Here is a recipe for a gluten free sweet pastry! It is a bit like a shortcrust pastry, but as it has almonds in it, it is richer. If you wanted to make it savoury, swap the sugar for ½ tsp of salt. I have used frozen butter because when making normal pastry, I find that this makes the pastry much flakier and not so heavy. When measuring frozen butter, what I do is take the whole pack of frozen butter out and grate it on the cheese grater until I have enough. I then put the butter into the fridge for future use. You can make pastry with unfrozen butter and it will work fine, it is just easier to overwork it (especially when using wheat flour) when the ingredients are warmer.
Gluten Free Pastry
65 g gram (chickpea) flour
45 g ground almonds
2 tbsp cornflour (US- cornstarch)
1 tbsp sugar
50 g frozen butter
50 ml ice-cold water
1.Combine the gram flour, ground almonds, cornstarch and sugar and mix well.
2.Grate the frozen butter into the flours.
3. When it is all grated, rub the butter into the flours until combined.
4.Add the water little by little to form a dough. Do not overwork the dough otherwise the dough will become oily.
5.Put it in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.
Figgy jam
This recipe makes a thick puree which smells of Christmas and tastes delicious. We used it here as a substitute to mincemeat, because not everyone is a fan of it. You could add more wine instead of the water, and more butter if you want it to be richer. We went for a lighter taste, as the pastry is already quite rich. The amounts below will give you enough for twice the amount of pastry you have made above, so either double up the pastry, or keep some in the fridge (it keeps for several days at least), and make something else with it. I have used it in these granola bars instead of the fig puree in that recipe and it worked really well.
70 g sugar
2 whole cloves
1 star anise
240 ml red wine
120 ml water
340 g dried figs
1 small cinnamon stick
50g butter
1.Combine the figs (having cut off the stems), sugar, cloves, star anise, wine, water and cinnamon into a saucepan.
2.Simmer the mixture for about 30 minutes until the figs are soft and most of the liquid has evaporated.
3.Remove the spices and blend.
4.Add the butter, stirring until it has melted.
To make the figgy mince pies
1.Butter a muffin tin or lay out muffin cases and preheat the oven to 180C.
2.Take a quarter of the pastry out of the fridge and on a very well floured (gluten free flour of your choice) surface, roll it out to approximately 2-3mm thick. Take care to flour the surface well because this pastry sticks more than normal pastry! We only took out a quarter at the time so that the pastry would not get too warm.
3.Cut out a circle and a star. Put the circle into the bottom of the muffin case and put in a teaspoon of figgy jam (or mincemeat). Put the star on top of the jam.
4.Once you have filled the tray, put it in the freezer or fridge to set until the oven is up to temperature. This stops the pastry shrinking when baked or melting in the heat of the kitchen whilst you wait for the oven to be up to temperature.
We sprinkled chopped almonds and a small disc of marzipan to some of our pies because we wanted a crunchy element, and we love marzipan. In retrospect, I think the marzipan might have been too much, but the chopped almonds were a good idea.
The Two Sisters' Kitchen 