I hold the idea in my hip pocket that when I just can’t take it anymore I will have a slice of the most fabulous bread in the world and then walk away again. So far I haven’t had to cash in on that . I’m still enjoying more the wonders of what going without gluten are doing for my body and my self-esteem. (More on that another time).
Good Quality Gluten and Wheat-Free Pasta
I rarely make specific recommendations, but I’m going to make an exception on this pasta.
A friend of mine is trying to go gluten-free. It has not been easy for her and I want to do what I can to support her during this. We were discussing the options out there when she told me about a wheat-free, gluten-free pasta she’d found that she felt was as good as any high quality wheat pasta out there. I decided to try it when I made tonight’s menu and was very pleased. The texture was perfectly al dente, not mushy or slimy and the taste was really good, like a high quality pasta.
It’s not cheap, by any means, but when you can have pasta on a gluten-free diet, it is worth I believe.
The pasta is from a company called Tinkyada and it’s a brown rice/rice bran pasta. It comes in several styles, spaghetti, linguine, spirals, macaroni and penne. If you’re looking for a wheat free pasta, I can recommend this one.
TaMara
jeffreyww
LFern7
indylib
