Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Gluten free marble loaf

I got a great book by Valérie Cupillard in which everything is gluten and dairy free (some recipes are eggless too) and taste amazing. Today's test was a marble loaf. A really basic cake but great at any time of the day.


Ingredients


- 120 g of brown rice flour
- 90 g of demerara sugar
- 80 g of dairy free margarine
- 40 g of ground almonds 
- 3 eggs
- 1 1/2 tsp of GF baking powder
- 1tsp of liquid vanilla
- 1 tbsp of cocoa powder


Directions


1°/  Preheat the oven to 210°C.

2°/ Whisk together the sugar and margarine. Add the ground almonds and eggs and keep whisking. Then add in the rice flour and baking powder.

3°/ Divide the dough into 2: pour a smaller half in a bowl and add the cocoa powder to it. Add the vanilla to the first half. 

4°/ In a greased loaf tin, pour half of the vanilla mix. Then pour over it the chocolate mix, following a central line, and the rest of the vanilla mix, still following the middle of the cake. 

5°/ Bake for 10 minutes at 210°C, then lower the temperature to 180°C and bake for about 30 more minutes.




Gluten free muesli cookies

... or how to transform a boring gluten free muesli into an exciting breakfast :)

So I bought that gluten-free muesli with rice, millet and soya flakes in the hope of getting a healthy nutritive breakfast. But when I poured my almonf milk on it, it turned into a really mushy thing that I didn't enjoy eating at all! So I tried to find a use for it - because it is a big pack and I don't like waste - and adapted a muesli cookies recipe that I found online. The cookies are a bit crumbly but taste great and I'm really happy that I saved my bag of muesli!



Ingredients (for a dozen of cookies)


- 200 g of gluten free flour mix
- 100 of gluten free muesli (mine contains rice, millet and soya flakes, raisins, currant, cashews, almonds and walnuts)
- 30 g of dessicated coconut
- 150 g of demerara sugar
- 125 g of dairy free margarine
- 1 egg
- 1/2 tsp of vanilla
- 1/2 tsp of bicarb
- 1/2 tsp of gluten free baking powder


Directions


1°/ Preheat the oven to 180°C.

2°/ Combine flour, sugar, muesli, coconut, bicarb and baking powder.

3°/ Whisk the egg and the melted butter. Add the vanilla.

4°/ Combine dry mix and wet mix together. Stir well.

5°/ Line a baking tray with parchment paper. With a spoon, scoop balls of cookie dough and place them on the tray (leave some space between them as they will spread out). Cook for 10-15 minutes.

Monday, June 3, 2013

Amazing brownies

I've been looking for the perfect GF/DF brownies recipe. The one where you wouldn't feel like something is lacking. It's really easy to replace the flour since brownies don't contain much, but I was sceptic as far as butter was concerned. Surfing French cooking blogs, I found the lovely blog Bien fait pour ta pomme and a recipe using almond butter instead of butter. I had to try it :)



Ingredients (for a big brownie)


- 400 g of dark chocolate
- 180 g of caster sugar (or 100 g of caster sugar and 80 g of muscovado sugar)
- 55 g of corn flour
- 4 eggs
- 70 g of almond butter
- 70 g of vegetable oil
- 2 tbsp of cocoa powder
- 60 g of nuts (I used half hazelnuts/half almonds)
- 50 g of dark chocolate chips


Directions


1/ Preheat the oven to 180°C.

2/ Melt the chocolate in the microwave. Stir in the almond butter and the oil to get a smooth mixture.

3/ Stir in the sugar, then the eggs (one at a time until well incorporated). Sieve in the corn flour and cocoa powder. Add the nuts (whole or chopped, as you prefer) and the chocolate chips. Stir well.

4/ Pour the mixture in a square tin lined with greaseproof paper. Bake for 25 minutes.



I have done the recipe twice so far and both were a huge success (although the first one was with half of the proportions only and I found the brownie far too thin, that's why I'm doubling it!)

Variations : You can replace the almond butter by another nut butter (I still need to try with peanut butter!), add cranberries, raisins, etc., use all different kinds of nuts. Enjoy!