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!

Banana Pecan & Maple Syrup Cupcakes to make you smile

This recipe was created during a family barbecue. We were making baked sweet potatoes (Americans call them yams???) in the barbecue and I had found a recipe for cinnamon & maple syrup butter to go with them. When I tasted it, I knew it would make a great topping for a cupcake. So, when I found some overripe bananas that needed to be used, I decided on Banana Pecan & Maple Syrup cupcakes, where the maple Syrup replaced the sugar you'd normally use. That would taste just great with Cinnamon & Maple Syrup Buttercream I had in mind. It also meant that these cupcakes can be eaten by people who have to eat sugar free (although they would have to skip the buttercream).

The color of the buttercream would be a bit brownish and boring, so the kids and I used chocolate sunflowers to decorate the cupcakes. And this is how it turned out. 

A little bit of sunshine on a sunny day

This recipe makes about 12 cupcakes.

Ingredients:
For the cupcakes

• 225 grams (8 oz) of gluten-free all purpose flour.  You can use gluten-free rice flour as well.
• 225 grams (8 oz) of over ripe bananas
• 150 ml (5 fl oz) of maple syrup
• 2 large eggs
• 75 grams (2.75 oz) of butter (softened)
• 100 grams (3.5 oz) of roughly chopped  pecans
• 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar
• 2 teaspoons of xanthan gum
• 1 teaspoon of salt

For the buttercream:

• 200 grams (7 oz) of soft butter
• 3 tablespoons of maple syrup
• 1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon
• 125 grams (4.5 oz) of powdered sugar /icing sugar
• a pinch of salt

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade /350 degrees fahrenheit.
2. Place paper cups in your cupcake tray.
3. Put the bananas with the eggs and the maple syrup in a blender and blitz till it's frothy and combined. Pour it in a mixing bowl.
4. Add the soft butter, the pecans, the gluten-free flour, the cream of tartar, the xanthan gum and salt and mix it all together to a airy batter. 
5. Scoop the batter into the paper cups and place the cupcake trays into the warm oven. Bake for about 20-25 minutes till the cupcakes are all risen and golden. 
6. Let them cool in the tin first, before you transfer them to a wire rack to let them cool completely.
7. Make the buttercream by mixing all the ingredients together and put it in a piping bag. Pipe it on top of the cooled cupcakes and decorate with whatever you want! 

Enjoy!

A momma's tale: fighting the 'gluten-free is a fad' concept

Before I share my recipe with you (which I will do in a next blog), I'd like to share my thoughts on something with you first. A while back I was scanning my twitter timeline and my eye caught a tweet. Innocent Drinks, that company that makes juices and stuff with lots of healthy goodness retweeted a tweet. They were doing a fun Twitter session where people were asked to update old movie quotes to the present. and I couldn't find this retweet very funny. So I responded. Here's the Twitter conversation i had:

It makes me sad that so many people think this gluten-free diet, this diet that is cruel and hard sometimes is considered a fad by so many. If only they had to live the life of a person who needs to live gluten-free in order not to get sick. Will they ever realize that it's not a celebrity diet to be mocked? Will they realize it is not about the health freaks that live gluten-free because they think it is healthier for you? (Which it isn't by the way, if you eat gluten-free just for the hell of it and without the help of a dietician, you'll miss out on essential vitamins, fibers and minerals.) Will they ever realize that this diet is about getting healthy & strong again and often getting healthy for a celiac means gaining weight? That it is about getting control over your body and eventually your life again, but also saying goodbye to many things that used to be normal for you? That going gluten-free because you have no other choice is not to be taken lightly but a brave and necessary decision that will impact the rest of your life forever? That it takes determination to stick to this diet? That a celiac can not cheat? And that it also means you are never sure of what you eat unless someone you trust makes your food? Will they understand how my kid feels when at school they once again forget to get him a simple popsicle instead of a well meant Italian gelato in a paper cup where they scooped hundreds of ice-cream balls onto  'gluten' cones before he got his? And that this might mean his ice cream is possibly still contaminated? Even if i have explained the same thing to them year after year? Will they understand his fear of getting sick and feeling horrible tummy ache all over again? 

What makes me more sad is that even though the celiac community often voices their experiences more often and even louder than ever, it is all to deaf ears. It gets lost in the jokes, in the shrugs, in the 'I don't give two fucks'. It took me a while to write this blog, because I wondered if it would make a difference if I wrote this. Would it help? But if i don't react to tweets like the above, when I do not write this blog, things will definitely not change. This may be read by just a few. I may only reach three people, but at least i've educated three people. Three more people who know to take celiacs and the gluten-free diet seriously. To not mock it. To not make light of it. Who may not understand what it means to live gluten-free, but who will maybe realize that this diet is serious shit (literally) and deserves to be taken just as seriously. 

Do me a favor? If you read this... spread the word. Even if you think: "But i don't know any people who are gluten-free?" All the better. Spread.the.fucking.word. Help the celiac community in their quest to get this 'the gluten-free diet is just a fad-concept' out of this world. Educate people, for crying out loud. It will not stop people from going on this diet because they think it is better for them somehow, but it will help get the real story out. It might open peoples eyes. 

If you want to know more about what it is like to live a gluten-free life & what it means to be a celiac, read my sons story. Read Jennifer Esposito's story.  Read. Educate yourself. 

Thank you! 

Wendy (a glutenfreemomma trying to change the world, one gluten-free recipe at a time)

Caramel Apple Pie that was supposed to look totally different

This blog entry is not about the challenges of gluten-free baking, but how a recipe can turn out totally different from what you see in the cookbook. I wonder if any of my readers have that when they recreate one of my recipes. Do they look completely different from the pictures I post with the recipes? And how the hell does that happen?

I was making a grocery list this morning and I had one of my many Jamie Oliver books open. You all know I love and adore him, right? Like, borderline worship... Anyway...my oldest son leafed through it and asked me if we could make this pie today. 

Jamie Olivers Toffee-Apple Pie

I told my son: "Sure" and we wrote down all that we needed for this recipe. But while I was reading it I thought: I'm not going to boil the 2 cans of  of condensed milk for three bleeding hours. What does he think? That I have all day? I'm going to make caramel my way. I guess that is where the whole thing went south. Well, sort of... because when my pie came out of the oven, it looked nothing like the picture above, but like this....

Errmmm... a bit different, but very lovely none the less. 

So here's the recipe to my gluten-free version of Jamie Olivers Toffee-Apple Pie, that I call Caramel Apple Pie. Because it sure isn't anything like Jamie's gorgeous pie, but lovely (and gluten-free) none the less. If you want to make Jamie's version and boil 2 cans of condensed milk for 3 hours, check Jamie's Dinners. 

Ingredients:

For the pie base

• 1 vanilla pod
• 125 grams (4.5 oz) of butter
• 100 grams (3.5 oz) of powdered sugar
• a pinch of bakers salt
• 250 grams (9 oz) of gluten-free flour (I used Schar C for cakes and cookies)
• 1 teaspoon of xanthan gum
• the zest of half a lemon
• 3 egg yolks (Jamie uses 2 but i used three to make sure the gluten-free base wouldn't crumble underneath your hands)
• 2 large spoons of chilled milk

For the filling:

• 2 cans (400 ml/ 14 fl oz each) of condensed milk
• 200 grams (7 oz) of butter
• 100 grams (3.5 oz) of light caster sugar
• 2-3 large apples 
• some powdered sugar and cinnamon to sprinkle on top of the apples

Instructions:

1. First you make the pie dough, because that needs to be refrigerated for an hour (I was impatient (as always) and refrigerated it for 40 minutes and it turned out just fine). Put the seeds of the vanilla pod with the butter, powdered sugar, salt, the gluten-free flour, xanthan gum, lemon zest and egg yolks and mix it all together with your mixer until it looks a bit like breadcrumbs. Then add the milk and mix till the breadcrumbs have become a combined dough. Make a sort of a sausage from it, wrap it into cling film and refrigerate it as long as your patience allows you.
2. When your patience is up, line and butter a spring cake tin and slice the dough into slices (duhhhh) and cover the bottom and the sides, and press the slices together to make one base. Put it into the freezer for about an hour. (I didn't make it longer than 45 minutes again... I have no patience whatsoever)
3. Now peel the apples, slice into quarters, remove the core and slice them thin. Dust them with ground cinnamon. 
4. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade (350 degrees fahrenheit).
5. Make the caramel as follows: put the butter, condensed milk and sugar into a pan with a thick base, put it on a low heat and let it all melt together. Then bring it to a boil, and do not stop stirring! Keep stirring for about 5 minutes as soon as the caramel starts bubbling and then take it off the heat. Take your pie base out of the freezer, pour on the caramel and then place the apple slices neatly on top. Dust with powdered sugar and pop it in the hot oven for about 40-45 minutes till the crust is all golden and your house smells divine. 
6. Leave it to cool completely (I even put in the fridge for 2 hours till the caramel was completely set.) Before you cut it and serve it to your guests. And as long as you do not show them Jamie's version, they will ooohh and aaahhh at your genius! 

Enjoy!

A little taste of Italy: Amaretti Biscotti

I sometimes bake just to keep this blog going, and this recipe is no exception. I was leafing through one of my cookbooks when I saw the recipe for Amaretti Biscotti and I just knew I wanted to bake a gluten free version for this blog. So below you'll find the recipe for the Biscotti. All gluten free and just as yummy as regular Biscotti. Perfect with a double espresso after an Italian dinner.  They are very easy to make and make a perfect ending if you are treating friends to a gluten free Italian dinner. 

I know a lot of people think cooking gluten free Italian food is difficult, because pasta is made with wheat and hence contains gluten. But Gluten Free pasta's are fairly good and then the possibilities are endless! 
Start with some anti pasti (check if the meats are gluten free, that can be tricky!) and some home made gluten free foccaccia, then make this brilliant lasagna (which can be made in advance and is a recipe by of the genius that is Gennaro Contaldo, I just used gluten free lasagna sheets) and end it with some home made Gelato and finish with an (double) espresso and these Biscotti. 

These Biscotti's have some pistachio nuts in them for an extra bite

Now, if you are not a celiac, or allergic to wheat or gluten, and you are reading this and you want to entertain some gluten free friends please make sure you cook your dinner in a gluten free kitchen. And with gluten free I mean a kitchen where there isn't a crumb of bread, cookies, flour or anything else that contains gluten to be found. Do not use wooden utensils that have been used to cook gluten food. Make sure pots and pans are spotlessly clean. The same goes for your oven. Because one little crumb means so much trouble for a celiac, you wouldn't believe. It means pain, being sick and damage to the intestine that takes a very long time to heal. That is why in our home, gluten & gluten free food is prepared in different area of my kitchen. I have one oven that is purely for gluten free food. Our dinner is always gluten free. I only bake gluten free. Even if I bake for people with no gluten issues, I bake gluten free. I don't want gluten flour in my kitchen at any cost. Take no risks. Your guests will thank you for taking their illness seriously. 

Here's the recipe to make about 20 Amaretti Biscotti:

Ingredients:

• 125 grams (4.5 oz)of gluten free almond flour
• 125 grams (4.5 oz) of powdered icing sugar
• 3 teaspoons of gluten free rice flour
• 0.5 teaspoon of xanthan gum
• 30 grams (1.125 oz) of pistachio nuts bashed or crushed into tiny pieces
• 3 egg whites
• 75 grams (2.75 oz) of finely granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon of almond extract or amaretto liquor

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade / 350 degrees fahrenheit.
2. Line a baking tray with baking parchment.
3. Mix the almond flour, icing sugar, rice flour, xanthan gum and pistachio nuts in a big bowl. 
4. Beat the egg whites in a clean bowl while slowly adding the granulated sugar till the egg whites are glossy and airy.  
5. Add the almond extract or the liquor to the egg whites. Slowly fold the flour mixture into firm eggwhites, spoon by spoon, making sure the egg whites stay airy and fluffy. 
6. I used two spoons to make small ovals on the baking parchment and smoothed them with a wet spoon (this way you can smooth the top without the mixture sticking to your spoon).
7. Put them in the preheated oven for 40 minutes. Turn them over half way through the baking process. 
8. Let them cool completely and store them in a airtight container until you serve them. 

Enjoy! 

Gluten-Free Raspberry, Walnut and White Chocolate Cake

This recipe is based on a Jamie Oliver recipe that was published in the Dutch edition of Jamie Magazine (nr.24 to be precise). My son saw that recipe and begged me to make it. I had to substitute certain things, because it was a 'normal' recipe at first, and decided to add white chocolate to it and substitute the hazelnuts for walnuts as we all like those more. As usual, I ended up with a different recipe and thus had to figure out everything by trial and error again. I kept to the normal baking temperatures and times as the original recipe and found out that wasn't getting me anywhere. My cake was totally uncooked and so I kept adding time. In the end, this cake took 2 hours to bake, but it was well worth it. 

So the moral of this story: gluten free baking is totally different, but don't despair, it will be alright in the end if you just keep your head cool and the oven at a constant temperature. ;-)

This cake is quite heavy, so cut it up in small slices! 

Fresh raspberries make all the difference and give this cake just the right texture and taste!

Ingredients:

• 175 grams (6 oz) of butter
• 175 grams (6 oz) of granulated sugar (and three tablespoons for the topping)
• 3 eggs
• 200 grams (7 oz) of walnuts (chopped or blitzed in the food processor) to tiny pieces
• 100 grams (3.5 oz) of white chocolate (chopped or blitzed)
• 150 grams (5.5 oz) of all purpose flour (I used Schärs C - cake & cookie mix)
• 2 teaspoons of xanthan gum
• 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar
• 175 grams (6 oz) of raspberries (and some extra for decoration)

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees centigrade (350 degrees fahrenheit)
2. Beat the butter and granulated sugar in a bowl till you have a light and frothy substance.
3. Beat in the eggs. 
4. Fold in half of the walnuts and all the white chocolate. 
5. Sift the flour, xanthan gum and cream of tartar over the bowl and fold it in. 
6. Add the Raspberries and fold them in. 
7. Grease and line a spring cake tin and scoop in the cake batter. Smooth the top and then mix 3 tablespoons of granulated sugar with the remaining chopped walnuts and spread it over the the top. Add a few small knobs of butter on top and cover the cake tin with aluminiumfoil. 
8. Put the cake tin in the oven and leave it in for about 90 minutes. Then take off the aluminiumfoil and bake the cake for another 30 minutes till the walnuts have turned golden, your kitchen smells heavenly and the cake bounces back when you tap on the top. 
9. Leave it to cool and then serve it with fresh raspberries and maybe a bit of whipped cream. 

Enjoy!

Typically Dutch Sticky Cinnamon Buns

I've always wanted to make these, but never bothered to look up the original recipe to make them or to check how difficult it would be. Well, as it turns out, these typically Dutch sticky cinnamon buns, also known as cinnamon turds in my house thanks to my dear husband, are really easy to make. And also very easy to make gluten free. So it goes to show you should never assume things. 

They may not look like much, but I'm so proud of these!!

So here's the recipe that will make about 12 buns. 

Ingredients:

• 250 grams (9 oz) of gluten free rice flour
• 250 grams (9 oz) of gluten free basic bread flour (I used Le Poole's Twello's wit)
• 15 grams (0.5 oz) of granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons of xanthan gum
• half a teaspoon of iodized salt
• 1 egg
• 50 ml (2 fl oz) of milk
• 215 ml (7.25 fl oz) of water
• 30 grams (1.05 oz) of dry yeast
• 30 grams (1.05 oz) of butter

For the cinnamon-sugar coating of the buns:

• 250 grams (9 oz) of dark caster sugar
• 4 tablespoons of cinnamon

Instructions:

• Preheat the oven to 50 degrees centigrade/ 122 degrees fahrenheit en put a bowl of water on the bottom of the oven. This will help the dough proof. 
• Mix all the ingredients for the the bun in a big bowl, except for the butter. Mix it with an electric mixer until all is well combined and you have a firm dough. 
• Then add the butter, mix it in and when it is all combined make tiny balls of about 80 grams (about 3 oz). 
• Now here is where the recipe differs from making the normal gluten versions of the cinnamon buns. Normally you would let the dough proof before rolling them out, but that is not effective with gluten free dough. Since it lacks the gluten the dough lacks flexibility and when you roll it out after proofing, the dough will not bounce back. You will end up with dense, tough buns instead of fluffy buns. So... you now take the balls and roll them out as sausages of about 30 cms (about 12 inches). 
• You brush them with some water and then roll them through a mixture of dark caster sugar and cinnamon which you have put in a large oven tray like this:

Make sure you mix the cinnamon & sugar well before rolling the dough in it

• Then you roll them up like this and place them on a baking tray lined with baking parchment:

Roll them up form and 'glue' them together with a bit of extra water

• Place the baking tray in the oven for 20 minutes to let the buns proof. They will come out the oven almost doubled in size, looking  like this. 

They proof really well, so make sure you don't put them too close together on the tray

• Heat the oven to 225 degrees centigrade or 425 degrees fahrenheit. When the oven is ready, put the buns in the oven and bake for 10 minutes.  Take them out of the oven, and immediately put them upside down on a clean baking tray to let them cool, like this:

I have to admit seeing this picture, that my husband sort of has a point...

When they are cooled, they will look like the picture on top of the blog. Serve them with a cup of tea and enjoy!

Ps. If you try out my recipes, please let me know how you get on. That way I can improve my recipes and help more people. If answering here is a bit daunting, you can always let me know on my Twitter account or tumbler linked to this blog.