Cinnamon Bread

I have been dying to try this recipe for ages now, ever since my roommates were given a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread and I had to smell it every morning when they toasted it and ate it with butter. If only I had had raisins when I made this!

This small loaf is astoundingly delicious toasted with butter. I tried it the morning after I baked this loaf and thought about having another slice all day. I think it would be even better with raisins, and could possibly use some more cinnamon too. It's very soft and has a very light texture and a great example of what rice flour can do on its own if treated properly. It is oh so yummy!

What you will need:

• 1/4 cup oil
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 4 egg whites
• 3/4 cup yogurt
• 1 cup rice flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons xanthan gum
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup raisins (optional)

-Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a medium size loaf pan.

-Cream the oil and sugar in a medium-size bowl. Add the egg whites and beat until very frothy. This will take a minute if using a fork. Add the remaining ingredients. Mix well.

-Pour into the prepared loaf pan. Bake for approximately 50 minutes, until golden brown. The bread should test cleanly with a toothpick.


Notes: With gluten free bread, it's very important to not under bake. If you have any doubts, stick in the oven for another five minutes, if it looks like it won't burn. I have taken many loaves out of the oven under-baked, and not only did they fall and look much less pretty, but they were squishy in the middle and inedible, which is a tremendous waste of eggs.

Also, if you want a taller loaf, use a smaller loaf pan and just extend the baking time.

I have also thought about replacing a couple of the egg yokes with whole eggs. Sometimes, in my opinion, gluten free baking gets too light. I tend to like my food a little hardy. Perhaps adding a second flour would also bring that depth to this loaf. Regardless, it is a great treat.

(This recipe is the Rice-based Cinnamon Bread recipe from Roben Ryberg's "You Won't Believe It's Gluten Free." Potato flour, oat flour, and corn starch based recipes also exist.)

Homemade Chocolate Cake with Caramel Sauce

This cake is so incredibly delicious, easy, and requires no butter! Which in my eyes is always a plus for a cake, because butter tends to run out quickly. I made this cake the same night the woman I was living with was making an apple cake with caramel sauce, and we decided to try the caramel sauce on the chocolate cake as well. It was incredible. The gluten free cake disappeared faster than the apple cake! This is a really good last minute dessert, as it does not take long to mix, takes only 30-40 minutes to bake, and is delicious even without frosting. If you like a mild cake, eat it plain, or if you like a richer cake, add the caramel sauce, and it transforms the taste completely.

What you will need:

• 1/3 cup oil
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup cornstarch
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum

-Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9-inch round or square baking pan

-In a medium-size bowl, mix the oil with the sugar. Add the eggs. Mix until lighter and thicker. This will take a minute or two with your mixer, or build up some muscles in your arms if you are doing it by hand. Add the other ingredients. (I like to mix the cornstarch in some before measuring the remaining ingredients, to prevent clumping.) Beat well. The batter will become quite thick. Pour into the prepared baking pan. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle tests cleanly.

Caramel Sauce (optional)

What you will need:

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup evaporated milk

In a saucepan, melt the butter, brown sugar, and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring with a whisk, then remove from heat and whisk in the vanilla and milk.

Notes: This caramel sauce recipe makes quite a bit of sauce. It was more than enough for two cakes. I would recommend halving the recipe, so as to use less sugar and butter.

That's it! This recipe is so simple, that you can really do anything you want with it: frost it, add fruit, make two of them for a double layer cake, etc. Just make sure not to check on the cake too early, so that it doesn't fall.

(The cake recipe was the corn-based Homemade Chocolate Cake recipe from Roben Ryberg's "You Won't Believe It's Gluten Free." Oat flour, potato starch, and rice flour based versions also exist. The Caramel sauce recipe is from "Cooking from Quilt Country" by Marcia Adams.)

Two Pear Pies

Sometimes, I go on a baking craze. I have all the ingredients, time, and energy I need, not to mention a huge bag of pears from my voice student's garden, and I go, why shouldn't I bake two pies in one night? Sure, the first pie didn't go quite as planned, and I ended up baking until 10:00 at night, but the ending result was still quite rewarding.

These two pies compliment each other nicely. My first one, a Pear and Almond Tart, is mild, not too sweet, and nutty. I adapted this recipe to be gluten free by replacing the rather odd crust recipe (which involved grating the dough and pressing it into the pan...) with a regular gluten free pie crust. The tastes worked extremely well together. My second pie, a Rustic Pear and Apple pie, is a great burst of flavors and extremely simple to put together. The tart apples and dried cherries in this recipe go extremely well with the crust, and make a great contrast with the sweet pear tart. Not that you neccessarily have to make both of these pies at once, however.

Pear and Almond Tart

What you will need:

• 1 unbaked gluten free pie crust (Click here for the Rice-based pie crust recipe and instructions)
• 3/4 cup ( 1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 1/6 cup blanched whole almonds (blanching optional)
  
• 2 eggs
• 3-6 ripe comice pears, cored, peeled, and halved.

-Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Prepare pie crust according to directions (place in 9-inch tart pan if desired) and bake for 10 minutes, until lightly golden brown.

-Place pears facedown in the pan. Lower oven temperature to 300 degrees F.

-For the filling, cream the butter and sugar until the mixture is pale and light. Put the almonds in a food processor and chop until fine. Add the butter and sugar into the food proccessor and blend, then beat in the eggs one at a time. Pour over the pears. Place pie on a cookie sheet or other pan before putting in oven and bake approx 1 hour and 20 minutes, until the top is crisp and tests cleanly with a toothpick.



Notes: This was my first time using a tart pan as opposed to a pie pan, and I didn't really know what the difference was, so I thought I'd say for those of you who are also new to tart pans. Instead of pinching the dough to the edge, as with pie pans, you simply press the dough into the crimped edges of the pan and trim off the excess by wiping your finger along the top of the pan. It gives the tart a very professional look, though in this case, the filling tends to obscure the crust.

Also, I had read that working with the pie dough when it is cold makes shaping it much easier, but I had never really tried it. This time, I kept the balls of dough in the refridgerator for about 20 minutes before hand, until they were a little tough to maneuver, and the dough held together magnificently.

It is extremely important to place a cookie sheet or other pan underneath the tart pan. When the butter based filling is still relatively cool, it holds together and forms a mound. This mound liquifies during baking and will spill over the edge of the pan (as you can see in the picture above) and into your oven if you do not place a pan underneath to catch it. I learned this the hard way.

For those of you who don't know how to blanch an almond or what blanching means (I certainly didn't) my fellow baker, Vicki, informed me. This is how I understand it, though the internet may be able to explain more accurately than I can: You take a bowl of almonds and pour boiling water over them. The almonds will begin to slip out of their casings, and after draining the water, you can slip the casings all the way off with your hands. Repeat the process if neccessary. I did not blanch my almonds, as I felt two pies was ambitious enough, and the only effect it seems to have is a slightly bitter after flavor, but nothing drastic.

Lastly, I did not use comice pears, that I know of. I would imagine that if you want to make this recipe to its full potential, you should use comice pears, but any old ripe pears that you have should work fairly well.

Rustic Apple and Pear Pie

What you will need:

• 1 unbaked gluten free pie crust (Click here for the Rice-based pie crust recipe and instructions)
• 3 cups peeled, cored, peeled, and sliced apples
• 1 cup peeled, cored, peeled, and sliced pears
• 1/2 cup dried cherries or cranberries
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch or potato starch

-Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Prepare pie crust following directions listed above.

-In a large bowl, combine the ingredients for the filling. Place in the center of the pie crust, spreading as evenly as possible.

-Bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees F. Cover the edges of the pie crust or the entire pie with aluminum foil to prevent over browning. Lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees F and continue baking until the fruits are very tender, approximately 40 minutes. The juices will be clear and bubbly.


Notes: For this recipe, I used the same unidentified pears as in the pear and almond tart and ripe fujii apples. The recipe recommends using Yellow Delicious apples and barely ripe pears, which I have used before, but unfortunately, the pie was a gift, and I never tasted it.

The original version of this recipe recommends rolling out the pie crust dough to about 15 inch in diameter, placing the dough on a lightly greased baking sheet, placing the filling ingredients in the center of it, and carefully folding the edges of the dough over the filling, making a more rustic looking pie. This turns out a little bit messier than a traditional pie crust, but surprisingly well, and if you are looking to break out of the traditional pie crust pattern, I'd recommend trying it.

(The source for the original Pear and Almond Tart filling recipe will be listed soon, which I halved and replaced the crust recipe with a gluten free one, and the pie crust recipe was taken from Roben Ryberg's "You Won't Believe It's Gluten Free." The Rustic Apple and Pear Pie recipe was a slightly adjusted version of Roben Ryberg's recipe also.)

Coffee Cake

I had never made a coffee cake before and was slightly nervous about making my first one when I volunteered to do so for my friend's brunch. I had no idea that making a coffee cake could be so easy, and yet so tasty! This recipe makes a delicious, delicate, not-too-sweet coffee cake, that will make your friends forget they are eating something gluten-free.

What you will need:

• 1/4 cup oil
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 1 1/4 cups cornstarch
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 xanthan gum

Topping:

• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons butter

-Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9-inch round or square baking pan.

-Combine the oil with the sugar in a medium-size bowl. Add the eggs. Beat with an electric mixer until light yellow and a little thicker. This will take a minute or two with a mixer, or build up some muscles by doing it by hand until the mixture is extra bubbly. Add the other batter ingredients and beat well. The batter will be very thick. Spread the batter in the prepared baking pan.

-Mix all the topping ingredients together in a bowl, until they crumble. (The sugar will not be evenly mixed with the butter, because in order for this to happen, the mixture reaches a creamy texture). Sprinkle evenly on top of the batter in the pan.

-Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle tests cleanly.

And that's it!

If you are looking for a place to start in gluten free baking, this is a great one, because the process is so simple, the baking time is very easy to judge, and the result is so rewarding, for both you, and your friends (gluten free or not!).

(This recipe is the corn-based version of the Coffee Cake recipe from "You Won't Believe It's Gluten Free" By Roben Ryberg. Potato flour and rice flour based versions of this recipe also exist.)

Graham Cracker Experiment

For ages I've been looking for a really good Cheese Cake recipe. I tried several that required no crust and one which I created a chocolate cookie crumb crust which I spent hours slaving over, and turned out only so so. Most of the truly amazing cheese cake recipes required a graham cracker crust, and I had simply never heard of a gluten free graham cracker.

After a little bit of research, I discovered that a graham cracker was essentially a cross between a cookie and a cracker, flavored with honey. But even in the gluten-filled world, graham cracker recipes are scarce. I looked at my gluten free cookie and cracker recipes and began formulating something I thought would turn out like a graham cracker, then compared the recipe to a regular graham cracker recipe, made a few adjustments, and felt satisfied. I wanted something that would become a dough I could roll out, with a small amount of agent so it would not rise, and a lot of flavor.

Here's what I did:

• 7 tablespoons butter (cold)
• 1 cup rice flour
• 2/3 cup corn starch
• 1/3 cup brown sugar (packed)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 cup honey
• 3 tablespoons yogurt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

-I preheated the oven to 400 degrees F.
-I creamed the butter enough so that it would be easy to mix in other ingredients. I then added the rice flour, sugar, salt, xanthan gum, baking soda, and cinnamon, and mixed until the mixture formed a fine crumb.

-Next, I added the vanilla, 2 tabelspoons of the yogurt, and the honey. Honey is rather difficult to measure and add to ingredients, and I'm not entirely sure if it's easier when it's cold or warm. I do recommend spooning it into the measuring cup rather than pouring it. Mixed well.

-The mixture was too wet. It was creamy rather than the dough texture I was looking for. After a little more experimenting, I ended up adding the 2/3 cup of corn starch and additional tablespoon of yogurt. The result was a satisfying ball of dough that was a very pretty brown color and very yummy.

-I lightly greased a baking sheet and placed the dough onto the center of it. With a piece of parchment paper on top, I rolled the dough out until it was about a quarter of an inch thick. (There ended up being too much for one baking sheet, so I cut the edges of the circle of dough, making a square on the sheet, collected the excess dough, and rolled it out into a separate baking sheet.) Then, with a knife, I cut the dough into squares, about the size of normal graham grackers, and pricked each square several times with a fork.

-The actual baking process was a little convoluted. The smaller and slightly thinner batch was placed on the center rack, which proved to be too much for it. After eight minutes, it was burnt on the edges. The larger batch stayed on the top rack. After the initial eight minutes, I lowered the oven temperature to 325 degrees F. I checked this batch regularly, and the edges browned slowly. I baked it for about 25 minutes total.

-First out of the oven, both batches were rather soft, though the top was solid enough to tap with my fingernail. However, after cooling, the crackers became increasingly crispy until the entire batch were as crispy and crunchy as normal graham crackers.


The results: The biggest thing I learned with this batch is that if these graham crackers brown at all on the edges, they will taste burnt. The middle crackers, however, that turned the light brown color of normal graham crackers, were delicious, and as far as my memory could tell me, tasted very much like normal graham crackers as well. They were a little thicker, and a little heavier in taste, so they left my thirsty after one or two. I had my boss who is a professional gluten free baker and cook try one and she thought they were very tasty. My boyfriend ate one without knowing what it was and said, "oh! These are the graham crackers you were talking about making!" He grabbed another one on his way out and wanted me to leave the rest to be consumed later.

I feel like the most experimentation needs to be done with the baking time and temperature. I might change the flour ratios around a little bit, so that there is more corn starch and less rice flour, which I think might help with the heavy texture, and I might decrease the amount of cinnamon just a little cause it seemed a little strong, but really, I want to get a batch that is good all the way through, not just the center ones.

All in all, I feel like this recipe was a success. It produced graham crackers that are extremely similar to the original gluten filled ones that were tasty and enjoyed by non gluten-free citizens, and they made very suitable crumbs which could be used for a Cheese Cake, which was in truth, the original goal.

(This recipe was completely of my own invention. )

Bagels

There are some baked goods in the gluten free world that you fear you will never eat again once you have removed gluten from your diet. Bagels used to be one of my favorite foods, eaten with hummus or cream cheese or just plain butter, and I missed them dearly. Finally, I decided to try this Bagel recipe, no boiling water required. They turned out gorgeous, and I ate one the second it was cool enough to handle. The salt water spray gives a delicious flavor while also giving the bagels a nice chewy outside. I love to make a batch or two of these and eat them for the rest of the week. They make such an easy, tasty meal. I recently made them for a brunch where there was a mountain of normal bagels, and they were a big hit for the few gluten free guests there. Feel like a bagel is too difficult a project for you to undertake? The baking process is not too complicated at all!

What you will need:

Water spray:

• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Bagels:

• 3 egg whites
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1/3 cup yogurt
• 1 cup cornstarch
• 1/3 cup rice flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

-Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a baking sheet.

-Mix the warm water and salt in a small spray bottle. Set aside.

-Place the egg whites in a medium-size bowl. Beat until very frothy, with big and little bubbles. Add the remaining ingredients. Mix well until very thick. (If you are mixing by hand and not with an electric mixer, I highly recommend mixing after adding the corn starch until it is fully blended with the first four ingredients, and then adding the rest. It makes for less lumps). The dough will appear soft, with many very small air bubbles.

-Place the dough in a resealable plastic bag. Cut 1 inch diagonally off one lower corner of the bag. Pipe the dough into three large or four small circles onto the prepared baking sheet. This sounds difficult but it's really quite easy. Squeeze the dough into one corner of the bag, leaving a little space at the bottom where you will cut the tip of the bag off. Cut the tip, and start squeezing the dough out. Try to keep squeezing the dough out as continually as possible for each bagel, so that the shape is more even. The pipe of dough will naturally curve to one side or the other, so follow that curve. When you complete the circle, let the dough overlap just a little and break the pipe of dough so you can start on the next one. With wet finger tips, smooth the overlapped bit of dough into the body of the bagel. Shape it however you want.

-Spray liberally with the salt water. Bake for 5 minutes. Spray again with salt water.

-Continue baking for 15 to 20 more minutes, until nicely browned.


They seem to turn out perfect every time.

Notes: Spraying the bagels 5 minutes after baking is very important. This allows the crust to form. If you forget and spray them later in the baking, they will still form the chewy crust but will not be as golden grown on the top. It also pays to measure the amount of warm water and salt, rather than estimating the measurements.

With the piping, you have a lot of say in what kind of bagels you are making. Typically you will want to make smaller circles than you think you should, because they do rise during baking. If you want more bagels out of your batch of dough, make the cut in the bag 1/2 inch wide, making for a thinner bagel. For thicker bagels, make it an inch wide as in the instructions and pipe them into tighter circles, however, the bagel count probably will go down. If you have some leftover dough that doesn't seem like it will be enough to make an entire bagel, make a mini bagel or just pipe little blobs onto the baking sheet to make bagel bites. Experiment to find the size and shape that you like best.

These bagels are at their best fresh. Freeze them over night and, to get some of the moisture back in the next few days, toast them before eating. Thawed, they are still good, but a little dry and grainy.

(This recipe was the Corn and rice-based version of the Bagel recipe in Roben Ryberg's "You Won't Believe It's Gluten Free." A potato flour and sorghum flour version of this recipe also exists.)