Waffles for breakfast

I fancied waffles for breakfast rather than our usual american pancakes.  It is almost the same mixture, but I beat the egg white to a stiff froth before stirring it in to the wet mixture.  The hard part about making waffles now is clambering into the roof-space cupboard to get the waffle baker, as the kitchen is too small to store intermittently used kit.

These waffles are light without being insubstantial, crisp on the outside and soft in the middle.  They freeze well so you can make a batch and have a few whenever you want.  If you have a toaster they can just be popped in frozen and come out ready to eat.

Ingredients
100g flour (this is my new mix avoiding corn - 40%urid, 40%tapioca and 20% brown rice flours)
1 tsp baking powder (this ratio of 1 tsp bp to 100g flour is my standard self raising flour)
1 tsp sugar
1 egg, separated
1 tsp oil
120ml rice or other milk

Prepare your waffle baker.  Set to a middle temperature setting.

Mix the dry ingredients together. Mix the egg yolk, milk and oil together.

Beat the egg white until stiff.

Fold the egg whites into batter.

Scoop the batter onto the baker, filling from the middle.  I find it better to have waffles that don't quite reach the edge than barge their way messily down the outside of the baker.

I found this mixture made one complete set of four waffles with a little left over.  Cook until golden brown and crisp.  Cool on a baking rack or send straight to plates.

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.

gluten free spaghetti test

Pasta test: Biofair organic fair trade rice and quinoa spaghetti (goodnessdirect.co.uk) and Le Veneziane corn spaghetti (Lavidafood.com)

I made two types of spaghetti to test this evening. I had intended to test three, but the Tesco organic wasn’t available in the shop when I went yesterday (unless I am imagining I have had their spaghetti? I usually buy their penne etc as it works very well). I served both with a Bolognese sauce made with a tub of mince and mushrooms from the freezer and a jar of Seeds of Change tomato and chilli sauce. After baking so many fruit cakes yesterday I didn’t feel like cooking, and I am still struggling to tidy up after the focus on the step-daughter’s wedding last week. My sister, Joy, had complained that her gf spaghetti tended to stick even if she used a bit of oil when cooking, so, of course, I immediately had to set out to find her a suitable product.

The corn pasta is bright yellow. The quinoa and rice psta is a pale brown.

The dishes are a bit splattered - I mixed the pasta in a dish that was a bit too small for elegance.

I know some of you out there can't eat quinoa, and some can't eat corn, but if you have a choice the comparison might be useful.

I followed the instructions for cooking on both packets. The quinoa one said cook for thirteen minutes, the other one three minutes stirring occasionally in an open pan then five minutes with lid on (though it did say turn off the heat and I forgot to). Both were mixed with same sauce and served from the same type of bowl.

Results

Views of Mr Taster, who tolerantly coped with two plates of food and quizzing…

“Both were passable, but the yellow one (corn) just was a little more chewy and took the flavour of the sauce better. The pale one was a little softer and didn’t quite hold its texture in the mouth so much though little difference, and it had a flattening effect on the flavour of the sauce – made it more neutral.”

Considering he usually doesn’t like to eat quinoa products in any form I thought this was remarkably positive.

My opinion

I thought that the corn spaghetti was considerably more bouncy. It didn’t seem to change in texture as the meal progressed, and I could still hold strands from high without any breakage fifteen minutes after the sauce went on. I liked the flavour of both though they were a little different.

The quinoa one definitely had an extra flavour level that seemed less usual for a Bolognese type dish, but it was very mild and you would probably have to be looking for it to notice.

I liked both, but the quinoa one was definitely getting mushier as the meal went on. I will check them later this evening both cold and reheated and give another view.

Preliminary test suggests that the corn retains its shape better and doesn’t stick together at all. This was the complaint I had had about other gf pasta.

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I checked a few hours later. The corn pasta was still firm and soft and could be lifted as full strands. It stayed this way after re-heating in the microwave. The quinoa pasta got steadily mushier, and could only be lifted as short strands particularly after re-heating. The flavour of both was still fine after four hours.