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!

Glutenfree buttermilk cupcakes with figs and walnuts and homemade caramel

Some people stress eat, I stress bake. Whenever my head is in overdrive and my body has the jitters, there is just one thing that will calm me: baking. Somehow my mind slows down as I measure ingredients and mix my batter, the fog in my brain clears up and by the time the cupcakes or cake or bread come out of the oven all risen and golden I can see things in perspective again. And as that happens my jitters disappear too. Beats any nerve calming medicine what so ever.  

But lately I've been so busy that I didn't even have time to bake, hence the lack of new blogs and recipes. This also means that a baking session was long overdue for my shattered nerves. Here's the recipe that turned this headless chicken back into a glutenfree momma.

This recipe makes 12 cupcakes and two mini-bund cakes as shown above. 

Ingredients:

• 225 grams (8 oz) of fine granulated sugar
• 225 grams (8 oz) of soft unslated butter
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 225 grams (8 oz) of riceflour
• 2 teaspoons of baking soda
• 1 teaspoon of xanthan gum
• a pinch of salt
• 225 ml (8 fl oz) of buttermilk
• 150 grams (5.5 oz) of figs, finely chopped
• 100 grams (5.5 oz) of walnuts, finely chopped

To make the caramel topping:

• 1 tin (400 ml / 14 fl oz) of condensed milk
• 50 grams (1.75 oz) of caster sugar
• 100 grams (3.5 oz) of butter

Instructions:

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Centigrade (350 degrees Fahrenheit).
• Line two muffin or cupcake tins with paper cupcake cups en grease the mini-bund cake molds. 
• Mix the butter and sugar with a handheld mixer till it's all light and fluffy. Add the eggs and mix till all is blended into one mixture.
• Put the flour, baking soda, salt and xanthan gum into the bowl with the mixture, add the buttermilk and mix again quickly till all is blended. 
• I chopped up the walnuts & figs together in my kitchen aid and kept some walnuts aside (I bought more than the 100 grams) to decorate. 
• Mix in the walnuts & figs and then fill the cupcakecups and the bund cake molds. (It might just make one big yummy bund cake too i think!!)
• Put everything in the oven and bake for 25 minutes till the cupcakes have risen and are all golden and brown.
• While the cakes are in the oven for the last 10-15 minutes, make the caramel topping. Put all the ingredients for the caramel in a pan with a thick base. Put it on a low fire and keep stirring until all the sugar and butter has dissolved and the mixture is bubbling. Don't stop stirring now, and let it boil for about 5 minutes.
• Remove the pan from the heat, let the caramel cool a bit and when both the cupcakes, bundcakes and the caramel are cooled a bit pour some of the caramel on the cupcakes and decorate with a walnut or some chopped up walnuts.

Enjoy!