Gluten free Banana Muffins with Raisins and Macadamia nuts

I love baking & cooking so my storage bursts with food and as a result with left over food stuff. Somehow you can always buy everything in large quantities only, and you need itty bitty bits of things in your recipes. So I have jars with raisins, coconut, nuts, several kinds of gluten free flours, preserves... well you name it actually, and it is all in my fridge or storage. I realize I buy a gigantic amount of food each week with all my gluten free stuff and I always need stuff in storage, just in case. That's what you get when you make everything from scratch because prefab gluten free is even more expensive. It's a bit insane, I know, I could feed half a village on what's in our store cupboard. But I use it all. 

Because what do I do with all that? Well, I bake with what I can find. These muffins were born out of left overs and the urge of my three year old to bake with mommy.  :-)

I just tossed in what I could find and ended up with this lovely result. Soft, sweet, fragrant muffins.

These muffins make a great lunchbox treat too!

This recipe makes about 16 muffins. 

Ingredients:

• 75 grams (2.75 oz) of soft butter
• 150 grams (5.5 oz) of powdered sugar
• 2 eggs
• 200 grams (7 oz) of gluten free (brown) rice flour
• 2 teaspoons of xanthan gum
• 250 grams (9 oz) of bananas (mashed to a pulp)
• 5 tablespoons of buttermilk
• 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar
• 0.5 teaspoon of grated nutmeg
• 200 grams (7 oz) of sultanas
• 85 grams (3 oz) of chopped up Macadamia nuts

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade (350 degrees fahrenheit).
2. Beat the butter and powdered sugar in a big bowl to a frothy substance.
3. Beat in the eggs, make sure the mixture doesn't split. If it does, add a bit of the flour. 
4. Mash up the bananas and add these together with the milk to the mixture in the bowl.
5. Sift the flour, cream of tartar and the xanthan gum and add it to the bowl.  Mix it in with the grated nutmeg, raisins and chopped up Macadamia nuts. Pecans would taste amazing as well. 
6. Take out muffin tins, line them with paper muffin cups and scoop in the batter. 
7. Put the muffin tins in the oven, and bake the muffins until golden. It will take about 45 minutes. 
8. Take them out of the oven and let them cool on a wire rack.
9. Dust with powdered sugar before serving. 

Enjoy! 

Gluten Free Lemon Scones that brighten your day

All you need on a rainy day to make it all better.

I just love scones. To me, they represent cosy days in front of a fire, with a good book and great company. They also bring me back to Scotland, where my husband and I had the best pre-kids holidays. The most delicious scones I ever ate, I ate in Scotland. In front of a fire. And pouring rain outside. My day was made.  To make them gluten free still is a bit of a thing for me. Making scones isn't difficult, but somehow the gluten free ones always were either too crumbly or just rock hard. Not good. I realized these scones turned out the way they did, because they lacked extra fluids in the recipe. Gluten free flour tends to need more fluids to get the same result. So when I bumped into a (gluten) recipe that used double cream I decided to try to make that one gluten free. Since I didn't have double cream, I decided to use plain old yoghurt. And they turned out wonderfully well. Maybe the could have risen a bit more, but other than that, they taste like proper scones. Real, proper scones. Needless to say, I'm over the moon!

Here's the recipe. If you love scones, go for it!

Ingredients:

• 250 grams (9 oz) of gluten free rice flour
• 25 grams (1 oz) of almond flour
• 1 teaspoon of xanthan gum
• a quarter of a teaspoon of (iodized) salt
• 2-3 teaspoons of cream of tartar
• 50 grams (1.75 oz) of cane sugar
• 75 grams (2.75 oz) of cold butter, chopped in tiny pieces
• 1 lemon
• 1 egg
• 4 tablespoons of yoghurt

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees centigrade (400 degrees fahrenheit)
2. Mix the flour with the cream of tartar, xanthan gum, cane sugar and salt. 
3. Knead the cold butter through this mixture, until it turns a bit flaky. 
4. Grate the zest of the lemon and add it to the flaky dough together with the egg, 4 tablespoons of yoghurt and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. 
5. Knead the dough, make it into a ball, cover it with cling foil and put it in the fridge for about 15 minutes. 
6. Roll out the dough till it's about 3 cm (a bit over 1 inch) thick and punch out the scones with a round cookie cutter. Place them on a baking tray lined with baking parchement and bake them for about 15-20 minutes until golden. 
7. Leave them to cool on a wire rack and them serve them with clotted cream and lemon curd. 

Gluten Free Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Muffins

EEEEEKKKK! ;-)

This recipe was born because my oldest son Thijmen wanted to make scary cupcakes for Halloween. I'm a bit late posting this recipe, but sometimes there just doesn't seem to be enough time in a day, or a week. So, you can bookmark this recipe for next year. :-)
Since I've made a gazillion cupcakes of late, I decided to turn them into scary muffins. The basic recipe is of a Apple, Cinnamon Oatmeal cake I've found in a Jamie magazine that I figured would make great gluten free muffins if i canted the recipe somewhat. Yes, I'm a daredevil, boldly changing that into a muffin recipe. LOL
Apple, Cinnamon & Oatmeal make a great combination, so if you aren't into a scary breakfast of snack, you can very well do without the marzipan spiders we put on top.


Ingredients:

• 180 grams (6 oz) of butter at room temperature
• 140 grams (5 oz) of cane sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 100 grams (3.5 oz) of rice flour
• 80 grams (about 2.75 oz) of buckwheat flour
• 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar
• 1 tablespoon of cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of xanthan gum
• 1 large apple (do not use a very sour one, pick a sweet tasting apple)
• 2 tablespoons of oatmeal
• Icing sugar
• To make the spiders, use gluten free marzipan

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees centigrade (325 fahrenheit).
2. Line a muffin tin with butter or paper muffin cups. 
3. Take a large bowl and add the soft butter and sugar. Beat it into a creamy mixture. 
4. Whisk the eggs into the sugar and butter mixture and sift the flour, cream of tartar, cinnamon and xanthan gum and fold all this into the egg/butter/sugar batter in the bowl. 
5. Peel the apple, take out the centre and grate it. Fold it into the batter.
6. Now, if you want to decorate your muffins with marzipan, toss the oatmeal into the mixture now and fold it in. It will give the muffins an extra bite and extra fibers. If you don't feel like making scary spiders, keep the oatmeal aside to decorate the muffins with later. 
7. Now scoop the batter into the paper cups in the muffin tin. Grab your oatmeal if you kept that for decoration and sprinkle it on top.
8. Put the muffin tins in the oven and bake them for about 35-40 minutes. If they look golden, smell wonderful and if you poke a skewer in them and it comes out clean, they're done. 
9. Take them out of the oven and let them cool a bit before you transfer them to a wire rack to let them cool completely. Then decorate with the marzipan spiders (stick them onto the muffin with bit of basic icing) or just dust the oatmeal topped muffins with some icing sugar for extra prettiness.

Enjoy!