Prune and almond chewy high-fibre high-protein cookies

These cookies are chewy and chocolaty. Cook them for less time for a softer chewy cookie, or leave in at a lower temperature for longer for a firm cookie.  I rolled them out and cut shaped cookies, but you can just make blobs and press them flat with your fingers, or cut them into bars.  They hold their shape well, are quiet to eat, and don't make crumbs, making them ideal to tuck into your bag for a trip. Increase the cocoa of you want a more chocolaty flavour - this is just enough to give a warm hint.  I haven't tried it but I am pretty sure you could skip the egg without much effect if you need egg-free recipes.

Ingredients
250g dried prunes
100 ml oil
1 egg
200g ground almonds
75g urid lentil flour
20g cocoa
40g ground flax seed
200g sugar
1 tsp mixed spice

Blitz the prunes in a blender with the oil and egg to make a paste.  Scrape into a bowl and mix in all the other ingredients.  The dough will be firm but malleable; I mixed this with my hands but if you have a food mixer use the dough hook to save effort.

Either take small blobs and press onto a lined cookie tray, roll into a log, chill and then slice into cookies, or roll out using more urid or other flour to stop sticking and cut into shapes.

Bake at 175C fan for six to eight minutes depending on how thick your cookies are and how chewy you want them.  You can always put them back in to the oven for further baking if they are too soft when they cool.

Slide the cookies on their lining paper onto a cooling rack and let them cool for a minute before trying to move the onto the cooling rack.  Stiffening slightly makes them easier to move.

This amount of dough made about 70 small cookies.

Tesco FreeFrom fruit loaf - gluten, wheat and milk-free

I tried Tesco's own FreeFrom Fruit Loaf, a sweet lightly-fruited bread.  It can be kept for up a to month before use, and can be frozen.  The package contains what looks like a half loaf (one crust) with seven slices.

I enjoyed the slice I ate.  The recipe includes psylliam husk powder, xanthan gum and hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose, so if you need to avoid these completely this bread will not be suitable.  I eat such items sparingly, but an occasional treat like a slice of this fruit loaf is okay.

allergy advice: contains eggs, cannot guarantee nut free

Apricot and almond bites

I wanted to make some cakey cookies - a little like flapjacks but not so sweet and buttery.  I wanted to use apricots for their high iron content.  The almonds, eggs, quinoa and urid make these a high protein snack.

Ingredients
120g almond butter
2 eggs
100g dried chopped apricots (mine are sulphite free so brown rather than orange) blitzed in blender with
100g flour (40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)
65g  dried apricots, chunks
100g quinoa flakes
50g flaked almonds
50g sugar
25g flaked almonds for topping

Method
Mix the almond butter and egg to a slurry.
Blitz the flour and 100g apricots in blender so that you get a brownish powdery mixture.
Mix flour mix into egg slurry, stir in remaining ingredients except the final 25g almonds.  I added the sugar after tasting the mix - you may want to add more or less sugar/sweetener to meet the taste of your eaters.

Put blobs onto parchment paper/silicon baking sheets, press the final flaked almonds on top.

Bake at 170C fan for about 12-15 minutes.  If you make them thick they will need longer.


I am not too sure about the use of the quinoa flakes.  Quinoa can have a sharp unwelcome flavour from the saponin coating, which the plant uses as an insect/bird repellent.  This is best dealt with by rinsing before use.  If I want flour I tend to use whole quinoa and rinse it well, dry it in the oven then grind it to be sure to remove all of this taint.  With the flakes this rinsing was more difficult to do.  I think I would stick to quinoa flour or cooked quinoa (well rinsed) in future.

Breakfast muffins, gluten free, dairy free, high fibre

Before I started blogging all my cooking escapades I made some delicious and very nutritious breakfast muffins.  At the time I was doing an Open University Nutrition course, and I designed the muffins to be as complete a food as possible.  If you ate nothing but these muffins all day you met your daily RDAs for lots of food components, including protein and fibre.  Unfortunately, being written on a scrap of paper I can't find the recipe.

As I am due to  be on a writing course next month where I will need to take my own food to be sure to avoid contamination I thought I had better get on with recreating a version of this recipe.

This muffin has a complex slightly sweet flavour.  I haven't done the nutritional analysis of it, but it is a high fibre food with no highly processed sugars.  The sweetness comes from dried fruit, bananas, butternut squash and a bit of agave syrup, which has a low GI.  Adjust your seeds and fruit to suit what you like and have available. Almonds would also be a good addition - I read a study the other day that said a few whole almonds with breakfast kept you satiated longer.  I kept this nut free as a base recipe.

If you want to use quinoa in your baking but don't like the odd taste it can give, rinse it first.  If you need it dry for the recipe, then put it in a warm oven for a few minutes after rinsing.

Ingredients
150g mashed bananas (two small or one large)
100g roasted butternut squash (it would work grated raw, I just had some available ready roasted)
150g sunflower oil
100g flour
4 tsp baking powder
30g sunflower seeds plus 10g for topping
15g pumpkin seed plus 10g for topping
25g buckwheat
30g quinoa
15g linseed
70g raisins
60g blueberries/cranberry mix
50g agave syrup plus 1 tsp for topping

Put the seeds, buckwheat etc in a blender and grind.  I left the sunflower whole as I like a bit of texture. Add some of the flour and the raisins and grind so that the mixture looks like dark coarse flour.

Mix this with remaining flour and baking powder.

Mash banana and squash, add egg and oil.

Mix wet and dry ingredients together.

Divide mixture between 12 muffin cases.  Mix 1 tsp of agave syrup with the 10g g each of pumpkin and sunflower seed and sprinkle this on top of the muffins.  It isn't necessary but looks inviting and gives a sweet crunchy texture to the top.


Cook at 180C for 25 minutes in muffin cases.

Gingersnaps -made with vintage marmalade (gluten-free and dairy-free)

gluten-free gingersnaps

We have been clearing the house and barns as we are trying to sell the house.  We came across a stash of marmalade so old it has to be called vintage - from 1999.  It wasn't hidden away - it was primly stored on the preserves shelves, but I like sprightly fresh marmalade and this just kept being ignored.  The seals were still good, and I had to use my jar opening device to get the lid off.

This morning I sorted out my spices.  I have lots of different types of herbs and spices, and buy frequently-used ingredients like cinnamon and cumin in large quantities.  The new house will be very small, so I was trying to think how to reduce the space needed - and this meant decanting spices, and soon the kitchen smelled enticingly of ginger.  So, gingersnaps became necessary.

I read several recipes, one using applesauce instead of fat, some egg free, others full of butter and syrup.   With the supply of marmalade that needed using up fresh in my mind I decided to make cookies where the marmalade took the place of the sugar and treacle and quite of bit of the usual fat.

gingersnap ingredients

I made up a batch of the batter, then baked a single cookie to test the flavour.  I added more spice and sugar at this point, and produced a cookie that is delicious, crisp on the outside and chewy inside, and that has a warm complex slightly bitter flavour, with the deep caramel of the marmalade complementing the spice.

TT has been in several times and snuck the slightly odd-shaped, smaller ones off the rack.  He can eat as many as he wants of course, but the temptation to keep coming back for more of the 'very grown up biscuits' as he puts it, is a good sign that they are something to make again.

Ingredients
100g crystallised ginger, chopped
350g flour (urid 40%, tapioca 40%, cornmeal 20%)
150g ground almond
4 tsp mixed spice
2 tsp ground ginger
1.5 tsp baking powder
60g soft brown sugar
2 eggs
400g marmalade
60ml sunflower oil

Method
Whisk or sieve the dry ingredients to make sure evenly mixed.
Mix the wet ingredients - marmalade, egg and oil.
Add dry ingredients to wet and mix
Stir in chopped crystallised ginger

Put spoonfuls of this stiffish but still sticky batter onto granulated sugar, roll to cover, then press flat, placing on a baking sheet.

Cook at 175C for about ten to twelve minutes, keeping an eye on them.  I cooked mine until the edges were just turning brown.  Cook at a lower heat for longer for a crisper biscuit.

Almost instant sausage rolls - dairy-free, gluten-free

sausage roll, gluten and dairy-free

Usual thing, had the TV on to see a programme about artisan beer and they started eating sausage rolls.  Immediately I wanted one for lunch.  I had some gluten and dairy-free hotdogs in the fridge.  I had some of my flour pre-mixed (40%urid, 40%tapioca, 20% cornmeal) and I had a block of hard white vegetable fat.

I grated some of the fat into a bowl.  As it turned out to be 60gm I added 120gm flour, stirred them together, then added cold water until the mix stuck together.  I didn't knead it at all as I wondered if it would produce a flaky effect.

I rolled this out and wrapped pastry around each hot dog.  Cooked sausages would have worked fine too.  I placed these on a baking sheet, brushed a little egg yolk mixed with water on top - I thought the pastry would be unlikely to brown by itself as it didn't have butter or egg or sugar in it.

I cooked these for about 15minutes at 180C until they were golden and the pastry firm.  You can see the pastry has slightly shrunk away from the hot-dog because it hadn't been kneaded at all.

These were crisp and amusing to eat.  The pastry holds together well enough for them to be finger food or taken on a picnic.  From seeing the initial sausage rolls on TV to eating them for lunch took about 20 minutes.

Energy Bars - gluten free, dairy free

I spent some time trying to make a flapjack without oats, but was disappointed by the texture and appalled by the amount of butter and sugar needed to hold the ingredients together.  I watched nutritionist Ellie Krieger make energy bars on TV and thought her recipe would adapt well with gluten-free ingredients.


energy-bars-recipe/index.html


 She did use oats and wheat flour; here is a version using buckwheat and my usual flour mix of urid lentils (40%), tapioca (40%) and cornmeal (20%).

These bars are sweet without being cloying, hold together well and can be eaten without crumbs getting anywhere and, for the person that said they wanted quiet food to eat in the library, make hardly any noise at all.

Elie wrapped hers in clingfilm and stored them in the freezer so that she always had a wholesome snack to put in her bag when she was in a hurry.  Otherwise, she suggested a week at ambient temperature.


I have tried to produce a complete nutritional breakdown but had to use a combination of pack backs and websources, so data on all the minerals, amino acids etc. are not available.  Actual figures on the vitamins and minerals should be higher.  However, you can see that these little bars are good for protein, fibre, and iron.  They are also packed full of slow-release sugars so will be good for combating hunger for longer.


Ingredients (substitute whatever fruits and nuts you have in your store-cupbard.  Next time I will try cranberries and lemon zest for a sour flavour).

125g pumpkin seeds
125 sunflower seeds
230g apricots
110g blueberries
125g dates
100g whole buckwheat
100g whole almonds
125g flour (gluten-free mine is urid, tapioca and cornmeal)
3 large eggs
1 tsp cinnamon
150g maple syrup

Method
Put all the dry ingredients in a food processor and whizz until it starts forming a paste.  I had to do this in two batches.  You want some of the fruit to pulverise so that it holds the mix together, but some bits to be large enough to notice what you are eating.

Add the egg and maple syrup and stir until evenly mixed.

Place on a greased baking sheet.  I lined mine with baking parchment just to be sure that it wouldn't stick. Press down to make a flat top so that things will hold together.

Bake at 170C fan for about 20 minutes until it just begins to go brown.

Cut into slices while still warm and place on rack to cool.

Nutrition Data

20 slices from batch (I made 40 but regarded two of these as one serving for this calculation).  Percentages are approximate RDA for adult female.

219 calories
Total fat                 10g                15%
Saturated fat            1 g                 6%
Sodium                  14mg              1%
Total carbohydrate 30mg            10%
Dietary fibre            3 g               13%
Sugars                   17g
Protein                    7g                  14%

Vitamin A  6%
Vitamin C 1%
Calicum 4%
Iron 11%

Have a look at  this website for useful help with analysing recipes - www.NutritionData.com


If you want to make these a more complete protein source add some powdered milk as Elie did - I kept these dairy free because I am mildly lactose intolerant.  Being made with nuts and lentils and buckwheat makes them pretty good as they are.

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.

easy gluten-free vegan lasagna

gluten-free vegan lasagna

I was exasperated the other day that I had to wait in for a courier that never came.  I set out to make lasagna but had no eggs, and couldn't go out to buy any.....so here is a vegan version which turns out to be much better than my usual lasagna.  This is so much better that I have ordered an electric pasta roller for my Kenwood food mixer so that I can make loads for my sister.  I tried rolling the pasta in my old pasta machine, which I have used for polymer clay, and it rolled very easily.  I threw that batch away (speckled blue and orange..) but it did at least allow me to be sure that a normal pasta roller would be helpful.

I made the lasagna with tapioca gel and what has now become my standard flour.  I put the flour and the gel in the food mixer and let it do all the hard work.  When the dough was soft I let it rest, wrapped in plastic, in the fridge for a while, and then rolled it thinly.  I tested the wet rolling - between dampened clingfilm, and dry rolling with flour, and found the dry rolling worked fine and made the resulting thin sheets easier to handle.

I then pre-cooked the pasta for a few minutes in boiling water and made two lasagnas.  One we ate for lunch, the other has been frozen to see how the lasagna copes with being frozen as a pre-prepared meal.

I also made a tiny lasagna with some of this dough that I had made yesterday, pre-cooked in water and then dried.  Layered with a simple tomato sauce and covered in cheese (dough is vegan - use how you want) and baked - it worked very well.  The layers of pasta stayed distinct, had a smooth soft texture, and tasted good.  The long-term hope is to be able to make neat pre-cooked lasagna sheets so that they can be made in advance and used as a convenience food by people who don't like cooking.

tapioca gel - 10g tapioca flour, 100ml water, stirred together and cooked until clear.
150g flour - 40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% polenta.

If any UK readers would like to try this flour mix if they would let me know - I'd like to get some feedback from others about this mixture. I think it is better than any of the other flours on the market and doesn't need xanthum gum.  I now use it for cakes, pastry, cookies, pasta and bread.

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

reheated in microwave from frozen this pasta is still good

BBC Good Food Magazine chocolate fruit cake - review

I made six versions of the cake in the Christmas edition of the BBC Good Food magazine.  All of these stages are described in earlier posts.

I did initial taste tests, but thought I really needed to see how the cakes matured.  I tested them again a few days later.  In general those made with butter tasted better than those made with Pure dairy-free margarine.  The cakes made with Doves Farm flour had the pastiest texture and were somewhat unpleasant.  The Bob's Red Mill flour produced a better cake initially, but over time the texture became grainier and pastier as well, and the flavour of the chickpeas in the flour became more pronounced.  The cakes made with my flour mix, (urid lentils, tapioc and polenta), tasted the best to start with and continued to taste better.

However, I have to admit I got really bored trying to run these taste tests.  In the end I gave all the cakes away to my sister, and she heroically did a test, and gave me the same results.

The real problem with this cake is not what fat is used or what flour is used, but that chocolate and fruit just don't sit happily together.  This cake was advertised as one that might please people that didn't like fruit cake.  I think it would displease people that liked fruit cake and displease people who liked chocolate cake.  Make one of each.  That is a much better solution to meeting the needs of people with a variety of tastes over Christmas.

Ravioli

gluten-free egg-free ravioli

I was asked for a description of the ravioli I referred to in a previous post.  I hadn't yet written up how to make ravioli as I wasn't  satisfied with the texture.  Today I was feeling in need of some experimental therapy - I am supposed to be marking essays - so decided to have another go at the ravioli, altering the proportion of the flours I use.

When I used to make fresh pasta with wheat flour I had found that the more egg you used the more succulent the pasta was.  I ended up using Jamie Oliver's recipe rather than Nigella Lawson's.  Up until now I have always used egg when I have made pasta.  However, I realised I had run out of pasta and I was waiting in for a courier so couldn't nip out and get any.

I made some of the tapioca gel I have used in the past when leaving egg out of recipe.  I took 5g of tapioca flour and stirred it into 50ml of cold water, and then cooked it, stirring continuously, until it was a clear gel.

tapioca gel

 I let this cool a bit while I weighed out 50g of urid lentil flour and 60g of tapioca flour, and then I squidged the flour into the gel.  I needed a bit more water to get a dough so just added some until the dough held together nicely.

mix flour into gel

I mixed this thoroughly until the dough was soft and a bit stretchy. Start with a spoon but you will soon need to pulverise it with your hands. The gel is bouncy and resists the flour.  Once you get a smooth dough knead it until it is a bit stretchy. I just held it in both hands and pulled and folded and pulled and folded until I was happy with the texture.

I tried rolling this out but found that the dough tended to stick and then tear when I made ravioli the usual way.  It was much easier to make individual pockets of dough by squeezing a marble of dough in my hand until I had a thin disk, putting the filling in the middle, dampening the edges and then gently sealing them together.

I made a second batch and found that the easiest way to make the ravioli (sorry any Italians out there who think I am using the wrong word for the shape) was to dampen a piece of clingfilm / plastic wrap, place a marble of dough onto this, fold the cling film over and squeeze the dough into the desired shape.  Provided you don't get over excited and make it too thin this gives you a smooth circle of dough for your filling.  Keep the whole thing damp and it wont stick too much and it also means the dough sticks to itself when you press it around the filling.

ball of dough on damp cling film

press out a circle between two layers of damp film

place filling on circle

fold over cling film and use to press edges together

I cooked these for about eight minutes in boiling water.  The length of time you need will depend on how thin and large you make them just as with wheat pasta.

boil in water

These little pasta parcels had a smooth yielding texture and held the filling well.    Enjoy playing with fillings and sauces - the choices are endless.


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

I froze some of these ravioli and cooked from frozen.  They retain their shape and texture though the filling used went a little rubbery.  Pasta worked fine - need a different filling.

Beef Burger on gluten-free bagel

I spent a couple of years in Camden, London, where there was a very good burger restaurant about half a minute's walk away from my flat.  I don't eat beef often - usually only when I feel I need extra iron, but when I did I liked a burger on ciabatta with lots of extras.

The other day I took one of my gluten-free bagels, made from urid lentil and tapioca flours, toasted it lightly, and layered it with a home-made organic beef burger, some of my own chilli jam, the last of my own home-grown onions caramelised in olive oil, and a handful of rocket.  Very delicious.

The hole in the bagel just made the burger easier to bite, and didn't seem to allow the contents to cascade all over my lap, as I thought it might.

Vegan and gluten-free mushroom stroganoff

mushroom stroganoff

Those of you that can remember what it was like to be a vegetarian in the 1970's and 80's may view a recipe for mushroom strogonoff with a twinge of loathing.  For a long time, after the sole option at restaurants was an omelet, or if it was really posh, a poached egg, the standard veggie option was mushroom strogonoff.  I haven't eaten, let alone made, a mushroom stroganoff for at least a decade.  However, in the store today mushrooms were cheap and I had pastry ready in the fridge so I thought a pie with mushrooms would be a good supper.

I ran out of time doing other things so didn't  get around to preparing the other ingredients for my pie.  Mushrooms being sold off cheap because the store wants to get rid of them need using...stroganoff with baked potatoes seemed the ideal solution.

I used a recipe from http://vegbox-recipes.co.uk/recipes/mushroom-recipe-2.php simply because it was the first one to lad - my Internet was being very slow and I kept changing URLs till I found one that came up before my patience vanished.

It included wine and cream, and I didn't have any wine and, being lactose intolerant, didn't want to use the cream.  I added half a can of borlotti beans to increase the protein of the dish and to act as the thickener.  I blitzed them in a blender before adding them; they gave a thick creamy texture that satisfied even the diary lover taste-buds of my Tolerant Taster.

fry mushrooms with onion and garlic

• 500g mushrooms, wiped and cut into chunks
• 200g Borlotti beans - pureed
• c 100ml water - more as needed
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp whole grain mustard
• 1 teaspoon gluten free soy sauce
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 medium onion- finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic - minced
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• handful chopped parsley

Fry onion in oil until translucent.
Toss mushrooms in paprika.
Add garlic and mushrooms to frying onion and cook until the mushrooms start to look brown and cooked
add borlotti paste and water and stir well
add other flavourings apart from parsley.  Cook until thick and luscious looking.  Stir in chopped parsley and serve.

add borlotti paste to mushrooms

I served this with baked potatoes and fresh buffalo mozzarella for anyone that wanted it.

Excellent flavour and really easy to make.  I'll definitely add this to my regular repertoire of simple supper dishes.

Gluten-free dairy-free mince pies

I made these with a pack of ready mixed all-purpose gluten-free flour called Bob’s Red Mill.  I normally mix my own flour for different recipes from Urid lentils, tapioca, polenta and almonds.  The recipe made ten deep-filled mince pies and six mini pies.

Ingredients

• 225g Flour
• 100g Cookeen – hard vegetable fat – or butter if dairy is ok
• 40g sugar
• 1 egg (leave out if can't / don't eat egg and add a bit more water.  If you have trouble with managing the dough try adding a bit of tapioca gel: 10g tapioca starch 100ml water, stir together cold, cook until clear gloop, wash utensils well with cold water)
• 35 ml water – add slowly until you have the right amount.  You might need more or less depending on the flour and the humidity of the air.

Method. 

Whizz fat into flour in food processor or rub in by hand until it resemble breadcrumbs.  Add the sugar, whizz, then add the egg and whizz just until mixed.  I tip out into a bowl and add the water by hand to be sure not to add too much, but you can just add the water in the machine and whizz until it just starts forming a dough.

Roll out the pastry between two sheets of cling film / plastic wrap – this saves on mess and having to add flour.  

Cut into circles and place in tart tins or other tin of choice.  Half fill with mincemeat. 

I used some from a jar for this but have bought citrus fruit to make candied peel this weekend so I can make some without sulphites.

Bake until the pastry is just turning golden.  Mine took twenty minutes at 170C in a fan oven. 

I sifted icing sugar over half of the mince pies.

Mini-mince pies

I used a mini muffin tin and what I call a stomper (mini-tart shaper:  The Pampered Chef http://bit.ly/g23sN5). Take a ball of dough (about 18g), place in bottom of tin, dust stomper with flour, press into dough twisting slightly.  You will get a neat little pastry case with remarkably little effort.  

Update - Chocolate christmas cake - gluten free flour and dairy/dairy-free taste test

On November 19th I posted a trial of the BBC Good Food chocolate Christmas cake, using three different gluten-free flours and dairy/non-dairy fat ( http://bit.ly/9TC6E3).  We just retested the cakes, on Nov 25th, as they have had some time to mature.

The flavours have blended with the extra time and it isn't so much of a shock to have chocolate with fruit lumps.  The textures of the cakes are closer together.  We still liked the one made with my own blend of flour and the butter best.  The Bob's Red Mill flour, from lavidafood.com, made with Pure, was good, so if you want a vegan gluten free cake made from standard flour rather than mixing your own I suggest this is a good choice.

Doves Farm was still producing a fine pasty texture - I think it is the rice in the flour mix.

Chocolate christmas cake - gluten free flour and dairy/dairy-free taste test

Taste testing the next day (will do another in a week to see how it changes with time)

The cakes were coded by putting different types of nuts on top. For the testing we didn’t know that flour or fat were used in each. We considered taste and texture.

We took them in random order.

Mr Taster’s form	Taste	Texture
1	Dark sweet maybe touch too much choc Consistent after-taste	Mouth – micro crumble to course paste ‘cake’ disintegrates in mouth to leave fruit
2	Mostly fruit Less character in cake Choc has disappeared	Fine paste Falls apart in hand
3	Lighter sweetness Choc comes in middle after about 15secs	Mouth – crumbles to a sort of treacle in mouth and continues to stick to the fruit
4	mid to dark sweet mostly fruit choc not intrusive needs cream to cut depth	Falls apart in hand Mouth crumble to fine paste (pudding)
5	Little character Consistent sweet Minimal chocolate	Micro fine paste. Holds in hand – just
6	Cake almost lost in fruit	apart in hand Micro fine paste

My form	Taste	Texture
1	Too much chocolate and slightly pasty taste Sugar levels good	Disintegrates – maybe better with age? Very clear lumps of fruit – took some chewing Hard to cut, fell apart
2	Odd taste when first in mouth and fruit seemed tougher Less chocolate taste	More crumbly than 4 to cut Lighter feel at first than 4
3	Liked taste better than 4	Falls apart even more but feels good in mouth
4	Ok, not very exciting	Cut easier but did use bread knife. Slice stayed intact when lifting. Slightly pasty mouth feel
5	Powdery and cloying at the same time. Fruit doesn’t seem part of cake Chocolate flavour about right after a moment	Holds better when cut for first slice but crumbled when trying to eat
6	Even textured paste. High nose taste	Fell apart, can’t even pick up a piece

In general I think this should have more cake and less fruit. If making again I would increase the eggs, and perhaps chops half of the fruit to give more cohesion.

We both like number three best.

I had a nerve-wracking moment when I couldn’t find my code list. It was on the book rest I had used to hold the magazine!

Turns out we both like the one made with my own flour mix, which was about one third tapioca and two-thirds urid. We preferred the butter version.

I think Pure margarine, as a soft margarine, isn’t really suitable for this type of cake. I have been recommended another type of Kosher dairy-free margarine for cooking but it is difficult to buy unless you get it mail-order from Ocado. I did buy some Cookeen yesterday, and will be running comparisons with that.

In general we like the cake flavour and texture made with my flour best, then the Bob's Red Mill flour, then the Doves Farm flour. In general I haven’t been impressed with the Doves Farm mix for anything other than batter recipes, such as pancakes and choux. It does also work in the cupcakes I used for the wedding tower, but there are also a lot of almonds and yogurt in that cake recipe.

Number	Nut topping	Flour	Fat
1	Almond and hazelnut	My flour	Pure
2	Hazelnut and Pistachio	Bob's Red Mill (lavidafood.com)	Pure
3	Pistachio	Own flour	Butter
4	Hazelnut	Bob's Red Mill	Butter
5	Pistachio and almond	Doves Farm	Butter
6	Almond	Doves Farm	Pure

The really surprising outcome is how much the type of flour affects how much you can taste the chocolate. In some cakes it had too much chocolate flavour and in others you might not have known there was chocolate in it at all. This is despite all the recipes being made with identical ingredients, method and cooking apart from the fats and flours on test.

The nuts were only on top so that the cakes could be told apart. They were not taken into consideration when testing the cake.