Category: baking

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Gluten Free Blueberry Muffins

Gluten Free Blueberry Muffins

Decided to try and make some gluten free blueberry muffins. The aim was to recreate a traditional muffin experience, but make it gluten free.

Ingredients

100g unsalted butter softened, plus 1 tbsp, melted, for greasing

140g golden caster sugar

2 large eggs

140g natural yogurt

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp milk

250g plain gluten free flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

125g pack blueberries (or use frozen)

Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6 and line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases. 

 I bought my paper cases from Amazon, though I later found the kind I like in Waitrose.

Beat the butter and caster sugar together until pale and fluffy. Then add the eggs and beat in for  about a minute. You then need to mix in the yogurt, vanilla extract and milk. Combine the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda in a bowl with ¼ tsp fine salt.

Add this into the wet ingredients and stir in. Finally, fold in the blueberries and divide the mixture between the muffin cases.

Bake for 5 mins, then reduce oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4 and bake for 15-18 mins more until risen and golden, and a metal skewer inserted into the muffin comes out clean.

Cool in the tin for 10 mins, then carefully lift out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Will keep for 3-4 days in an airtight container.

You can after a day or two, pop them in the microwave for 10-15 secs on high to freshen up.

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Gluten Free White Chocolate Chip Cookies

Gluten Free White Chocolate Chip Cookies

The process I used is pretty much the same as the process I have used on other cookies I have made.

Ingredients

225g of unsalted butter
125g gluten free bread flour
125g gluten free plain flour
1 egg
1 egg yolk
100g caster sugar
120g light brown sugar
1 pack white chocolate chips
One teaspoon salt
One teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
Two teaspoons of vanilla essence

Melt the butter in a pan and bring to the boil, stirring frequently. The aim is to boil off some of the water off the butter. Once the butter melted and had turned slightly brown this was removed from the heat and cooled to room temperature. I find it is better if it is room temperature, too warm and the cookies are not as good.

Cream the liquid butter with the sugar, vanilla essence. The idea is to mix it until it is light and fluffy. Use an electric mixer if you have one, ours was broken, so I did it by hand, which was hard work. Beat in the eggs until they are incorporated into the mixture.

Combine the flours, salt and bicarbonate of soda.

Stir in the dry ingredients a third of it at a time until it is incorporated.

Using a wooden spoon fold in the raspberry and white chocolate.

Chill.

Place six small balls, about 2-3cm across, of dough on a baking tray and bake for 6-9 minutes.

This quantity of ingredients will make about eighteen cookies.

After cooking leave on the tray and then after three minutes move to a rack to cool further.

Eat!

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Cake disaster

So there I was making a couple of small gluten free sponge cakes.

Having had them in the oven for 20 minutes, they looked done, I did the skewer test, which came out clean.

However when removing them from the tins the middle collapsed!

A bit of a disaster.

I had to bake them all over again.

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Gluten Free Mini Chocolate Loaf Cakes

Gluten Free Mini Chocolate Loaf Cakes

These are tasty tiny loaf cakes.

I had seen these mini loaf cake cases in Sainsburys a few times, but I bought a pack to try them out.

cake cases

The recipe is based on the weight of two eggs

Ingredients

      • 3 standard eggs
      • Take the same weight of two of the eggs of soft butter
      • Take the same weight of two of the eggs in caster sugar
      • Take the same weight of two of the eggs in self-raising gluten-free flour
      • Vanilla essence
      • Two tablespoons of cocoa powder
      • Half a pack of chocolate chunks.

Cream the sugar and butter until you have a smooth consistency.

Beat the eggs, add some vanilla essence.

Stir the eggs into the creamed butter and sugar with some of 

the flour, until the mixture is smooth and consistent.

Then fold in the remaining flour and the cocoa until it is combined with the rest of the mixture.

Then stir in the chocolate chunks, leaving some to add to the top of each mini loaf.

Spoon into a the mini loaf cake cases. The mixture should be enough for five or six cases. 

Bake in a 180º normal oven or 160º fan oven for 25 minutes or until a metal skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

You can add fudge icing for extra decadence if you wanted to.

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Gluten Free Dough Balls

Gluten Free Dough Balls

I have had a few attempts in the past at making gluten free dough balls. I have made a bread dough using gluten free bread flour, however these were rather heavy and heavy. Not quite the Italian dough ball experience I was looking for.

I then tried an experiment using a Davina Steel Gluten Free Focaccia Bread Mix.

I had used this mix in the past to bake focaccia bread with some success. However I have found that it works well for dough balls as well.

I follow the instructions on the back of the pack, however I don’t use the dried garlic or rosemary. I added 7g of fast acting yeast to the dry mix and then add 300ml of warm water and 30ml of olive oil. Mix until smooth. Leave for two minutes and then mix again vigorously for a further minute.

The end result is a smooth batter.

Then onto baking trays lined with baking parchment add separate desert sized spoonfuls of batter onto the trays.

If possible leave in a warm place for 30 minutes to rise, but I’ve not always needed to do this (sometimes didn’t have the time).

I baked the dough balls in a hot oven, 220°C (200°C fan assisted) for about 15-20 minutes. They should be light, crisp on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside.

Remove from the baking tray and serve hot with garlic butter or olive oil or other dips.

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Gluten Free Raspberry and White Chocolate Chip Cookies

Gluten Free Raspberry and White Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made a variation of the gluten free cookies I have been making recently.

My son found a recipe online for cookies which we tried, though we replaced the standard flours with gluten free variants. These were nice, but they were a little too crisp and a little too sweet. He then adjusted the recipe and the result was tasty chewy gluten free choc chip cookies. What I and my son liked about them was that they were very similar in taste and texture to the fresh (non-gluten) cookies you can buy at supermarkets that he use to enjoy before he went gluten free.

When I was buying cookies from places like Sainsburys I did quite enjoy the raspberry and white chocolate versions. So I was intrigued in Aldi in their store had a pack of raspberry and white chocolate for baking. It was in their specials area, which is a pity as we quite liked the cookies and it might be challenging to find a pack again, hopefully I can find an alternative from another supermarket.

The process is pretty much the same as the process I used on the other cookies.

Ingredients

225g of unsalted butter
125g gluten free bread flour
125g gluten free plain flour
1 egg
1 egg yolk
100g caster sugar
120g light brown sugar
1 pack of raspberry and white chocolate
One teaspoon salt
One teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
Two teaspoons of vanilla essence

Melt the butter in a pan and bring to the boil, stirring frequently. The aim is to boil off some of the water off the butter. The recipe said to go ensure the milk solids got a nutty brown. I was a little wary in case of burning the butter, so didn’t probably go far enough. Once the butter melted and had turned slightly brown this was removed from the heat and cooled to room temperature.

Cream the liquid butter with the sugar, vanilla essence. The idea is to mix it until it is light and fluffy. The recipe calls for an electric mixer, ours was broken, so we did it by hand, which was hard work. Beat in the eggs until they are incorporated into the mixture.

Combine the flours, salt and bicarbonate of soda.

Stir in the dry ingredients a third of it at a time until it is incorporated.

Using a wooden spoon fold in the raspberry and white chocolate.

Chill.

Place six small balls, about 2-3cm across, of dough on a baking tray and bake for 6-9 minutes.

This quantity of ingredients will make about eighteen cookies.

After cooking leave on the tray and then after three minutes move to a rack to cool further.

Eat!

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Loaf Cake Disaster

I have a simple recipe for a gluten free loaf cake, but despite usually having no problems, I did recently have a bit of a disaster.

The recipe is quite simple and is based on the weight of two eggs

Ingredients

      • 3 standard eggs
      • Take the same weight of two of the eggs of soft butter
      • Take the same weight of two of the eggs in caster sugar
      • Take the same weight of two of the eggs in self-raising gluten-free flour
      • Vanilla essence

Cream the sugar and butter until you have a smooth consistency.

Beat the eggs, add some vanilla essence.

Stir the eggs into the creamed butter and sugar with some of the flour, until the mixture is smooth and consistent.

Then fold in the remaining flour until it is combined with the rest of the mixture.

Spoon into a loaf tin and bake in a 180º normal oven or 160º fan oven for 35 minutes or until a metal skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

The main issue I had was I thought it was cooked. I used a metal skewer to see if it was cooked and after inserting into the cake it came out clean. I think that was because it was only about 25 minutes into the cooking time.

However, alas the entire middle of the cake was uncooked, so though it looked okay after coming out of the oven, as it cooled it completely collapsed in on itself.

There was no way to salvage the cake, so I started over and this time cooked it for the right amount of time, so this time it worked.

 

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Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Muffins

chocolate chip muffins

I’ve been meaning to try and make these for a while now, but kept making other things instead.

      • 125g gluten free plain flour
      • 25g cocoa powder
      • 1 tsp gluten free baking powder
      • 1 large egg
      • 60g caster sugar
      • 2 tbsp vegetable oil
      • 100ml whole milk
      • 50g chocolate chunks
      • Dark chocolate chips for decoration.

Heat the oven to 180ºC or 160ºC for a fan oven.

In your muffin tin or tray add six muffin cases. 

Sieve the flour, cocoa and baking powder into a medium bowl. 

In a jug add the egg, sugar, oil and milk, then mix well together

Gradually pour part of the mix into the dry ingredients and stir until combined. Then add some more, repeat until all the ingredients in the jug are combined with the flour, cocoa and baking powder.

Stir in the chocolate chunks.

Spoon the mixture evenly into the muffin cases and bake for 20-25 mins until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. 

Scatter a few dark chocolate chips on top of the muffins.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the muffin tray for 15 minutes and then remove from the tray.

Not 100% sure about the blue muffin cases, but you’re not going to eat them are you?

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Gluten Free Choc Chip Cookies

Gluten Free Choc Chip Cookies

My son found a recipe online for choc chip cookies which we tried, though we replaced the standard flours with gluten free variants. These were nice, but they were a little too crisp and a little too sweet.

He then adjusted the recipe and the result was tasty chewy gluten free choc chip cookies. What I and my son liked about them was that they were very similar in taste and texture to the fresh (non-gluten) cookies you can buy at supermarkets that he use to enjoy before he went gluten free.

Ingredients

225g of unsalted butter
125g gluten free bread flour
125g gluten free plain flour
1 egg
1 egg yolk
100g caster sugar
120g light brown sugar
85g plain chocolate chips
130g plain chocolate chunks or chopped chocolate bar
One teaspoon salt
One teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
Two teaspoons of vanilla essence

The adjustments we made to the original recipe was to increase the amount of flour, reduce the amount of sugar and swap the dark brown sugar for light brown sugar.

Melt the butter in a pan and bring to the boil, stirring frequently. The aim is to boil off some of the water off the butter. The recipe said to go ensure the milk solids got a nutty brown. I was a little wary in case of burning the butter, so didn’t probably go far enough. Once the butter melted and had turned slightly brown this was removed from the heat and cooled to room temperature.

Cream the liquid butter with the sugar, vanilla essence. The idea is to mix it until it is light and fluffy. The recipe calls for an electric mixer, ours was broken, so we did it by hand, which was hard work. Beat in the eggs until they are incorporated into the mixture.

Combine the flours, salt and bicarbonate of soda.

Stir in the dry ingredients a third of it at a time until it is incorporated.

Using a wooden spoon fold in the chocolate chips and chunks.

Chill.

Place six small balls, about 2-3cm across, of dough on a baking tray and bake for 6-9 minutes.

This quantity of ingredients will make about eighteen cookies.

After cooking leave on the tray and then after three minutes move to a rack to cool further.

Eat!

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Gluten Free Colourful Victoria Sponge

Gluten Free Colourful Victoria Sponge

This is a tasty but colourful gluten free colourful Victoria sponge cake.

The recipe is based on the weight of two eggs

Ingredients

For each layer of the cake

      • 3 standard eggs
      • Take the same weight of two of the eggs of soft butter
      • Take the same weight of two of the eggs in caster sugar
      • Take the same weight of two of the eggs in self-raising gluten-free flour
      • Vanilla essence
      • Food colouring (different colour for each layer)

For the filling

      • Strawberry jam
      • Whipped cream

Method

Cream the sugar and butter until you have a smooth consistency. I try and leave the butter out so that it is really soft.

Beat the eggs, add some vanilla essence. I then added athe food colouring to brighten the cake mixture.

Stir the eggs into the creamed butter and sugar with some of the flour, until the mixture is smooth and consistent.

Then fold in the remaining flour until it is combined with the rest of the mixture.

Spoon the mixture into a greased cake tin.

Repeat the process for the second (and if required third layer).

The bake the cake in a 180º normal oven or 160º fan oven for 25-30 minutes or until a metal skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Cool and then construct the cake, spreading jam and then cream.

Finally dust the cake with icing sugar.