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Gluten Free English Muffin Pizza

This is definitely not anything gourmet, but I'm telling you -- going gluten-free is tough, and the best way to be successful is to BE PREPARED!  Have food hanging around that you can actually eat, and you'll be less tempted to eat the 'bad stuff'. Like those sugary powdered donuts that my kids love, and that were sitting on my counter yesterday. 

These are Gluten Free, Dairy Free English Muffin Pizzas. They are not cheap to make, but tasted pretty good. I used Daiya cheese for the cheese shreds, and since I only had cheddar-style in the house, that's what I used. I'm eager to try their mozzarella style cheese too. 

Daiya cheese is way better than any of the other non-cheese cheese I have tried - the texture is a little like processed cheese, maybe like Velveeta or the equivalent, and it tastes really good for fake cheese. 

The muffins I used are the frozen El Peto GF English Muffins that I found in my small town's local grocery store. I pre-toasted them in the toaster, then put them in the microwave to melt the cheese. (For toasting them, I also found that thawing in the microwave for a full minute helped them toast up better.)Faster and easier than the oven, and I didn't think the oven would work for toasting the muffins. I also pre-warmed the veggies I used in a dish in the microwave, so they would be a little cooked.

This is a bad picture, but I was hungry and couldn't wait to try them:

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:

Gluten Free Brownies

Hello again!

Here's another gluten-free recipe for you. I was at home the other night and had a chocolate craving, and I decided to make brownies. Of course, along with the craving was the thought that I should make something that Mark could eat as well and so began the quest for gluten free brownies!

Since I was baking these at my house, the only gluten-free flour I had on hand was cornstarch. Mark's mom had sent me a great looking recipe for gf brownies, but that recipe required potato starch as the main flour.  So -- off to the local grocery store I went.  The only -- and I *do* mean only -- gluten-free flour they had there was a small packet of Club House Rice flour. I brought it home and decided to see what I could come up with.

A little note about experimenting with gluten-free baking: sometimes it just doesn't turn out. In this case, the brownies turned out AWESOME, but some of my experiments lately haven't been so successful.  Gluten free bread has kicked my you-know-what, but I will keep working on that. In this case, I couldn't find a recipe that had only the ingredients I had on hand. There is no xanthan gum or guar gum here (there is now :) ), just rice flour, cornstarch, and eggs, which is why I had to make things up as I went. I think this would be a good recipe if you are new to GF Baking, simply because the ingredients aren't too 'out there' and should be easy to find. If you are new to gluten free, it's worthwhile to follow a recipe until you're comfortable baking with new flours and ingredients - there are lots and lots of great things to eat on the gfree diet! 

The Chia and/or Flax seed that I've included in the recipe might be unusual for you, and so they are completely optional!  I like adding Chia seed because it acts, I think, as a binder for the ingredients, and it's good for you. Not that I, or anyone, should eat brownies because they are good for you (no thank you, black bean brownies! Give me sugar). However, a little bit of something that might almost be considered healthy makes it easier to justify eating a pan of sugar. You can also substitute out the cornstarch for any other starch, like tapioca or potato starch, if you are sensitive to corn.

Gluten Free Dairy Free Banana Cream Pie

Happy Holidays!

The title should read "Gluten free, dairy free, refined sugar free, banana cream pie", but that just seemed a little over the top long.

It was a good Christmas, with a nice brunch at my mom's -- where she made some delicious gluten free goodies for Mark.  We skipped dinner here, but did have a great banana cream pie. 

All right. I'll be honest - we didn't actually skip skip dinner. We ate bacon. And then banana cream pie. In a roundabout sort of way, we got at least a few food groups in.

The banana cream pie was a trial run for a lunch on Monday, as one of my friends is wheat intolerant as well.  So between the three of us we have two people who can't have wheat (one with no gluten either), and one dairy free person.  This pie has a custard made from light coconut milk, corn starch as thickener, maple syrup as sweetener, and meringue for the topping.

The crumb base is made from a crumbled cake I made using a recipe from the book "Babycakes: Vegan, mostly gluten free, mostly sugar free recipes from New York's most talked about bakery". I really, really wanted to like this cookbook, but have not had much luck with the recipes.

The recipe is after the jump, along with a mini-review of the book.

Gluten free Blueberry Oatmeal muffins

Well, that's been a long hiatus!  

I decided to post this recipe because I've noticed how hard it is to find simple Gluten-Free recipes!  My significant other is undergoing some investigation for Gluten intolerance and/or Celiac disease, so I have started experimenting with wheat free cooking.  It's a challenge, that's for sure!  Bread will be the next big thing I attempt, since both of us really used to enjoy those grainy artisan breads from the bakery.  

Mark (my significant other) wants me to make gluten-free beer, but I think I'll stick to baking. This recipe calls for ingredients that should be easy to find. 

Just a note about ingredients:  I've used oatmeal in these, and oatmeal is generally considered safe for Celiac and wheat-free diets (and here is another link from Health Canada).  However, the 'generally' is there because there is some fear of cross-contamination of the grain. If you are incredibly sensitive to gluten, or deathly allergic to wheat, please use caution with the oatmeal!  If in any doubt at all, don't make these, and if only a little worried, then make sure to use certified gluten and wheat free oats. If you are newly diagnosed, then tuck this recipe away, and make it when you are reintroducing potentially problematic foods!