Gluten free ANZAC biscuits

 I made these gluten free ANZAC biscuits for ANZAC Day today to share with my gluten sensitive friends. The recipe is online here.

People who are sensitive to gluten also can’t eat oats either because of cross-contamination or a protein in the oats themselves. Some gluten free recipes replace the oats with quinoa flakes, which is a big no no for me. I was pleased to have found this recipe, which uses crushed gluten free cornflakes in place of oats.

These biscuits were really tasty, and smelled and had the general flavour of normal ANZAC biscuits. I would recommend this recipe as a gluten free alternative.

TWD - Baby Buckwheat Bars

 This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Baby Buckwheat Bars. As the name suggests, these bars are made with buckwheat flour, and flavoured with vanilla, rum and chocolate.

Dorie recommended caramel chocolate so I used Caramilk. I have to say I didn’t really taste it though.

These bars were not really my cup of tea. They were ok, but the overwhelming flavour of buckwheat flour made them a bit meh for me.

To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Banana, Pineapple and Coconut Bread

 Recently, Mardi posted a recipe for Banana, Pineapple and Coconut Bread on Instagram. I was intrigued by the combination of banana and pineapple, and the fact that this cake is made with buckwheat and coconut flours.

For reasons that I could no longer remember, I had both buckwheat and coconut flours in my pantry, so all I needed to buy was pineapple. Instead of using tinned crushed pineapple, I cut fresh pineapple and crushed it in the food processor.

This banana “bread” is rather delicious, with a slightly grassy nutty flavour from the buckwheat. The fruit makes the cake moist.  

For those with dietary constraints, this bread is gluten free, and the only sugar is in the fruit. 

I really enjoyed this change from the run of the mill banana bread, and it is very easy to make. Give it a go!

Strawberry Watermelon Cake - Black Star Pastry

One of my colleagues had been urging me to try the Black Star Pastry Strawberry Watermelon Cake, so on a recent trip to Sydney, I took the plunge and did so.  I agreed that it was delicious.

I was then urged to try and replicate the Strawberry Watermelon Cake as a dessert for our upcoming team lunch.  Yikes!!

The recipe for the Strawberry Watermelon Cake in online here, so you are not guessing as to the cake's composition.  There are lots of steps, and I'd say it takes a little skill to be able to make this cake. 

Whilst my finished product was not perfect, I was pretty happy with it, and everyone who tried it liked it (even the sceptics who, like me, thought that watermelon in a cake was weird).

Here is a slice from the cake:

My notes on the recipe are as follows:

• I used a 9" springform tin as my "collar", lining the base with foil and the sides with acetate.
• Only make three quarters of the dacquoise recipe to make two meringue discs - you do not need four discs for one cake, and I found that there wasn't quite enough meringue to make four sturdy discs anyway. 
• I used a watermelon wedge and assembled the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle rather than pay for a whole watermelon to cut single thin disc of watermelon.
• I used heated apricot jam to glaze my fruit.
• I skipped the rose petal décor, as they taste like nothing and are expensive.
• Macerate the strawberries and grapes in rosewater for 15 minutes befor placing on the cake.
• Use a hot knife to slice the cake, as it tends to squash when you cut it otherwise.
• I just used crushed pistachios rather than the speciality item, slivered pistachios, as I can buy ordinary pistachios from the supermarket.

If you give this cake a go yourself, let me know!  Have fun with it.

Strawberry Tart (Gluten Free)

When looking in the window of pastry shops, one delicacy that always catches my eye is the fruit tarts.  Traditionally, the fruit tart is a heavenly combination  of shortcrust pastry, crème patisserie and glazed sliced fruit.

The jewel of fruit tarts is the ruby red strawberry tart.  How could anyone resist its luscious beauty?  Accordingly, for a recent work team lunch, I wanted to make a strawberry tart.  The challenge lay in the fact that one of my team members is a coeliac, so the tart had to be gluten free.

The biggest challenge from my point of view would be making the pastry.  After conducting some research, I chose this recipe from Hungry and Fussy for a gluten free shortcrust pastry. It contains almond meal, maize flour, rice flour and sorghum flour.  I substituted the sorghum flour for buckwheat flour, which with a high protein content, I figured would have similar properties to the sorghum flour.  This was my resulting blind baked tart shell:

The pastry tasted reminiscent of Arnotts Shredded Wheatmeal Biscuits.  Whether you think that is good or bad is entirely a matter of personal opinion.

For the filling, I used this recipe from the Australian Women's Weekly.   The crème patisserie is thickened with wheaten cornflour, so I substituted rice flour on a one for one basis.  I was not a huge fan of the resulting crème patisserie, which seemed a little too thick and a little eggy.  My usual crème patisserie recipe, from Dorie Greenspan, only uses four egg yolks - did the extra yolk make a difference?  Also, should I have used less rice flour than cornflour?  Who knows, as I was locked into using the crème patisserie I had made (not wanting to waste all of those egg yolks).

I also layered the strawberries a little differently to the Women's Weekly recipe to make the tart look a little fancier, borrowing from this arrangement from The Great British Bakeoff:

Although not everything went to plan with this tart, I think that the tart looked great and it tasted quite acceptable.

If you would like to make this tart, you will need:

Pastry

¾ cup corn (maize) flour¾ cup sweet rice flour⅓ cup buckwheat flour½ cup pure icing sugar
⅓ cup almond meal
1 egg
125g cold butter, cubed

Place the dry ingredients into a food processor and blitz to combine.  Add the butter and egg and blitz again until a dough forms.

Turn out the dough onto the bench, press into a flat disc and wrap in plastic wrap.  Leave the dough to rest in the fridge for an hour before use.

Spray the inside of a 23cm loose bottomed tart pan with spray oil.

Remove the dough from the fridge and allow to soften on the bench for 10 minutes or so.  Once the dough is able to be rolled without cracking, place the disc of dough between two pieces of baking paper and roll out to fit the tart pan.  Line the tart pan with the dough and allow the tart shell to rest in the fridge for an hour.

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Remove the tart shell from the fridge.  Spray a piece of alfoil on the shiny side with spray oil and place it oiled side down in the tart shell.  Pour uncooked rice or baking beans into the tart shell, and bake for 20 minutes.  Remove the tart shell from the oven, take out the rice and alfoil, then return the tart shell to the oven to bake for another 10 minutes or til completely cooked.  Remove the tart shell from the oven and place on a wire rack in the tine to cool.

Filling

400ml milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

5 egg yolks

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup rice flour

Heat the milk in a medium saucepan until it almost boils. Remove from the heat and stir through the vanilla extract.

While the milk is heating, whisk the egg yolks and sugar together in a bowl until  thick and pale. Whisk in the rice flour.

While continuing to whisk the yolks, pour in  quarter of the hot milk.  Add the remainder of the milk to the mixture in a steady stream, whisking all the while.  

Return the mixture to the saucepan and heat, while continuously stirring, until the mixture almost boils and it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.  Remove the mixture from the heat and strain to remove lumps, if necessary.

Assembly

Gently heat 1/4 cup strawberry jam in the microwave and strain to remove the seeds.  Spread the base of the tart shell with jam.

Scrape the crème patisserie into the tart shell and spread out evenly.

Wash, hull and slice a 250g punnet of strawberries.  Arrange the halved strawberries over the top of the tart.  Heat a few tablespoons of quince jelly in the microwave and brush over the top of the strawberries to glaze them.

Place the tart in the fridge for an hour or so to set before serving.

Pink Persian Cake - Red Tractor October

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so the Red Tractor Recipe for October is pink - Pink Persian Cake.

The quote for the month comes from an unusual source - a former Liberal opposition leader:

This month's Pink Persian Cake would do very well on a cake stall, because it is absolutely devine.  It is nutty, moist (yeah, that's a good thing for cakes), pudding-like and all round just good to eat.

The cake also looks pretty because it is topped with pink, rose flavoured icing (in the recipe, it was also supposed to be decorated with a real pink rose, but I did not have one):

To make this pearl of a cake, you will need:

Cake

3 cups almond meal
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup raw sugar (I just used panela sugar)
125g butter
2 lightly beaten eggs
1 cup Greek style yoghurt
2 teaspoons grated nutmeg

Icing

120g butter
2 teaspoons rosewater
3 drops rose colouring
1 1/2 cups pure icing sugar

Preheat your oven to 170 degrees Celsius, and line and grease a 23cm springform pan.

Put the almond meal, sugars and butter in a food processor and blitz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Divide the mixture in half, and put one half into the prepared cake tin, pressing down so that it covers the base evenly.

To the other half of the mixture, add the eggs, yoghurt and nutmeg, and mix well.  Pour this mixture over the base in the springform pan, and bake in the preheated oven for an hour or until cooked through.

Leave the cake to cool completely in the tin.  (This is important - I tried to remove the ring when the cake was still warm and it cracked open in a few places.)

For the icing, beat the butter in a stand mixer until pale and creamy.  Add the rosewater, rose colouring and 1 tablespoon of the icing sugar, then beat until combined.  Add the remaining icing sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time (or not!) and beat in until smooth.  

Spread the icing over the top of the cake and decorate as desired.

Hazelnut strawberry macaroons (Haselnussmakronen)

My second cookie recipe in my Christmas treat boxes is Luisa Weiss's Hazelnut Raspberry Macaroons - or, in my case, Hazelnut Strawberry Macaroons.  The recipe again was in The Guardian.  They are the perfect colours for the season, in red and white.

These cookies, like the Cinnamon Almond Stars, are gluten free and dairy free, so they are perfect for people who are intolerant of or just want to avoid either gluten or dairy or both.

The hazelnut macaroons are much simpler to make than the Cinnamon Almond Stars, with no cutter required and no fiddly meringue topping to apply.  If you are looking for bang for your time buck, these cookies are the money pick.  Just be aware that they don't travel as well as the Cinnamon Almond Stars because the jam stays sticky. (I wrapped these in Glad Wrap to ensure that they didn't coat everything else in the treat box in jam.)

I saved even more time by buying roasted skinned hazelnuts.  Hazelnuts can be a pain to skin so I was happy not to have to do it.

If you love a festive looking, totally delicious cookie that is easy to make, these are the ones to make.  
To bake them, you will need:

230-290g hazelnuts, roasted and skinned 
2 egg whites
¼ teaspoon salt
150g white sugar
150g red jam

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius and line two baking trays with silicone mats or baking paper.

Grind the nuts in a food processor into a fine meal..

Whip the egg whites and salt in a mixing bowl until frothy, then gradually add the sugar to the bowl, beating until soft peaks form. Using a rubber spatula, fold in all but ¼ cup of the ground hazelnuts. Add some or all of the remaining ground hazelnuts only if needed to make a thick mixture that keeps its shape when dolloped onto a tray.

Place heaped teaspoons of cookie mixture onto the baking trays, leaving around an inch between them. Bake in the oven, one tray at a time, for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and immediately press a hollow or "thumbprint" into the middle of each cookie with the back of a teaspoon. Cool on a wire rack, while repeating with the second tray of cookies.

While the cookies are still warm, heat the jam in a microwave until liquefied. Spoon a small amount of liquefied jam into the hollow of each cookie. Allow the jam to set and the cookies to cool completely.

Cinnamon-almond meringue stars (Zimtsterne)

Christmas is not far away now.  A lot of people in my workplace finish up today to commence their Christmas holidays, and for those of us who are still working, things seem jollier and lighter.

Long-time readers will know that every year, I make Christmas treat boxes for colleagues and friends, stealing the idea from some American bloggers that I read back in the early days of my blog (can you believe it, 10 years ago!).  Half the fun is deciding what to put in the treat boxes from the myriad choices that I could make.  

This year I did not spend a lazy afternoon planning what to put in the treat boxes, as life has seemed very fast this year.  I just randomly noted recipes of interest in my head as I saw them, and when the time came to actually make the treats, I seized on the top few recipes plus a Dorie Greenspan recipe that  I had to make for Tuesdays with Dorie, and lo, I had my treat boxes.  I belatedly added in a savoury item, as I had selected all sweets with no savoury, and I know that most people like a little of both. 

The other interesting thing this year is that a few items that have been staples  in the past did not appear in the treat boxes.  There was no traditional style Christmas cake, no plum pudding, no rum balls and no apricot balls.  There has been a lot of change in my life in the last 18 months, not all of it by choice, so I feel that in an unconscious way, my treat box choices reflected that.

On my mother's side of the family, I am of staunchly German heritage, with both sets of great grandparents being German immigrants to Australia in the late 1800s.  I can't imagine how they might have felt, taking a very long journey on a ship half way across the world, to a place sight unseen with a climate dramatically different to what they were used to.  Today, travel is faster and safer, and there is a wealth of information about other countries, so we have so many advantages over my ancestors.

Despite only possessing some rudimentary German vocabulary learnt in Grade 8 German and having only visited Germany once on an Insights tour, I enjoy exploring my German heritage through baking.    When Luisa Weiss published some recipes for German Christmas cookies in The Guardian, they went "straight to the pool room" of recipes for my treat boxes. The beauty of the majority of these recipes is that they are gluten free - I had three gluten-free people to make for this year, so as a result, everyone received gluten free goodies.

First up, I made Luisa's recipe for cinnamon-almond meringue stars.  I foolishly did not study the recipe in advance, and airily believed that the snowy white tops on these cookies were white icing.  After all, the recipe contained icing sugar, didn't it?  Nope, wrong.  The snowy white top of these cookies is meringue that is painstakingly coaxed over the top of the star-shaped cookies to cover them in a pristine white blanket.  

Other things to note abut making these cookies is that the dough is very, very sticky and unco-operative, so do take Luisa's tip about dipping the cutter in water to stop it from sticking - and keep the dough cold!  Also note that once the cookies are formed, you need 12-24 hours to dry them before baking - they only bake for 3-4 minutes.  I only dried mine for about half that time and they turned out fine (I am in Australia in summer where things dry quicker than in wintery Europe), but regardless, you will need a few hours of drying time.

However, these cookies are worth the effort - so good!  Chewy, nutty, not overly sweet and very pretty.  If you want to take the plunge and make these cookies, you will need:

3 egg whites
pinch of salt
200g icing sugar
300g almond meal 
2 tsp cinnamon

Whisk the egg whites and salt together in the bowl of a stand mixer, then slowly add the sugar, whisking until the mixture forms stiff peaks. Remove three heaped tablespoons of the meringue mixture from the bowl and set aside.

Using a rubber spatula, fold 225g of almond meal and the cinnamon into the large quantity of meringue. Add the rest of the almond meal until a firm but sticky dough forms. Wrap the dough in cling film and chill for half an hour.

Roll the chilled dough out to 6mm thick between two sheets of cling film. Cut cookies from the dough with a 4cm star shaped cutter. Dip the cutter in cold water every so often to keep the dough from sticking (very important!). Put the cookies on baking trays lined with baking paper.

Why making Christmas treats beats buying every time

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Spoon small blobs of the reserved meringue on top of each cookie, and spread it evenly over the top of the cookie with a wooden skewer. Allow the cookies to dry on the trays at room temperature for 12-24 hours or until the meringue is dry to the touch (but don't poke too hard or you'll crack the surface!).

Preheat your oven to 180C, and bake the cookies, one tray at a time on the bottom shelf, for 3-4 minutes or until the meringue is set but still white.

Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool on the baking trays on a wire rack.

Christmas Spiced Friands

My Christmas boxes are typically full of glutinous goodies, so for a gluten-free friend, I made these Christmas spiced friands from BBC Good Food.

Yes, the recipe does refer to the inclusion of a small amount of wheat flour.  Friands don't normally contain flour at all, so I substituted the wheat flour with coconut flour to keep them gluten-free.  They stayed together quite well, despite the lack of gluten.

I have to say that these friands are not the most attractive looking specimens.  However, they taste good, especially with the addition of the coconut flour, which gives them an extra flavour dimension. 

Make sure you shape your friands the way you want them before baking, because they pretty much maintain their shape during baking - mine are round because I used an icecream scoop and thought they'd spread and flatten during baking, but they didn't.

Accordingly, if you are looking for an alternative Christmas baked treat for your gluten free friends and family, these Christmas spiced friands are a good option.  You can also easily make them dairy-free by substituting the butter for non-dairy spread.

Slow Cooker Whole Chicken and Cranberry Maple Pecan Pudding for Christmas in July

On Sunday, I invited four friends over to my place for Christmas in July dinner.  For the uninitiated, Australia's seasons mean that July is winter, making it the perfect time to indulge in Christmas treats which are more suited to cold weather than December, when Christmas is celebrated around the world.  This means that in Australia, we really can have two Christmases - one in July with roasts and Christmas pud, and one in December with seafood and icecream.

We started off with cheese (washed rind, triple cream brie and cheddar), dips (sweet potato and cashew and guacamole) and crackers to start the conversation while dinner finished cooking: 

Here is the table all laid in expectation:

For dinner, we had slow cooker roast chicken with roast pumpkin, potato and carrot, and steamed asparagus:

I had never cooked a whole chicken in the slow cooker before, so I was pleasantly surprised.  the recipe for the chicken that I used (including a spice rub) is online here at Tori Avey's website.  The meat stayed beautifully moist and tender, and the spice rub gave the meat a nice flavour.  For the gravy (not pictured), I drained off the juices that cooked out of the chicken and thickened them up in a saucepan with a dessertspoon of cornflour dissolved in water to make a paste.

Two of my guests are gluten and dairy sensitive, so I made this Cranberry, Maple and Pecan Pudding from BBC Good Food:

You can see that when I turned out the pudding, the base of it caved in a little.  I can only guess that the crumbly texture of the pudding is at least in part due to its gluten free status.  Next time, I would leave the pudding to cool in the pudding basin for a while before unmoulding.

I didn't have fresh  cranberries (they are virtually impossible to obtain in Australia), so I used frozen cherries in the  sauce instead:

For the dairy lovers, there was also raspberry ripple icecream to go with the pudding.

The pudding doesn't taste like regular Christmas pudding - it is nowhere near as rich for a start.  However, it is very fruity, and reminds me of a light fruitcake. 

It was a fun evening and a great way to celebrate Christmas in July.

Date and Banana Energy Bites

I seem to always fall behind with eating my bananas, and frequently end up with bananas that would not be the greatest to eat as is in my fruit bowl.  Not wanting to waste these bananas, I am always on the lookout for good recipes to use them up.

On one of these recent searches, I found a fabulous recipe for Date and Banana Energy Bites on The Betty Stamp.  These bites have lots of good things in them, and even better, I would always have these ingredients (dates, bananas, oats, butter, vanilla extract) in the house.  Accordingly, there is no reason why I can't always make these as a quick snack.


I have had lots of issues with old links becoming broken, and this is a recipe I don't want to lose, so here it is:

100g dates (dried dates are just fine)
2 ripe bananas
200g rolled oats
75g coconut oil or butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
 ~100g chocolate for the topping (I used Old Gold 70% dark)

Preheat  your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Grease and line a 20cm square baking tray.

Place the dates in 100ml boiling water and soak for 10 minutes.

Melt the coconut oil (or butter).  Pour the dates, the water you soaked them in, the melted coconut oil or butter, bananas and vanilla extract into a blender or food processor, and blend or process until smooth.

Put the oats  into a mixing bowl and pour over the banana mixture, and combine well.  Spoon the mixture into your prepared baking tin and spread out evenly.  Place into the oven and bake for 25 minutes.  Remove the bites from the oven and cool on a wire rack.

Melt the chocolate and pour over the top of the cooled bites. Once the chocolate has set, cut into bars. Voila!

Wholefoods Wagon Wheel Slice

In Australia, Wagon Wheels are a chocolate biscuit treat, comprised of two chocolate coated biscuits sandwiched together with raspberry jam and marshmallow.  The closest US equivalent that I know of is the Moon Pie, but the Wagon Wheel is a larger and more luscious affair.

When I was at my dentist a couple of weeks ago, the cover of the March 2016 edition of Delicious magazine caught my eye - there on the cover was the most decadent looking Wagon Wheel Slice.  However, you cannot judge a book by its cover, and a flick through the magazine revealed that this was a "wholefoods" version of Wagon Wheel Slice, with no flour or chocolate in sight.  I bought the magazine to give this slice a go, as I was intrigued by the possibility of a "healthy" version of the Wagon Wheel.

This slice would be quite expensive to make if you didn't already have most of the ingredients - I did, so this aspect was not a problem for me.  The finished slice looks the part of a Wagon Wheel, but it tastes quite different.  It is not particularly sweet, and the "marshmallow" has no sweetener added to it at all.  Everyone remarked that they enjoyed this slice, but if you are expecting the full on sweetness of a Wagon Wheel, you will be disappointed (as I was).  It is much more like a health food bar in flavour.  If you cannot indulge in treats like Wagon Wheels or your own dietary inclinations won't allow you too, but you secretly enjoy such treats, this slice could be just the ticket for you.  For me, I would prefer to indulge in the more decadent versions of Wagon Wheel slice.  You'll have to make up your own mind.

To make this slice, you will need:

180g almond meal
80g shredded coconut
100ml rice malt syrup
1 lightly beaten egg
250ml melted and cooled coconut oil
2 titanium strength gelatine leaves
500ml coconut cream
200g raw cacao powder

Jam

250g hulled and chopped strawberries
125ml rice malt syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup chia seeds

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Grease and line a 12cm x 22cm x 5cm deep slice tin.

In a small bowl, combine the almond meal, shredded coconut, rice malt syrup, egg and 80ml of rice malt syrup.  Press the mixture into the base of the slice tin.  Bake in the oven for 20 minutes or until golden.  Remove from the oven and cool in the tin.

Make the jam by putting the strawberries, rice malt syrup and vanilla in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes or until slightly broken up.  Remove from the heat and fold through the chia seeds.  Allow to cool completely before spreading over the almond meal base.  Chill for 30 minutes to set.

Soak the gelatine leaves in water for 5 minutes to soften.  Heat the coconut cream in a saucepan over medium heat.  Squeeze the excess water out of the gelatine leaves and add to the coconut cream, stirring until melted and combined.  (I used powdered gelatine according to the instructions on the tin instead with no problems.) Strain the mixture and allow it to cool to room temperature.  Pour the coconut cream over the strawberry jam on the slice base and chill for 3 hours or until set.

Combine the cacao powder and 170g coconut oil in a bowl and stir until smooth.  Place the chilled slice over a lined baking tray.  Pour the cacao mixture over the top of the coconut cream, then work quickly to spread it evenly over the top of the slice.  Allow to set at room temperature for ~ 20 minutes. 

Once set, dust with extra cacao powder, and cut into pieces to serve.

Black Bean Chocoate Cake for Melbourne Cake Club - Mystery Ingredient

 

 

Last Thursday night, the Melbourne Cake Club had a meeting at Groove Train in South Yarra.  The theme for this month's meeting was "Mystery Ingredient".  After some extensive Internet searching, I decided to make a black bean chocolate cake, with black bean as my secret ingredient.  The recipe is online here.  It is a gluten free cake.

 

For Cake Club, I dressed up the cake with chocolate water icing rather than the sugar free buttercream accompanying the recipe:

 

 

 

I had never made a black bean cake before, and the first thing that struck me was how funky those canned black beans smelled.  Yuk!  It did not inspire confidence in what the cake would be like.

Another worrying thing when I was making this cake is that the batter was very liquid - it was so runny that I had doubts that it would set.

However, the end result was astonishing.  The cake was dense, moist and chocolatey, and most definitely did not smell funky - in fact, it smelled just like chocolate cake should.  The crumb of the cake was very smooth - all round, this cake was a winner, even if I didn't make it look very pretty: 

Other cakes at the Melbourne Cake Club Mystery Ingredient event were Sue's gluten free tomato soup spice cake: 

 
Abi's Vegemite caramel chocolate cake: 

 
and Dalya's tomato soup spice cake with raisins:

Here are my spoils from the evening all arranged neatly on the cake board:

It was another fun night with the Melbourne Cake Club.