Vegan cranberry and sweet potato muffin Gluten-free

Ingredients:

60g sugar

60g sunflower margarine

50g grated sweet potato (unpeeled)

30g cranberries

gel – 10g tapioca 60ml water

25g urid lentil flour

15g tapioca

15g polenta

1tsp baking powder

1/4tsp ginger

0.3tsp baking soda

Sift dry ingredients together. Mix in margarine then stir in sweet potato and cranberries. Mix in gel – this takes a bit of effort; just keep going until evenly dispersed. Place in muffin cases and bake for 25-30 minutes until crisp and golden on top and springy to touch. Oven temperature 170 degrees C.

These muffins are light and the cranberries shine like jewels. The hint of ginger isn't obvious, just adds a touch of warmth to the flavour.

Views of Mr Taster

"The fabric of the matrix holds together in a way that is much more like something with gluten in it. It is springy and doesn't collapse when you bite it or press it with your tongue, keeping its three dimensional structure. Sweetness is evenly distributed and the top has crunchy sweetness - did you sprinkle it with something? Works very well."

Vegan gluten free carrot muffin

Carrot muffins are one of my favourite snack foods and great to keep in the freezer. I put one in a tub for a day out when I don’t know if there will be anything safe to eat. My usual recipe is gluten and dairy free but does contain eggs, so this is an attempt to find a good vegan recipe.

I made two batches of muffins, one with pre-gelatinised tapioca starch and one with the same amount of water and tapioca added to the rest of the ingredients. The second batter was very sloppy so I probably should not have added so much water, just mixed in water until the texture was right, but I haven’t retested this yet.

The muffins were quite different.

The one made with water was wetter, the muffin stuck to the paper case, and the individual ingredients were very visible. The pieces of carrot will still very clear. The taste was light, the texture moist, but this moistness gave a gelatinous feel. The muffin did hold together and was fine to eat. Considering there was no gluten or egg it had a lot more coherence than I had expected, presumably because the carrot strands gave structure.

The one made with the pre-gelatinised tapioca starch (gel) was quite different. If you haven’t seen the earlier instructions on this all I did was mix 10g tapioca flour with 60g cold water and heat, stirring continuously, until it looked like thick wallpaper paste – a clear very sticky gel. Be warned, you need to clean the pan and spoon with paper towel before putting in the dishwasher or you will find blobs of the stuff left in the dishwasher at the end. It really does stick together. Technical papers I have been reading suggest the temperature you cook this to makes a difference as to how it performs but I didn’t do anything other than cook until clear and thick.

I had to work harder to mix the batter, so I started with the gel and worked first the sugar, then flour, then margarine, then carrot and raisins into the mix. As I was making a tiny amount I did this with a wooden spoon; it may well be that in a food mixer it would be easy.

This carrot muffin was lovely. I gave a blind taste test to my resident Mr Taster, who has a fine palate, an analytical mind and a good descriptive capability (he writes novels while I bake). His words were ‘If I came across one in Starbucks I would make a note to have it again. It has a deep, complex mature flavour; an extremely good taste experience.”

In the photo the ‘gel’ muffin is on the left with the reddish colour.

Ingredients (makes four muffins about 70g batter each)

60g sugar

60g sunflower margarine (usually use oil but tried Pure margarine)

50g grated carrot

30g raisins

gel – 10g tapioca 60ml water

25g urid lentil flour

15g tapioca

15g polenta

1tsp baking powder

1tsp cinnamon

0.3tsp baking soda

Place about 70g of batter in each muffin case and bake at 17degrees C for approx 25 minutes until skewer comes out clean.

When cool, ice with a glace icing made with icing sugar and lemon juice.

I’ll run some best-before tests – my usual carrot muffins are still great after seven days. That, of course, needs time. I’ll report back.

I note that lots of sites suggest flax seed as an egg substitute. I’ll try that when I get some, as they have a nutritional advantage over tapioca starch. Will report later.

This recipe will give less protein than the usual one made with egg but is a great way to have a gf, dairy and egg free portable treat.

Cranberry and pumpkin seed brunch bar

Cranberry and Pumpkin Seed Brunch Bars

I have a challenge to make sweet treats for a group of people on a craft course in Spain. Between they have allergies or intolerances to a very long list of things, including gluten, dairy and egg. I always make gluten free food, but I don’t tend to make things without eggs. Here is a scrummy bar of seeds and fruit.

I haven’t done any tests to see how well it keeps at ambient temperatures; that will come later. I also haven’t worked out the nutrients yet.

Ingredients:

20g pumpkin seed

30g dried cranberries

40g mashed ripe banana

50g urid lentil flour

30g pregelatinised tapioca ( tapioca flour cooked with water to make a thick transparent gloop)

40g dairy free margarine

30g soft brown sugar ( I found this too sweet so will reduce next time)

cream sugar and margarine and add banana. Stir in tapioca gloop. Add flour. Mix well. Stir in cranberries and pumpkin seeds. Place on lined greased tray and bake for 20-25 minutes at 170degrees C until golden brown. Place on rack to cool.

Crispbread

The hunt is on in earnest for an excellent, long shelf-life crisp-bread. The first problem that I am confronted with is that I have no idea what a good crisp-bread should be like. I never used to eat them as I regarded those packaged things as something eaten under duress when given them at the mother-in-law's for lunch. Mr Taster never eats them, and never even liked crackers. I have tried several versions and am getting to a product I am very happy to eat, made with a combination of quinoa, urid, tapioca, polenta and seeds. However. I realise there are some serious questions that need answering:

How much dry strength should they have? What force, in other words, should be necessary to crack one held between both hands and forcing the cracker up between them (bending).

How much wet strength should they have? How long should a crispbread loaded with mashed avocado, for arguments sake, be able to to retain a horizontal position whilst held at one end.

Should you be able to bite the cracker easily between the front teeth or is it OK to have to use the molars to help? What compressive force is necessary to shatter it?

What crack pattern is optimal - a single crack along the line of the teeth or should the cracks radiate out like thin ice when you throw a rock onto it?

What texture is desired when chewing the crispbread? Should it disintegrate fast or take some work to disperse? Is a smooth texture or one interrupted by seeds etc good?

Should the cracker taste, salty, sweet, nutty? Should it be neutral so that the topping shines or should it be assertive in it's own right?

Then there is all the business about residual moisture and the change in texture as it get older. I figure get it right straight out of the oven then keep testing. I have noticed some of the samples get munched a lot faster than others. So far they have been the ones made with a wet batter spread onto a baking sheet rather than those made into a stiff dough and rolled. Aesthetically I prefer the rolled crispbreads but the spread ones are a lot easier to eat, not softer really but with a cracking pattern that spreads with much less force.

Any comments welcome.

Steak pie and pyjamas

Last Saturday I was still in my pyjamas at 11:30. I had the house to myself and wasn't expecting any visitors or deliveries. The doorbell went. It was bloke in an open-top convertible who had been given one of my carrot muffins by a chap that had brought the portaloo (yes, no proper sewer all summer) and had thought it was fantastic. He had dropped by expecting to find a shop, not a house with an unkempt cook, a kitchen in chaos, no products for sale, and no Environmental Health clearance for anything other than low risk cakes.

I asked him what he wanted, checked on pastry lid versus full case, his views on animal cruelty (well, would he pay extra for organic/freedom foods or not) and then asked what he wanted to pay. With all this information I set about making my first ever steak pies, figuring I might just as well know if they work, can they cope with being frozen, do they taste good, can I do them for the price he is prepared to pay, before I reopen conversations with my excellent local EHO.

Fortunately the pastry is sufficiently pliable and robust, the pies cope with being frozen, and my instinctively carnivorous husband is delighted with this new range of compulsory food tests.

I realised I never put a picture of the wedding cake when it was fully iced on the first blog.

At first I was going to make it match the main cake, but then I wondered how I would be sure that I had a safe piece of cake. So, I changed the flowers and did an all-over piping squiggle so that any piece of cake could be identified. The flowers are made from sugar paste. They are a lot better than my first few attempts! Thanks to the SWORCS beginners sugarcraft course and my friend Alison who helped me get to grips with this rather odd medium.

Wedding Cake

At last, a chance to try a formal wedding cake. My nephew John is getting married in May, so the three months recommended maturing time for a traditional fruit cake means that now is the time to get started. I am making a small gluten- free cake to match their three tier normal version.

I have booked on a cake decorating course at Evesham College, which starts this evening. I need a seven inch cake for the course, so this weekend I made two seven inch cakes and two mini loaf cakes. The later - well, it would be stupid not to test the recipe, and Rod looked crestfallen when I suggested planning not having any batter unfortunately left over so no immediate consumption cakes.

I used the wedding cake recipe in my ancient Cordon Bleu book, Baking 1. It seemed a lot less interesting than the fruit cakes I normally make, but it turned out to be scrumptious. There is a tiny amount of cocoa powder in it and it makes the cake have a lovely warm flavour. I didn't photograph the batter but I will post pictures of my adventures in icing.

recipe for two seven inch round cakes - ancient book so in Imperial

1 lb sultanas

1 lb currants

11 oz raisins

3 oz glace cherries, halved

2 oz blanched and shredded almonds

3 oz candied peel

4 fl oz brandy - I used more as the fruit seemed dry

1/3 tsp cinnamon

1/3 nutmeg, grated

11 oz butter

1/3 tbsp cocoa

grated rind 1/3 lemon and orange

11 oz caster sugar

1/3 tbsp black treacle

6 eggs

15 oz flours: 8 oz almond

4 oz tapioca

4 oz urid lentil

1/2 tsp baking powder ( I added this as my mixer is dead so I didn't beat the butter and sugar until fluffy- figured this would add a touch of lightness to the batter)

soak fruit in brandy 24 hours, stirring occasionally

mix dry ingredients and stir one third into the fruit to coat. This is supposed to help keep the fruit evenly dispersed through the cake

cream butter until soft, add sugar and rind and beat until light and fluffy.

add treacle and eggs one at a time, beating between each addition.

Stir in half the remaining flour and stir

Add fruit and stir

Add rest of flour and mix until even.

Bake in tins which are lined with three or four layers of greaseproof paper to help the cake cook evenly. Smooth over the top, and then lightly smear the top with water. I use my fingers for this. This helps keep the top from burning on cakes that cook for a long time. If the top does seem to be getting too brown whilst the middle is under cooked put some layers of greaseproof paper over the top. As I have a fan oven these blow off, so I put a cooling rack on top to hold things in place. I didnt need this for these small cakes.

150 degrees C in a fan oven

The two seven inch tins I cooked for about two and a half hours . The two mini loaf testers I cooked for about forty minutes. Test with a skewer or knife to see that they are cooked through. Cool in the tins. Wrap and store for three months, soaking extra booze in every few weeks if wanted.

Eat the mini cakes with gusto straight away.