Gingerbread (Gluten free)

 

It’s been a while since I wrote a new recipe, which is ridiculous because I actually made these about a month ago. This gingerbread is adapted from this recipe. I have toned it down because I find it over sweet and have left out the glaze. I have made a third of the quantity, because it does otherwise make a huge cake! Lastly I have swapped plain flour with some gluten free alternatives, using the same combination I used in these muffins which are quite similar.

 

A few points to consider:

 

The mixture is very liquid at the end and you do pour it into the muffin cases. It in no way resembles a normal cake mixture and you will worry that you went wrong (at least I did). Do not fret! It will work; this is how it is supposed to be.

 

Do heat the milk through as I have suggested in the instructions. I didn’t and the warmed treacle mixture went solid when I poured the milk on top of it and trying to whisk it smooth was a bit tricky.

 

Makes 9 mini muffins

 

75g unsalted butter
60ml treacle
60g muscovado sugar
60g ground almonds

60g buckwheat flour
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
2/3  tsp ground ginger
1/3 tsp ground black pepper
1/3 tsp ground cinnamon

A pinch of ground allspice
A pinch of ground cloves
1 large egg
40ml milk
1small tbsp freshly grated ginger

 

Turn the oven on to 160°C.

 

Put the butter, treacle, sugar and 40ml of water in a medium sized saucepan.

 

Heat over a low heat until the sugar is dissolved and the butter melted. Pour into a mixing bowl and allow the mixture to cool. In the same bowl slightly warm the milk.

Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spices in a separate bowl and put into one side. When the treacle mix is lukewarm then add the egg to it and whisk it, then add the milk and whisk until smooth.

 

Once smooth add the dry ingredients and the grated ginger.

Pour into the muffin cases and bake for approximately 15minutes. The muffins should spring back when touched and if you insert a toothpick or skewer it should come out with a few moist crumbs.

 

Chocolate Chickpea Cake (Gluten Free)

I know you’re probably not going to believe that using chickpeas in a cake is a good idea. But I promise that you really can’t tell that this is made with chickpeas! It tastes just like a really dark chocolate cake and is much lighter than a normal cake.

Depending on how good your blender this may be good enough to remove any lumpy bits of chickpea. However, if yours is a bit rubbish (like ours) there are two ways to proceed. You could maybe use a potato masher (a bit like a massive garlic press) or, what we did, is put the chickpeas in a sieve over the bowl and mash them through the sieve so that they were really truly blended to smithereens (otherwise you get lumps of chickpea in your cake). The crucial step is to cook the chickpeas until they are really soft or used canned ones; otherwise they are a pain to blend.

Alternatively you could use black beans (which are often used in Asian desserts) instead of chickpeas, which are much easier to blend, and also work really well in this cake. You could even possibly use kidney beans, although I haven’t tried that.

If you want the cake to come out in one piece, don’t try and take it out of the tin when warm, wait until it is cool.

Makes 1 big loaf tin

Ingredients 

500g cooked chickpeas

4 eggs

3 tbsp cooking oil

1tsp strong coffee

4 tbsp cocoa powder

150g sugar

1tsp baking powder

1.Turn the oven onto 175°C.

2.Put the chickpeas in a bowl and blend until they are smooth.

3.Add the sugar and mix thoroughly

4.Add the eggs on at a time and beat thoroughly.

5.Add the oil and coffee and mix.

6.Add the cocoa and baking powder and mix.

7.Pour into a loaf pan and bake for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Treacle and Oat Muffins (Gluten Free)

Since trying to substitute gluten free flours for plain flour in baking I have become much more used to cakes which are crammed full of oats, nuts, seeds, fruit etc, and in my view they now taste nicer, and plain flour cakes seem to now luck sustenance. This is to the point that I found myself saying at Christmas, that I preferred Christmas pudding to bûche de noel, (thus going against 20-odd years of undying devotion to chocolate buttercream and butterless sponge). Josie does not agree and continues to make chocolate muffins and waffles with plain flour rather than succumbing to my suggestions to at least substitute wholemeal or rye for the plain flour, but these muffins below are some of my favourite. I think also with a bit of tweaking you could quite easily make these into gingerbread.

A note on buckwheat. It is not related to wheat at all but actually to rhubarb amongst other plants (!!) and its grains are milled to make the flour. It is used to make those lovely savoury pancakes in Brittany and grows well in cold climates, so is eaten in places like Russia and Scandinavia. It is naturally gluten-free but make sure when buying it that it is has been milled etc in a gluten-free environment, much likes oats. The only buckwheat flour I have found in shops here in the UK is Doves’ and it is not gluten-free. I would suggest the internet as a possible source for buckwheat buying.

If you can’t find buckwheat go for 100g of ground almonds.

These muffins are crumbly and you have to let them cool before taking them out of their cases if you make them in silicone ones like we did.

Makes 12 medium sized muffins.

50g ground almonds

50g buckwheat

175g oats

100g soft brown sugar

1tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

1 egg

120ml milk

60ml treacle

75ml vegetable oil

Turn the oven onto 200°C.

1. Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl.

2. In a separate bowl beat the egg, milk, treacle and vegetable oil until it is well blended.

3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until it is just blended, do not overmix.

4. Spoon into muffin cases and bake for 15 minutes.

Oat Crackers (Gluten Free)

One of the things that our mum misses most about being gluten intolerant is bread, especially as a vehicle for cheese. Initially we bought oat crackers, but they are so expensive! So we decided to make our own. 500g of crackers makes enough for a week’s worth of lunches. They are best fresh but keep fairly well in a tin.

These are not as easy as pastry to roll out, so flour the work surface thoroughly. We used gram flour because you can buy it in huge bags and it is cheap. Don’t try to roll out all the dough at once, but roll it out a handful at a time. The oats soak up a lot of water and the dough may become dry before you finish rolling it all out. If this happens, just add a tiny bit of water to the dough.

A nice shortcut is instead of melting the butter in a pan (more stuff to wash up, more energy used), put the butter in an oven proof bowl/ramekin and put it in the heating oven as the first step.

You could add spices, pepper, herbs etc for variety. I would start with a teaspoon and adjust to taste. We have also successfully substituted 1/3 of the oats for gram flour, which made it a bit more biscuit-like and different, but also very tasty.

Lastly, a quick note. Oats are naturally gluten free but are not necessarily processed in a gluten free environment. Get ones that say gluten free if you are gluten intolerant.

Ingredients

500g oats

¾ tsp of salt

50g melted butter

500ml of boiling water approx

1. Grind 2/3 of the oats into a fine powder using a blender.
2. Mix the oats and salt together.
3. Add the melted butter and mix.
4. Add enough water to make a slightly sticky dough.
5. Dust the work surface with a gluten free flour of your choice, and roll out the dough.
6. Cut out squares of dough and place them on a lined baking sheet.
7. Bake in a preheated oven at 150C for 30 minutes. They are done when they are dry and hard to touch and slightly golden. They will shrink quite a bit when baking.

Oat and Fig biscuits (Gluten Free)

I usually make this with raisins instead of figs but someone (Josie!) doesn’t like raisins so here is a version for those who also dislike raisins. Feel free to put in any or a mix of dried fruit, I imagine cranberries would also be delicious.

Plain flour can also be substituted for ground almonds if you are not gluten intolerant.

We baked them for about 15 minutes so that they would be golden and crispy. Bake them a bit less if you want them soft and take them out of the oven when they are just starting to brown on the sides. Let them cool before taking them off the baking sheet as they crumble easily when warm.

Ingredients

Makes 10

1 egg
100g sugar
50g butter
50g ground almonds
125g chopped figs
175g oats
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking powder

1. Turn on the oven to 180°C

2. Cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy

3. Add the egg and beat thoroughly until smooth

4. Mix in the ground almonds, salt and baking powder

5. Add the chopped figs and oats and mix thoroughly

6. Scoop some of the mix in your hands and form a little ball.

7. Flatten the ball in your palm and place on a greased or lined baking tray.

8. Repeat for the rest of the mix.

9. Bake for 10-15 minutes.