Triple ginger freezer biscuits - gluten and dairy free

This sticky dough is easy to handle if rolled in clingfilm and frozen.  Slice and bake a few biscuits at a time for a warm spicy aroma in the house on a cold winter day and a lovely crunchy treat.

Ingredients:

200g ground almonds
200g flour (40%urid, 40%tapioca, 20% brown rice)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground clove
1 tsp ground ginger (add more if wanted- this gives quite a mild ginger flavour)
100g sugar
120g dark brown muscovado sugar
75ml oil
2 eggs
20g grated fresh ginger
75g crystallised ginger, chopped
belgian waffle pearl sugar or sugar crystals for topping if wanted.  The pearl sugar keeps it shape, is crunchy but not too hard.

Oven 170C fan, ten minutes from frozen, seven or eight from room temperature mix.  Cool on baking sheet for a few minutes before moving onto a baking rack.


Mix the dry ingredients together.  My muscovado sugar was a solid lump so I hacked off the right amount with a large knife and heated it in the microwave with the oil to get a slurry that was easy to mix into the flour.  If you do melt the brown sugar make sure the mixture is not too hot before you add it to the eggs - you don't want scrambled egg at this stage.

Mix liquid ingredients together and add to dry.  I used the food mixer for this as it was quite a lot of work to do by hand. Add in grated fresh ginger and chopped crystallised ginger and mix.

You can bake this in blobs on your lined baking sheet.  This amount of dough will make a lot of biscuits.  The dough holds its height when baked like this so flatten a bit with a damp spoon.

Alternatively lay on clingfilm in a log, wrap, put in freezer on a baking sheet until firm.  Once firm the baking sheet can be removed. There is a risk that the dough would sag around your freezer racks if you put it straight in unsupported and so get stuck in place.

When you want to bake some biscuits just slice off thin layers, sprinkle with sugar if you want to, and bake on a lined baking sheet.

Spiced sweet-potato cake; gluten and dairy free

This cake is soft and reminiscent of the filling in pumpkin pie.  Not surprising really, when it has mashed sweet potato as its main ingredient.

To do ahead of time

Cook sweet potatoes in the microwave (or oven if you have it running for something else) until they are soft.  Mine took about eight minutes - four small sweet potatoes. Leave to cool then remove the peel and mash.  I found it easiest to cut an end off and scoop the sweet potato out with a circular action with a fork.  Do this ahead of time so you don't be tempted to work with them while they are very hot and burn yourself.   Keep the peel and spritz with oil, put on a baking sheet, and cook for 20-30 minutes in the oven for a crisp scoop for spicy salsa.

My muscovado sugar is always a solid lump.  Hack enough sugar off and leave put in a bowl with the oil and eggs so it dissolves - this will make the rest of the cake making much easier.

Ingredients
400g mashed cooked sweet potato - mine was 460g whole (4 small)
125g muscovado sugar
125 ml oil
3 eggs
125 g self raising flour (mine is 40%urid, 40% tapioca, 20% rice, with 1 tsp bp for each 100g)
1 tsp mixed spice /pie spice
1 tsp cinnamon

Mix the sugar, oil and egg and leave for the lumps of sugar to dissolve if needed.
Mix in the cooled mashed sweet potato, flour and spices.

Pour the sloppy cake mix into a greased/lined tin.  I used a 9inch square tin as I wanted a shallow cake.

Bake in a pre-heated oven, 175C fan, for 40-45 minutes until a knife inserted comes out clean.

Leave in tin for a few minutes on the cooling rack to allow it to firm slightly, then remove from tin and leave to cool, or eat hot as a pudding with icecream.  If you want a firmer cake add some more flour or cut down on the sweet potato.

Waffles for breakfast

I fancied waffles for breakfast rather than our usual american pancakes.  It is almost the same mixture, but I beat the egg white to a stiff froth before stirring it in to the wet mixture.  The hard part about making waffles now is clambering into the roof-space cupboard to get the waffle baker, as the kitchen is too small to store intermittently used kit.

These waffles are light without being insubstantial, crisp on the outside and soft in the middle.  They freeze well so you can make a batch and have a few whenever you want.  If you have a toaster they can just be popped in frozen and come out ready to eat.

Ingredients
100g flour (this is my new mix avoiding corn - 40%urid, 40%tapioca and 20% brown rice flours)
1 tsp baking powder (this ratio of 1 tsp bp to 100g flour is my standard self raising flour)
1 tsp sugar
1 egg, separated
1 tsp oil
120ml rice or other milk

Prepare your waffle baker.  Set to a middle temperature setting.

Mix the dry ingredients together. Mix the egg yolk, milk and oil together.

Beat the egg white until stiff.

Fold the egg whites into batter.

Scoop the batter onto the baker, filling from the middle.  I find it better to have waffles that don't quite reach the edge than barge their way messily down the outside of the baker.

I found this mixture made one complete set of four waffles with a little left over.  Cook until golden brown and crisp.  Cool on a baking rack or send straight to plates.

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.

Excellent gf-friendly Christmas lunch at Holloways

My friends from the City & Guilds course I did a few years ago met for our December jolly at Holloways, an amazing store and cafe in the rolling hills in the Worcestershire, in a village called Suckley.  I had phoned the day before to check that they could feed me, and was impressed with the calm and informative way in which they said that they did have lots of food that was suitable for me.

Whilst it may seem strange, I had a surprisingly delicious curry while my friends ate turkey or nut roast dinner...not because that was the only thing that I could eat safely but because it was what I fancied.  I have actually got to the stage where I find it difficult to chose what to eat in restaurants because there was such a long period where all I was offered was bare salad- or even told there was nothing I could eat.  I didn't have a starter, but the other person who needed gf free food had a thick vegetable soup and gf rolls - they looked like DS ciabatta, which is almost the only packaged bread I buy for myself occasionally.

I had a desert as well, again a choice.  How difficult,  I chose meringue with mulled fruits minus the cream.  I also ordered coffee.  I wondered if they would fall down at this final hurdle- many restaurants seem unable to translate an order for a gf meal into a a coffee without a biscuit at the end of the meal.  The coffee came - with a mini meringue.  The waiter apologised that it was meringue overload; normally they would have given me a gf brownie, but as it had butter in and I had said no dairy (though it is not so big a problem for me) they had carried this through to the end.  I was very impressed.

I also found it quite surprising that I had no cross contamination symptoms, even from sitting with my friends eating flaky breads, stuffing and cakes.  I often find I feel ill just being near people eating glutened foods, so this is very impressive.

The general atmosphere was very pleasant, the staff attentive, inventive and willing to please.  It is a pity it isn't nearer - I'd make it a regular venue for lunch and coffee breaks.  They even had a blueberry gf cake - I spotted this as I paid my bill.  I gave the staff a 60% tip and sincere thanks.  It is a long time since I enjoyed a meal in a restaurant as much.

Tikka cod with lentil curry and mixed rice

This tasty meal is high in protein and easy to make.  Frozen cod fillets coated in tikka paste and lentil and vegetable curry made with Korma paste make this a simple meal to make and full of flavour. Start cooking the curry before you cook the fish as curry is very flexible on how long it can be cooked but the fish needs to be eaten as soon as it is ready.

For two people:

Coat two frozen or fresh cod fillets with  about 1 tbsp of tikka paste. I used Pataks.  Cook according to the fish instructions.  My frozen fish needed thirty minutes in a 180C oven.  Fresh fish could be grilled for a charred finish.  I have given up trying to grill food as the smoke alarm in my new flat goes off everytime I use the grill and the whole block of flats gets alerted!

Curry
1 tbsp oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup orange lentils
1 tbsp Korma curry paste
2 cups water, more as needed
1 tbsp tomato paste

1 large carrot, sliced
2 tbsp peas
1 tomato, cut into large chunks


Cook chopped onion in oil until soft.  Keep the heat low so that the onions don't brown unless you prefer the flavour of the browned onion.
Add the lentils and stir over medium heat until the lentils are coated in the oil.  Add the Korma paste and stir. Add the water, tomato paste and carrots. Stir and cook until lentils and carrots are soft.
Add more water if needed.
Three minutes before serving add the frozen peas and cook.
One minute before serving add the tomatoes.  They should just heat through but not fall apart.

Rice
Use whatever rice you like.  I used a mixed rice with French Red Camargue, Italian long grain and Canadian Wild Rice because that was all I had.  Plain rice would have been more appropriate to go with the complex flavours of the curry and fish.  If I had served the fish with steamed vegetables rather than the curry the mixed rice would have been excellent as the different flavours and textures would have been more noticeable.

Serve the fish with curry and rice.

Rescue Waffles - gluten free and delicious

My lovely new induction hob stopped working the other day when we started cooking breakfast.  The chap that turned up to fix it, a day later, said he couldn't repair it as it had been installed incorrectly by the kitchen fitters.  What to do, what to do.  We have pancakes every morning for breakfast; they are quick and easy and keep us from being hungry the rest of the morning.

The first morning I sliced apple, added cinnamon and sugar, and baked the already prepared pancake mix in the oven.  Slow, and not as delicious as the individual pancakes, where you get a choice of flavours with each pancake.  We usually have a variety of fruits and jam on the breakfast table.  The second morning I tried cooking them in the microwave.  Disgusting.

When it became obvious there wasn't going to be a quick fix - the oven needs lowering to give an increased airspace and the cable needs upgrading, we got the waffle iron out of storage.  The flat is small so things we don't use all the time have to be put away.

Lovely lovely waffles.  Glad to have been compelled to revisit these.  You can make a big batch and freeze them, just pop in the toaster for a hot waffle (if you have a toaster - got rid of that to save space...)

Set waffle baker to medium heat.  Spray or brush oil onto the waffle baker as the first waffle tends to stick even in a non-stick pan.

Ingredients
125g flour (mine is urid 40%, tapioca 40%, cornmeal 20%)
3 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp oil
rice or other milk to produce a batter

This amount made eight squares.

Mix flour and baking powder together.  Separate egg yolks and whites.  Place whites in a clean large bowl for whisking.  Mix egg yolk, oil and sugar.  Mix in flour and add milk to get a smooth but not sloppy batter.  Whisk egg whites until they hold their shape.  Fold egg white into batter.

Ladle a blob of batter onto each section of the waffle baker.  It doesn't matter if the finished waffle doesn't come out completely square but it is a pain if you put on too much and it bulges out everywhere - much harder to clean up.  With experience you will know how much to use.

Cook until the waffles are golden brown on the outside and cooked all the way through.  If you find they are stodgy in the middle when burning on the outside you have the heat set too high.  If you are planning to store for later toasting you can use a slightly lower heat so that they are cooked all the way through but not quite as brown as you would normally like.

Cool on a rack.  Eat with whatever you fancy or freeze in plastic bags.