Quick microwave orange pudding, gluten and dairy free

Continuing my testing of puddings in the microwave (cheaper, quicker and easier) I made one with some fragrant zingy oranges.   Unfortunately not straight from a tree- yet another year where I haven't made it to Seville for the orange season.  I don't think this recipe is quite right yet - if anyone makes a variation on it that works well perhaps you could let me know.

I based the recipe on this recipe for self-saucing orange pudding.

Ingredients
zest one orange
juice 5 oranges (approx 250ml) - 40ml for batter, rest for sauce
100g self raising flour (40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal plus 1 rounded tsp baking powder)
80 g sugar - 40g for batter, 40g for sauce
40ml oil
1 egg

Mix the zest, oil, egg, 40g sugar and 40ml juice together.  Mix in flour.  Place batter in microwave safe bowl.

Mix remaining juice and sugar together.  Heat to dissolve sugar then bring to the boil.  Pour carefully over the pudding; it looks weird but that's what you do.

Cover in clingfilm, and cook on medium for 8 minutes.  Leave to sit for a few minutes, covered.

This pudding is quite fluffy but has a texture which reminds me slightly of dumplings.  The original recipe asked for melted butter, and a larger amount, which might have given a better texture.

Tastes good, worth doing again.

double ginger biscuits- gluten, nut and dairy free

I based these crisp chewy biscuits on this recipe.  I didn't have any bicarbonate of soda and didn't want to use butter, and of course I was using my gf flour mix rather than wheat.  I also added chopped crystallised ginger for an extra bit of texture and flavour.

Ingredients
100g flour ((40%urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)
2 tsp baking powder (twice as much as my usual for self raising- perhaps a bit much)
2 tsp ground ginger
75g sugar
30g crystallised ginger, chopped
1 overflowing tsp of golden syrup
1 egg
40ml oil
sugar crystals to sprinkle on top

Mix the dry ingredients together except for crystallised ginger
Mix egg and oil together
Mix dry and wet ingredients together thoroughly then add the syrup and ginger pieces.  Stir to mix.

Place dollops on baking sheets, lined with parchment paper. Leave plenty of room as they spread.  Sprinkle with sugar crystals if you have them.  Bake for about ten minutes at 175C fan.  Keep an eye on them and remove from the oven when they are a lovely golden colour - similar to the colour of the syrup.

Cool on a wire rack on the paper for a few minutes to begin to harden. They are too soft to take off the sheets immediately.  If you haven't used paper they will take longer to harden as the tin will hold the heat.

These biscuits are crisp and chewy, spicy and sweet.  My patient taster says they are among the best ginger biscuits he has ever tasted.

almost instant really easy steamed syrup pudding

Winter, river in flood, Wales lost at rugby...it seemed like a good day to have a sweet pudding.  I found a steamed syrup pudding recipe made in a microwave, and decided to try it.  I used to make steamed puddings in a pressure cooker when I was a student three decades ago, but now I don't even own a pudding basin, muslin, pressure cooker- though I probably could lay my hands on some string and I reckon I could still tie one of those double loop over the top to make a handle arrangements if I tried.

This recipe makes two good helpings or three if you are more restrained.

50g butter - I used soft spread to make creaming quicker
50g sugar
50g self raising flour (made from 40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal, and a rounded tsp of baking powder per 100g flour)
1 egg
1/4 tsp vanilla

3 tbsp Golden Syrup, jam, marmalade...whatever you want on the pudding.

Cream butter and sugar together.  Stir in egg and vanilla.  Mix in flour.
Put syrup in base of a microwave-safe bowl. Place batter on top of the syrup.  Cover bowl with cling film. It will balloon while cooking but don't worry, it turned out fine.

Cook on medium heat in a microwave for five minutes.

When you want to take off the clingfilm I recommend you stab it swiftly with a horizontal knife so that as it collapses the film lands on the knife rather than the pudding.

Serve with custard or eat plain.  I found it a bit sweet so sprinkled lemon juice on top, but Rod ate his with custard and gusto.  I don't think people would know it had been rustled up in a microwave and took less than ten minutes from having the idea to finding the recipe, making the batter, cooking and serving.

Banana butternut and choc chip muffins

The grocers were selling bags of over-ripe bananas today, so I set out to make some muffins.  I had a large butternut squash in the fridge and no dried fruit so I used the squash as part of the sweetener for the mixture.  I did add a little sugar as the bananas were not as ripe as I had hoped and I had only cooked the squash in the microwave so the sweetness didn't develop the way it does when it is roasted.

These are quite dense muffins.  I use them as handbag food so I like a nutritious non-messy muffin that can be eaten discretely and will keep me from feeling hungry for several hours.  If you want this lighter add some water or fruit juice to make the batter thinner.

Makes 18 muffins
Oven at 175C

Ingredients
400g over-ripe bananas (4 medium)
350 cooked butternut squash ( peel, chop, ten minutes in microwave)
350g flour (40%urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)
6 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp mixed spice
2 tsp cocoa
100g ground almonds
150ml oil
50g sugar or other sweetener
100g chocolate chips (I used dark to avoid the dairy)

30g sugar crystals plus 1/4 tsp mixed spice for topping

Smash the bananas and squash.
Mix the flour, baking powder and spices including cocoa together, whisk to ensure thoroughly mixed
Mix in almonds
Add oil, eggs and sugar to banana and squash mixture, stir well
Add dry ingredients to the banana mixture and stir thoroughly
Spoon into muffin cases

Sprinkle top with spiced sugar crystals if using.  Do this just before putting in the oven so that they don't dissolve before being cooked.

Bake for approximately 25 minutes if large, 17 for cupcake size

Cool on a wire rack. If you leave them in the tin you will get soggy bottoms.

These freeze very well.  Slip one in your bag in the morning, wrapped in plastic, and it will be defrosted for your mid-morning break.  They will keep for a few days in an airtight container.

If you can't eat nuts swap the ground almonds for more flour or just leave out for a lighter muffin.

gluten free lemon rosemary foccaccia

I got an email with recipe suggestions - most of these I ignore, but this one caught my eye.  Foccacia strewn with rosemary and slices of lemon.  They should be a specific type of lemon, not just old tired ones from the bottom of the fridge.  Comments on the original recipe were things like ' looking out of my kitchen window at the lemons on the tree....' but hey, any lemon is better than no lemon.

I have started keeping a batch of yeast dough in the fridge, so I can take scoops for pizza or flatbreads anytime.  It is so easy and produces good results.  I just mixed 500g of my flour (40%urid, 40% tapioca and 20% cornmeal) with two teaspoons of yeast which I mixed with about 600ml warm water and a pinch of sugar, stirring the whole load together once the yeast starts fermenting.  Easy blend yeast would be simpler - just stir into the flour and add water.

Keep this in a large lidded bowl in the fridge for up to a week.

Take a good scoop of the dough and spread on your baking tray.  I use my crepe pan for most of my flatbreads as I can crisp the bottom on the hob if I want to. If your baking tray isn't a good non-stick one I suggest spreading the dough on some baking parchment.

Topping
One lemon, sliced thinly and pips removed.
1 tsp olive oil - I used rosemary and chili infused oil
1/4 tsp sugar
pinch seasalt
tsp rosemary leaves

Spread the lemon slices on the dough, sprinkle remaining ingredients on top.  Let it sit for a little while if you have time for the dough to start rising a bit more.  Place in a cold oven, set to 180C, and bake for about twenty five minutes, until crisp and browning.  If you put it in a hot oven just reduce the time.

This is amazing, the heat and tartness and the zap of sweet give an astonishing flavour - but not, I suspect, if you aren't a lemon fan.  Those unfortunate people could eat the bits between the lemon slices.

Gluten free apple strudel recipes - testing pastry

It became a irresistible project - to try making apple strudel with four versions of pastry quite late this evening.  So, a quick look on the internet and the second hit was  a review of strudels by  Felicity Cloake in the  Guardian.  No doubt it would have been better if I remembered to check the recipe when I came to making the strudels - I forgot to brush the pastry with melted butter and then wondered how I was supposed to get all that butter on top of the rolled strudels.  Butter before filling would make the filling less likely to make the pastry soggy and help it to be flexible.  Buttering the baking sheet or using baking parchment would have made it less likely that the strudels would stick too.  This is what I get for making tests too late in the day.  I found a lot of liquid spilled off the baking sheet so it would be better to make this in a shallow tin like a swiss roll tin rather than a flat cookie sheet.

The flour used is my usual 40% urid lentil, 40% tapioca and 20% cornmeal.

I made four versions so I could test my usual flour, and then flour with some tapioca gel that I made for the purpose, some dry prejel tapioca and some Solanic Potato protein. In the past I found that the gel tapioca made it much easier to make very thin pastes for pasta, though I also found that these worked better without egg.  I didn't try a non-egg version this evening.

I mixed the egg and butter into the flour and then divided into four.  One portion was used plain, one had 7g prejel tapioca powder, one five g potato, and one a couple of teaspoons of the gel I made myself (enough to work into a dough).

The doughs handled very differently.  The gel I made myself gave a lovely flexible dough once the gel was worked into the flour mix.  The dry pre-gel tapioca and the plain flour took a bit more work to get a soft dough.  The batch made with the potato starch, which is excellent to reduce slumping in risen breads, was very different; I needed to add more flour as the amount of water I used with the others produced a slurry.  I must have used far too much in this test as it also made the pastry taste weird.

All four pastries rolled easily to a stage where I could see text through them - I didn't struggle to get a finer pastry by using clingfilm to avoid sticking.  I was aiming at a reasonable pastry that I would be prepared to make on a normal day rather than one which took a lot of preparation.

We liked the two pastries made with the gel/prejel tapioca best. The were light and crisp rather than hard.  The potato pastry cut the cleanest but was tough and tasted odd. It is a while since I used this and I am sure that I put too much in - when the strudel was cold it held together very well but was too hard to be inviting. The plain one was good enough that I would make this again without any additives, but compared to the prejel pastry it was a bit harder rather than crisp.

note very neat cut on pastry on left - potato starch

The tapioca versions also seemed to bring out the apple flavour compared to the plain flour.

I don't think the butter on top of the pastry improved the strudel much if at all so I wouldn't bother in future, especially since I keep my dairy intake very low.

I didn't sprinkle the top with nuts or sugar as I wanted the pastry to be easy to judge.  Flaked almonds on top would make the whole thing crisper and more flavoursome.

Overall I would say if you really fancy a strudel the plain flour will make an adequate pastry.  Of course it is years since I made a strudel or even ate one, so I may be making something that bears little resemblance to a proper wheat flour strudel.  However, if you want a rolled fruit filled thin pastry these are fine. If you can't get hold of pre-jel tapioca, which I got through a LinkedIn contact, making it yourself is easy and almost as good in this recipe.

To make tapioca gel
10g tapioca flour
100ml cold water
stir together then cook on a low heat stirring constantly until a clear gel.  Use this for flatbreads to make them easier to roll and more flexible when cold, to make pasta, particularly where you need to handle it such as ravioli.

Recipe
200g flour
1 egg
10g melted butter
water to make soft malleable dough

700g Apples - I used half granny smith and half braeburn, peeled and chopped
50g raisins soaked in 40ml liqueur (soak for a couple of hours if possible) drained
zest one lemon
50g sugar
1/2 tsp mixed spice

Method
Mix egg and melted butter into flour.  Add water (or gel) to form a dough.  Mix well - running dough through a pasta maker works very well or letting it bash in a food mixer, but I just squished it for a couple of minutes in my hands.  Wrap in clingfilm and let it sit for fifteen minutes at room temperature if possible to ensure the flours have absorbed the liquid.

Roll thin, using plenty of flour to stop it sticking to the worktop.

Mix filling ingredients together.

Place the filling along one edge and roll into a log.  Slide onto the baking sheet/tin.

Bake at 190C for 20-40 minutes depending on how large your strudels are.  I made four small strudels and they were cooked after twenty minutes.

Gluten free aduki and parsnip pie

It's time to clean my fridge and freezer so instead of going grocery shopping I am using up tag ends of foods. Today I found three slightly tired parsnips and a tub of aduki beans.  I had soaked and cooked a whole bag of beans a while ago and frozen them in tubs.  With a beautiful crisp and chilly day outside I thought a pie would be nice .  I used garlic, ginger and chilli in the vegetable mixture but also put half a teaspoon of madras curry paste in the pastry to give it a bit of zip.

These amounts serve three.  I made double the pastry needed and rolled and froze one portion (oh no, the freezer filling up again!).   You could make a double pastry pie rather than just a topping or halve the ingredients.

I served this with steamed savoy cabbage and pineapple cooked with cumin, chilli and soy.  Pineapple is another thing I usually have in my freezer.  When I buy a fresh pineapple I can't eat the whole thing in one go so freeze it in tubs.  In this dish it added a sweet/sour note which worked well with the spicy earthy flavour of the beans.  Pineapple can be chopped with a large knife while it is still frozen.

Ingredients
3 parsnips, peeled and chopped
1 cup cooked aduki beans (1.5 cups/one can)
1 tbsp chopped ginger
3 garlic cloves
1/2 tsp garam masala
2 tsp oil
1 tsp madras curry paste is wanted
1/4 tsp chilli

Fry parsnip and spices briefly then add water to cover and cook until beginning to soften.  Add beans and continue to cook, stirring regularly.  Once the beans are in the pot there is an increased tendency to catch and burn so I don't put them in at the beginning.  When cooked use a slotted spoon to fill your pie dish.  Keep the cooking liquor to make a gravy if you want.  I left some of the vegetables in the give a thick sauce and added a dash of soy to lift the flavour a little. Leave to cool while you make the pastry.

Pastry (use half quantities if you just want single layer of pastry on top and no leftovers)
100g flour (40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)
50g butter
approx 1-2  tbsp of cold water
1/2 tsp curry paste

Rub butter into flour.  Rub in the curry paste (or stir in curry powder if you prefer)
Add water and mix until you get a soft dough.  Don't leave it too dry or it will crack when you roll it.  Form a ball and leave the pastry to rest at room temperature for the flours to absorb the water. If you put it in the fridge it will be too hard to roll.

Roll pastry, cut around pie dish shape (I have two the same which makes this easy) and place on top of the bean mixture.  Bake for 30 minutes at 180C until crisp and just browning around the edges.

Cabbage side dish
Shred savoy cabbage and cook in very little water with the lid on.  Add 1/4 tsp cumin seed, dash of soy (make sure gf), pinch chilli and some pineapple if wanted to the pan at the start of the cooking so that the flavour permeates the cabbage.

Make a gravy with the cooking liquor by mashing a few of the vegetables into the stock and adjust seasoning if wanted.

Apricot and almond cookies

I used this apricot and nut recipe as a base for these golden cookies.  They are crisp, light and fluffy with a complex sweet flavour and small nuggets of chewy apricot.  I have iced some with a mixture of icing sugar and Amaretto liqueur.  Makes about 28 six cm cookies.

You can make the dough and keep it in the fridge for a while, or in the freezer and slice and bake as needed.

Fan oven 175C (after mixing and chilling)
Four baking sheets lined with parchment paper, or do two at a time.

Ingredients
50g almonds, slivered and toasted
25g pine kernels (or more almonds), toasted.
200g ready to eat dried apricots (partially rehydrated), chopped
100g butter, soft
100g sugar
200g self raising flour (40& urid, 40%tapioca, 20% cornmeal)

Toast the nuts and pine kernels lightly in the oven or a dry pan.  Don't put them in at the same time as the pine kernels will burn before the almonds change colour.
Mix butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Stir in egg
Stir in flour
Stir in fruit and nuts

Roll into a log on clingfilm, wrap and chill in the fridge for a couple of hours.  You can just dollop the dough onto the baking sheets which will give a less regularly shaped cookie.

Bake for 12-15 minutes until browning. Take care not to let them burn - the fruit at the edges has a tendency to go black before the rest is golden.

Cool on a rack.

If you want to ice them take two tablespoons of icing sugar and three or four teaspoons of amaretto, mix together until you have a sloppy icing.  Drizzle over cooled cookies and leave to set.

Ginger chocolate swiss roll

My mother-in-law is coming for Christmas lunch.   She doesn't like Christmas pudding and she doesn't like pastry (I was feeling tempted by a spicy apple pie).  She does like ginger chocolates, so much so that they are her standard Christmas and birthday gifts from her grandchildren, and a mother's day gift from me.  She allows herself one a day, and these gifts last her most of the year.

So, desert.....seemed like a ginger Swiss roll coated in chocolate so that it looked like a chocolate log would be traditional, festive and a good flavour combination.  Only thing is I don't think I have made a Swiss roll since I gave up gluten.  I made a light gingery sponge using  this recipe from Woman and Home, unusually for me I didn't even look at any other recipes.

The recipe is very simple.  The cake is mostly air, so it probably isn't worth trying to make if you don't have a stand mixer, or else accept that it will be a little less fluffy.

Cake ingredients
3 eggs
125g sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1tsp ground ginger
125g flour

Filling ingredients
80g Butter
100g white chocolate
150g icing sugar
25g crystallised ginger
3tbsp ginger syrup from stem ginger jar (if you haven't got any just cook some fresh or crystallised ginger in a little water with sugar)


Icing ingredients
85g Butter
85g dark chocolate
150g icing sugar

Crystallised ginger shreds for the top if wanted

Mix the eggs and sugar until they are light and fluffy.  This only takes about a minute in a stand mixer, but the recipe says do it for ten minutes until the mixture holds its shape when you lift the beater.  I kept  stopping and testing and.....and it did get a bit stiffer but not like a plain meringue mix.  Put the machine on full pelt somewhere safe and go do something else if you can bear to.

Mix the flour and spices together.  I whisk the mix rather than sieve as it is less effort and seems to work well.  Gently fold the flour and spice mixture into the egg and sugar mixture.  Try not to deflate too much so don't beat the mixture.  When reasonably well mixed spoon carefully into the prepared cake tin, smooth into the corners - it is quite stiff and sticky so it won't fill the tin by itself.

Bake at 180C for about fifteen minutes until just beginning to brown and just firm to the touch.  Lay out a piece of baking parchment bigger then the cake, sprinkle with sugar, and turn the sponge cake out onto this.  Remove the lining paper. It is a bit awkward, but any cracking can be hidden by the icing.  Roll the cake up immediately using the baking paper to help tuck the cake in place smoothly.  Don't include the paper in the roll. Place the roll seam side down on a baking rack and leave it to cool completely.

When cold, unroll gently, spread on filling and re-roll.  Spread chocolate icing over the whole surface and decorate in whatever jolly fashion you choose.

Filling
Melt butter, add chocolate and stir to melt over low heat, chop the crystallised ginger into thin slices and add with other ingredients.  Spread on cake while the icing is still warm.  Re-roll cake, wrap paper around cake as you roll and leave to set.

Icing
Melt butter, add chocolate and stir to melt over low heat. Sieve icing sugar and stir into chocolate butter mixture.  Spread over Swiss roll.  Leave to set. Decorate if you want.


The photos were taken a bit too soon so the icing was still a bit liquid even though cold.


............

I found this cake a bit too sweet for my taste.  If I made it again I would add extra ginger to the cake mix and some plain cocoa to the final icing.  My taste tester thought it didn't need cocoa when tested before icing, but agreed it would be better when trying the finished cake.  This would be good served with ginger ice cream.

The original recipe had a creme fraiche filling and this would be both more tart and lighter than the butter cream icing.  If you can manage the dairy this would probably work better.

The sponge cake worked well, with some cracks in the top but it held together.

.......

After it had time to set properly the flavour had also matured so that the ginger in the cake and icing became more obvious- a very good cake that got compliments from the ginger-nut it was intended for.  It sliced cleanly and thin slices held together well.

quinoa and mushroom loaf (nut roast/turkey substitute)

So, you have someone visit who won't eat the turkey and can't eat dairy or nuts...and they need all their food to be gluten free.  You still want to give them a delicious protein portion to go with their roast potatoes and sprouts...here is a possible solution.

I wrote up a recipe for quinoa, butternut squash and cashew loaf.  Using some of the batch of quinoa I had cooked for this and the cranberries I made a second nut-free version with mushrooms and egg. This is a mild savoury loaf with the mushrooms and quinoa held together by the batter produced from the flour and egg.  The quinoa texture is still discernable.  Test the flavour when you have made the mixture by frying a small amount.  Add more seasonings if you want a punchier flavour.

The quinoa, mushrooms and egg as well as the lentils in the flour combine to make this a high protein dish.


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 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

325 cooked quinoa (all that was left)

250g chestnut mushrooms, chopped

1 red onion, chopped

1 tbsp oil

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2 eggs

1 tbsp soy sauce (check gf- I use Sanchi Tamari)

pinch mixed herbs

1 red onion, chopped

50g flour ( 40%urid, 40%tapioca, 20%cornmeal)

Cook onions over gentle heat until soft.  Lift out of oil and use the same oil to cook the mushrooms until softened.  You may need to do this in batches.  Add more oil if needed. Cook the garlic in with the last batch of mushrooms.

Mix all the ingredients together.  The flour and egg will give a cakey mix to hold the quinoa and mushrooms together.

Dollop mixture into the prepared mini-loaf tins with cranberries at the base or cook in a large loaf tin lined with baking parchment.

Cook at 180C for 25 minutes.

This is very good cold.  It holds together well so would make a good lunch box or picnic food.

Marmalade loaf cake

Brought back a jar of marmalade from the storage unit made in 1999.  I prefer the crisp flavour of new marmalade but Rod likes this rick dark caramelly flavour.  I used half a jar to make him a cake using a recipe from the Telegraph as the base. This cake has a chewy toffee crust and gently orange middle.  Add more zest if you want a zingier cake.  I used satsumas as they were the only oranges I had.

I used half ordinary sugar and half a solid block of dark brown sugar which I had to dissolve slowly in the egg, so I didn't follow the creaming method fully.  I did cream the loose sugar, so for the first time in ages I got my food mixer out (thanks Lindsay).  The rest of the dissolved sugar and egg mix went into the mix after the butter and sugar was light and fluffy.

I added flaxseed as Rod's new pills mean he needs to increase his fibre intake.  It has the added benefit that I don't get tempted by these cakes as my delicate guts can't cope with flaxseed.

Loaf tin; 22cm by 12cm - traditional 1lb loaf tin, buttered and lined

Oven set to 175C fan

Ingredients
75g butter, room temperature.  If you are hasty and zap in the microwave be careful as the middle can become liquid before you realise
175 sugar (soft brown or other)
2 eggs
125g dark marmalade
zest of two satsumas and juice of one
175g self raising flour (40% urid, 40% tapioca and 20% cornmeal, with 1tsp of baking powder to 100g flour)
25g flaxseed (optional)


Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
add in the egg, juice and zest, beat, then add the marmalade
Stir in flour and flaxseed until evenly mixed

Spoon into the prepared tin and bake for 35- 45 minutes.  If it looks wobbly when you first open the door at 35 minutes leave it in.  It should leave a knife clean when you test it.

Leave in tin for ten minutes.  Peel off paper and cool on a rack.

Spiced plum cobbler

This cobbler has a light cake topping and a rich syrupy spiced plum base.

Ingredients
600g plums, chopped
4tbsp sugar
1tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
rind and juice of small orange

topping
100g self raising flour (40%urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal and 1tsp baking powder to 100g flour)
50g cold butter
50g sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 egg
rice or other milk to produce soft dropping batter


Cook the plum mixture until the plums are beginning to soften.  Place in either one medium pie dish or two smaller ones (I like to make two so I can freeze one).

Cut the cold butter into small pieces, toss in the flour, then rub together, either with your fingers or a quick whizz in a food processor.  Stir in the sugar and spice, then the egg and milk.

Carefully spoon the cake mixture on top of the fruit.  Cook in a medium oven (175C fan) for 25-30 minutes until the top begins to brown and the cake is cooked all the way through.

This easy pudding can be made with any variety of fruit.

Easy cheesy gluten free quick bread

If you can tolerate dairy this is a super-easy delicious foccacio-style bread made with self raising flour, grated mozzarella cheese and yogurt.  The middle is soft, the outside crisp, and my resident dairy eater kept going yum yum as he ate this with the spiced lentil and carrot soup we had for supper.

Ingredients
200g grated mozzarella cheese
300g gf self raising flour (40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal, with 1tsp baking powder to 100g flour)
yogurt /water to mix

Mix the cheese and flour together and then add yogurt until you get a soft dough.  Pat into shape on a baking tray and bake for 20minutes in an 175C oven.

Eat hot or cold.  Freeze left overs if you don't expect to eat it within a couple of days.

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.

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.

the remarkable tale of the swedish gf wedding cupcake tower

Annie Dean's lovely fabric flower

A week to go before I catch my plane to Sweden.  Time to mill, mix and bag the flour I will need.  My niece's future mother-in-law has messaged me on Facebook to say she will buy ingredients I need, so that is a relief.  I have no idea where shops will be in relation to the flat I have rented, and I won't have a car.

A sudden change of plans, and now my mother is travelling with me.  Her mobility hasn't been that good over the last few years, so I am pleased she feels able to come on this trip.  It will be good for her to be able to attend her grand-daughter's wedding, especially since my niece has spent much of her life living in Mongolia and Thailand so we haven't seen much of her.

I ordered urid lentils, no husks but otherwise whole, and ground these.  My lovely little Swiss flour mill gets warm after about a kilo of grinding so I like to take things slowly.  Tapioca - a last minute bit of internet shopping as I realised I hadn't enough in my store cupboard; I am so pleased that internet shopping is so swift and reliable. Fine cornmeal.  Mixed in these proportions 40% urid, 40% tapioca and 20% cornmeal.  This makes a very reliable and versatile flour.

urid, tapioca and cornmeal

I bagged the flour in the small heat-sealable cellophane bags I used to use when I ran a small bakery business.  Double sealed and then stored inside another food bag, I am hoping I get to the other end without all the flour spread around the suitcase.

Into the suitcase has gone a long list of things.  Iv'e got a list on my magic whiteboard paper on the wall where I can mark off when things are packed, posted or arrived. I have no idea what will be available, and for proper gf cooking one should really use baking tins, wooden spoons etc that have not been used with wheat flour. I used to have a separate oven when I still baked sourdough wheat bread for my husband, and labelled oven gloves, spoons, bowls etc.

The six tier cupcake stand is a bit awkward to pack.  I have taken it out of the box I store it in as that won't fit in the suitcase.  I hope it doesn't crack on the way, but I have packed around it with bubble wrap.  The flour bags are in the crevices and hopefully this combination will give a stable packing structure that means everything will arrive safely, I have also packed a variety of silver, white and purple cake decorations, a small icing rolling pin, cupcake trays, shiny purple foil cupcake cases, aprons, gloves, a baking hat (who wants hair in their cake), a measuring jug...it is certainly a lot easier to bake at home.

The suitcase is almost too heavy for me to lift, not helped by my having a mildly sprained wrist to go with my still not recovered severe ankle sprain from last month.

Got my kroner from the Co-op travel agency yesterday and my banking card wouldn't work, tried it in the ATM at the bank and it wouldn't work...bank cashier says not to worry.  Twice in France our bank cards refused to operate, we presumed because all the lines between France and the UK would busy.  I don't want to get stuck on this trip with a cake to make, a mother to look after, and planes, buses, taxis to catch.

At least with my mother coming too I can use some of her luggage space.  I have weight spare but economy seats only allow one piece of checked baggage.  So far the case is full and I haven't packed any clothes or toiletries, my laptop, my camera...all the usual things one would want to take to a wedding and a trip abroad. I've given up on the hat, and a friend of mine has made a purple silk flower for me to wear so I can look a bit festive and match the cupcakes.  It packs very small.

I was surprised to find that no-one makes collapsible posh hats.  People used to wear collapsible top hats so that they could fit in their luggage. I fancied a spiral in black sinemay (not sure how to spell that - the fine mesh usually used for hats) that would press down to a flat disc and then bounce up into an energetic spiral when you released it from its box.  It doesn't really matter what I wear anyways, but as a hat lover I normally grab opportunities to wear large hats when I can.

Just to add to the fun it continues to pour with rain and my wonderful new induction hob has stopped working.  The engineer that came this morning says it has been installed incorrectly (wrong cable, wrong air gaps) so he can't fix it.  Given that our balcony door stopped locking months ago and the chap coming to fix it is only arriving tomorrow, and the network cables haven't worked since they were installed and on Friday we are paying a seperate contractor to look at them as the house builder hasn't resolved the issue for six months...who knows how long I will be without a stove.

almost instant (very easy) gluten and dairy free chocolate cupcakes

I am getting ready to pack all the ingredients for my niece's wedding cupcake tower in Sweden.  A last quick check today to be sure I know how much cake mix made how many cupcakes so I can scale up for 150 cupcakes and a top cake.  So, a one egg batch, some medium cupcake cases...and ten chocolate cupcakes.

Ingredients
75g flour ( 40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% fine cornmeal)
100g sugar
20g cocoa
3/4tsp baking powder
30ml vegetable oil (I used sunflower)
70ml water
1egg

Pre-heat oven to 175C
Prepare cupcake cases in pan.

Mix the dry ingredients together.  I sieve the mixture after mixing to make sure I get rid of the clumps of cocoa powder.

Mix the egg, water and oil together.

Stir the wet and dry ingredients together. The batter will be very sloppy.

Divide mixture between ten medium cupcake cases and bake for fifteen minutes at 175C fan.

Remove from tin and cool on baking rack.  If you leave them in the tin to cool the paper cases will be soggy.

Ice/frost if wanted. These have quite a slow sweet flavour so do work well with the extra sweetness of a topping.

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.

GF Seedy rolls in the campervan

I’ve been driving around France and Italy for the last month, so have been cooking in the campervan.  I made up some bread mix before I left, made with urid, tapioca and conrmeal flours, Solanic potato protein (which stops risen yeasted gluten free breads slumping), lightly crushed buckwheat, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, a smidgeon of cocoa powder and some yeast.  I mix with water to a slurry, put into bread tins, sprinkle extra seeds on top, leave to to rise, then bake from cold in my campervan oven.  I have no idea what temperature it is; I just cook the bread until it is toasty brown and has come away from the side of the pan a little.

The last blog on this topic showed my high altitude bread, cooked in Bourg St Maurice when we were skiing.  This is my low altitude seedy rolls; camped by the sea near Sete, on the Mediterranean.

The bread is light, crisp on the outside, and full of flavour.  It also has no added fat or salt.