I’ve always loved donuts. It’s one of the things I’ve missed the most since going gluten free. Since there are no gluten free bakeries nearby, my only choice is to make my own.
A few weeks ago, my husband and I talked about getting a deep fryer. Besides talking about making donuts the way my Grandma used to, we fantasized about all the other wonderful things we could make with a deep fryer—GF breaded fish nuggets, breaded vegetables, mushrooms, poppers, etc. Unfortunately, my husband has cholesterol issues, so he finally said no to the deep fryer.
Then I found these donut pans on Amazon. I ordered two and waited patiently for them to come in the mail. Once they came, I had to find a good recipe, these Baked Vanilla Cake Donuts, which I doubled to fill both pans. The recipe calls for buttermilk, but since we’re also dairy free, I originally planned to mix a scant cup of soy milk with a scant teaspoon of vinegar. However, the boys had already drunk all the soy milk, so I mix water with the vinegar. It still worked out all right.
I liked how easy it was to squeeze the batter into the pans from a sealed freezer bag. I have to experiment with the size of the corner that I cut off, because I made it a bit too large, and only got 10 donuts out of it, instead of the expected 12. (They also took a few minutes longer to bake.) Still, after they were done, they came out of the pans very easily. I had donuts with a nice, soft texture and good flavor, even without the milk.
After cooling, I frosted them with my grandmother’s glaze recipe, which has always been gluten and dairy free:

1 cup powdered sugar
2 Tbs. cocoa powder
Hot water

Mix the powdered sugar and cocoa powder. Pour the hot water in the mixture little by little, stirring until it’s a good frosting consistency. Spread quickly. The frosting will harden into a glaze.

I let the boys each try one. Then I put the rest in the freezer. For the next few weeks, two donuts will come out of the freezer on Saturday night to thaw in the refrigerator. Then, we’ll take the donuts to church with us on Sunday morning, so the boys can enjoy them after the service, instead of sulking because they can’t eat anything on the refreshment table.
I’ll be trying out some more experiments with GF donuts. Perhaps some chocolate cake donuts, pumpkin (with a soy cream cheese frosting), apple cider … This could be a lot of fun!

Inexpensive Easter treats are easy to make

Finding traditional Easter candy for you children’s baskets can be challenging when they’re supposed to stay off of gluten and dairy. Some websites offer GFCF molded candies and other treats that you can special order, but their prices raise my blood pressure. So, a few years ago I adapted some Easter treat recipes myself so the boys can still enjoy their traditional favorites. There are some big pluses to this. For instance, the boys have fun helping make them. And these candies taste better than the purchased chocolates, because they’re freshly made.

Finding GFCF jelly beans is surprisingly easy. It seems that Jelly Belly uses corn starch and NO dairy products in theirs. Their smaller size is perfect for these Easter Nests. Note: I crush the puffed rice in a sealed plastic bag. Actually the boys like to do the crushing, with either a rolling pin or the flat side of a meat tenderizing mallet.

Gluten and Dairy Free Chocolate Easter Nests

20 oz. gluten and dairy free chocolate, white chocolate or almond bark
½ cup shredded coconut
2 cups crushed gluten free puffed rice
1 bag of gluten and dairy free jelly beans

Melt chocolate or almond bark over low heat, preferably with a double boiler. Stir in coconut and puffed rice until they are coated with chocolate. Drop mixture by tablespoons onto wax paper. Shape each drop into a nest, making and indentation in the middle. Please three jelly beans into each next. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes until firm.

As I mentioned before, these little chocolate Easter eggs taste much better than the ones you’d buy at a discount or grocery store. The boys came up with the idea of fashioning tiny egg dippers, like the bigger versions in the egg dye kits, with florist wire.

Gluten and Dairy Free Chocolate Easter Eggs

¼ cup coconut oil
¼ cup soy or rice milk
1 3.125 oz. box of gluten and dairy free pudding mix
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ pound powdered sugar
1 6 oz. bag of gluten and dairy free chocolate chips

Melt coconut oil in a saucepan. Add milk and pudding and cook for two minutes. Remove from heat. Then mix in vanilla and powdered sugar. Shape mixture into small egg shapes and refrigerate until firm, about 15 minutes.
Melt chocolate chips in a double boiler. Using a toothpick or small wire dippers, dip the eggs into the melted chocolate. Place the eggs onto wax paper. Place back in refrigerator.

Have a blessed and tasty GFCF Easter!

Easy Rice Flour Crackers

Last night, my 10-year old came down with the stomach flu. While he moped around the house carrying a bucket, I ran out to the store to buy the usual items. This bug must be making the rounds here this week, because I felt lucky to grab the last bottle of ginger ale. Unfortunately, my local grocery store doesn’t carry rice crackers, and I didn’t want to travel out of town to buy some. So, I looked up a recipe and adapted it for my son’s personal tastes (doesn’t like sesame seeds) and the ingredients I happen to have on hand. They turned out nicely enough.

Gluten and Dairy Free Rice Flour Crackers

1 cup white rice flour
½ cup potato starch
1 tsp. xanthan gum
½ tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. Oregano
1 tsp. basil
2 tsp. garlic powder
4 Tbs. olive oil
2 Tbs. honey
6 Tbs. soymilk
1 tsp. cider vinegar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix together the dry ingredients. Mix together the last four (wet) ingredients and then add to the dry ingredients.
Sprinkle a board with white rice flour and roll out the dough thinly. Cut into small squares with either a knife or a pizza cutter. If the crackers still seem too thick, you can roll the individual squares out even more.
Place the squares either on a greased cookie sheet or a sheet covered with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
Bake for about 12 to 15 minutes, when they’re browned nicely. Let cool.

Pumpkin Pancakes and a Bread to make with pumpkin puree leftovers

Usually, people are in the mood for pumpkin recipes in the fall, but my family loves pumpkin all year round, so we continue with our favorites throughout the winter. A few weeks ago was no exception, when the boys were clamoring for pumpkin pancakes.
In our pre-gluten free days, I had received a pumpkin pancake recipe from a cookbook writer I interviewed when I was a food writer for the local paper. After the first try, it immediately became a family favorite. When we became gluten free, the boys were a bit sad about not having these anymore. However, by doubling the dry ingredients from a regular pancake recipe I had and combining it with a GF recipe that required an expensive mix, I made the boys happy again. We couldn’t tell the difference from our original wheat flour recipe. So, here is the inexpensive, but easy recipe.
GLUTEN FREE PUMPKIN PANCAKES
Dry Ingredients

1 cup rice flour
½ cup bean flour
½ cup potato starch
4 Tbs. sugar
1 tsp. salt
4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 Tbs. cinnamon

Wet Ingredients

1 egg
3 Tbs. brown sugar
2 cups soy milk
1 cup pumpkin puree

Blend the dry ingredients well.
In a separate bowl, mix the wet ingredients with a handheld electric mixer or a whisk. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until there are no lumps.
Use a 1/3 hot cup measure to scoop out pancake batter onto a hot, lightly oiled skillet. Flip the pancakes when the bottoms are golden brown. Serve with maple syrup.
Of course, that leaves us with an extra cup of pumpkin puree in the can. Rather than let it go to waste, we bake pumpkin bread. This recipe is a convert from a regular flour recipe my husband wanted to try one day. I told him that I wanted him to make pumpkin bread that I could eat, too. So, we sat down and made some changes. Success! It doesn’t get dry (a downfall of a number of gluten free bread recipes). We brought it to a church potluck brunch a few weeks ago, and there were no leftovers. The non-gluten free people liked it, too, apparently. We’ve baked it as loaves in the oven or in the bread machine. It works well either way.

GLUTEN FREE PUMPKIN GINGER BREAD
1-1/2 cups sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1/3 cup water
½ can pumpkin puree
1 tsp. ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cloves
1-3/4 cups gluten free flour
¾ tsp. xanthan gum (if it isn’t already included in your GF flour mix
1 tsp. baking soda
¾ tsp. salt
3/8 tsp. baking powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease two 9”x5” loaf pans. In a large mixing bowl, beat sugar, oil and eggs until smooth. Blend in the water. Stir in pumpkin, ginger, allspice and cinnamon. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, xanthan gum (if not already in the flour mix), soda, salt and baking powder. Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and just until all the ingredients are mixed. Divide the batter between the prepared pans or pour the batter into the bread machine pan. Bake four one hour, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

With Patience, Kids Can Learn to Bake GF Cupcakes

Always interested in frugal living, I checked out a slideshow article from Kiplinger’s on ways to save money. One that made my jaw drop down and say, “duh,” was the caption, “Learn to Cook.” Then again, I have known a few people over the years who lived on nothing but restaurants, carry-out and premade entrees. Unfortunately, for someone who has to live gluten free, this would be an extremely expensive option. While more and more restaurants and bakeries offer gluten free products, and there are a lot more frozen entrees available these days, you’ll pay a high price.
That’s why I’ve been teaching my sons how to cook, a valuable and money-saving life skill. This week, while learning about long division, the Louisiana Purchase and how to grammatically classify a sentence, my ten-year old has also been spending quite a bit of time in the kitchen.
He wanted to make cupcakes for a Halloween party, so I chose this One Bowl Chocolate Cake http://www.recipezaar.com/One-Bowl-Gluten-Free-Chocolate-Cake-209764 recipe for them. The recipe is simple enough for children and inexperienced cooks to make. It also has a great flavor, keeps moist and rises nicely. Even with all these great features, cooking this with a 10-year old still requires patience.
Since I was out of my all-purpose flour mix, we had to get out the flours and make more. My son, eager to help, measured out a cupful of rice flour, and as I was just saying, “Don’t tip the cup so high over the mixing bowl,” I head a thud and saw a cloud of white dust floating around the counter.
“Sorry, Mom!” he said.
He was careful with measuring after that. Then, it was time to blend the various flours with the pastry blender. Just as I was saying, “Don’t mix the flour so fast,” I saw another cloud of white dust floating around the counter.
“Sorry, Mom!” he said.
Then it was time to mix all the ingredients for the cake. He was so excited that he was doing this kind of happy dance around me as I was gathering all the ingredients.
“Ouch! Please stop stepping on my toes.”
“Sorry, Mom!” he said.
The rest of the measuring and mixing went without too many messy or painful incidents. He laid out the cupcake papers in the muffin tins. Because the cake batter is much thicker than normal, we had to drop it in with teaspoons like cookie dough, instead of pouring it in, as we would have before we went gluten free.
The cupcakes, after baking for 25 minutes (instead of the recipes called-for 30 to 35 minutes for a cake) were a little lumpy looking, but they rose nicely and tasted great, even several days later.
Despite the messes and the bruised toes, it was worth it. Encouraged with this success, my son wants to do a lot more baking. Today, he wants to make pumpkin fudge. I’ll be sure to have the “dogvacs” ready to clean up the messes on the floor (when aren’t they ready?), and I may borrow my husband’s steel-toe boots.

Enjoy Cheesecake with a Gluten Free Nut Crust

Today is my husband’s birthday, and what he really wants is an orange cheesecake. We all love cheesecakes in our family, but the trick is how to make a gluten free crust. The usual graham cracker crust would be difficult, since I still haven’t found any premade GF ones on the market yet. I have a recipe for making them, but it seems a lot of work to mix, bake and then crush them and still have to make a cheesecake crust. I don’t like all that work. I’m kind of lazy that way.
Fortunately, I found a tasty and easier solution in making nut crusts. I can buy the nuts already finely ground. Then it’s just a matter of mixing them with sugar and an oil. I usually use canola oil instead of butter (since the butter would have to be melted anyway) in the hopes of offsetting the saturated fat content of all the cream cheese and eggs. Although olive oil is heart healthy, I wouldn’t use it for baking a dessert because of it’s strong flavor.
What kind of nuts I use depends on the type of cheesecake. The stronger flavor of pecans complement pumpkin and chocolate nicely. However, for fruit or mint cheesecakes, I prefer the lighter flavor of almond.

Here’s the recipe for a nut crust:

1-1/2 cups ground nuts
4 Tbs. canola oil
3 Tbs. sugar

Combine nuts, sugar and oil. Pat into the bottom and part of the sides of a spring-form pan and pour in your favorite cheesecake filling. Bake according to your cheesecake filling recipe.

If you can’t find finely ground nuts, you can toast whole nuts and grind them yourself. However, an easier option would be to let your cheesecake go naked—that is, crustless. This works out well for many cheesecake recipes, and has become popular with the carb-cutting crowd. Either way, going gluten free doesn’t mean the end of cheesecake!

Cranfest in Wisconsin inspires a dairy-free fudge

Being a family of cranberry lovers, we took a jaunt a few weekends ago to Warrens, Wis., for the town’s annual Cranfest . Amid a town full of craft booths and funnel cake vendors, we found what we were looking for, a tour of a real cranberry bog. We learned a lot there about how they cultivate and harvest cranberries. (The cranberries don’t actually grow in the water, but are flooded in the fall to make harvesting easier, since they float.)

My 10-year old son Dwight learned the hard way what a cranberry picked straight off the vine tastes like. They really do need to be sweetened!
Afterward, we browsed through the Wisconsin Cranberry Discovery Center, http://www.discovercranberries.com/, where we learned about how cranberry farming developed over the years. The farmers invented quite a few interesting tools.
Afterward, we hit some of those vendor booths, focusing on those that sold cranberry items. You name it, they make it with cranberries—chutneys, salsas, ice cream, candles, soaps, teas, candies, mustards, honey, barbecue sauces, cheese, sausage, dips and syrups. After looking around for the best prices and reading labels carefully, we bought cranberry wine, cranberry-flavored popcorn, cranberry honey (no actually berry in it, but the bees used cranberry flower pollen) and cranberry taffy. The boys really wanted the cranberry fudge, but I couldn’t find any that was dairy-free. So, of course I promised find a recipe and make some for them.
I finally got around to it this week, and after the results, I can tell you that GFCF fudge is possible! Most of the recipes I found call for cooking up fresh or dried cranberries into a sauce or reducing cranberry juice. Being a lazy cook, I found a recipe that uses cranberry juice concentrate. It’s cheaper than bottled juice, and less work, too.
Coconut cream turns out to be a great dairy-free substitute for evaporated milk. Instead of butter, I used a refined coconut oil that can tolerate higher temperatures. The cream and the oil may give the fudge a slight coconut flavor, but it works together well with the vanilla in the marshmallow cream and the cranberry juice.
For white chocolate chips, I used Eilien’s Candies, Inc. brand, which, while it doesn’t contain gluten or dairy, could still have some cross contamination from the equipment. The boys and I can tolerate some cross contamination. However, if that’s an issue for you, I found the Chocolate Emporium, which offers GFCF white chocolate chips for sale at http://www.choclat.com/GFCF/gfcf.php. It’s more expensive, but it makes this fudge possible for those who have to be extra careful about a GFCF diet.
(12 ounce) package GFCF white chocolate chips
1/2 teaspoon almond or orange extract
Seven ounces marshmallow cream
1/3 cup coconut cream
1/3 cup frozen cranberry juice concentrate, thawed
2 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup coconut oil
Spray or grease a 9x9 pan. Set aside the chips, extract and marshmallow cream in a large bowl. In a medium size sauce pan, bring coconut cream, sugar and cranberry concentrate to a boil, stirring constantly. Cook to 235°F on candy thermometer (about 9 minutes). When mixture reaches 235°F, take off the heat and add coconut oil. Stir and mix it well, and then pour over the white chips, extract and marshmallow cream. Stir this well until all the chips melt. Pour into the prepared pan. Let it cool and then refrigerate till firm. Cut in squares.