Archive for the ‘Christmas’ Category
It is up to the individual to decide whether they can eat oats or not. To eat oats or not is a controversial issue in the gluten free world. Please research the oat issue carefully for yourself, and decide what you want to do in consultation with your healthcare professional. If you are feeding a gluten-free guest, please inquire whether they eat oats or not. You may substitute dried coconut for the oats in this recipe. This recipe was developed by Gf-Zing! , which celebrates flavor in the gluten free world.
2 cups gluten free cookie flour
1 cup rolled quick or old-fashioned gluten free oatmeal, uncooked or oat substitute
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons gluten free baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon Authentic Foods powdered gluten free vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon xantham gum
3/4 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 eggs
1/3 cup extra light olive oil
grated zest of one orange
3/4 cup chopped dried cranberries
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Mix the first 8 ingredients in one bowl, and mix the second 7 ingredients in a second bowl. Grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan, line the bottom with parchment paper, and grease again. Flour the pan lightly with mochiko (sweet rice flour).
Combine the contents of both bowls and stir briefly just until thoroughly blended. Spoon the dough in to the prepared pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour to 1 hour and ten minutes. When a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, the bread is finished.
Remove the pan from the oven and let cool on a rack for one hour. Turn the bread out of the pan and let cool completely before serving.
Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free, and investigate the oat issue and the source of the oats and ask your medical professional for their advice regarding this topic before eating oats.
This recipe was developed by Gf-Zing! , which celebrates flavor in the gluten free world.
1 cup gluten free butter or vegan margarine
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cups gluten free cookie flour
1/3 cup gluten free unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon gluten free baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups gluten free semi-sweet chocolate chips
3/4 cups chopped dried cherries (Rainier cherries are good)
Oven at 350 degrees.
Cream the butter 0r margarine (or one stick of each) with the two sugars and the vanilla until light and “fluffy.” Beat in the egg. Mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add them to the creamed mixture. Mix thoroughly. Up to this point in the recipe you can use a food processor to do the mixing.
Stir in the chocolate chips and the cherries.
Drop tablespoons of dough on a silpat lined cookie sheet. Flatten them slightly with your hand or with the bottom of a glass that you dip repeatedly in sugar.
Bake the cookies for 11-12 minutes, then remove the cookie sheet from the oven and allow the cookies to cool for 2 minutes on the pan before removing them to a rack to cool completely.
This recipe will make a 3 dozen cookies or so, and they will be eaten so fast you will have to make more right away!
Be sure to use all gluten-free ingredients!
All those gluten-free cookies need to have the spice and flavor component enhanced, as spices and flavors tend to disappear into the rice flour…..Here is a good way to obtain a nice, strongly ginger-flavored cookie - a recipe from Gf-Zing!
You will need Miss Roben’s Mock Graham Cracker Cookie mix for this recipe.
Put the contents of 1 package of Miss Roben’s Mock Graham Cracker mix in a large bowl.
Add:
2 teaspoons gluten free ground ginger
1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
3/4 cup minced crystallized ginger
Now, follow the instructions on the Miss Roben’s Graham Cracker mix bag, adding the honey, vanilla, butter, and water. Do not leave out the honey - use a fresh, local honey for extra good flavor.
Roll out the dough between pieces of waxed paper dusted with confectioner’s sugar, until the dough is about 1/4 inch thick. Cut with cookie cutters or a small glass. You can prick the cookies with a fork or press them with a ceramic cookie stamp - both methods will make nice designs on these cookies.
Bake the cookies as per the instructions on the Miss Roben’s bag. If you cook them longer they get darker and crunchier. They will keep for a long time in a cookie jar, and are excellent with coffee or tea.
Your friends in the glutenated world will want this recipe!
Make sure that you use all gluten-free ingredients!
Here at Gf-Zing!, we decided that sugar cookies are a little bit like pie crust without the pie, so why not use a gluten free pastry flour to make the cookies?
Gluten free baking can produce a pretty bland product. This sugar cookie dough has extra -strong vanilla flavor, due to the addition of Authentic Foods Vanilla Powder. Authentic Foods is located in Gardena, California.
2 1/2 cups gluten free dream pastry flour (see below)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon liquid GF vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon powdered GF vanilla (Authentic Foods makes such a product)
confectioner’s sugar for rolling
Cream the butter and sugar with the liquid vanilla extract. Mix the gluten free flour, salt and powdered gluten free vanilla in a separate bowl. Add the egg to the butter mixture. Mix thoroughly. Then add the dry ingredients. Form in to a ball and refrigerate for one hour at least. You can use a food processor for mixing this dough.
Roll out the dough to 1/4″ thickness between two sheets of wax paper. If you need to “flour” the wax paper to keep the dough from sticking, use liberal amounts of confectioner’s sugar. Cut out the cookies, using a cookie cutter and transfer them to a silpat lined cookie sheet.
Bake in a preheated oven 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes or more, until they are as brown as you like them.
“Dream pastry flour” is from Bette Hagman’s cookbooks, and the recipe is also available on the internet. It is meant for use in pie crusts:
2 cups tapioca starch
2 cups cornstarch
1 cup potato starch (not potato flour)
4 cups mochiko (sweet rice flour)
4 teaspoons xantham gum
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt
Mix these ingredients really thoroughly, either in a large bowl, bag or jar, and store in an airtight container.
Gf-Zing! recommends using all gluten free ingredients.
Commercial almond paste is often made with glucose derived from wheat, and is therefore out-of-bounds for the gluten free community. Here is how to make your own gluten free almond paste for baking cakes and cookies. Almond paste made at home does not have as intense an almond flavor as the commercial product because it does not contain bitter almond. This recipe has been developed and tested for the gluten free community by Gf-Zing!
1 pound shelled, blanched, peeled almonds (simply put, the almonds look whitish in color, with no brown skin on them - it doesn’t matter if they are whole or slivered)
3 1/2 cups gluten free confectioner’s sugar
2-3 egg whites
Grind the nuts in a food processor with a sharp blade until they are almost turning to the consistency of peanut butter. Add the sugar and 2 egg whites. Process until the mixture forms a uniform ball. Add the third egg white only if you have to. You will probably need to separate the mixture into two batches to process the paste. If that is the case, mix the almonds and sugar, divide it in half, then add one egg white to each half. That is the best way.
This almond paste will work for baked goods. Do not eat it raw, as it contains raw eggs.
It will keep for less than a week in the refrigerator, so use it quickly. To use it in recipes, weigh out amounts with a kitchen scale.
Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free.
One of the greatest gluten-free interests we had was recreating this Christmas cookie. We first encountered it in Better Homes and Gardens magazine in the 1970s. Back then, the recipe called for 10 drops of green food coloring and 8 drops of red (for the different colored layers). Now, in the December issue of Gourmet (2005), the same recipe has appeared under the name of Seven-Layer Cookies, but with 25 drops of each color of food coloring and with chocolate icing on both the top and the bottom. This larger amount of food coloring produces a much more garish cookie. With the bright colors and chocolate icing on top and bottom, it seems like the three-car garage of cookiedom. We prefer the original, smaller amounts of food coloring, and chocolate only on the top. Gf-Zing! presents the recipe here, adapted for gluten free cooking with gf flour and extra almond extract to make up for the flavorless rice flour, and including a link to how to make your own almond paste.
8 ounces gluten free almond paste
3 sticks butter
1 cup sugar
4 eggs, separated
1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract
2 cups gluten free cookie flour mix
1/4 teaspoon salt
10 drops green food coloring
8 drops red food coloring
12 ounces apricot preserves
4 ounces gluten free semisweet chocolate
You need 3 pans, each 9×13″ to make these cookies, or use the same one over and over.
Grease the three pans, line them with wax paper, and grease the wax paper.
In your food processor, mix the almond paste, egg yolks, butter, almond extract and salt. Beat for 5 minutes, until the mixture is really smooth. Add the gluten free cookie flour and mix well.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Fold the dough from the food processor into the egg whites.
Remove 1 1/2 cups of the batter and spread it all over the bottom of one of the three prepared pans. Remove another 1 1/2 cups of batter to a separate bowl, add the green food coloring and spread the green batter in a second pan. To the last remaining batter, add the red coloring. Spread this red batter in the third pan. The batter spread in the pans will be very thin - only a quarter of an inch or so.
Bake in a preheated oven 350 degrees for fifteen minutes. The dough will start to pull away from the edges, and start to brown around the edges. The top will be springy to the touch. Remove the pans from the oven and set aside.
Melt the 12 ounces of jam in a pan. Some of the recipes for this cookie call for straining the jam, but this is not necessary. Enjoy the lumps! Turn out the green cake on a flat cookie sheet that is lined with tin foil or some other durable material. Spread half the jam on the green cake. Top with the plain colored cake. Spread the remaining jam on the plain colored cake. Top with the red cake. Put a piece of plastic wrap on the top of the red layer. Put a cookie sheet on top. Place canned goods, or heavy weights, around the cookie sheet to weigh down the cake and glue the layers together. If you have a heavy wooden cutting board, you can use that instead. Set aside in a cool place for several hours or overnight.
Melt the chocolate. If you like bitter chocolate, add an ounce of bitter chocolate to the semisweet chocolate. Remove the cans, cookie sheet and plastic wrap from the top of the cake, and then spread the red cake layer with melted chocolate. Allow to harden (this will take some time - at least 30 minutes). Slice off the edges of the cake and put these scraps on a plate for sampling. Slice the cake into squares, about 1″ on a side, using a sharp knife and a ruler (to mark where to cut). You may have to run hot water over the knife, then dry it with a clean towel, from time to time so that crumbs don’t get onto the chocolate topping.
These can be stored in an airtight container in the freezer, with wax paper between the layers of cookies, and removed as needed. If cut into 1″ squares, over 100 cookies are produced.
Make sure to use all gluten free ingredients.
1 cup hazelnuts
1 cup walnuts
1 Tablespoon gluten free unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon cloves
a pinch of salt
1/3 cup gluten free flour mix
1/3 cup honey
1 egg white
Grind the nuts finely in a blender of food processor. Mix with the rest of the ingredients and form a sticky ball of dough.
Roll out the dough on a piece of waxed paper covered in a virtual snowfall of powdered sugar. Roll the dough until it is 3/8 inch thick, and make sure to keep a deep coating of powdered sugar so the dough doesn’t stick to the rolling pin or the counter etc.
Cut the dough in to 1 x 1 1/2″ bars. Transfer them to a well-greased cookie sheet. Bake at 275 degrees, about 25-30 minutes or until they appear dry. Transfer to drying racks and cool completely. Place the cooled cookies on waxed paper and drizzle them with icing.
Icing:
Mix 1 Tablespoon of egg white, 1/2 cup powdered sugar, and 1-2 Tablespoons of gluten free orange liqueur to make a thick but drizzly icing. Not too thin. Add more liqueur or more sugar as needed to achieve the right consistency. Drizzle attractively on the cookies. Allow to dry completely before storing the cookies in an airtight container with waxed paper between the layers of cookies.
Note: Make sure the nuts are fresh, as the freshness of the nuts makes the flavor of these cookies. Rancid nuts are not good.
Make sure all of your ingredients, including spices, are gluten free!
These appetizer sized crab cakes are delicious and rich! People consume quite a lot of them. That’s why the recipe uses 2 pounds of crab meat. This recipe has been adapted for the gluten free community by Gf-Zing!
2 pounds fresh or canned gluten free crab meat (drained in a strainer) - about 1 quart
1 pound frozen grated fresh coconut (Asian grocery stores carry this product) - one package
7-8 cloves garlic, finely grated
3 Tablespoons gluten free Fish Sauce (check the label for wheat)
3 Tablespoons gluten free Oyster Sauce (choy sum)
4 eggs
freshly ground black pepper
cornstarch if necessary
Glutino brand corn and rice bread, made in to crumbs (for rolling the cakes in before frying)
Mix the crab meat, coconut meat, garlic, sauces and pepper, and eggs together. Do not break up the crab too much - leave some whole chunks in there. Make a mixture that can be formed in to small cakes. If the mixture is too wet, add up to 2 Tablespoons of cornstarch and some of the bread crumbs, until the mixture will form cakes.
Make bite-sized cakes from the mixture, - about 1 - 1 1/2 inches across, and roll them in the breadcrumbs and place them on waxed paper, ready for frying.
Heat some frying oil in a large pan until quite hot - 400 degrees, or prepare a deep-fryer. Be careful not to burn yourself! If you are making this dish for gluten-free guests, and you have used your deep-fryer oil for frying something else, change the oil before preparing this dish for your gluten-free guests. Don’t be shy about telling them that you used new oil - they will appreciate your care and concern!
Fry the cakes a few at a time until they are golden. Drain the cakes on paper towels to absorb excess frying oil.
Notes: Be careful to read the label on Thai or Vienamese Fish Sauce - some brands contain wheat. For oyster sauce, check the internet lists or your local store for the brands that assert that they are gluten-free.
Serve these cakes with Thai Sweet Chili Sauce (gluten free).
Make sure that all your ingredients are gluten-free!