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Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Gingerbread loaf with orange glaze

Gingerbread, take 2!

With glaze

We're calling this the 'gingerbread frosted donut' bread at home because it reminds us of a tastier, gingerbread variation of a Dunkin Donuts glazed chocolate donut.

We are loving this loaf…it turned out much better than the last gingerbread! It was moist and pleasantly spiced. I had thought about omitting the orange glaze to cut back on the sugar, but I'm glad I didn't, because the hint of orange flavor really added something special to this bread.

You can go here for the recipe!



Here's what it looked like without glaze


Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Gingerbread snacking cake



I must say, it was fun cutting out the paper snowflake for the design on this cake. Back when I had a job working with kids, I was able to indulge a little in my love of crafts, so I've missing coloring, cutting, glueing, and such (oh, and the kids of course too!). 

This was my first attempt at making a gluten-free cake, and I didn't have all the right ingredients. I also didn't want to bother buying lots of different special flours that I don't know well (it can get quite expensive eating gluten-free!), so I worked with what I had already. Unfortunately, it looked prettier than it tasted... It's not bad, but didn't rise at all, so it's very dense, and tastes a bit too salty for my liking. I think next time I will have try to better adhere to the original recipe, and/or increase the amount of liquid (make it more batter-like consistency), and omit or reduce the salt by half. On the positive side, it was sturdy enough to pick up and eat, and since I've significantly reduced my sugar intake, I have reduced tolerance for the super-sweet; so I appreciated that it wasn't very sweet.

So on that note, I encourage you to compare both recipes, and you can figure out what you want to do from there! I welcome anyone's suggestions on how to improve this, or ideas on what might have happened haha. Maybe I just baked it too long…? Anyway, here's the recipe I followed.

This was adapted from Angela's Kitchen Gluten-free Dairy-free Gingerbread Cake.

Ingredients

  • 1  1/4 cup white rice flour
  • ¼ cup coconut flour
  • ¼ cup cornstarch 
  • ¼ cup potato starch
  • 2 teaspoons gluten free baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon xanthan gum
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • ½ teaspoon ground allspice
  • ½ teaspoon ground cloves
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup unsweetened gluten and dairy free milk substitute of choice
  • ½ cup molasses
  • ¼ cup oil
  • 1 egg (or 1 tablespoon ground flaxseed mixed with 3 tablespoons hot water)
  • optional: about 1/3 cup powdered sugar

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease an 8″ x 8″ pan or 8″ round cake pan. Set aside.
In a medium sized bowl, sift all dry ingredients together.
In another bowl, blend wet ingredients together.
Incorporate the dry & wet ingredients together in thirds.
When all ingredients are well-blended, pour the batter into the greased pan. Smooth out the top of the batter with a wet spatula.
Bake 45 minutes or until the cake springs back when touched lightly. (Original author says if you test this cake with a toothpick, the toothpick will come out clean before the cake is actually done.)

Freezing suggestions: 
Allow cake to cool completely, then wrap it well, and freeze.
To serve, let the cake thaw, and then dust with the powdered sugar.



Monday, December 16, 2013

White sandwich bread


This had to be one of the best gluten-free sandwich breads I've ever had! Not only did it taste good, but it also had a nice soft texture. Nothing like those brick loaves I find at the grocery store that must be kept frozen, or those sponge-tasting loaves that are vacuum-packed on the shelves. Though I've learned my body isn't too happy when I eat too much of any type of bread, I liked this bread so much that I ended up eating this whole loaf by myself over the course of 4-5 days! I guess you could say I was making up for all those missed times I couldn't make a decent sandwich using the hard and crumbly store-bought breads.

So without further ado, here is the recipe. I hope you have a good turn out and enjoy it as much as I did!


Adapted from Bob's Red Mill recipe.

Suitable for a standard sized Bread machine pan.

Makes about 14, 1/3 inch slices.

Ingredients:
  • 3 large eggs*
  • 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
  • 1/4 c canola oil
  • 1  1/2 c water (+ 1/2 c to blend into dough manually to thin it out)
  • 2 c white rice flour
  • 1/3 c cornstarch
  • 1/2 c potato starch
  • 1/2 c coconut flour
  • 1 tbsp xanthan gum
  • 3 tbsp sugar 
  • 1  1/2 tsp salt
  • 2/3 c dry nonfat milk**
  • 2  1/4 tsp active dry yeast
Directions:

Whisk wet ingredients together in a bowl and add to bread machine pan. Whisk dry ingredients together another bowl and then pour into machine pan.

Set machine to the white/basic setting.

When the machine finishes the initial mixing, take out the dough and mix in the extra water, to get it to a wetter, softer consistency.

Extra water was added outside of the machine with an electric mixer (dough hook) because the dough was too thick and wasn't expected to facilitate much rising. This amount of water made the dough very wet, to more of a very thick batter or cookie dough. (This let the machine mix it better and the dough rose about half its size.)

Return dough to machine and let it finish the job. Before it starts the baking mode, usually about an hour before the end of the timer (my machine's basic setting runs 3 hours, so at the 2hrs, baking starts), check to see if you might need to spread out the top of the dough to even it out more.

When the bread is finished baking, remove it from the pan and set onto a cooling rack to let it cool completely before slicing.

*1 tbsp ground flaxseed plus 3 tbsp hot water is baking substitute for eggs

**I am not sure but it may be ok to sub. this with nondairy liquid milk, if you subtract the same amount of liquid in the recipe

Vanilla almond sugar cookies

These had a soft, pillowy texture and a great vanilla/almond flavor.

Given that this was my first attempt at making a gluten free cookie, and I was unfamiliar with some of the ingredients, I think these came out great!

This could be easily modified to dairy-free and vegan, if you wanted to sub-in all coconut oil for the ghee or butter, and use coconut or soy milk (or other nondairy milk).

Adapted from Bob's Red Mill recipe.

Makes about 30 cookies.

Ingredients:


  • 1/4 c ghee 
  • 1/4 c coconut milk 
  • 1 c sugar 
  • 1/3 c milk 
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract 
  • 2 tbsp potato starch 
  • 3/4 c white rice flour 
  • 1/3 c coconut flour 
  • 1/2 c finely ground almond meal 
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda 
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder 
  • 1/2 tsp sliced almonds

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350.

Cream sugar, oil, and ghee.

Mix in milk and vanilla.

Mix dry ingredients together in a separate bowl.

Blend all together.

Mix in almonds.

Drop rounded tbsp. sized balls of dough onto parchment paper lined baking sheet.

Bake 10 min. on middle rack of oven.

Cookies will still be very soft but should be lightly browned. Let them cool on the baking sheet for 10 min before transferring to cooling racks.