Boozy cranberry and lemon gluten free cookies

I bought a bottle of sherry for a visit from my brother-in-law but it turns out he only drinks one variety.  What to do with a bottle of sherry?  What to do with the diminishing but still present stash of dried cranberries?  What to do for the Writer's Group party this evening?  Boozy cranberry and lemon cookies seemed the thing to try.  I soaked the cranberries in sherry so that they were plump and juicy. As I had run out of eggs these are an egg-free cookie.  The result?  A crunchy cookie with succulent berries and a good bit of zing.

200g flour (40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)
2 tsp baking powder
80g butter
115g sugar
juice 2 lemons
rind 1 lemon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp mixed spice
100g cranberries - soaked in alcohol (or juice) of choice

Mix dry ingredients including zest
rub in butter (or stir in soft margarine if used)
Stir in lemon juice and cranberries.  Add more juice if needed to make the dough hold together.

Place dollops on a baking sheet or roll between your palms for a smoother shape. Makes about 40 cookies.

Bake for about twelve minutes at 180C fan.  Let them cool slightly on the baking sheet or baking parchment to make them easier to handle before sliding them onto a cooling rack.  If you want them crisper put back in the oven at a lower temperature - the same way you would make biscotti.

Turkey alternatives- vegan quinoa, butternut squash and cashew nut roast

It is always a good idea to have an alternative to turkey as people may be vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian or just not like turkey.  I had a look at a few recipes on the internet, including the useful evaluative series at the Guardian. I wanted to use roasted butternut and cashew, so also looked at the River Cottage nut roast.  I also fancied including cranberries, and found this pretty-looking recipe from Jamie Oliver.  I wanted this dish to be a complete protein source - it seems to me that too often the vegetarian option in restaurants hasn't thought through either the flavour balance or the nutrient balance.

I made two versions, I'll post the second, including mushrooms, later.
I cooked a whole 300g bag of qunioa, rinsing thoroughly first, to make both recipes.
I cooked 300g of fresh cranberries for a couple of minutes with the juice of a satsuma, 1tbsp sugar and 1 tbsp chilli jam.  This was used in both recipes.

Ingredients
600g cooked quinoa
250 roasted butternut squash (peel, chop, rub with oil, roast in hot oven half hour)
250g cashew nuts, chopped (quick blast in blender, be careful not to powder)
1 red onion, chopped, cooked until soft in 1 tbsp oil
1 tsp mixed herbs
1 tsp vegetable bouillon powder (make sure gf)
1/4 tsp ground cumin
1/4tsp pepper

cranberry 'topping'

Mix all the ingredients and check seasoning. As you stir the mixture the butternut squash pieces will break up  If any are too large just cut them. You want a mixture with some contrast but no large lumps.

You can eat this as it is to test or fry a small blob to give a crisp outer to test what it will be like when baked. You may well want more salt as I eat very little (just enough to stop my tendency to low blood pressure). You may also want to reduce or remove the cumin if you don't like its distinctive earthy taste. Try some sage as an alternative.

Place a layer of the cranberries in the bottom of your dish and pack the quinoa mixture on top.  I used individual baking cases - the sort often used for lemon drizzle, as some of these are being given away.  I made eleven individual nut roasts from this mixture, filling the containers to just below the surface. Drizzle a little oil on top to help it go crisp and brown when baked.

before baking

Bake in the oven with other things you are cooking for about 20 minutes.  These can be frozen; just get out of the freezer a couple of hours before you want to cook them if they are the individual size. These tiny individual portions are easy to tuck in next to other items.  Leave them to rest ten minutes before serving.

This nut roast has a light flavour and slightly crumbly texture.  It would go well with the other traditional items on a Christmas dinner.  Just remember to have some gf vegan gravy to go wit it.

Nut roast - a handy food for gf vegetarians - guests or visits

I was strolling around Worcester (UK) this evening as it is their Victorian Christmas Fair - the centre of town is thronged with stalls, stallholders wearing Victorian- style clothing.  There were lots of food stalls selling burgers and sausages in buns (and yes, the burgers had cereal in, I checked), pizza, dutch pancakes, french crepes, Balinese spring rolls, Spanish churros....I could have had hot chestnuts but preferred to just watch others eating and kept myself safe.

Then I came across Nevins Speciality Foods selling gluten free nut roasts. They are a new business and their website is not up and running yet (Dec 2012) but will be www.nevinsspecialityfoods.co.uk.  I bought a Cranberry and Chestnut nut roast.  The individually packed in paper baking cases and plastic wrap, and look inviting.  They have breadcrumbs in, made with Doves Farm flour and no xanthum gum.   There are other flavours, but those had dairy in so I didn't try them.

These individual nut roasts (though they would serve two unless you had been tramping miles or had nothing else with them) can be frozen.

This one had a firm though not hard texture, a moist middle, and a sweet and savoury flavour that would make it very versatile.  The chestnut flavour did not dominate.

An excellent addition to the convenience foods available to the gluten avoider.

As these are currently being sold at venue direct from maker to consumer the labels do not list all the ingredients.  For example, this nut roast does have dairy in the breadcrumb, but it isn't listed.  Be a little cautious and quiz the seller if you are very sensitive.

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a few minutes after eating this I got an allergic reaction.  Very odd, as I don't normally have allergic reactions to any foods.  I am allergic to Erythromycin and zinc oxide...but those aren't going to be in a nut roast.  Will phone and get more details.  

After the phone call- no idea what caused the problem.  I should eat the remainder of the nut roast today to check that I get the same reaction, but don't feel inclined to to this.  Spoke to the maker, can't figure out what caused it as nothing in the food that would worry me.  Maybe there was an airborne allergen in the market area that produced a reaction after I got back - I do react powerfully to insect bites, stinging nettles etc so just possible some strange product floating off the Christmas wreath, strings of dried oranges, scented candles etc.

Gluten free cranberry and hazlenut biscotti

These hazlenut biscotti have a warm, complex flavour with a lighter texture than my usual biscotti.  They have a hint of cinnamon but if you want a spicier flavour just add more spice, perhaps with mixed spice or ginger as well as the cinnamon.  If you like an iced biscotti, making a glace icing with icing sugar and ginger wine would work well.

Ingredients
150g hazlenuts, toasted, skins scruffled off and lightly chopped
150g pine kernals, lightly toasted
150g dried cranberries
250g sugar
150g ground almonds
150g flour (40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla.

Set oven to 175C.

Mix the flours, sugar, baking powder and spice together.  Stir in the egg and vanilla.  It should make a stiffish dough.  Mix in chopped nuts, pine kernal and cranberries.  This can be hard work; I tend to just smush it all together with my hands.  If you are using a food mixer it should be easy but add the nuts with the machine on a very low setting or they will tend to fly out around the room.

Make four logs of the dough on two parchment lined baking sheets. Cook at 175C for about fifteen minutes.  The outside will be getting crisp but the middle will be gooey. Let the logs cool for a few minutes then cut into slices and rebake for another ten minutes or so. You can leave the biscotti between the two stages of cooking if that is more convenient- this will also make the biscotti more easy to handle.

Cool on a baking rack.  Store in airtight container.  These keep very well - I have kept them for a couple of months without any reduction in the quality.

Lemon, ginger and cranberry gluten free cookies

I woke up with a sore throat this morning.  Best cure I know for feeling a bit glum is to bake something scrumptious.  I have a stash of dried cranberries that need using, so had a quick look to see if I could find some crunchy cookies using these.  The first few recipes were oats with cranberries and didn't look that interesting.  Then I found these lemon ginger and cranberry cookies.  Lemon and ginger sounds like a cold remedy...so why not a cookie based on these.

The lemon flavour is the strongest when these cookies are freshly made.  I expect the ginger flavour will develop later - at the moment the ginger is just a lingering hint in the mouth after the cookie has been eaten. The cookie is crisp on the outside, slightly crumbly in the middle, and the juicy cranberries give a lovely contrast.  The whole house smells delicious - a bit of aromatherapy as well as the occupational therapy.

For people without a flour grinder, I recently asked the company I buy my urid lentils from whether their urid lentil flour still came with an advisory that it was milled in a factory that also handles wheat.  This no longer appears on the packaging so this should mean that they are safe for even those with extreme sensitivity.

The original recipe uses the creaming method.  I rarely plan ahead so don't have room temperature butter.  I rubbed in the butter to the flour by hand, but if you have a food processor just whizz until mixed into the dry ingredients.


200g flour (40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)
2tsp baking powder (this is the mix I use as my standard self raising flour)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
80g sugar (add a bit more if you like extra sweet cookies)
80g butter
30g fresh ginger, grated
1 lemon, rind grated and juiced
2 eggs
100g dried cranberries

Set oven to 175C fan.  Line cookie sheets with baking parchment or use ungreased.

Mix all dry ingredients except the dried cranberries.  Mix in butter - rub in if cold, beat in if soft, or whizz in food processor.
Add in the eggs, beat, add in lemon juice and grated ginger.  Stir in dried cranberries.

Place on baking sheet in dollops.  I used two desert spoons for this, which gives  20 cookies about 7cm/3inches across.

Bake for 12-15 minutes until the edges are browning.  If you like very crisp cookies you can bake for longer at a lower temperature.

These are really good cookies, and will be part of my standard repertoire from now on.

gluten free spiced apple, cranberry and blueberry cake

This cake is sweet and tart with just a hint of spice.  It has plenty of fruit but isn't a solid wodge of dried fruit like some cakes of the wedding/christmas cake variety.

Many of my recipes happen in a slightly random way, driven by things that need using up.  Today I found I had seven small apples from a batch that hadn't been as crisp as expected, and were beginning to look a bit sorry for themselves, a large mandarin orange that had lost its gloss, and a husband that keeps wanting lunch early as there is no cake to go with his mid-morning coffee.

A large fruit cake seemed the obvious way to solve all of these problems.  I had already cooked the apples, chopped but not peeled, in with the orange juice and zest, before I decided to make the cake.  You wouldnt need to cook them first if you prefer the apple to stay in chunks in the finished cake.

Set oven at 170C fan
Grease and line two large cake tins.  I used a long pullman loaf tin (the lid is handy if the top starts to get too brown) which has a capacity of 3.5l and an ordinary one pound loaf tin (750ml) to fit all the mixture in.  I like to make a small cake for immediate eating and a larger one to mature, though having two different sizes means you have to keep an eye on how cooked they are as they will need different times.

Ingredients
500g cooked/chopped apples
juice and zest one small orange
500g dried blueberries
500g dried cranberries
8 eggs
300g soft brown sugar
250g soft butter (I keep mine in the freezer, so just zapped it on medium heat in the microwave - not so good for the precise temperatures needed for creaming, but fine for just mixing in)
400g flour
5 tsp baking powder
4tsp mixed spice

The flour used in this was 300g of my current flour mix(1/3 each urid lentil, brown rice and buckwheat) and an extra 100g urid lentil flour.  I ran out of flour and didn't want to make a fresh batch - so considering how much fruit there was in this cake just added extra urid as it will help hold it together.  I am sure 400g of the standard mix would have been fine.

Whisk the flour, baking powder and spice together.  Mix all the other ingredients together.  Stir together.  Put mix in greased lined tins and bake.

The smaller cake took an hour to cook.  Test with a  skewer or fine knife.  I use a knife even though I get a bigger hole as I find it easier to see the cake residue.  I turned the heat down to 150C and cooked the larger cake for a further half an hour.

Cool on a rack.

Good immediately; will keep well.

Whole Meal muffins

I have been trying out recipes using flour mixes that do not contain tapioca or corn.  These muffins were made with urid lentil flour, buckwheat flour and brown rice flour.  The first two I ground myself, the third I bought as flour.  I also included quinoa.  This was cooked whole and added to the mixture rather than using the flour.  I find quinoa, whilst excellent in terms of being a complete protein, can give foods a slightly acrid taste.  To avoid this the quinoa should be rinsed before use.  If I really need flour I then dry the quinoa in a low oven before grinding.  In this case the nature of the muffin meant that leaving it whole would be fine.  I have found in the past that if I use uncooked whole quinoa in muffins the texture tends to be coarse, with the quinoa staying too hard.  In a  slow fermented batter this would not be a problem.

I added banana, grated carrot, dried fruit, pumpkin and linseeds to the batter as well as egg and a little oil. These muffins are high in protein and would make a good emergency meal if travelling - hence another reason to call them 'Whole Meal muffins'.  You get your protein, fruit and vegetables in one neat package, with no added refined sugar and very little fat.  I use a little oil as it helps the muffin to keep moist if not eaten immediately.

These were a little denser than I would have like. In future I would add some juice or water to make a sloppier batter, which would aid rising, and add another teaspoon of baking powder.

If you want a sweeter muffin just add a little sugar or syrup of your choice.  To check this you can cook a tiny bit of the batter in a frying pan to see what it will be like.

Makes 12 large muffins
Set oven at 175C

Ingredients
150g flour - 1/3 urid, 1/3 buckwheat, 1/3 brown rice
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp mixed spice
2 eggs
2 ripe bananas mashed (2 small - 165g)
1 large carrot, grated (100g)
20g linseeds
30g pumpkin seeds
80g cranberries
80g blueberries (or other dried fruit)
50g sunflower oil

Topping
20g pumpkin seeds
10g agave or other sweet syrup

Method
Whisk dry ingredients together

Mix all the remaining ingredients except the optional topping together

Mix wet and dry ingredients together and put in muffin cases.

Put a few sticky pumpkin seeds on top of each muffin.  This gives a crisp burst of sweetness on each muffin.

Bake at 175C for 25 minutes

Freeze when cool and use as needed. I find 20secs in a microwave is adequate to defrost them, or pack in your lunch box frozen where they will keep everything else chilled as they defrost.

gf bread without tapioca - first tests

I started testing bread recipes using a flour mix that has no tapioca in.  For a long time I have used a standard flour mix with urid lentils, tapioca and cornmeal that gives very good results.  However, my step-daughter seems to be unable to tolerate the tapioca, and I know that some people do find this flour difficult.

What with my travels, catching up on normal life and then wrenching my foot badly my planned experiments took a back seat.  However, I tried a plain loaf and a fruited loaf the other day using one third each of the urid lentil flour, brown rice flour (which I just bought from the supermarket so do not know what kind of rice) and yellow cornmeal.  To 600g of this mix I added 1.5 tsp yeast, a tbsp of agave syrup and sufficient water to make a batter ( I think about 800ml).  I also included 30g of potato protein, which helps gf breads not slump, but this is not yet available to domestic consumers.  In the past I found that provided I kept breads below 5cm/2inches and didn't let them rise above the tin they were fine without this.

I poured the batter into the tins, left them to rise in a warm moist oven, and when they nearly reached the top of the tin put the oven on.  The loaves were baked for 50 minutes at 175C, the little rolls baked in muffin tins were baked for 25 minutes.  Remember that this includes the time taken for the oven to get hot.  I find that it is better to leave a gf loaf for longer than you think necessary rather than have an inadequately cooked middle, so if you don't feel sure the bread is done take it out of the tin and put back in the oven for a few more minutes.

The plain loaf did slump a little but does not have a layer of gluey dough.  It is ok to eat plain - just a bit more crumbly than my usual loaf.  I made good croutons with some diced bread, a squirt of oil and some garlic, baked until crisp.  Any left over bread can be turned into breadcrumbs and kept into the freezer until you want to crisply coat something.  Two days later it is still easy to slice without crumbling.

The second loaf and the buns were made from the same batter but with added ingredients.  As this was a first test, and my foot still wouldn't bear my weight, the recipe was an informal and unrecorded handful of this and that.  I added more sugar, some vanilla, a bit of cocoa, about a cupful of chopped dried apricots I had cooked with water to go with breakfast pancakes, some dried blueberries and cranberries.  I also added a tablespoon of oil.  This mixture made a smooth loaf with good  holding qualities.  Two days later it still slices well and is moist without being cloying.  It is sufficiently good that I will work up a proper recipe.

The basic loaf needs a bit more work, but it is promising.  I found that tapioca gave a smooth chewiness to baked goods, whereas rice tended to give a gritty texture.   I always disliked Doves Farm flour for anything other than pancakes and choux pastry because things fell apart and had a lousy rough texture, and thought it was due to the rice.

I am hoping to create a bread mix as tasty and well-behaved as my usual lazy seedy bread. I think next time I will add buckwheat for the additional flavour a well as seeds.

really yummy accidental toffee biscotti- gluten free

I tried my usual biscotti recipe but using my standard flour a while ago.  I didn't like it as much as usual; the texture seemed rougher than usual.  Making my first batch of biscotti in my new flat I decided to go back to my usual mixture of urid, tapioca and almond for the biscotti. I went back to my source recipe, biscotti all a mandorle, in the River Cafe Cook Book Green, by Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers.  As my new kitchen is tiny, and the oven is too small for my baking trays, I reduced the recipe to needing only one egg.  I made the mistake of not writing down the quantities I would need, and what with dividing the flour quantity in two and then in thirds for the three flours I use, adding dried blueberries and cranberries, and generally getting in a tizzy because I couldn't find where I had put things like sugar, I made a mistake in the ingredients.  I forgot to halve the sugar.

When I mixed the dough I found I needed to add water to get a formable dough.  This was odd, as usually there is egg left over.  However, I added a bit of water and just carried on.  The dough took much longer than usual to cook, but was getting too brown on the outside.  With double the cooking time, then cooling, slicing and rebaking, it did take quite a while, and my initial impression was that the biscotti was too sweet to be pleasant.

However, the biscotti have matured into a delicious soft and slightly chewy biscuit with bursts of tart flavour from the dried fruit.  Sticky, toffeeish, and very tempting....I am not sure if I will be able to bring myself to make this recipe exactly this way again, but made as a mixture which is dolloped in small mounds on a baking tin and cooked long and slow, it may well become a standard favourite.

Recipe
75g flaked almonds (hadn't any of the usual whole almonds)
50g pine kernals
250g sugar ( I used granulated golden)
150 flour (50g tapioca, 50g urid, 50g almond)
1/4 tsp baking powder
50g dried blueberries
50g dried cranberries
1 egg

Toast the almond flakes and pine kernels for a few minutes until just going golden.  Move onto a new tray to cool before using.  If you leave them on a hot tray they may scorch and will take longer to cool.

Mix all the dry ingredients together.  Mix the egg and use this to make a batter stiff enough to mould into a log shape.  Add a bit of water if needed.

Place on a baking sheet in a log shape- I use a silicon liner or parchment to make the process easier..  Cook for about 25 minutes at 150C. I found that caramel oozed out around the mixture.  Leave to cool, slice and return to the oven until they are fully cooked.

Place on a cooling rack.  Store in an air-tight container when cool.

cranberry muffins: dairy and gluten-free

inside - bright berries and loose muffin texture

Busy cleaning out the fridge following the post-festivities gluttony.  There is still a lot of cranberry sauce - I like to make too much as it is depressing to serve a tiny portion and terrible to run out.  The vivid colour does a lot to counteract grey skies and low light levels.

What to do, what to do...invent a recipe for for cranberry and chestnut bread? Sounds a bit serious, so I'll try that later. The last of my carrot muffins got used up yesterday at Tolerant Taster's writers party, so I thought I'd try some cranberry muffins.

I found this recipe - very simple    http://www.cranberryrecipes.org/cranberry-muffins.html

and then read up in Alton Brown's 'I'm just here for More Food' baking book, which I am working my way through at the moment.  A bit of both and a bit of well that'll do produced these muffins.


300g flour (my mix is 40%urid lentils, 40% tapioca and 20% cornmeal)
9g / 3tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
pinch salt
1tsp cinnamon
zest of one orange

100g sugar
1/2 cup / 120ml veg oil
3 medium eggs
1 cup / 240ml juice.  I used 3/4 apple and 1/4 orange  (remember - I am tidying the fridge really)


1 cup 240ml cranberry sauce.  I didn't worry about the sugar or water in the cranberry sauce, muffins are quite forgiving.

Mix the dry ingredients together - either whisk, blitz in food mixer or sieve
mix  oil, eggs and sugar together
Mix the wet and dry ingredients together roughly and stir in the cranberries.

raw muffin batter- only just mixed

Put into paper muffin cases or greased muffin tins.  If you aren't very accurate and get some blobs of mixture on the tin just regard that as a way of finding out what a cookie made from the batter would be like.

Bake about 20-22  minutes at 170C fan or 180C.

I find muffins in general freeze well both cooked and raw.  If you freeze them raw you can bake from frozen or let them defrost, just make sure they are cooked all the way through by inserting a thin knife or skewer or using a temperature probe.  The interiors should reach 210F or 100C.

Flip them out onto a cooling rack so that they don't get soggy bottoms

cooked golden muffins

These are quite an interesting muffin, with the sourness of the cranberries and the hit of orange zest.  If you want a milder flavour leave out the zest.  If you are ok with dairy you could swap the fruit juice for plain yogurt.  You could add a bit more cranberries - next time I would put at least another half cup of the cranberry sauce in so that each bite had a cranberry in it.

So I was cleaning the kitchen....but now the sink is full of dirty dishes.  At least the house smells good and the fridge is a bit emptier.

Vegan cranberry and sweet potato muffin Gluten-free

Ingredients:

60g sugar

60g sunflower margarine

50g grated sweet potato (unpeeled)

30g cranberries

gel – 10g tapioca 60ml water

25g urid lentil flour

15g tapioca

15g polenta

1tsp baking powder

1/4tsp ginger

0.3tsp baking soda

Sift dry ingredients together. Mix in margarine then stir in sweet potato and cranberries. Mix in gel – this takes a bit of effort; just keep going until evenly dispersed. Place in muffin cases and bake for 25-30 minutes until crisp and golden on top and springy to touch. Oven temperature 170 degrees C.

These muffins are light and the cranberries shine like jewels. The hint of ginger isn't obvious, just adds a touch of warmth to the flavour.

Views of Mr Taster

"The fabric of the matrix holds together in a way that is much more like something with gluten in it. It is springy and doesn't collapse when you bite it or press it with your tongue, keeping its three dimensional structure. Sweetness is evenly distributed and the top has crunchy sweetness - did you sprinkle it with something? Works very well."