Mini Custard Pies with an almond, coconut & oatmeal base & a fresh strawberry

I was making rumpledoodles (see recipe on my blog here) a few weeks back and as I was making the dough for these cookies full of fibers and lots of flavour I realized it would make a great base for pies too. I figured I had to alter the recipe somewhat to make for a pie crust, so that needed some thinking. I let that idea slip from the back of my mind for a while, until last week when it hit me. It would make a wonderful combination with custard. Home made, gluten free custard. And that's when the baking itch always hits me. When the idea has come to me, I just have to bake. 

The little black specks in the custard are the vanille seeds as I used a proper vanilla pod in the custard.

So I made these cute little pies as a Sunday treat & the amount of dough also allowed me to make a stack of cookies too. This recipe will make about 12 mini custard pies and about 10 oatmeal, coconut, almond cookies. When I wanted to photograph the cookies, I found out i only had three left. So that goes to show how lovely those were. 

They're gone before you know it!

And the mini custard pies? They didn't last very long either! 

Ingredients:
Pie base & cookies

• 100 grams (3.5 oz) of rolled oat
• 100 grams (3.5 oz) of gluten free almond flour
• 100 grams (3.5 oz) of grated coconut
• 50 grams (1.75 oz) of raisins, 50 grams (1.75 oz) of dates, 50 grams (1.75 oz) of dried apricots
• 0.5 teaspoon salt
• 5 tablespoons molasses (maple syrup works really well too!)
• 150 grams (5.5 oz) of soft unsalted butter (if you are lactose intolerant as well, you can substitute it for soy butter or something similar)
• 2 tablespoons boiling water
• 1 egg
• a tiny bit of basic gluten free flour to dust the work top with and to help roll out the dough.

Custard

• 250 ml (9 fl oz) of milk
• 1 vanilla pod
• 16 grams (0.5 oz) of vanilla sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 20 grams (0.75 oz) of corn starch
• 50 grams (1.75 oz) of granulated sugar

Instructions:

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade or 350 degrees fahrenheit.
• Line a muffin or cupcake tray with paper cupcake cups.

First you make the custard as follows:

1. Mix all the sugar with the cornstarch & whisk it with a bit of cold mix till all the cornstarch and sugar are combined and you have no lumps.
2. Scrape the vanilla pod seeds from the vanilla pod and put them in a pan with the pod. Pour in the remainder of the milk & heat the milk in the pan on the stove. 
3. Beat the egg yolks with the cornstarch & sugar mixture till it is is frothy.
4. Pour a bit of the hot milk on the frothy egg, cornstarch, sugar mixture while whisking and then pour this back into the pan with the milk. 
5. Bring this to a boil and keep whisking, as soon as the custard starts bubbling, turn down the heat, leave it to boil for about a minute & don't stop stirring.
6. Then pour the custard on a cold plate or in a cold bowl, remove the vanilla pod and cover it with cling film. Leave it to cool for half an hour and then let it cool further in the fridge.

Then you make the pie crust & cookie dough:

1. Put the rolled oats, the apricots, dates & raisins in a blender and blitz till everything is in small chunks and the oats look like flour.
2. Put it in a bowl and add all the other ingredients. 
3. Mix it all well until you have a firm but slightly sticky dough. 
4. Dust a spotlessly clean worktop with a bit of basic gluten free flour (I always use a bit of baking parchment to place on the work top and dust that with the flour to make sure no stray gluten can bite my gluten free dough in the butt, just to be sure) & put the dough on there. Dust it with gluten free flour again & roll out the dough till desired thickness & punch out circles for the cookies & the pie crust. Place the circles (roll them out a bit if necessary) in the lined muffin or cupcake tray and form the pie crusts. Put the cookies on baking parchment & on a tray. 
5. Bake them both in the oven for about 20-25 minutes till golden.
6. Take them out of the oven & let them cool on a wire rack before you fill a piping bag with the cooled down custard and pipe the custard onto the pie crust. Decorate with a fresh strawberry. 

Enjoy!!

Pumpkin & Buttermilk Bread

What do you do when someone gives you a 5 kilogram, huge delicious pumpkin? You make pumpkin lasagna, you make pumpkin soup & then? I expect I'll make some pumpkin pie or cookies or cupcakes sometime next week, but that still leaves some pumpkin left. 

So I'm killing two birds with one stone; finishing the left over pumpkin & slipping my kids some much needed extra fibers & vitamins by making a pumpkin bread. Gluten free flours & products lack natural fibers & vitamins that wheat & other grains contain, so adding some nutritious pumpkin to their bread is a win. 
I serve my kids an abundance of vegetables to make up for the loss vitamins & especially fibers they miss out on because they eat gluten free. And hiding those veggies in their bread is one way to do that. 

Fluffy, airy Pumpkin Bread

Here's the recipe for Pumpkin & Buttermilk bread. It makes a rather big bread, but there is nothing like too much bread, now is there? Especially when you have kids that grow like beanstalks... ;-)

Ingredients:

• 350 grams (12 oz) of cooked pumpkin
• 200 ml (7 fl oz) of cooking juices left from draining the cooked pumpkin
• 400 ml (14 fl oz) of buttermilk
• 3 tablespoons of olive oil
• 700 grams (1 lb 9 oz) of gluten free flour 
• 2 teaspoons of fiber husk
• 2 teaspoons of xanthan gum
• 1 teaspoon of iodized salt
• 20 grams (0.75 oz) of dried yeast
• 2 tablespoons of molasses
• 16 grams (0.5 oz) of cane-sugar

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 50 degrees centigrade (122 degrees fahrenheit) and put a bowl of water in the oven. This will help the bread proof. 
2. Mash up the cooked pumpkin in a big bowl. Add 200 ml of the cooking juices left from cooking the pumpkin. Add the buttermilk and the olive oil & the gluten free flour. I only had plain all purpose gluten free flour in my store cupboard, but I think it would taste fab too if you substituted a bit of the gluten free flour with gluten free cornflour. 
3. Now add the fiber husk, xanthan gum & iodized salt. Make sure you mix it in a bit with the flour, so that when you add the yeast, it won't come in direct contact with the salt. It will dimished the power of the yeast & you won't get a nice & fluffy bread. At last, add the molasses & can sugar. The molasses will enhance the sweet taste of the pumpkin, the cane-sugar will help the bread proof. 
4. Mix it all together with an electric mixer until you get a sticky mass of dough. The dough needs to be sticky, because gluten free dough requires more fluids to make a good soft bread. Without it, your bread would  break more easily when cutting & it would crumble more. 
5. I put some baking parchment in the bread pan & scooped in the sticky dough. I evened it out and carved a diamond pattern in the top with a knife & sprinkled some oat flakes on it. If you have the time to roast some pumpkin seeds, you could scatter those on top, but i was too lazy. 
6. Put it in the preheated oven and let it proof for about 50 minutes. 
7. After 50 minutes, take it out of the oven, preheat the oven to 200 degrees centigrade (400 degrees fahrenheit) and when the oven is at the right temperature, bake the bread for 40 minutes in the middle of the oven until golden. 
8. Take the bread out of the oven and let it cool on a wire rack. 

Fully baked & the proofed dough

Enjoy!

Strawberry and Almond Pie

When we were in Switzerland on our summer vacation I ate the most zingy, wonderful, yummy pie ever: Walliser Apricot Pie. Seriously, that was one of the best pies i've ever tasted in my life, so sweet, yet zingy and fresh.  Sweet because the filling is made with grated almonds and the apricots made it fresh and zingy. And my kids were looking at my plate with sad little faces. Because of course this was a 'gluten-pie'. So I promised them to make something similar when we got home. Time flew by and now apricots are out of season. Bummer. But the supermarket is stocked with peaches and nectarines instead. And my kids loathe peaches and nectarines. Yeah, really.... 

So when I woke up with the urge to bake, I suffer from acute Obsessive Compulsive Baking Disorder (OCBD) sometimes, I decided to try and make this wonderful pie with strawberries, because my kids adore strawberries.  

It looks a bit messy, but trust me, it tastes wonderful!

A tip before you start: 
This pie is made with a standard recipe for pie dough, but with gluten free ingredients  And usually (when you make this with normal flour) you would make the dough and store it in the fridge for a while and then roll it out. With gluten free dough that will become one huge disaster, because the dough will break and crumble underneath your hands. And you don't want that. So i made the dough for the pie base and just pressed it into the pie baking tray with my hands, making sure it is even everywhere. That way you have no frustration, but end up with a yummy pie dough. I then put it in the fridge. 

Ingredients:
For the pie base

• 150 grams (5.5 oz)  of soft butter
• 220 grams (8 oz) of gluten free rice flour
• 5 tablespoons of finely granulated sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 teaspoon of xanthan gum

For the filling

• 180 grams (6 oz) of melted butter
• 150 grams (5.5 oz) of powdered sugar
• 80 grams (2.75 oz) of gluten free almond flour
• 200 grams (7 oz) of finely chopped almonds
• 3 eggs (and the egg white that is left over from the egg yolks that you used for the pie base)
• 6 tablespoons of sugar
• about 250-300 grams (9 - 10.25 oz) of strawberries

Instructions:

• Preheat the oven to about 180 degrees centigrade/350 degrees fahrenheit.
• Butter a pie baking tray or a spring tin
• Mix the butter, rice flour, the granulated sugar, the egg yolks and xanthan gum in a bowl. 
• take out the dough and divide it over de base of the pie baking tray making sure it is even and the dough covers the side of the pie baking tray as well. 
• Put the pie base in the fridge for about 20 minutes while you make the filling,
• Mix the melted butter with the powdered sugar till it's all creamy and fluffy. Then add the almond flour, the chopped almonds, the eggs and the left over egg white and mix it to a fluffy, frothy substance. 
• Take the pie base out of the fridge and spoon the filling on top of it. It will look like this.

• Slice the strawberries in half and place them on top of the pie. Your pie will look like this.

• Put the pie in the oven for half an hour.
• Take the pie out of the oven, sprinkle sugar over the top and turn the heat down to about 170 degrees centigrade/ 325 degrees fahrenheit and bake for another 45 - 50 minutes. 
• If the centre isn't wobbly anymore and the pie is soft but firm take it out of the oven and let it cool before you slice it up to serve it with some whipped cream.

Enjoy!