Gluten Free Flapjack - A really good recipe

Obviously, gluten-free flapjack isn't all that challenging. You can buy gluten-free oats from Sainsburys or Tesco (though only the larger ones), and that's the only ingredient you need to change! However, that's no excuse for making boring old normal flapjack...

Gemma's Gorgeous Gluten-Free Flapjack

3tbsp golden syrup

4tbsp honey

150g butter

150g gluten free oats

100g desiccated coconut

75g cranberries

75g mixed peel

Grease a baking tin and preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Melt the syrup, honey and butter together until well-combined.

Stir the dry ingredients in to the syrup mixture.

Bake for 25-30 minutes until browned well. Cut into squares while still hot and leave to cool in the tin.

Of course, the best thing about this recipe is that you can modify the last three ingredients! Instead of coconut, cranberries and mixed peel, what about crushed almonds, raisins and chopped dried apricot? Or roughly ground hazelnuts, white choc chips and dark choc chips? The possibilities are endless!

Enjoy!

Amazing American to English Conversion Calculator

I'm sure many of you are familiar with the age-old problem of trying to use American recipes. Everything's in cups!

Or, as happened to me the other day, your scales run out of battery in the middle of baking a cake...

A quick google search rescued me from a trip out to the shops: gourmetsleuth.com.

Gourmet Sleuth allows you to search for any ingredient, select the exact ingredient you need to measure, and choose your conversion factors. So I discovered that 150g granulated sugar is 0.75 cups (3/4 a cup)!

It's this simple: go to http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/cooking-conversions/cooking-conversions-calculator.aspx, and:

1. Type in the ingredient and press enter.
2. Narrow the results by selecting a category (sugar is in "Sweets").
3. Select the right ingredient.
4. Enter the amount you know, and the conversion measurement you want.
5. Click convert - and the answer appears at the top!

Genius!

Gluten Free Crackers...Perfected!

I have finally hit upon the perfect recipe for gluten free cheese crackers!

After much trial and error, here it is:

Gluten Free Crackers

• 1 cup flour (1/2 a cup each of two types for the best flavour) - make sure you pick smooth flours, e.g. rice flour works well, but maize flour is gritty!
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp margarine
• 1-2 tsp seasoning - I usually do Italian Herb Crackers, e.g. oregano and basil, but try out finely grated cheese, onion powder and finely chopped chives...whatever you fancy!
• 3-4 tbsp water

Mix all the ingredients except the water together. Then, 1 tbsp at a time, work the water in slowly (best done manually). You're aiming for a dough that you can push your knuckles into and form an imprint without cracks appearing in the dough and without the dough sticking to your hands. Depending on the flours you use, you may need more or less water.

Once the dough is formed, pull off a handful and put it on a well-floured wooden board. Lay a sheet of grease-proof paper over the dough and roll out as thin as you can - the thinner you roll the dough, the better the crackers will be. 1-2 mm thick is ideal!

When your dough is rolled out, gently peel the greaseproof paper off, get your cookie cutter and cut circular crackers. Pop them onto a greased tray, brush with olive oil (to make them brown) and put in a pre-heated oven at 210 C for 10-15 minutes, until browned.

And that's all there is to it! A couple of tips:

• Each time I roll and cut out a new handful of dough, I collect the spare dough together. Then, when I've rolled out and cut all the dough, I rebind the leftovers by dipping my fingers into water and working it together again. The dough is surprisingly resilient to being rerolled over and over again, but it does need encouraging a bit!
• Experiment with flavours! I would really like to make onion and chive crackers, so my next task is to buy some powdered onion and give it a go! If you hit upon a winning combination, please let me know!
• These crackers will keep for a couple of weeks in an airtight tin, so although they're a bit fiddly to make, doing a big batch is really worth the effort.
• I initially made these with all olive oil rather than some margarine, but the crackers came out teeth-breakingly crunchy! However, you might want to make them crunchier or softer. The key is that you need 2 tbsp of oil/margarine. Oil makes them crunchier, marg makes them softer. Play with the amounts of each until you get the right texture for you!

I hope you enjoy this recipe and love these crackers - now that I've got them right, I'm going to be making them all the time!

Making Gluten Free Pasta

I don't know about you, but I find dried gluten free pasta rather disappointing. Some of the pasta I've had has produced the most horrible starchy fluid as it's cooked, making it rather difficult to drain and not particularly tasty to eat! After a rather dramatic disaster with some GF spaghetti, resulting in me throwing it all in the bin out of frustration, it finally reached the point where I had to consider making my own.

I hear you gasp in amazement at my culinary dedication... But hold your breath for a minute! I was very blessed this Christmas to receive the pasta maker attachment to my Kenwood from Granny. So, for the first time today, I got it all out, read the instructions, and...made pasta.

The recipe that Kenwood supplies is obviously not gluten free. However, instead of plain flour, I used rice flour, figuring that a very fine grain would make the best pasta (pasta flour is very fine-ground wheat flour). In went the eggs, salt and flour, mixing in the Kenwood for 2 minutes to a breadcrumb consistency. Then on went the attachment, with a tagliatelli screen. I put in the first few spoonfuls of the mixture... And out came tagliatelli!

But the real test is in the tasting, obviously! I decided to make Carbonara, following a Good Housekeeping recipe. Pasta cooked for about 5-6 minutes, while I fried the bacon and prepared the sauce, it all got mixed in together, went on two plates...and it was delicious!! You wouldn't have even known it was the same food as the dried GF pasta, and it was streets ahead of dried wheat pasta! (Even my husband said so!)

So my pasta making adventure was successful! And not only is it quick, easy and cheap, the pasta also keeps in the fridge for a couple of days. I have yet to try freezing it (an experiment for another day, I think!), but I am assuming that, as you can freeze fresh wheat pasta for up to a month, GF pasta won't be any different.

I would absolutely recommend any GF cook getting an electric pasta maker, either the Kenwood attachment (which allows you to do tagliatelli, spaghetti, penne, lasagne, macaroni & large macaroni) or a stand-alone one. The results are wonderful!

Thank you Granny!

5. Philippa's No-Flour Chocolate Fudge Cake

I needed a great cake recipe for a girly weekend away, and my good friend Philippa gave me this recipe - it is very tasty!

Philippa's No-Flour Chocolate Fudge Cake

300g broken chocolate
225g caster sugar
180ml boiling water
225g salted butter, cut into cubes
6 eggs, separated
1tsp vanilla essence

1. Grease and line a cake tin (23cm round / 20cm square). Preheat oven to 180 C / 160 C fan assisted.

2. Put the chocolate and caster sugar into a food processor and pulse until fine (I don't have a food processor, so I shaved the chocolate with a knife as finely as I could - it takes much longer, but it works!)

3. Add the boiling water, butter, egg yolks and vanilla essence, mixing until smooth.

4. Whisk the egg whites until stiff, and then add to the chocolate mixture and combine until just mixed.

5. Pour into the prepared tin and cook for 45-55 mins. The top will crack like a desert, and the cake should no longer be wobbly when you move the tin.

6. Allow the cake to cook, then refridgerate overnight. Serve from the fridge with ice-cream, creme fresh, or fruit coulis.

As ever, there are various ways of adapting this recipe! Personally, I think a bit of crunch would complement the gooey, fudgy texture really well - I will add about a cup of crushed walnuts, hazelnuts, pecans or almonds next time I make it. And these are a few other ideas I'd like to try:

• Add a tablespoon of instant coffee powder to the chocolate mixture, before you mix in the egg whites (Philippa's suggestion!)
• Add a cup of frozen fruit, such as raspberries, blueberries or blackcurrants.
• Add the rind of an orange and do 150ml boiling water and 30ml orange juice, for a chocolate-orange variation.
• Add a couple of teaspoons of cinnamon for a spicy kick to the cake.

And I'm sure you can come up with some of your own adaptations! Let me know if you hit upon a dream combination!

4. Orange One Minute Pudding with Chocolate Orange Sauce

One Minute Pudding is a favourite of my family's for after a Sunday roast - it's really simple to make (it takes 1 minute!) and tastes great, and you can do so many variations, simply from what's in the cupboard!

This is my gluten free version, with an orange and chocolate twist!

Gluten Free One Minute Pudding

5 oz gluten free self-raising flour (I use Dove's Farm) 5
3oz butter
4oz sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp milk
1 tbsp orange juice
rind of one orange
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp xanthan gum

For the chocolate sauce:
1 tbsp orange juice
200g plain chocolate, broken into pieces (or dark for a richer taste)

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees / Gas Mark 4.

2. Mix together all ingredients in a large bowl until well-combined.

3. Put into a greased oven-safe serving dish and cook for 30 min.

4. Whilst in the last 5 minutes of cooking, put the chocolate and orange juice in a glass bowl and melt together (either microwave or over a pan). I like to add about 1 tbsp of sifted cornflour to the chocolate mixture, as it makes it extra thick and creamy.

5. Serve immediately!

The best thing about the basic sponge recipe above is that it can be so easily adapted. For example, taking away the 1 tbsp orange juice and doing an extra tbsp milk, you can then add mixed spice and sultanas for a completely different feel to the dessert. Or you could put thinly sliced apple and red berries at the bottom of the dish, sprinkled with some brown sugar and with the cake mixture poured on top, and you get a kind of crumble, but with cake topping! (Otherwise known in our house as Mother Eve's Pudding.) There's loads of variations to be had with this recipe - so go ahead and experiment!

Tips and Tricks: Gluten Free Sausages!

Just a quick note about an exciting discovery of mine - Marks and Spencer have changed their basic sausage recipe to NOT include gluten! Obviously check the packets, as it seems that some of the flavour combinations they offer do include gluten, but the majority were gluten free... Made even better by the 2 for £4 price tag! That's 34p per sausage!

Although you can't order online, I'm definitely going to drop by on my way past every now and then to pick some up - it's worth it!