Packing for my holidays.....bagging gf bread flour

I am spending part of the summer in my campervan in Cornwall.   For three days I will be on a painting course in Newlyn, and for a week I will have my sister staying with me.  I thought that bread would be helpful for picnics- which means making sure I have plenty of my own flour available.  I can eat M&S bread as it doesn't have any xanthum gum, but I find it doesn't hold up well for sandwiches.  I did finally find one of their ready-made gf sandwiches at a motorway service station the other day, and bought it even though I had to remove the cheese.  That did seem to hold ok, but it was packed in a protective plastic holder.

So, as part of my summer packing, this morning I ground two kilos of urid lentils, and mixed the resulting flour with two kilos of tapioca flour, and one kilo of brown rice.  I also added 2% of the Solanic 301 potato protein, which makes gf breads work so much better.  It stops them slumping once the get over a couple of inches high, and improves the texture.  My usual supplier of urid lentils is now offering urid flour that has not been packed in a facility that also handles wheat, so when my current supplies run out I think I will switch to ready ground flour.  That would make travelling a lot easier, as well as reducing the need for me to travel with multiple packs of unlabelled powder; having had the campervan stopped and thoroughly searched by French Customs once in the middle of France on our way back from a Surprise 60th Birthday in Geneva  I prefer not to look suspicious.

Once mixed I bagged the flour in 300g packs and heat sealed it.  This will allow me to make a small loaf (1lb tin) with ease by adding a teaspoon of yeast and enough water (about 250ml) to get a sloppy dough, leaving it to rise and baking in the campervan oven.  It will also work for flat breads like pizza, which bakes great on the barbeque.

I had 130g of flour left over so made four pannetone flavoured buns, with the peel and flavouring I got from  BakeryBits.

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.

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.

Lemon Drizzle Cake - gluten free

I used to make lemon drizzle cake a lot for a cafe, but discovered I had never written it up so when I wanted to make on I had to do an Internet hunt.  I based this cake on the BBC Good Food recipe.  Making this cake marks a sad moment for me as it is the last day of my glass course at the excellent shop/training/studio at the Creative Glass Guild in Bristol.  My teacher, Jen, is fantastic, full of expertise and very kind to over-enthusiastic novices. I asked what type of cake to bring and she requested lemon drizzle, so her wishes trump the other students' please for ginger, parkin.....

Slight problem in that I have given away so much flour recently for people to test my bread recipe that I have run out of tapioca.  I thought I had a whole box left - lots of urid and lots of brown rice but no tapioca, and no store in Worcester sells it. I also ran out of baking powder and then forgot to get it when I went into town, so not the best start.  By using the tapioca I keep plain for thickening sauces or making tapioca gloop for flatbreads I managed to make 225g flour, which the recipe called for, but that seemed a bit stingy for thirteen hungry artisans.  Another 75g of almond flour makes this cake more substantial.  I forgot to increase the sugar and had no more butter, so this is a cake which is tangy and not very sweet.  However, my regular taster, who has a very sweet tooth, declared it to be perfect.

Ingredients:
225 g self raising flour (I use urid, 40%, tapioca 40% and rice 20%, with 1 tsp baking powder for 100g flour to make self raising four)
75g almond flour/meal
225 g butter, soft
225 g sugar for cake
5 eggs
Zest and juice of 2-3 lemons depending on how tangy you like your cake.  I used 2.5
100g sugar for topping

Set oven at 175C fan

Beat the butter until light and fluffy, add sugar and beat until fluffy.  Mix in eggs a little at a time, then add the lemon zest (not the juice) and flours, a little at a time, beating well between each addition.

Spoon the batter into a greased/lined baking tin.  I used a square tin as I wanted lots of shallow pieces to make them easier to eat without plates or cutlery.

Bake for 40-50 minutes until the top springs back when lightly pressed and a knife comes out clean.

Leave in tin to cool.  Mix the lemon juice with the remaining 100g of sugar.  Pierce the cake with a fork and slowly pour the lemony sugar over the cake.  Leave in tin to cool completely

The lemon sinks in and the sugar makes a fine crust on the surface.

Seedy bread - sharing the flours with others and the wonders of Solanic potato protein

I responded to a query about bread on http://glutenfreeguerrillas.healthunlocked.com.  I normally don't contribute recipes for bread on this site as I now always use the potato protein I got from a LinkedIn contact, and this is not available in the shops.  If you buy it from the company the minimum order is 15kg - and given you need a few grams/couple of spoonfuls for a loaf of bread this is an enormous amount.  However, I offered to send some samples out to people if they wanted, and a batch of the flour I use, as I want to get feedback on my usual loaf.  

I have been wondering whether to take the step of trying to bring this flour mix to market, which would be a lot of work, so feedback would be useful.  I have also been talking to the company about the possibility of the potato protein being made available in consumer sized portions.  This potato stuff doesn't upset my guts at all - I can't use zanthum/xanthum or other gums, and even have to stay away from flax/chia seed.  It helps gf loaves to keep their shape so they don't slump if you want a full size/high loaf, and give improved texture even to pizzas and other flat breads.


I sent out six batches of the flourmix- enough for a loaf made in a one pound loaf tin, and 30g of the potato protein. I do hope these packages survive the post- I went to bed fretting that I hadn't double bagged everything.  I sealed them in cellophane and built small posting boxes by chopping up a large box and wrapping with lots of parcel tape, so hope the transit is fine.  I thought I should include a photo and instructions, so took the usual plain loaf ingredients and added a little cocoa and pumpkin and sunflower seeds to give a warm seedy loaf.

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This mix is made from urid lentils, tapioca, rice and potato.  The potato protein that I have have included in the small bag should be used at about 2%of the flour for yeast breads.  Makes great pizza and other flatbreads as well as the loaf.   I am thinking about trying to package it or a variation on it so would be glad of your feedback.  I have a gf house and am very sensitive so these samples should be completely gluten free.

The bag has approx 300g of flours, enough for a small one pound loaf tin.  Mix it the yeast- either a teaspoon or two for a quick rise or half a teaspoon if you want to let it rise more slowly to develop a sourdough flavour.  Put salt and sugar in if you like.  Add 250ml cold water. You can also put a little cocoa and some pumpkin and sunflower seeds for a seedy loaf, or other flavours to suit your taste.

Mix the batter thoroughly with a wooden spoon or food mixer.  It will look like a thick  cake batter.  Pour the mixture into a greased non-stick loaf tin.  It should come about half way up the sides.  For a quick loaf put this in the oven with a tray of hot water in the bottom and leave it to rise.  You want to let it rise about one third - not quite to the top of the tin.  When it gets to that point turn the oven on to 175C (fan) and set timer for 45 minutes.  It will rise further in the heat but shouldn’t come over the top of the tin as the batter hasn’t the strength to go up on its own. It needs a slower bake than wheat bread.

If you want more flavour and a slightly more artisan-style texture leave the loaf to rise somewhere cool - if you want to retard it to fit in with your schedule just put it in the fridge.  Then bake as before.

Tip out the cooked loaf and cool on a baking rack. I cool them on their sides to encourage them not to sink.  Don’t try to slice before they are cold or the bread will stick to the knife.

This should be ok for several days, or slice and put in the freezer.

Rinse your dirty dishes in cold water promptly - the batter sets quite hard.

The photo is the loaf I made this morning when I bagged up the flour (at the moment I still grind my own lentils before mixing the flour, so quite an effort).  This has half a teaspoon cocoa and a small handful of seeds mixed into the dough, and a few more seeds sprinkled on the top.  A loaf I left out to see what happened a couple of weeks ago was still ok to slice after a whole week, but I normally slice the bread and put it in the freezer. 

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I'm hoping to get some feedback shortly.  One person suggested that we buy a big bag of the potato protein and share it out between us.  That is a great idea.  If anyone reading this would like to join in and try so of this stuff let me know.

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.

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.

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.

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.

oreo-style chocolate cookies with white chocolate filling, gluten, corn and tapioca free

Flour mix two, made from a third each of urid, buckwheat and brown rice flours, continues to be a reliable mix for many baked goods.  Here I made a quick batch of oreo-style chocolate cookies for the grandchildren.  These cookies are a little intense by themselves but the frosting balances them well. If you don't want to eat these with the frosting filling you might want to add a bit more butter and cut the cocoa a little.  (The eight year old didn't eat hers. Tortilla chips filled the gap.  This flour mix obviously produces a more bitter result than my usual flour mix.  Cut the cocoa down to 30g unless you want a super intense chocolate cookie.  I was told they would be good with vanilla ice cream)

Ingredients
100g flour
1 tsp baking powder
40g cocoa
100g sugar
40g butter
2 eggs (use only part if necessary)

Filling
50g white chocolate
25g butter
50g icing sugar


Oven 175C fan
2 lined baking sheets

Mix all the cookie dry ingredients together and rub in flour or blitz in a food processor.  Stir in egg until you get a manageable dough.  If you don't mind the cookies being more rough shaped just tip the egg in and spoon the resulting mix onto lined baking sheets.  I did the latter as I was in a hurry, and just tapped errant dough into place with a damp finger.

Cook for 12 minutes in a 175C Fan oven.  This mix will be ok left before baking, or frozen for future use.

Cool on baking sheet.  Don't take the cookies off the baking parchment or tray until they cool slightly as they will tend to go out of shape. I tend to slide my liner onto the cooling rack so I can reuse my baking sheet, and this speeds  up both the cooling and baking.

To make the filling, melt the butter and chocolate together.  I use a microwave on medium heat for two minutes, stirred half way through.  You can use a double boiler.  Just stop before the chocolate is fully melted to allow residual heat to finish the job, or you might over cook the chocolate and spoil the texture.

Mix in the icing sugar.  Don't put all of it in at first.  You want a firm easy to handle wodge of frosting, but not so dry that it cracks.

When biscuits are cool either use a knife to coat the cookies with frosting or, if, like me, you made the frosting too stiff, just make a disc of frosting in your hands and press it onto the cookie.

Summer berry cobbler, gf, tapioca free and corn free

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

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

Oven 175C fan

adjust the proportion of fruit to cake to your own taste

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Serve hot or cold.  This pudding freezes well.

Easy Oreo-style gluten-free cookies

The grandchildren really like Oreo cookies but can't have them here so that I can keep well.  These giant chocolate cookies are crisp and chocolaty and easy to make.  Either fill them with icing - I use the white chocolate icing I used for the wedding cupcakes, or ice cream, or just eat them plain.


I started by looking at lots of recipes.  Mostly them seemed to say take a chocolate cake mix and turn it into cookies.  I tried finding one in grams rather than cups but couldn't.  I based my recipe on this one -  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/oreo-cookies-recipe/index.html


Ingredients:
65g flour (40%urid lentil, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)
20g cocoa
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
65g sugar
25g butter
egg to mix to dough (this took less than one egg - I was making a small batch to test)




Mix all ingredients except egg - either by hand or in food processor.  Slowly add egg until you get a firm dough that is easy to handle.  The original recipe calls for lots of cooling and resting the dough, but I just baked these straight away.  I did keep one blob of dough and put it in the freezer.  I'll see how it bakes from frozen some other time.


Take the dough and shape into pieces.  I pressed these down and put  a fork mark in the top as I wanted to find out if they would hold an impression.  The cookies spread the way ginger snaps do, so don't try to do anything fancy and leave plenty of room for spreading.  This might have changed if I had chilled or rested the dough.

fork marks on raw cookie

cookies on baking sheet

Bake at 170C fan for about 7 minutes.  Leave on the sheet to cool for a few minutes so that they begin to harden before transferring to a cooling rack.

cookie on cooling rack

These cookies are mostly crisp but with just a hint of chewiness.  The flavour is rich and chocolaty without being bitter.

cookies sandwiched with white chocolate icing

gluten free vegan Rosemary and Olive Oil Cracker recipe - thin and crisp

Rosemary and Olive Oil gluten free crackers

Two things combined to create these crackers.  A sudden yearning for crackers led to this recipe :
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/12/gluten-free-tuesday-easy-homemade-crackers.html . The second thing is my new pasta roller attachment for the food mixer.  


Anyone who has made anything with polymer clay will know that it tends to fracture and is hard to work with until it is kneaded, and a standard way to do this is to put it several times through a pasta roller. As my manual roller is now dedicated to polymer clay I have an electric one, which is such fun and so useful for these stiffer gluten free doughs.  Run a dough for crackers or pasta through a few times and you get a smooth transparent sheet without any real effort.  When you start the dough will tend to shatter and be irritatingly hard to control.  Just gather it up, reform a slab and pass through again, and after five or six passes it will be smooth and stay together and you can get a sheet of dough a meter long it you can hold it one piece.


Of course I didn't follow the recipe, but it did lead to a rosemary and olive oil cracker that is very thin and crunchy and crisp.  I don't yet know how well they will age - I'll add to this post later when I find out.




Ingredients:
100 g flour ( 40%urid, 40%tapioca, 20%cornmeal)
1/2 tsp baking powder (check gluten free)
1/4 tsp chopped rosemary
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp lemon juice
water to mix to firm dough

cracker ingredients

Method:
Stir all ingredients except water together until evenly mixed.  Add water until you get a dough you can just squeeze together.  It will be a bit tough and hard to shape at this stage.  If you don't have any helpful machinery kneed it until it gets pliable.  I use the pasta roller attachment on my Kenwood mixer.

On the next pass this sheet of dough became three times as long and still all in one piece.  Make thin sheets and either cut to shape in squares and re-roll the trimmings, or just slice the dough into shards with the ragged edges - they taste just as good and look interesting. 


Bake at about 170C far, 180C, for about six minutes until they are just tinged with gold.  Place on rack to cool then store in an air tight jar.  I don't yet know if they will lose their crispness when stored, but a quick reheat will fix that if necessary.  I'll add to the blog when I know.


The crackers have little air bubbles and speckles from the rosemary.  You can of course vary the flavourings any way you like.

Sunflower and Pumpkin Seed Brittle.

I had some sugar syrup left over from making Italian meringue.  It had gone completely solid in the pan but I thought it would still be possible to turn it into caramel and embed seeds in it to make an interesting seed brittle.  Anyone feeling wary - this is the only candy my mother made when we were kids, and she really did not like cooking.  It is simple; just be careful of the hot caramel as any of that on your skin will burn badly.  The actual quantities don't matter much - if you have lots of seeds and only just enough caramel to coat they will fall apart better and be better for you - too few seeds and you have more caramel to suck or crunch between the seeds.  Chose whatever type of nut or seed you have handy and like.

I took a couple of handfuls of pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds and toasted them briefly in a hot pan.

toasted seeds

Keep an eye on this - they should only just be tinged with gold and be beginning to fragrance the air.  Put them into a cold bowl when they are done.  If you just turn the heat off and ignore them they will carry on cooking and be likely to burn.

I put the solid clear syrup onto a medium heat and watched as it began to go liquid.  I didn't stir.

melting syrup

It gradually went completely liquid and then began to turn golden on the edge.

beginning to go golden

When it was a light amber colour I turned off the heat, tipped the seeds in and tipped the whole mass onto a pan lined with a sheet of baking parchment. You can just grease the pan but it is a lot more reliable to use baking parchment.

seed brittle

broken into pieces

This very easy to make.  You do have to pay attention and shouldn't try to do other things at the same time. Get your pan ready before you begin making the caramel as you have to handle the caramel and seed mixture swiftly when it is ready.  Store in an airtight container.

Gluten-free brandy snap baskets

I posted about making brandy snaps a while ago, testing two commercially available flours, Doves Farm and Bob's Red Mill.  This blog shows you how to make brandy snap baskets, for a flamboyant desert where the last minute effort is minimal.

I used my standard flour mix of 40%urid lentil flour, 40% tapioca and 20% polenta for these.  Having done a lot of tests I am happy that this mix makes most things in a direct swap for normal wheat flour.  Bread is a bit different, but cakes, pastry and cookies, and in this case brandy snaps, work fine without any extra ingredients or effort. Look at the earlier blog for the ingredients if you don't have a recipe: http://blissglutenfree.blogspot.com/2010/11/easy-gluten-free-brandy-snaps.html

Take you mixture and place on a baking sheet.  Put four blobs about 1cm in diameter widely space- they will spread a lot.

 Pat them out a little bit with a damp finger or swirl with the back of a spoon.  They do spread anyways but I found they produced a more even brandy snap with this little bit of help.

Bake until they go amber coloured.  You need to shape them where they are hot enough to be supple and not so hot they fall apart while burning your fingers.  I found that leaving them on the non-stick mat but sliding this so that two were on the cooling rack and two still on the tray allowed me to shape the first two while the others stayed hot enough from the heat of the tray.

brandy snaps - non-stick sheet half on and half off hot baking tray

If I took them all off the tray the second two were too stiff to shape and I had to put them back in the oven for a few seconds before shaping.

I made small baskets by forming them around some little individual tart cases as I wanted to be able to pack them in tart cases for a friend.  Use an upturned glass or small bowl - whatever has the sort of shape you want. Have several ready so that you can shape several and leave them to cool while the next batch are baking.  I oiled these using grapeseed oil, which has very little flavour.

Taking a hot brandy snap that will hold its shape, place on the greased mould and press lightly so that the brandy snap takes up the same shape.  Leave to cool and pack in an airtight box or plastic bag until needed.

Shaping the brandy snap basket

this video has no sound - it wasn't clear enough to post - another thing to learn

To serve - place on a plate, fill with whatever takes your fancy, and be prepared for 'oooh's of delight.

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.

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reheated in microwave from frozen this pasta is still good

Sulphite-free vegan mincemeat – Phase 1, the candied peel

I like candied peel but find it usually contains sulphites.  These don’t trouble me, but while I am making food for people who can’t eat gluten it seems sensible to avoid as many of the usual problem food components as possible.

I am about to make a batch of mince pies for a local farm shop.  I could just use bought mincemeat, or make it without the peel, but the recipe for candied peel looked very easy though it needed quite a long time for all the stages. 

I started by buying three lemons, four oranges and a grapefruit.  I don’t remember why that particular number, but I don’t think it matters as the recipes I looked at all called for different proportions of the citrus fruits.  I scrubbed them, then slit the peel with a sharp knife and removed the peel.  Some recipes say juice the fruit first, but then later on they say scrape the membrane from the softened peel, and that sounds too much of an effort.

I slivered the peel then cooked it in water until soft. Just add enough water to cover the peel and top up as necessary.  Stir occasionally to avoid sticking and burning.

Some recipes suggest boiling then draining, reboiling in fresh water, draining, reboiling in order to cut the bitterness.  I decided not to do this as I like bitter marmalade and I want the peel primarily as an ingredient in cooking.  Actually, having finished the peel I don’t think I would want to reduce the lovely bitterness even if I was going to eat these plain or dipped in chocolate.  When making marmalade I have softened the peel in pressure cookers and in the microwave – use whatever method you find easiest – all you are doing is getting the peel to the point where you can squish it easily between your fingers.

Drain the peel, reserving the liquid.  I plan to make citrus Turkish delight with this liquid as it seems a shame to waste all that flavour.  I’ll post information about that when I do it as well.

I ended up with 650g of cooked peel (I forgot to weigh it before I started).  I added the same amount of sugar to 300g of water, which gave enough syrup to just cover the fruit.  Add the fruit and cook gently until almost all of the syrup is absorbed.  I added a bit more sugar, totalling 800g, as I thought the peel was too bitter, and the more sugar it has the better it should keep.  

Stir occasionally.  Check every fifteen minutes or so to make sure it isn’t sticking or burning. This could take up to a couple of hours on a very low heat.

Spread the peel out on racks and leave to dry somewhere warm.  I put these in my oven with just the light on, and every now and then put the oven on its lowest setting – it’s a fan oven, to drive out the moist air and add a little bit of extra warmth.  Slow drying rather than cooking is what is being aimed for.  In the summer I dried glace cherries on a stack of cooling racks covered in a tablecloth to allow air circulation and keep flies and dust off. That worked fine too.

These should be dry enough to make the mincemeat tomorrow with some of the peel.  The rest I will store in airtight containers until needed.

Ingredients

Citrus fruit – peel including the white pith     650g once softened
Water to keep covered for first softening boil

Syrup made from:

• Sugar - same weight of cooked peel plus a bit more if desired 800g
• Water to just cover softened peel  300ml

Drying racks.