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Gluten Free Crullers and Choux Pastry

We are snowed in here in Southwestern Ontario, so what better thing to do then make donuts! (Actually, I can think of a few things, but this was a good option :)  ).

Mark and I's favourite Tim Horton's donut (doughnut?) is their Honey Cruller. At some of the other donut joints around, they are also called French Crullers. Since Mark's celiac diagnosis in December, we have both missed having these donuts. Okay, not me, since I eat them when I am at my place, but I do feel bad for him for not being able to eat them too.

This recipe comes from a great site called "The Art of Gluten Free Baking". Love this site!  All the recipes have been good so far, and this one is excellent. I didn't totally follow the choux pastry recipe on her site, but I did like the beautiful photographs and step by step instructions. Her advice to use aluminum foil to transfer the crullers to the oil is genius.

As far as the choux pastry recipe goes, I used my regular recipe but substituted Jeanne's flour mix for the wheat flour. I've modified my regular recipe to use more of her mix, and I think the crullers need to cook until they are fairly well browned. A candy thermometer would help! If you don't have one, drop a 1 inch cube of potato into the oil, and if it starts bubbling around it and is softened but not browned in about 60 seconds then that should be about right. A thermometer really helps, though.

Mark's favourite picture of the crullers:

Hawaiin Ham, the redux

It occurred to me tonight, as I made Hawaiin Ham, that this is nothing like the Hawaiin Ham my mom made when I was a kid!  So I thought I should take a picture of my variation.  I have posted this recipe before - you can find it here - but I'll post it again with all the additives and changes I've made since the last time I posted it!

My  mom's version of this recipe is completely different than mine.  I actually had to dig up a recipe book she gave me as a bridal shower gift many, many years ago, just to see the actual differences.  I'll post both recipes so you can do your own comparison, but in my own defense, I think I added all the extra veggies both to stretch the dinner, and to make it a little more 'healthy'.  I'm air-quoting that just in case she ever logs in here and reads this.  The veggies make sense though: carrots and pineapple are a great combination, green beans and pineapple AND green beans and pork are great together, ham and pineapple are complementary, and, well, the green peppers were called for in the original, so I had to keep them in.  Take a look, see what you think!

Baked Ham - photo

Here is my picture for Adrienne's Mulled Ham, which I made tonight for my kids and I.  It looks pretty good, doesn't it?

Now, if you've read Adrienne's recipe for the Mulled Ham, you might have noticed MY ham is missing a few things.  Like the pineapple.  And the poaching liquid. And the brown sugar.  There's a story behind that, of course.  I dropped the ham - not once, but twice. The first great drop landed on my fuzzy slipper (ew) and then bounced to the floor. The kids were on the Wii, so I quickly scooped it up, carefully set it back on the plate, picked it up - and dropped the whole thing again.  I didn't want to waste a good ham, so I cut off the outside, threw out the pineapple, ditched the poaching liquid, and put it back in a hot oven to fix it.  

So here is my version of the Mulled Ham - I call it 'Megan's Beat-up Ham'.  Enjoy!!  The link to the Mulled Ham recipe can be found here.

Mulled Ham, by guest author Adrienne Charlton

Hi everyone. This is a recipe for Mulled Ham (a ham baked in orange juice and mulling spices), by guest author Adrienne Charlton. No picture of it yet, but if I manage to bake a ham in the next couple of days, I will get a picture up!

From Adrienne (who is from Ottawa, Ontario originally, and is currently living in London, England):

Being in Britain, I am surrounded by remembrances of the wartime slogans like "make due and mend" and "keep clam and carry on;" so, when I was unable to find cloves for my Christmas ham I steeled myself and found a solution. The resulting flavour was so complex and seasonally appropriate that it definitely bears repeating. I hope you enjoy the recipe.

French Toast with cinnamon

I thought French Toast was just an easy breakfast staple that was in everyone's recipe box. That was until I was discussing it, and a friend told me she never actually had cooked it, she just bought the French Toast sticks at the grocery store. So, for anyone else who thinks French Toast is too hard, here is my recipe for it. Obviously since the grocery store actually stocks french toast in the freezer I have to assume it's not really something that everyone knows how to cook (or actually wants to cook!). One little thing that I do slightly differently is to sprinkle my slice of bread with cinnamon BEFORE dipping in the beaten eggs. I've just found that doing this makes sure each piece gets some cinnamon on it.

Le Dessert de Nos Ancêtres

I have been searching for a good French-Canadian summer recipe. Searching being a relative term and it roughly translates to asking my mother repeatedly for some recipes. When I asked what 'they' ate during the summer I was told it was all just cooking and to forget seasonal food. Of course, no one ate Cipaille, no one ate Tourtiere, no one ate ANY of the french recipes that I was familiar with. The best I could get was that people didn't barbeque just because people didn't barbeque then. I did get a few general ideas for recipes, no instructions or amounts, per usual, so I will have to experiment with those first. Le dessert de nos ancestres - translated directly to be "The Dessert of Our Ancestors" is one of those simple, good, bad recipes all at the same time. Simple because there are three ingredients, good because it tastes so, so good, and bad because two servings will immediately clog your arteries and stop your heart. I don't have a picture of it yet - the humidity is so high here today that the cream will curdle as it pours out of the carton.

Tarts - It's All About the Goo Factor.

Butter tarts are a Canadian treat. Pretty much the same as a Pecan pie, only tart sized, we like to think of it as one of our own creations. There is often some debate over whether the tarts should be 'gooey' or 'firm'. Those are technical terms around here. In fact, ask a Canadian sometime how they like their tarts and I'm sure you'll get an interesting answer. Personally, I like my tarts on the firm side -- I like to bite into one and not have it dripping down my chin. Of course, there are a lot of people who get excited over that drippiness and wouldn't have it any other way. Here is my favourite recipe for butter tarts, with the optional of making them firm or gooey.

Coffee-Chocolate Pudding Cake

This is a slight twist on an old fashioned recipe. It's not really gourmet - although you could cook it in little ramekins for more pizzazz - but it does taste pretty good. This turns out with a chewy brownie floating on top of a hot coffee-chocolate pudding. If you use water instead of the coffee, it becomes a chocolate variety of Montreal Pudding.

Pate Chinois (French Canadian Shepherd's Pie)

This literally translates as "Chinese Pie", although it is by no means a chinese dish! The oral history behind the dish is that it was prepared by the chinese railway workers in Quebec, and the recipe was adopted by the locals there. This is a traditional French Canadian dish, as fed to us by my French Canadian mother. Her father was a lumberjack (do I sense a cliche here?) who did a lot of the family cooking when he was home. I imagine he fed this to his 11 children to help stretch the family budget. It IS cheap, easy, tastes really good, and is definitely peasant comfort food.