Gluten Free Carrot Cake Cupcakes to cheer you up

I always tell people that this gluten free diet that my son is on isn't the end of the world. That it is doable and that, once you get used to it, you get very creative & then anything is possible. But there is something about this diet and this autoimmune disease that makes me cry every now & then. Sometimes it's my boys disappointment when he can't be like everybody else and a week or so ago it was the fact that my son is so incredibly scared of getting sick, that he is overcautious. That he takes his diet so seriously, that he ended up playing all by himself at after school daycare. Why? Because his friends hadn't washed their hands and he was afraid their gluten could contaminate him, so he didn't dare touch the toys they were touching. It broke my heart, because he is such a social kid and loves to play with others. Out of fear he took things a step too far. When he was little, we cleaned all the toys simply because he would put stuff in his mouth, but now that he's older, that is no longer an issue. But suddenly the fear of getting sick was too much for him. It happened after a night where he had had stomach cramps and we couldn't figure out if something had gone wrong (diet wise) that day. So he took drastic measures.

All we could do when he told us he had played all by himself was cry with him & then tell him that there was a very simple solution. As long as he had the discipline (and he has, he has shown that over and over again) to wash his hands before dinner, there would be no problem at all. He could play with his gluten infested friends and then safely eat his sandwich or fruit and not end up sick. He was so relieved, because they always do that, but he had been all by himself for nothing. 

I felt so bad for him that Gijs and I baked him cupcakes a few days later. We made him these carrot cupcakes. And because my youngest can't have that much refined sugar, we used palm sugar instead (thanks for the tip Lisette!). It's a bit different in taste, but in these cakes it works really well. Ok, we ended up topping them with marzipan and sugar figurines, but we limited the sugar intake a bit (this no sugar thing is takes babysteps ;-)).

This recipe makes 12 very large cupcakes.

These really do cheer you up, don't they?

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs beaten
• 175 grams (6 oz) of palm sugar
• 150 ml (5 fl oz / 0.25 of a pint) of olive oil
• 200 grams (7 oz) of rice flour
• 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon of xanthan gum
• 2 teaspoons of gingerbread spices
• 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• 300 grams (10.5 oz) of grated carrot
• the seeds of one vanilla pod
• the zest of one orange
• two tablespoons of orange juice

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade or 350 degrees fahrenheit.
2. Line a cupcake/muffin tray with paper cups.
3. Put the eggs, palm sugar and olive oil in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer to a smooth batter.
4. Spoon in the rice flour, the spices, xanthan gum, cream of tartar, cinnamon, grated carrot, orange zest and vanilla seeds till all is mixed. If your dough is a bit dry, add the orange juice, you want a soft, moist batter. 
5. Scoop the batter in the cupcake cups. 
6. Put them in the oven for about 25-35 minutes until golden and risen. 
7. Let them cool for a bit before you take them out of the tray, and then let them fully cool on a wire rack until you decorate them. We used marzipan & sugar figurines, because my son just loves it and it was his treat. But you could make a mascarpone frosting as well with 50 grams (1.75 oz) of mascarpone, 225 grams (8 oz) of powdered sugar, 2 teaspoons of vanilla drops and 2 to 3 tablespoons of hot water. If you want to make the marzipan grass, just squeeze some marzipan through a garlic crusher. ;-)

Enjoy!

Lovely Lemon and Honey Ladies (gluten free)

For Christmas one of my oldest and dearest friends gave me cookie cutters to make gingerbread girls (my boys keep telling me it's gingerbread men that are wearing coats. Right, boys!). I just couldn't wait till next Christmas to make them, and who says you actually have to? So this morning my toddler and I made cookies that taste like summer and that make you smile: lovely lemon & honey ladies (and some scary looking lemon & honey dinosaurs too, because one cannot live without dinosaur cookies ever, of course).

These cookies make a great birthday treat too

Even though I try to bake sugar free as well as gluten free I decided to use cane sugar for these cookies, because it makes them more firm and the gingerbread ladies are quite huge, you don't want them breaking as soon as you pick them up. This recipe doesn't use an insane amount of sugar, so I dared to risk it using cane sugar. 
I made a double batch of dough (as Gijs tends to eat half of it straight out of the bowl anyway) so I had two trays of dinosaur cookies and 5 enormous zingy ladies. We did not decorate them, because quite frankly, they are just lovely the way they are. 

Here's the recipe (one batch).

Ingredients:

• 175 grams (6 oz) of gluten free rice flour
• 25 grams (1 oz) of almond flour
• 50 grams (1.75 oz) of cane sugar
• 50 grams (1.75 oz) of butter
• 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar
• half a teaspoon of xanthan gum
• 1 egg
• zest of one lemon
• vanilla seeds (from one vanilla pod)
• 2 tablespoons of honey
• 2 tablespoons of milk if the dough is too dry and won't combine.

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees centigrade (325 degrees fahrenheit).
2. Put all the 'dry' ingredients (everything except the honey, milk and eggs) in a big bowl and mix well. 
3. Add the egg and honey and knead it into a soft dough using the electric mixer. If the dough doesn't combine, but stays crumbly; add the milk, spoon for spoon until it does. 
4. Do not eat all the dough out of the bowl. Yes, this is very important, because the dough is so wonderful, you might just do that and end up with no cookies at all. 
5. Knead the dough on a (rice)floured surface and roll it out into a big slab. I make them rather thick it makes the cookies nice and fluffy. The thinner the dough, the crunchier the cookies become (that's a bit of a "duuuhhh" I know). My kids like fluffy cookies. 
6. Get out your cookie cutters and knock yourself out making cute & funny cookies. 
7. Put them on a baking tray lined with baking parchment. 
8. Put them in the oven and bake them until they are golden. Depending on the oven it takes 12-20 minutes. The lovely ladies took a while, because they are rather large. 
9. Let them cool on a wire rack and serve them with a cup of tea. 
10. Enjoy!

Gluten free and sugar free Dinosaur cookies

I had forgotten how tough it is to adapt your life to a diet. Cooking, or rather living gluten free has become a way of life in our home. It doesn't matter if I have one person with Celiacs Disease in our home or let's say four, it wouldn't change a thing. We are used to that.
But now that we are limiting our  three year old's sugar intake to see if that helps him, I find myself checking everything in the store over and over again, adapting recipes that were once already adapted and sometimes completely failing at it. It's not as hard as gluten free, because a bit of sugar won't make my little boy sick, as gluten really do make my oldest incredibly sick, but it's still a challenge. Because I want what's best for our son(s).  And so we struggle a bit until this is a regular thing in our household too.

Yesterday my 3 year old an I baked cookies as my cookie dough & batter lover and I often do on Thursday. And not just any kind of cookies, but dinosaur cookies, because both my sons have succumbed to the 'Dinosaurs are cool' virus. We have this favorite gluten free cookie recipe, that we always use, but that contains sugar. Bummer! We decided to change that and turn it into a sugar free version using apple syrup (appelstroop in Dutch). It's a totally Dutch thing that we eat on sandwiches. Yes, us Dutchies, we are weird. We eat sprinkles on our sandwiches and pancakes for dinner. Don't judge us. ;-)

Run, the dinosaurs are back! :-)

Here's the recipe. For my Dutch readers: The Dinosaur cookie cutters were bought at Dille & Kamille.

Ingredients:

• 200 grams (1.6 cup) of rice flour
• 0.5 tablespoon of xanthan gum (to keep your cookies from crumbling)
• 1 teaspoon of glutenfree baking soda
• 125 grams (4.4 oz) of apple syrup. Maple syrup will work too I think!
• orange zest from one orange ( I add 2 tablespoons of gingerbread spices)
• 50 (about a 1/4 of a cup) grams of butter
• 1 egg

Instructions:

• Preheat the oven to 160 degrees centigrade (320 degrees centigrade)
• Put all dry ingredients in a kitchen aid or bowl and slowly add the other ingredients while mixing. Add some extra rice flour if the mixture is too moist, and a bit of milk if it gets too dry.
• Take it out of the bowl, dust the surface and roll out to an even dough, about half a centimeter or half an inch thick. Get out your favorite cookie cutters and cut out about twenty cookies.
• Put them on a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake them in the preheated oven for about 10 minutes.
• Let them cool on a wire rack. If you want, you can decorate them with icing, but my kids love them just the way they are!

Enjoy!

Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Sugar Free Raisin & Rooibos Tea Cake

It has been a while since I blogged a recipe. I've baked (I always bake, it's my second nature), but I just haven't had the time to write my recipes down in my blog, I've been so busy. I've jotted them on little pieces of paper, so eventually I hope they will end up here, in black & white. 

I'm glad the holidays are over and life is slowly returning to normal. Even though I like the time off, somehow the days toward the holidays are just insanely busy. So much to do, so little time. All the Christmas activities at school & daycare (bring this, bring that, don't forget this, don't forget that), the usual baking and then of course the inevitable school Christmas dinner, which means I need to bake or cook for the whole class (as do all parents) and I separately need to create a gluten free dinner for my boy, just so he can enjoy his dinner as well without worrying he might eat something wrong. I'm always exhausted when the Christmas vacation is actually here. 

In the mean time I (well... we as a family actually) have been putting a lot of time & energy into our youngest son as well, who is a cute little whirlwind with a brain that amazes me in many ways. He is so smart, funny and he has the most fantastic imagination, but his amazing, chaotic brain is very confusing to him and us sometimes. So, while we are looking into all that, the doctor suggested to limit the amount of sugar as well. In most things that isn't too difficult a except when I bake. I bake with sugar a lot. Oh and he loves his chocolate sprinkles... hmmm...  Anyway, I'm used to baking with sugar because it tastes great and is common in almost all recipes. So today, as a fresh start, we've baked our first gluten free, sugar free Raisin & Rooibos Tea Cake that so happens to be dairy free as well. 
I probably will still bake with sugar from time to time, but if limiting the amount of sugar will help my little whirlwind munchkin, I will do so. In this case, Gijs loved the batter and that is a good sign & a great motivation to adapt more recipes along the way. Let the gluten free and sugar free baking commence! ;-)

Here's the recipe for the cake that we made today. 

Not bad for a first time!!

Ingredients:

• 125 grams (4.5 oz) of raisins
• 200 ml (7 fl oz) of Rooibos tea
• 50 grams (1.75 oz) of buckwheat flour
• 100 grams (3.5 oz) of chestnut flour
• 150 grams (5.5 oz)of almond flour
• 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar
• 1.5 teaspoon of fiber husk
• 90 grams (3.25 oz) of honey
• zest of a large tangerine
• The contents of one vanilla pod
• 4 eggs
• 100 ml (3.5 fl oz) of olive oil

Instructions:

1. Soak the raisins in the warm Rooibos tea for an hour or so.
2. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees centigrade / about 350 degrees fahrenheit.
3. Put all the flour, cream of tartar, and fiber husk into a bowl and mix.
4. Add the eggs, the zest of a tangerine (you can also use a lemon, but I like the combination of the raisins and the softer, sweeter taste of the tangerine) and scrape the inside of a vanilla pod and add it to the mixture. 
5. Mix it all well and then add the olive oil and the raisins. If your mixture is a bit tough, add a bit of the rooibos tea, but not to much. You want a soft dough with just enough moisture.
6. Put the cake in the oven and bake for about 45-50 minutes. 
7. take it out of the oven, poke in a skewer to see iff the cake has cooked properly 9it will come out clean when it is) and let it cool on a wire rack. 
8. Serve with a cup of (Rooibos) tea and... enjoy!

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!