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.

Gluten-free Granary style bagels and bread - tapioca free experiment

bagel-shaped rolls   baked only

So, the challenge is on to produce a range of foodstuffs without tapioca as well as without gluten.  I thought I would try a wholegrain style bread, using brown rice flour instead of my usual tapioca.

I was aiming at a warm toasty sort of flavour.

I made up a dough using my usual technique, intending to make bagels.

I made one small loaf to test the flavour, without the egg, and it worked very well.  It produced a bread that sliced easily, made a cheese and tomato sandwich without disintegrating, and tasted rather like a brown sourdough loaf but a bit damper.

I then added the usual egg and some more brown rice flour to the batter and left it to rise.

risen dough

When I came to shape the bagels the dough was a lot softer than it would have been with the same amount of tapioca flour - tapioca doughs seem to dry out and slightly set when left.  I ran out of the rice flour so just made very soft bagels, which would have held together in the boiling water if made with tapioca. Tapioca gelatinises on contact with the boiling water and the rice flour doesn't.  I should have used some cornflour to produce this effect.  I'll try that next time.

bagels disintegrating

I scooped the disintegrating bagels out of the water and baked them in a giant puddle.  I figured they would do well for producing breadcrumbs if nothing else.

The remaining dough was baked in small rolls (bagel shaped- the ones that hadn't made it into the water) and loaf tins.

texture of the egg-free bread

When I get a tapioca-free recipe to work I'll post it.

Ingredients
500g brown rice flour
400g urid flour
50g pecans - ground
50g quinoa flakes
50g ground almonds
80g sprouted buckwheat flour
20g sprouted linseed flour
30g sunflower seeds - ground
2 eggs
1 tsp cocoa
2 tsp date syrup
2 tsp yeast
water to make a dough that just held its shape

So, as a loaf, this works very well.


As bagels - definitely doesn't hold its shape in the water.  Further tests required.

I have run out of the sprouted buckwheat flour I made and probably wont make any more in the near future.  It is a very flavoursome flour, with a sweet taste.  If you have been missing malty tastes this would be worth your trying as it is easy but takes time for the buckwheat to grow and then dry.