High fibre prune and flaxseed gluten free cookies

I know some people with coeliac disease have a need for more fibre.  These cookies are made with prunes and flaxseed, both helpful in preventing constipation.  They taste great, and are an easy way to add these ingredients into your diet without noticing them.

Makes about 20 cookies - about 8cm across.

These have a warm subtle flavour - my usual taster is very good at describing foods and analysing distinct flavours.  With these he just kept saying they taste really good!  They have a warm, subtle flavour with bursts of tart juiciness from the cranberries.  Add more spice or cocoa to adjust the flavour if you want.

Oven at 175C fan

Ingredients:
1 small tub prunes - these are 120g breakfast pots, prunes in fruit juice
2 eggs
40g oil
100g muscadovo sugar (lighter sugar will give a paler cookie)
50g flax seed, milled
10g cocoa
100g self raising flour (I use 40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20%cornmeal, with 1tsp baking powder to 100g flour)
2 tsp mixed spice
100g dried cranberries or other dried fruit

Blitz the prunes in a blender or chop.  Mix with the eggs and oil then add the sugar, spice, cocoa and flour.  Finally stir in the cranberries.  Place dollops on a baking sheet, preferably lined with baking parchment or reusable silicone.  Cook for 12 minutes at 175C. Cool on a baking rack.

Guests to tea and no baking

I have been trying to give up my obsession with baking.  Doesn't feel the same in my tiny new kitchen and there isn't anywhere to freeze supplies if I bake in bulk.

I was having visitors yesterday afternoon and bought baked goods from M&S and my local speciality foods (allergy etc) store.   I was astonished that two of the biscuits from different manufacturers looked identical except for the colour (one was coffee flavoured) but was told this was perfectly normal.  I thought it suggested a single maker and branding - not that I object, was just surprised.

I was never much of a fan of ordinary shop-bought biscuits, especially after one Christmas where we went skiing in a hurry and left some foods on the table, coming back to find that the mice had managed to get up onto what we thought was a mouse proof zone, and had eaten all the biscuits that were like home made ones and the open tin of standard biscuits hadn't been touched,  I figure if mice think biscuits aren't food that is sufficient information for me to stay away.

A quick trip to M&S and I came away with an almond frangipan cake and some pecan, chocolate and caramel shortbread type biscuits made with cornmeal.  The frangipan good, moist and held together adequately, and had no odd ingredients.  The shortbread was gritty, as things made with cornmeal often are.  I do use cornmeal in a mix with other ingredients, but do find it difficult to find fine-milled cornmeal rather than course ground.  The general view was the topping was good but the grittiness was unpleasant.  I found the topping too sweet.  I would be happy to buy both of these in the future.

The biscuits were plain and coffee flavoured simple biscuits - the kind I think of as dull.  They were boring in flavour and texture, and they went to a slightly claggy paste in the mouth.  My gluten eater who gave me feedback said they were ok.  I suspect for people who want a biscuit with a cup of milky sweet tea they would be fine.

The lemon wafers were astonishing.  My gluten eater who gave me feedback said they seemed like a fishy lemon flavour.  I didn't notice the fishiness, but the lemon oil flavour was overwhelming.  I have bottles of oils for use in massage and these wafers were exactly like neat lemon oil which I sometimes use as a room scent if I need to concentrate.  So - too much like a floor cleaner is probably the easiest way to think of them. The texture was very entertaining, crisp then melted.  If your mouth is yearning for a wafer these will be a good purchase.

The weird flavours and textures didn't stop me munching quite a few of these over the course of the afternoon and evening.

So, a whole bit of text about food that I haven't made myself in my gf kitchen and so far no mention of guts.  Too late.  Spent a good chunk of the night on the loo, and feeling a bit ropey this morning,  No idea what caused the problem as these foods didn't have anything I know causes trouble, especially in small quantities.  I haven't been glutened as I don't have the fever and rash and all the other symptoms.  Perhaps I am just suffering from greed.

The amazing thing about this offering of cakes and biscuits is that it was possible, and I didn't even buy some of everything available.  There is now a choice of gf treat food available from normal high street stores, the packaging looks as if the manufacturers think of it as food and not DIY products, and the quality is acceptable.  If I had given up gluten recently rather than several years ago I would probably never have spent those hundreds of hours searching for an acceptable way to make baked goods.  I still think my flour mix is superior to the others available, and I still regret the industries liberal use of gums to provide cohesion, but things have come a long way.

.....
the weird lemony wafers give me gut ache so won't be buying them again.  The other biscuits are just too uninteresting to be worth the house space...but if you don't like baking you could at least use them as the base for a cheesecake or make that muddled up thing with chocolate and marshmallows.  The cakes were the best of the lot.

Hazelnut and chocolate chip cookies

Spotted that the hazelnut packet said high in iron (though not as high as almonds when I check)...rather eat hazelnuts than pigeon, so into the shopping trolley they went.  There are no cookies of any description in the house and I am expecting guests tomorrow, so the first thing to do is make some cookies using whole hazelnuts for crunch and hazelnut flour, blitzing the hazelnuts in the blender.

100g flour (40%urid lentil, 40% tapioca, 20% corn)
65g butter
75g sugar
50g hazelnuts blitzed to flour
50g whole or lightly chopped hazelnuts
50g chocolate chips ( I used dark, soften flavour if wanted with milk or white chocolate)
c 1tbsp water with a couple of drops of vanilla essence

Cut butter in to flour, stir in sugar and blitzed hazelnuts, stir in chocolate chips and whole hazelnuts.  Add cold water/ vanilla mix a little at a time until you get a dough that holds together.  If you leave this to sit for at least fifteen minutes for the flour to absorb the water it makes it a little easier to handle.  If it is a bit too gooey you can firm it up with a bit more flour or by cooling in the fridge.

I made some of these into log shaped cookies, which keeps the hazelnuts whole.  I put the rest of the mix away in the fridge, and the next morning sliced the now very firm log of cookie dough into discs. Slicing the cookies cuts the hazelnuts, so you end up with a pretty cookie with little discs of hazelnut and chocolate.

Cook on ungreased baking sheet or baking parchment in a fan oven at about 170C.  Cooke for about ten minutes until they are tinged with brown.  Cook longer at a lower heat for a crisper cookie.

Made about ten cookies.

After I made these I looked up recipes on the Internet - they all said that the papery brown skin around the nut was bitter and needed removing before cooking (toast in oven and rub skin off, then separate nut from debris).  I also used bitter chocolate.  I like bitter flavours, but wondered if they would be too bitter for my guests, but even the nine year old thought they were scrummy.

Almond and blueberry cookies

A vegan guest at a party, so a quick cakey biscuit.

tapioca gel made with 10g tapioca (1 tbsp) and 100 ml water, mix and cook until clear, cool
150g flour (40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)
50g blueberries (dried)
50g vegan margarine
50g sugar
50g flaked almonds plus extra for the top


Mix flour into gel, mix in sugar and margarine, stir in blueberries, then carefully stir in flaked almonds.  Spoon small mounds on a lined baking sheet or spread in a tin to cut into bars. Lightly pat extra flaked almonds on top.  I made fifteen cookies from this batch of dough.

Cook for 20 minutes at 170C until golden brown.

Delicious cookies - definitely a make again recipe.

flourless peanut butter cookies

peanut butter gf cookies

I got an urgent plea this morning from my sister.  Could I tell her how to make gluten-free peanut butter cookies as she was dreaming of them.  She needed a recipe without any complicated flours, as all she had was cornflour (not cornmeal) and rice flour.  I remembered a blog by glutenfreegirl, so posted a link immediately.  I then set out to try these myself.

The recipe is very simple, calling for 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of peanut butter (smooth), 1 egg and 1 tsp of baking powder.  Those of us who are used to weighing ingredients might wonder what a cup meant, so I measured.

1 cup of the sugar I used (golden caster sugar) is 200g
1 cup of peanut butter ( I used crunchy) is 230g.  The jar I have is 454g, so just scoop half the jar full into your bowl and save mess.  I can't see that the precise amount will make any difference to the outcome, and a bit less washing up is always welcome.  If you use the kind of peanut butter that already has sugar added you may want to cut down the sugar.

Stir all the ingredients together and roll into little balls.  Roll these in sugar and place on a lined baking sheet.  I tried one tray where I left the balls round and another where I pressed the cookies lightly with my fingers to flatten.  The end results are the same.  Leave as balls if you want, but if you like pressing them, feel free to do so. (The next time I made them I just just dolloped the mix onto the baking tray with two teaspoons - less messy to do and gives a freeform biscuit that is attractive).

Cook at 180C for ten minutes.  Take the trays out and leave to set for five minutes before you move onto the cooling rack.

When cold, enjoy.  I coated some of these in a bit of melted chocolate for an extra bit of decadence.

The texture of these is very good, crisp and slightly chewy.  They are slightly too sweet for my taste, but with bitter chocolate they work very well.

swirled chocolate on bottom of cookie

These are so good I don't think I'd bother trying any other recipe - they take about a minute to mix, ten to cook, and ready to eat, still warm but getting crisp, five minutes later.  With the chocolate - a minute in the freezer sets the one you can't wait to eat.