Blueberry crunch cookies

I hadn't planned to write any more posts, but lately I've been mildly exasperated when I make something delicious and have no idea how to replicate it- and I get asked by others for recipes, and my usual, "bung a few things together and see what happens" is not helpful for them.
So, I'm reopening this blog for occasional use as my recipe file.

I made some delicious crunchy cookies a few days ago, and really wanted to be able to make them again.  Fortunately I had put some of the dough in the freezer, so I had raw dough for comparison and also could cook a bit of this dough to do the baked comparison.  It took a bit of tweaking, but here is a recipe that is very delicious, crunchy without being crumbly, and dairy free as well as gluten free.  I tried a bit of the dough without egg but it just splidged and disintegrated when baked, so I can't say that if you need to skip the egg just add a bit less flour- I haven't done a successful egg-free test yet.

I included the hemp seed as we had some available, and I like the added omegas and also I think it gives a lightness to the texture and some visual interest.  If you haven't got any substitute your favourite seeds or just add a bit more flour if your dough is sloppy.

Recipe

Ingredients
160g coconut oil (solid at room temp)
160g demerera sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
300g self raising flour (I use a mixture that is 40% urid lentil, 40% tapioca, 20% rice, with 1.5tsp (7.5g) baking powder to 100g of flour)
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp mixed spice
40g hemp
80g dried blueberries

Method
Pre-heat oven to 175C
Warm the coconut oil to make it easier to get out of the jar.
Mix oil and sugar
Add in the egg (make sure your oil isn't hot before you do this or you will scramble the egg!)
Mix in vanilla
Add in flour, hemp and spice
Mix in blueberries

The dough should be quite stiff.
Roll into rounds between palm and press onto a lined baking sheet, or dollop with two teaspoons if you prefer.

Bake at 175C for 7-10 minutes until golden brown.  Keep an eye on them- they go from brown to burnt quite quickly.  It is better to get them out too soon then put them back for a bit longer than to go away having set the timer, coming back too late.

Slide the baking parchment with cookies onto your cooling rack and let them sit until they begin to stiffen.  Move them off the paper onto the rack and leave until cold before putting in a cookie jar.

If you want to keep some dough for later just form into a roll, wrap in freezer paper and over wrap with clingfilm.  Slice and bake when you need some more.

gluten free spiced apple, cranberry and blueberry cake

This cake is sweet and tart with just a hint of spice.  It has plenty of fruit but isn't a solid wodge of dried fruit like some cakes of the wedding/christmas cake variety.

Many of my recipes happen in a slightly random way, driven by things that need using up.  Today I found I had seven small apples from a batch that hadn't been as crisp as expected, and were beginning to look a bit sorry for themselves, a large mandarin orange that had lost its gloss, and a husband that keeps wanting lunch early as there is no cake to go with his mid-morning coffee.

A large fruit cake seemed the obvious way to solve all of these problems.  I had already cooked the apples, chopped but not peeled, in with the orange juice and zest, before I decided to make the cake.  You wouldnt need to cook them first if you prefer the apple to stay in chunks in the finished cake.

Set oven at 170C fan
Grease and line two large cake tins.  I used a long pullman loaf tin (the lid is handy if the top starts to get too brown) which has a capacity of 3.5l and an ordinary one pound loaf tin (750ml) to fit all the mixture in.  I like to make a small cake for immediate eating and a larger one to mature, though having two different sizes means you have to keep an eye on how cooked they are as they will need different times.

Ingredients
500g cooked/chopped apples
juice and zest one small orange
500g dried blueberries
500g dried cranberries
8 eggs
300g soft brown sugar
250g soft butter (I keep mine in the freezer, so just zapped it on medium heat in the microwave - not so good for the precise temperatures needed for creaming, but fine for just mixing in)
400g flour
5 tsp baking powder
4tsp mixed spice

The flour used in this was 300g of my current flour mix(1/3 each urid lentil, brown rice and buckwheat) and an extra 100g urid lentil flour.  I ran out of flour and didn't want to make a fresh batch - so considering how much fruit there was in this cake just added extra urid as it will help hold it together.  I am sure 400g of the standard mix would have been fine.

Whisk the flour, baking powder and spice together.  Mix all the other ingredients together.  Stir together.  Put mix in greased lined tins and bake.

The smaller cake took an hour to cook.  Test with a  skewer or fine knife.  I use a knife even though I get a bigger hole as I find it easier to see the cake residue.  I turned the heat down to 150C and cooked the larger cake for a further half an hour.

Cool on a rack.

Good immediately; will keep well.

Piecrust; New gluten free flour mix - tapioca free

I have been trying my first attempt at a tapioca and corn free gluten-free flour.  The one I am using at the moment is one third each of urid lentil, brown rice and buckwheat.  It makes good pancakes, but they are very easy with almost any flour.  Pastry is more of a challenge, and I wasn't expecting much from this mixture - I thought it might not hold together and it might not be crisp, or it might taste so strongly of the buckwheat that it would affect the flavour of the fruit filling.

I made a tiny amount of pastry to test, just using the scrap of butter I had to hand.  It made enough for two small pastries, made in a cupcake tin.  One was double crusted, the other open.  The filling was some frozen gooseberries, defrosted and mixed with sugar,

30g butter
60g flour mix (1/3 each urid, buckwheat, brown rice)

Cut butter and flour together then add chilled water to make quite a damp dough.  I thought I had added too much water to start with but after a little further mixing the dough became well behaved.  I didn't even leave it to rest before rolling.  I took slightly more care lifting the rolled dough than my usual recipe, but in general it was well behaved.  It kept its shape well in baking and when cooling, not shrinking away from the tin or the joins.

The piecrust was delicious, crisp and light and suitably complemented by  the tart sweet filling.

For those of you not used to English gooseberries who are shocked by the sight of prickles on the fruit in the first little pie - don't worry, they go soft and so aren't noticeable when eating.

Buckwheat and urid lentil flatbread

A very quick and easy flatbread that is soft and flexible even when it cools.  I added whole cumin seed to these when I was rolling them out  to give extra flavour, and served with a variety of curries.

Makes four small flatbreads - sufficient for two people

50g urid lentil flour
50g buckwheat
water to make a firm but pliable dough.


Add water gradually until you get a dough that holds together.
Knead briefly and wrap in cling film until ready to use.
Roll out using plenty of flour to stop sticking and tearing.
Cook on both sides in a hot-medium dry pan until you get small brownish patches.  You will probably get some puffing as they top and bottom separate, though probably not enough to use them as filled 'pockets'.

Wrap in a towel until ready to eat to keep them warm.

(You can see a small crack on the rolled flatbread in the picture with the curry.  I rolled and re-rolled this flatbread to see how pliable this was, and the this was the only cracking.)
 

Whole Meal muffins

I have been trying out recipes using flour mixes that do not contain tapioca or corn.  These muffins were made with urid lentil flour, buckwheat flour and brown rice flour.  The first two I ground myself, the third I bought as flour.  I also included quinoa.  This was cooked whole and added to the mixture rather than using the flour.  I find quinoa, whilst excellent in terms of being a complete protein, can give foods a slightly acrid taste.  To avoid this the quinoa should be rinsed before use.  If I really need flour I then dry the quinoa in a low oven before grinding.  In this case the nature of the muffin meant that leaving it whole would be fine.  I have found in the past that if I use uncooked whole quinoa in muffins the texture tends to be coarse, with the quinoa staying too hard.  In a  slow fermented batter this would not be a problem.

I added banana, grated carrot, dried fruit, pumpkin and linseeds to the batter as well as egg and a little oil. These muffins are high in protein and would make a good emergency meal if travelling - hence another reason to call them 'Whole Meal muffins'.  You get your protein, fruit and vegetables in one neat package, with no added refined sugar and very little fat.  I use a little oil as it helps the muffin to keep moist if not eaten immediately.

These were a little denser than I would have like. In future I would add some juice or water to make a sloppier batter, which would aid rising, and add another teaspoon of baking powder.

If you want a sweeter muffin just add a little sugar or syrup of your choice.  To check this you can cook a tiny bit of the batter in a frying pan to see what it will be like.

Makes 12 large muffins
Set oven at 175C

Ingredients
150g flour - 1/3 urid, 1/3 buckwheat, 1/3 brown rice
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp mixed spice
2 eggs
2 ripe bananas mashed (2 small - 165g)
1 large carrot, grated (100g)
20g linseeds
30g pumpkin seeds
80g cranberries
80g blueberries (or other dried fruit)
50g sunflower oil

Topping
20g pumpkin seeds
10g agave or other sweet syrup

Method
Whisk dry ingredients together

Mix all the remaining ingredients except the optional topping together

Mix wet and dry ingredients together and put in muffin cases.

Put a few sticky pumpkin seeds on top of each muffin.  This gives a crisp burst of sweetness on each muffin.

Bake at 175C for 25 minutes

Freeze when cool and use as needed. I find 20secs in a microwave is adequate to defrost them, or pack in your lunch box frozen where they will keep everything else chilled as they defrost.

Quick and easy gf breakfast pancakes

Trying out a new flour mix that doesn't contain any tapioca or cornmeal.  Every morning we have pancakes as we find them more sustaining than any breakfast cereal, and they became our standard breakfast when we were travelling in the campervan.

This batch of flour was made with 150g urid lentil flour, 75g buckwheat flour, 75g brown rice flour.

Pancake Ingredients
100 g flour
3/4 tsp of baking powder (very fluffy pancakes, could reduce this)
2 eggs
100 ml rice milk

Method
Mix all ingredients together.  Whisk thoroughly to remove lumps.

Cook in a non-stick pan on a medium heat.  I use a spray oil once every few pancakes to make sure nothing sticks but it isn't essential.

Pour batter into the pan to make a pancake smaller than the pan.  This makes it easier to turn them.  You have the right temperature when the top of the pancake has set into bubbles and the bottom is golden brown.  If you have the temperature too high the bottom will burn before the top has set.  This doesn't matter much - you will just have a messier pancake and it won't have those little channels for the syrup or whatever topping you are using to run into the pancake.  These pancakes are a bit like crumpets - if you made the batter thicker you could make a crumpet style pancake.

These pancakes keep well - you can eat them immediately or use them throughout the day.  They are very good as a snack with curry paste and lettuce, or if you eat cheese as a mini pizza with melted cheese on top.

They can also be frozen.

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.

Gooseberry cobbler - with frozen dough

I made a cobbler with blackberries yesterday, and froze half the dough to see how it would work used straight from the freezer.  I took frozen gooseberries, put them into a small dish with a teaspoon of sugar, and placed the piece of frozen cobbler dough on top.  I cooked this for 30 minutes in a 180C oven.

The cobbler worked well and the fruit was succulent.  This is a very easy way of making an individual pudding or a family sized one, having done all the work whenever it is convenient.

For any international readers. the English call gooseberries a small hard very sour fruit with prickles on the berries.  These prickles become too soft to notice in your mouth when eating, even though you can still see them in the photographs.  One of the clearest memories I have of my sense of dislocation when I came to England was being told we had been given a basket of gooseberries ( I envisaged Cape Gooseberries, Physallis, succulent orange berries in their individual paper case) and it was these hard sour prickly green things.

Blackberry cobbler

I had some frozen blackberries in the freezer, and needed a cobbler to photograph for the new cookery book.  Here is a very easy cobbler recipe.

I based the recipe on using one whole egg.  This made enough batter for two oval dishes 23cmx15cm, each enough for four portions.  I sometimes freeze a whole dish once cooked, but this time I froze half the dough as dollops on a non-stick sheet.  I'll blog how well these work cooked direct from frozen later.

Ingredients
175g flour (40%urid, 40% tapioca, 20 cornmeal)
4 tsp baking powder
75g butter or other fat suitable for baking
75g sugar
1 egg
75ml rice or other milk (add extra if dough too stiff)
15g flaked almonds (optional)

I used the food processor bowl to weigh and mix this dough but you can easily do it by hand, especially if you use a soft margarine.

Mix dry ingredients thoroughly.
Cut in butter until finely dispersed
Mix egg and milk together and stir into flour mixture


Place in dollops on top of the fruit.  Use whatever type of fruit you like and have handy.  You can easily adjust the ratio of fruit to topping to suit your own preferences.  There should be gaps between the dollops so that some of the fruit shows through when the pudding is cooked.

Sprinkle with flaked almonds if using.

Cook in a pre-heated over, 180C for 35minutes.

Test for doneness as you would any other cake - if a knife inserted into the cobbler comes out without uncooked dough sticking to it the pudding is done.  If you find it needs longer turn the temperature down to allow the mixture to cook without burning the top. If I use a lot of frozen fruit I find it can take an extra ten minutes for the cobbler to cook where it touches the fruit.

Why people with food-intolerances need enormous houses and some coeliacs might eat gluten

I have been looking at all my stuff trying to think how to fit into a small flat rather than a rambling farmhouse with outbuildings.  OK, so I have kept stuff from every hobby I have ever tried, and between us we have kit for sailing, windsurfing, surfing, skiing (downhill and nordic) Heelies, jewellery, electronics, welding, wine-making, pottery, embroidery on a grand scale, oil and acrylic painting (easels for three people) and so on.

But, a big problem is thinking about kitchen storage.  If an ordinary person wants a bag of flour they buy a bag of flour.  If I need more flour I have to buy at least three ingredients, at least two of which have to come from an Internet supplier.  So, OK, I need to buy three bags of flour to make one bag of flour.  Big deal.

But then, look at the costs.  A bag of tapioca or urid might cost only a few pounds ( still 7-10 times the price of ordinary flour).  Postage on one bag of flour costs much more than the flour itself.  Occasionally I have bought flour, eg chestnut, where I just paid much more for the delivery than the flour, but usually I buy enough stuff to make the unit cost of the postage seem reasonable or to hit the free delivery band.

There is also the time lag associated with Internet shopping. Most people manage a near-next day delivery now, but sometimes I have had to wait for weeks for an out of stock staple.  So more flour earlier is better from this perspective too.

So, for the flour to make a single cake I might end up with twelve bags of tapioca, six cartons of Eat Natural muesli, some blue corn tortilla and a few other bits and pieces in one box, and six bags of urid lentils, some curry paste and some cooking tongs in another box.

In one fell swoop I have gone from needing a product that for most people is available for 60p in any grocery store and takes up one small space on a shelf to twenty items which cost £70 and take up half a cubic meter of cupboard space - or on top of the washing machine and on the stairs.....

Then there is the finished food.  I bake enough bagels at a time to last about a week.  They take up a whole shelf in the freezer.  Other people can just go to a shop and buy a single cupcake or a sandwich or a loaf of bread.  Of course, if I was prepared to eat really bad food or hunt out the few reasonable specialist suppliers (Internet, postage, storage...) this wouldn't be such an issue.

If I didn't make reasonable pizza, pasties, cookies, cakes etc it would be harder for TT to keep the house safe for me too.  I bluntly said if he couldn't avoid smearing gluten all around the house I'd have to have a separate house (now that's another twist on the theme of needing more space) so it is a big deal.

Steering clear of those tiny deadly proteins means adopting an obsessive lifestyle and, for me, an obsessive interest in the structural attributes and function of myriad of other materials.  It is easy to see why, for those who don't have excruciating and immediately noticeable effects from eating gluten, that they give up abstaining, trading social integration and convenience for the threat of future malaise.



I could just eat potatoes I suppose.  Where would be the fun in that?

Granary-style gluten-free bagels -high fibre

bagels

I still miss the warm toasty flavour of granary bread when I eat my usual bagels.  I also note that people seem to find it hard to get enough fibre in their diet on a gluten-free diet, presumably because the foods available in the shops are made from highly processed starches.  Here is a lovely and flexible recipe for a seedy high fibre well flavoured-bagel. adjust the quantity of linseeds to suit your own guts - they have a powerful bulking action.

I started with the usual bagel recipe and added a variety of seeds and other flavourings.  I have made this several times, and have varied it each time, so do amend the recipe to include your favourite seeds.  I have made this with mixtures of the ground buckwheat sprouts I grew last week, with quinoa that I rinsed and toasted then ground, with pumpkin and sunflower seeds, and with brown linseed.

Ingredients and method
400ml warm water (avoid highly chlorinated - if you don't filter your water and it smells very chlorinated let it sit a while to let the chlorine disperse)
1-2 tsp of yeast depending on how much of a hurry you are in
1 tsp of date syrup or other sugar

mix these together and let them froth.  I do this even with the instant yeast you can add dry to flour.  I like to see my yeast working before I go any further.

yeasty water

250g urid lentil flour
mix with the yeasty water and leave the covered batter to rise for a couple of hours in a warm place

double in size - see the air holes

30-50g linseeds -(depending on how 'therapeutic' for your bowels you want this bread to be!)
75g pumpkin seed
50g quinoa, buckwheat etc
100g skin-on almonds (substitute with more seeds/quinoa etc if nut intolerant)

mixed seeds

grind these in your blender until as smooth as you want.

ground seeds

Add the seeds and one egg (not essential if egg intolerant) to the dough

Add about 20g date syrup / 2 tbsp (or suitable brown syrup eg treacle, honey etc)
1/4 tsp vanilla (yes - it helps)
1/4 tsp tamarind paste

add seeds and flavourings to dough

Beat dough until mixed.

Add in enough tapioca flour to make a firm but still very slightly damp dough.  If you touch it very lightly some should stick to your fingers.  Beat thoroughly.

slightly too wet

a little dough sticks

Leave to rise.  I put mine to rise in the oven with some hot water in a dish to give a moist atmosphere.  Otherwise cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap.  As it rises the tapioca flour will absorb more water and the dough will be easy enough to shape with floured hands.

texture of risen dough - see the air holes

Shape into bagels.  Use a light touch so that you dont knock all the air out.  Place on floured tray to rise again.  The dough will feel odd and slightly bouncy.   We like about 100g for each bagel.

shaped bagels

risen bagels

When risen, boil for 30 secs each side, drain and place on baking sheet.  I read somewhere that you should plunge into iced water after this stage, so I tested it, but we preferred the ones that were just drained.

Add seeds on top if wanted.

sesame seeds

Bake in a hot oven (180C) until golden.

texture of finished bagel

These produce a bagel which has an even texture, no cloying texture, toasts well, holds its shape, freezes well, and tastes great.

Cool, freeze until needed if not going to be eaten within two days.


There are a lot of steps in this but mostly the dough does its own work while you get on with other things.  Slow risen doughs are easier to digest, and the timing between each stage isn't critical.  Increase the yeast or warmth (up to but not beyond 40C) to speed the process up. If you can't finish in one day just put the dough at whatever stage it is at in the fridge and carry on the next day.

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.

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.

Gluten-free cheese, potato and onion pasties

cheese, onion and potato pasties - gluten free

Ate the last one of these a week after baking.  It was still good and held together well.  

I had kept it in the fridge.

Savory picnic type food can be hard to find if you can't eat gluten.  I made these pasties to test the new standard flour mix...how strange to ladle a single type of flour out of a jar rather than grinding, assembling, mixing a bespoke flour for each project.

Pastry
250g butter
500g flour (40%urid, 40%tapioca, 20% polenta)
2 eggs
c100-150ml cold water to mix

Filling
1 onion, cooked until soft and golden in olive oil
1 large potato, peeled, diced and boiled until nearly soft
100-150g cheese - I used mature cheddar, and added more until I thought the flavour balance was right
pepper

Cook the onion and potato ahead of time so that they have a chance to cool before you need them.

grated cheese, sauteed onion and diced cooked potato

Make the pastry by cutting the butter into cubes and blitzing in the food processor until the butter is finely dispersed.  Add the lightly beaten egg and blitz until evenly dispersed.

You can do the next bit in the machine but I like to mix the water in by hand so I can feel how wet the dough is getting.  Tip the mix into a large bowl, add cold water a little at a time.  I use a whisking action with my finger tips, and keep adding until the dough will just hold a lump when squeezed lightly.

Form into two balls, wrap in clingfilm, and put in the fridge to rest while you assemble the filling the filling.

Roll the pastry out to a medium thickness.  Don't aim for a very thin pastry as it needs to be able to hold the filling in place when cooking.  I made my dough too thin for this and some of the cheese escaped. Aim more for the thickness of a £1 coin rather than a ten penny piece.

Cut out a circle.  I used 25cm 8 1/2 inch side plate, which produced a good meal sized pasty.

Egg wash around the edge of the pastry and place a large handful of the filling in the middle.  The potato, cheese and onion mix holds its shape well so that you can put a big lump in the middle and it stays in place while you shape the pastry around it.

It is easier to make a flat pasty, where you bring one half of the pastry over the top of the filling and press it down onto the other half.   As I was testing the performance characteristics of this pastry I did the version where you bring both sides up and seal them down the middle.  It was a little difficult to do this neatly as the pastry did tear a bit, but a little patching fixed that.  Egg wash for a shiny golden finish.

Cook for 20 minutes in a hot oven, 180C, until golden brown.

These are good hot or cold.  They survived carrying around in a box without any sign of falling apart.

a slice through a mini test-pasty - had to be sure it tasted good!

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.