Spiced bread and butter pudding - dairy and gluten free

I bought a loaf of Marks and Spencer's 'Made without wheat' Fruit bread.  I wondered how well it would work in a bread and butter pudding, so I took four slices of this bread, added egg and rice milk, raisins, sugar and spice and baked in a medium oven for twenty minutes. I skipped the butter to make this dairy free. In this case I used too little milk, so the pudding was a touch drier than it should have been.  Apart from that it was soft and delicious inside  with a crisp sugary topping.  For anyone missing bread and butter pudding this would be a good choice.  It didn't go to crumb or claggy, and absorbed the liquid very well.

Ingredients
4 slices fruit bread
2 eggs
enough milk to cover the bread when lightly compressed - try 250ml -I used rice milk
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp mixed spice
1 tbsp raisins
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp oil

Mix the egg, milk, oil, spice and sugar together
Place four slices of bread in an oven proof dish.  You can make it fancy, neat or just cut roughly and pile in.  Sprinkle the raisins between the bits of bread.
Pour over flavoured milk mixture.
Sprinkle with a bit more sugar to give a crisp topping.

Bake for 20-25 minutes in a medium oven, about 170C.

Summer berry cobbler, gf, tapioca free and corn free

I've given up eating foods make with my new tapioca free flour blend as I think the buckwheat causes me gut ache.  However, I have a batch already ground and mixed to use up, so I have been continuing to test it with some of my usual recipes; others will have to eat them.  I'm planning to test my oreo-style cookies for when the grandchildren visit next week.

This fruit cobbler is one of our standard puddings -good with apples in the winter and raspberries in the summer, or any other of fruit you have handy.  This cobbler is made with cherries (still have a few morello cherries in the freezer from our trees last year), and frozen blueberries and raspberries from the store.  The combination of the lousy weather and the sprained ankle means I haven't been to any pick-your-own fruit farms this year.

Oven 175C fan

adjust the proportion of fruit to cake to your own taste

Ingredients
600g fruit
75g sugar (to your own taste and depends on the ripeness and type of fruit used)

175g flour (this is one third each buckwheat, urid and brown rice)
4tsp baking powder
75g sugar
75g butter or other fat suitable for baking
1 egg
150 ml milk - I used rice milk

Mix fruit with sugar and put in a dish with plenty of extra room.  Don't be tempted to squeeze it into a dish that doesn't leave plenty of head room as the fruit will bubble up past the cake in the oven and make a mess.

Mix flour, baking powder and sugar together.  Mix in butter by rubbing into the fat with your finger tips, or whizz in a food mixer.  Stir in egg and milk.  It should make a batter that is easy to dollop onto the fruit. Add more milk if needed, or if you want to increase the protein levels use an exra egg and less milk.

Spoon carefully onto the fruit.  Bake at 175 for about 45 minutes.

If the top is getting brown before the cake is cooked lower the heat.  You can test for doneness by sticking a knife in - you shouldn't see any gooey cake mixture.

If you put the batter onto frozen fruit the pudding will need longer for the cake next to the fruit to cook.

Serve hot or cold.  This pudding freezes well.

Gallette - traditional Breton pancakes made with buckwheat

It is a while since I had buckwheat pancakes so I checked the recipes available.  Most suggest wheat flour with a quarter or so buckwheat.  I presume people do this to moderate the distinctive flavour of buckwheat.   I made these pancakes with plain buckwheat flour, which despite its name has nothing to do with the wheat family and is naturally gluten free.  I also skipped the large amount of melted butter some recipes called for, using a little vegetable oil, and substituted dairy milk for rice milk, making these dairy/lactose free as well.

I ate mine with homemade apple sauce and grape jelly.  Rod ate his with grated Gruyere and pepperoni, folded and left on the pan to melt the cheese.

These were delicious and simple to make.  We used the traditional wooden tools bought decades ago on holiday in Brittany, but you can spread the batter with the back of a spoon, and turn using a spatula.  Our flat crepe pan, used for nearly thirty years, is made of aluminium so won't work on the induction hob in the new flat.  We used our old cast iron griddle, which worked a little less well as edges are a bit roughened by use for many different forms of bread and pancakes over the years.  An ordinary frying pan would be fine.

For two people - as a main meal, or four as desert

200g buckwheat flour
1 egg
1 tbsp oil
400ml rice or other milk.  This is two of the small cartons I keep in the pantry.

Mix all the ingredients together and let it rest for a while.  The recipe I was basing this on said an hour but I used my batter after ten minutes.

Heat a pan, lightly grease and pour a small amount of batter and spread it out.  You could also increase the liquid to a pouring, swirling consistency and just tip the pan to spread.

Cook on a medium heat until browned on the first side, then turn and cook on the second.  Stack and keep warm or eat as they come off the stove.  If you make too many wrap and keep in the freezer.  They can be microwaved quickly and used as wanted.