gluten free

by

20-40-60 minute dinners review

I like the idea of sorting dinner recipes by length of time. I don’t because my current lifestyle doesn’t require me to whip out dinner every night, but there’s merit in it. That’s the premise of ’20-40-60 minute dinners: Meals to match the time you have’ by Kate Otterstrom.

The book is divided into:

  • College-Style dinners,
  • Quick-Prep dinners,
  • Slow-Cooker dinners,
  • Frozen dinners,
  • Time-Consuming dinners,
  • Accompaniments,
  • Breakfast,
  • Baking and Candy

Some of the recipes you will find here are:

  • Mac and cheese with candied sausage and green peas,
  • Pancakes with homemade syrup and smoky carrots,
  • Slow cooker strata with green salad,
  • Seven layer dip with tortilla chips and crudites,
  • Sweet and spicy turkey carnitas taco salad,
  • Swedish meatballs with roasted potatoes and green peas,
  • Chicken and corn casserole with sauteed cabbage,
  • Meatballs with roasted broccoli and mashed potatoes,
  • Moroccan-style chickpea stew with bread and preserved lemon salsa,
  • Crunchy granola bars,
  • Gluten-free almond poppy seed muffins,
  • Dinner or cinnamon rolls,
  • Gluten-free baguette,
  • Almond Texas sheet cake

The thing I like best about this book is the recipe format.  It’s similar to how I jot down recipe notes.  It’s a grid system.  For example, the pancakes recipe mentioned above is broken down into a section for the carrots, then the pancakes, the syrup, and the suggested condiments.  The ingredients are on the left side of the grid, while the instructions are next to it on the right.  I don’t have to flip pages, or look at an ingredient list and then go looking for the paragraph that corresponds.  I wish all recipes were formatted more like this!  I also love that since Otterstrom has celiac disease, all recipes come with gluten-free instructions where applicable.  The minor editing complaint that I have is the recipe grid doesn’t always clearly label what the row is for.  So in the recipe for the sushi rolls, the row for a sweet teriyaki sauce is clearly labeled, but then the very last row of the grid has no label.  It took me a second to realize, it was ingredients and instructions for miso soup.

Oh, another comment about consistency – this book does offer weighed ingredients when a flour is listed but not always.  For the dinner/cinnamon rolls, the all purpose flour has a weighed amount with the volumetric amount, but the whole wheat flour only has the volumetric.  But if you make the GF version, all volume and weighed measurements are listed.

Another great feature is that every recipe is meant to be a meal.  You don’t have to go looking for a side dish recipe if you don’t want to.  It’s built into the recipe.

I ended up making the focaccia-style pizza with Greek salad.  I thought it would enable me to test out two recipes – the pizza from the Time-consuming Dinners chapter, and the gluten-free blend from the Baking and Candy chapter.  I was really curious about the GF blend as it’s the only one I’ve personally seen that includes garbanzo bean flour (aka chickpea flour aka besan flour).  But as I re-read the recipe, I realized that the focaccia is different ratio of ingredients.  The GF blend is one of the ingredients, but then more starch and garbanzo bean flour is added to the mix.  (I have since looked more closely at the GF baked items in this book, and Otterstrom does this a lot. I almost wonder what’s the point of having a master blend.)

This recipe, in the GF instructions, offers both focaccia and standard round pizza variations.  I kept to the focaccia instructions (but I wish a little that I went with the standard round pizza as I actually prefer a thinner crust on my pizza pies). 

Anyway, you mix the dough with a high amount of yeast.  Let it rise on a baking sheet.  When it’s time, bake the dough for 15 minutes, take it out of the oven, add the toppings, and then finish in the oven.

Since it was my first time with this recipe, I kept it to just cheese.  I also halved the recipe so I used a quarter sheet pan instead of a half sheet pan.  Otterstrom warns that the GF version is less like a dough and more like a batter, and I can confirm.  It’s like a thick cake batter.  While it was baking, it smelled very strongly of garbanzo bean flour which worried me a bit.  But the eating experience was much nicer.  I think I would still prefer a bit less garbanzo bean flour but that’s just personal preference.  The overall texture was lovely!    As reheated leftovers, I thought that the garbanzo bean flavor was a little stronger (but not overly so), and the structure/texture held up pretty well.  I was too curious for my own good, and did a rough nutritional calculation.  Maybe not a recipe for everyday eating, but, for the occasional indulgence, I enjoyed this. 

Since I made a yeasted recipe, I have no idea if the expected cooking active time is accurate or not in this book.  I still want to test out the GF flour blend, so I think the next recipe I’ll be making is for the almond Texas sheet cake or the muffins recipe.  It looks like those might be the only ones that use the blend without any alternations/adjustments.  As for the non-baked recipes, I’m not sure if I’ll actually make any of them.  This cookbook is mostly meant to feed 4-6 people.  That’s a lot of food.  The recipes I normally use are meant to feed 2-4 people.  So that is to say, you’ll probably have more interest in this book if you’ve got a family to feed. Otherwise, be prepared to do some math.

Disclaimer – I kindly received a copy of this book from Shadow Mountain Publishing for this review.  I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.  This cookbook is available for purchase from your vendors of choice.

Reference Links:

dinnerinrealtime.com

shadowmountain.com/product/20-40-60-minute-dinners-meals-to-match-the-time-you-have

by

Natural Bakes review

Before I offer a positive review for “Natural Bakes” by Caroline Griffiths, I want to set expectations.  The subtitle of the cover is “everyday gluten-free, sugar-free baking.”  Yes, the recipes here are gluten-free, but it’s the “sugar-free” claim that I want to nitpick.  What the book really means is that it is mainly sucrose free. In addition to not finding granulated sugar here, there’s no coconut sugar, no maple syrup, no honey.  The main sweeteners used are dextrose and rice malt syrup. (So I’m not exactly sure if you want to call this “natural” either. But that’s a different topic.)  There is a little bit of use of applesauce/apple puree and dates, but not significantly.  (There is also a lot of use of pure monk fruit extract but more on that later.)  I understand the overall reason for it.  I’m not a scientist or a nutritionist, so apologies for the following speedy explanation.  The author is relying on forms of glucose as the main sweetener. Glucose is the main source of energy in our bodies, meaning the body can process it effectively.  Sucrose, on the other hand, is 50-50 of fructose and glucose.  It’s fructose that our bodies might have trouble absorbing because it’s a more complicated process.  Also to note, glucose facilitates the break down of fructose so, if we’re ingesting too much fructose, we’re increasing the likelihood of health issues.

If you’re diabetic or pre-diabetic, either skip this book or be prepared to use the sweetener substitution that I used because pure glucose will impact your blood sugar levels.  

Now, let’s get to the actual review.

This book isn’t a tome, and is simply broken down into:

  • Cookies,
  • Small bakes,
  • Cakes,
  • Celebration cakes,
  • Sweet endings,
  • Basics

Some of the recipes that I would have liked to make but couldn’t because I didn’t have the right ingredients are:

  • Chocolate sandwich cookies,
  • Passionfruit cashew cream melting moments,
  • Fudgy roasted cocoa cookies,
  • Banana chai blondies,
  • Almond, mandarin and orange blossom madeleines,
  • Carrot, parsnip and cardamom loaf,
  • Lime cheesecake tart,
  • Chocolaty sweet potato and macadamia cream cake,
  • Lemon tart,
  • Creamy raspberry and orange tart

I’ve thought about baking with dextrose before but I think I was intimidated by the “quit sugar” culture.  I remember reading something akin to “if you go down this route, you must never touch sugar again!” which, in hindsight, doesn’t fully make sense.  But more importantly, I try not to keep too many uncommon pantry ingredients.  So dextrose, rice malt syrup, and pure monk fruit extract were items that I didn’t have on hand for this review.  I scoured through the ingredient lists to find what I could reasonably make with little alteration as possible.

The first recipe I made was for the brown butter shortbread fingers.  The ingredients are few: butter, gluten-free blend #1 (found in the Basics chapter), dextrose, monk fruit extract (listed as optional), pecans, and vanilla.  Gluten-free blend #1 is made of a third brown rice flour, and the rest is tapioca and potato starches.  

I’ve heard that dextrose is less sweet than table sugar so I thought allulose would be a reasonable replacement as allulose is also less sweet.  While allulose would qualify as a specialty pantry ingredient, I have been experimenting with it for almost a year now because one of my best friends has type 2 diabetes.  Allulose is a rare naturally occurring sugar that doesn’t spike blood sugar levels, is deemed safe so far, and bakes pretty well as a sugar replacement.  And since monk fruit extract was listed as optional, I didn’t feel bad about leaving it out completely.

The recipe itself is easy.  The butter is melted, browned, and then cooled.  The dry ingredients are mixed, then mixed with the browned butter, vanilla, and nuts.  When they’re done baking, you cut them into bars (I did squares) before they completely cool.  Overall, the results are good.  These cookies are very barely sweet, and the toasted pecans help to make them more interesting.  I wonder if I should have browned the butter a touch longer as the flavor was lighter than I expected.  It still satisfied my cookie cravings, and I didn’t have to go out to buy anything special.  I already had on hand the ingredients.  My only real critique is that I think the flavor and texture is too starchy.  It almost feels gummy as I chew on a cookie, like the starches are hydrating in my mouth, so I think it’s the flour blend that I’m not in love with.  I’d be curious to remake these cookies with a different flour blend. 

I’ve not experimented with monk fruit extract yet.  Most monk fruit products that I can easily find in the northeastern area of the U.S. are always blended with a sugar substitute like erythritol.**  Real monk fruit is extremely sweet, so a little of the extract will go a long way.  If you really have a sweet tooth, I recommend adding the optional extract in this recipe.

The second recipe I made was the spiced apple and cream cheese muffins.  The muffins use a different flour blend from the Basics chapter (sorghum, potato starch, tapioca starch, and glutinous rice flour) along with dextrose, baking powder, cinnamon, mixed pie spice/pumpkin spice, monk fruit extract, almond flour, diced apple, cream cheese, eggs, and buttermilk.  This time, there was more monk fruit extract and it was not marked as optional ingredient, which made sense only 1/3 cup dextrose was used for 12 muffins.  This was the only time I made a major change.  I skipped the monk fruit and upped the sweetener to 1/2 cup of allulose.  Otherwise, this was another easy recipe to make.  You mix the cream cheese with the eggs, but don’t worry about making this smooth.  We want lumps of cream cheese.  Then add the buttermilk.  You mix the dry ingredients in another bowl, and then mix everything together.  When baked up, you have a delightful muffin that has little sweet pockets of apple and little tangy bits of cream cheese. I originally worried that the recipe asked for too much of the spice, but it worked out fine.

While I disliked the flour blend of the cookies, the flour blend for the muffins worked well.  The texture and flavor were good.

There are a couple more recipes that I want to make but I can’t do it without the rice malt syrup so I think I’ll give in and seek it out.  I don’t think I’m going to pick up some dextrose at this time though.  I’m ok with using allulose instead.  (Or dare I just go rogue and swap the rice malt syrup with honey or maple syrup?) For now, I’ll see how far I can go without the monk fruit extract.

If you don’t have any qualms about buying specialty ingredients and you don’t have any health issues wherein you need to watch your blood sugar, then this seems to be a good book. More so, if you’re gluten-free.  You might have to adjust some things to your liking.  For example, there’s no salt mentioned in any of the recipes.  Maybe it’s because these recipes aren’t sweet enough to warrant salt to balance the flavor?  I didn’t add any salt to the cookies or muffins, and they seem to be ok to me.

Oh, and this book is originally Australian so it uses weighed measurements. It offers grams and ounces, but if you’re insistent on volumetric measurements, then this will matter to you. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I like to work in both systems so I have a kitchen scale. The book was also written for a fan-forced oven aka convection oven. I don’t have one, and I think most American households still don’t. I simply increased the baking temperature, so if a recipe was 350F with fan, I used 375F without fan.

** = I hate the “fake” monk fruit products.  It’s mostly erythritol because of cost.  I think they taste weird and bitter.  

Disclaimer – I kindly received a copy of this book from Smith Street Books/Rizzoli New York for this review.  I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.  This cookbook is currently available for purchase from your favorite bookshops.

Reference Links:

A timely Youtube link if you’d like to listen to Adam Ragusea talk about sugar

www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9781922754141/

The apple cream cheese muffin recipe, but not the gluten-free version (has volumetric measurements though)

by

Nom Nom Paleo Let’s Go, cookbook review

I’ve been following Michelle Tam of Nom Nom Paleo for a very long time now, well before she and her husband published their first cookbook, and now they’ve published their third.  Amusingly, I can only remember making two of her recipes in the past, both of which she didn’t develop: her sister’s Phenomenal Grilled Green Chicken, and Leon’s Caper and Anchovy Miracle Sauce.  Both are delicious, and I’m not sure why I haven’t re-made them. (Probably because there’s 1,000+ recipes I want to make.)

I’ve eyed her Instant Pot recipes for a long time, but I didn’t have an electric pressure cooker.  Recently, a friend gave me her old but very unused Breville Fast Slow Cooker, so I’m determined to experiment more with pressure cooking.  I’ve always meant to cook more of Tam’s recipes since they are all gluten-free. If you’ve read my reviews for “Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple,” or for “Baked To Perfection,” you already know that there are several GF people in my life. The easiest way to cook GF is simply to use a GF recipe.

Luckily for me, a review copy of the third book, “Nom Nom Paleo Let’s Go: Simple Feasts and Healthy Eats,” made its way to me. I took this opportunity to get off my duff and just do the thing.

The book is divided into the following chapters:

  • Building blocks,
  • Plants and eggs,
  • “Rice and Noodles”,
  • Seafood,
  • Poultry,
  • Meats,
  • Treats

Some recipes that I aim to make: 

  • Umami stir-fry powder,
  • Instant pot green soup with tangy cashew cream,
  • Garlic mushroom noodles,
  • Chicken velvet and spinach soup,
  • Greek chicken and potatoes,
  • Sheet pan “peanut” sauce chicken and broccolini,
  • Cheesy chicken and kale casserole,
  • Instant pot balsamic beef stew,
  • Pot stickers,
  • Fruit galette,
  • Pistachio cardamom cookies,
  • Dan tat (Hong Kong egg tarts)

Some of the recipes are only in the book, some are in both the book and on the website.  I ended up making four recipes total, two of which are in the book only.

I started with the stir-fry sauce and the tsukune (Japanese chicken meatballs).  You need the stir-fry sauce for the meatballs and, thankfully, it’s easy.  I used some canned pineapple juice from Trader Joe’s for this endeavor.  I could have juiced my own oranges instead, but I thought the more subtle flavor of the pineapple juice would appeal to me more.  It’s a great all-purpose Chinese-inspired sauce.  Besides the meatballs, I found myself using it to season some quick vegetable soups.

The tsukune was good too.  Her cooking times were spot on, and my end result looked a lot like the photo.  (Although, no one will know it.  I forgot to take a photo of it before all the meatballs were gone.)  My only criticism, and it’s more personal taste, is that it was a little too salty for me.  That’s an easy fix.  I’ll use less next time.  It such an easy recipe that I can’t imagine *not* making them again.

The next recipe I made was inspired my defrosting my freezer.  I had some old cashew nuts stored there, and I wanted the container gone.  So, I got to making cashew cheese sauce.  I’ve made cashew cheese sauce before, but the NNP version was a bit different.  After soaking the nuts, you cook some onions, add garlic, tomato paste, and turmeric.  I don’t think I’ve done that with previous cheese replacements.  Then, you blend everything with nutritional yeast, hot water, oil, and a bit of lemon juice.  I was a little skeptical of the turmeric.  Even though it was a small amount, I didn’t think I was going to like it in this recipe.  (I think turmeric is overused in many modern recipes.)  But it was nicely balanced by the other ingredients, and I wasn’t put off by it in the final results.  My sauce didn’t look as nice as the photo but that’s my fault.  I forgot about the oil when I originally tried to blend it, and it was desperately needed.  I did my best to dump it back into my blender and smooth it out.  Mine also looks a bit browner because I was short on cashews and added skin-on almonds to help make up for it.  

Is it cheesy?  Well… no.  But it hits the spot.  And, it is definitely good eats.  I found myself trying to slather it on food every chance I got.

The last recipe I made (at least for now) was the old-school tacos.  It’s pretty straight-forward.  Cook some diced onion, add ground meat (I used ground turkey), add garlic, chili powder, cumin, oregano, cayenne pepper, and salt.  Then add some tomato salsa and finish cooking.  It’s nothing glamorous but it’s a good staple recipe.  I might try to alter the spices a little next time for personal preference.  I also ate this with the cashew cheese, which is a recommended optional topping.

With a score of 4 out of 4, I recommend this book.  Seriously though, I didn’t have any doubts.  There are few food blogs that still seem to strive for quality and consistency.  (So many blogs out there feel like they’re cannibalizing each other, or suffocating themselves with ads to make money.) And the book is just fun with lots of photos done in a comic book layout to match the comic book versions of the Tam-Fong family. In terms of content and ease of use, I think this book appeals to a wide variety of home cooks. The book is out now, and I hope you pick up a copy. Cheers!

Disclaimer – I kindly received a copy of this book from Andrews McMeel Publishing for this review.  I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.  

Reference Links:

https://nomnompaleo.com/purpose-stir-fry-sauce

https://nomnompaleo.com/tsukune

https://nomnompaleo.com/letsgocookbook

by

Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple, cookbook review

The first time I heard of Aran Goyoaga was not through her original blog, but from her first cookbook “Small Plates, Sweet Treats.”  I remember putting it on a wishlist with the intention of taking it out of the library but I never got around to it.  Even when she released her second book, “Cannelle et Vanille”, I meant to check it out but still never got around to it.  I don’t know why.  I’ve seen a few of her recipes online, and they sound really good.  Case in point, Cherry Bombe printed her  Spiced Chocolate-Cranberry Yeast Bread recipe, and it sounded so good that I sent the link to my gluten-free co-worker.  Did I ever get around to baking it myself?  No.

Well! There’s no time like the present!  Goyoaga’s newest book, “Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple,” is out this week, and I decided it was time to get off my duff and check it out.

The book is divided into:

  • Staples
  • The smell of baking bread
  • For the love of cake
  • The flakiest tarts, pies, and biscuits
  • Crispy, chewy, and crunchy: The cookies
  • Holiday baking

Some of the recipes that immediately caught my attention are:

  • Quick crusty boule (Gruyere-thyme variation)
  • Oat milk and honey bread
  • Olive oil brioche
  • One-bowl apple, yogurt, maple cake
  • Orange-flower water and saffron cake
  • Chocolate-buckwheat pastry dough
  • Chocolate-cashew mousse tart
  • Jam-filled scones
  • Pumpkin and pine nut tart

I’m currently in a cookie mood, so first up?  Orange flower water and almond crinkles, aka macarrones de azahar y almendra.  This might be the easiest looking recipe in the book, but don’t quote me on that.  It was very quick to put together, but my personal challenge was handling the dough after it was mixed.  It’s an extremely sticky dough!  I tried an assembly line approach – roll a ball, drop it into the sugar, roll another ball, drop it into the sugar, and keep on repeating until I had several on the plate to roll in sugar. Unfortunately, the moisture of the dough seemed to seep through the sugar which let the dough stick to the plate. 

Then I tried working on one ball at a time, start to finish. I rolled a ball of dough, then rolled it immediately in sugar, and dropped it on the cookie sheet before moving onto the next ball. The downside to this method was everything seemed to stick to me as the sugar quickly built up on my fingers. 

The other thing about this recipe that didn’t quite work for me is that you preheat your oven on the broiler setting, and shut it off when the cookies go in.  I should have followed my instincts and preheated my oven to something like 450F instead of using the broiler.  I think because my stove is electric, the coils of my broiler stayed a little too hot for a little too long.  Bits of my cookies got more color than I intended.  Thankfully they didn’t burn, but they are not esthetically pleasing.  Despite all that, I really liked these cookies.  They are basically a less fussy version of the French macaron, dry on the outside but delightfully chewy on the inside.

The second cookie I tried was the pistachio and rose water sandies.  This recipe is a bit more involved as you have to process your own pistachio meal.  I also had to process my own oat flour (because I’d rather not waste space by buying oats and oat flour when I can make the oat flour myself).  Goyoaga mentions that you can use hazelnuts or almonds instead of pistachios, but I wanted to try the recipe as intended first.  The only real issue I had this this recipe was that my cookies flattened out a lot.  In the cookbook photo, they are a nice dome shape.  I’m not sure what I did wrong.  Overall, pretty good but I think for my personal preference I’ll reduce the amount of rose water a little.  The rose water wasn’t so strong that I was put off by it, but it was strong enough that I didn’t get enough pistachio flavor.  But I want to remake and see if I can get a prettier looking cookie (I did not think I was this bad at shaping cookies until now.  lol!).

And for a bonus recipe that is not a cookie, I impulsively made the glazed lemon yogurt and olive oil pound cake with a minor change.  While I like lemon, it’s not my favorite flavor.  I took some inspiration from the earlier crinkles, using orange zest in the batter and some orange blossom water in the glaze.  This recipe was, for me, the easiest to execute.  Though it had more ingredients than the crinkles, you put everything into one bowl, mix, pour into the pan, and bake.  Once it’s cooled, make the glaze and apply it.  In general, I love olive oil cakes*, and this is a great gluten free version.   I fed this to a couple of my siblings and they enjoyed it.

So, how does this book compare to the gluten-free baking book I previously reviewed?  They feel pretty different.  Goyoaga doesn’t use xantham gum much except for laminated recipes and some of the more decadent recipes.  It’s in her pie crust, the jam scones (but not the biscuits), and more frequent in the Holiday baking chapter.  Generally, her recipes use psyllium husk and flaxseed meal.  There is none of the technical and science explanations of the previous book I’ve reviewed, which maybe you prefer or maybe you do not.  (By the way, I’m looking at both books now so that I can compare, and I wonder if I worked the pistachio rose water cookie dough too much.  Katarina Cermelj makes a note that too much aeration can cause cookies to spread.  So, I’ll have to try it again and see if that was my original mistake.)  In terms of the variety of recipes and baked goods, both books are great and you can’t go wrong.  Here in “Bakes Simple”, recipes are inspired by Goyoaga’s Basque Country roots or by other global influences, so if a flavor adventure is more meaningful to you, this is the book should appeal.  In terms of “ease”, Goyoaga’s book gives specific flour blends for every recipe (brown rice flour, tapioca starch, sorghum flour, potato starch, buckwheat, oat flour, and/or almond flour) but she also gives a recipe at the start of the Staples chapter for an all-purpose gluten free flour mix.  As she explains, her “preference is to consider the texture and flavor profile of an individual recipe” but she understands “the popularity of ready mixes.”  If you’re a stickler for details, expect to invest a little toward your pantry inventory.

Overall, I am happy to recommend Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple to any home baker who wants to do more gluten-free baking.

*My favorite olive oil cake recipe comes from Lior Lev Sercarz… which is not gluten free.

Disclaimer – I received this book from Sasquatch Books for this review.  I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.

Reference Links:

https://www.arangoyoaga.com/

https://www.instagram.com/cannellevanille/?hl=en

https://sasquatchbooks.com/

https://cherrybombe.com/aran-goyoaga-demo

by

Baked to Perfection, cookbook review

It’s weird to think but nonetheless true… I know more people who are gluten intolerant than I know people who are lactose intolerant. I have two friends who most likely have Celiac disease, and know two other people who seem to have developed digestion issues with gluten over time.

My brother in law was the first person I knew who went gluten free back before it was a trend. I remember how limited his choices were for bread, and pasta was pretty much a no-go. Rice noodles were sometimes a passible option. I remember experimenting with mochi cakes back then, but it was generally easier to pick recipes that had a low flour content and just convert. For example, these days, I’ll often bake a burnt Basque cheesecake as a gluten free dessert. There usually a couple of tablespoons of flour in the recipe but I’ll replace it with cornstarch. No harm done.

But when that fourth person in my circle went gluten-free, I thought that maybe it was time to go back to exploring gluten-free baking. That is where “Baked To Perfection, Delicious Gluten-Free Recipes With a Pinch of Science” by Katarina Cermelj comes in. The cookbook covers all general items that you’re likely to bake at home.

(Whoops! My thumb is in the way!)

The chapters are:

  • Gluten-free Baking Basics
  • Cakes
  • Cupcakes and Muffins
  • Brownies
  • Cookies and Bars
  • Pies, Tarts, and Pastries
  • Bread; Breakfast and Teatime Treats
  • Around the World

Some things that I really appreciate about this book? There’s a handy chart of gluten-free flours, their protein content, water absorption capacity, and whether it’s considered a starch or a protein flour.  (Successful GF bakes depends on a good balance of starchy and protein heavy flours.) Two DIY blends are offered, but Cermelj writes that she tested a variety of (UK) grocery store blends.  There’s also a table of percentages of flour in typical bakes, like brownies are about 9% and shortcut pastry is 54%. If you’re unsure about GF baking, you’re more likely to find satisfaction in your results from a recipe that is not heavily dependent on flour.

I also appreciate that Cermelj only uses two binders, xanthan gum and psyllium husk.  Their basic function is for elasticity and for flexibility.  Xanthan gum is in most of the recipes while psyllium husk is for bread. If bread isn’t your thing, then xanthan gum is the only binder you need to stock in your pantry.

Some recipes that I really want to try are:

  • Raspberry traybake
  • Peanut butter-stuffed chocolate chunk skillet cookie
  • All butter crust
  • Plain sweet shortcrust pastry
  • Roasted butternut squash and cheddar flaky pastries
  • Strawberries lemonade tartlets
  • Artisan dark crusty loaf
  • Proper boiled and baked bagels
  • Quick and easy flat breads
  • Vanilla French crepes
  • Extra flaky scones
  • Victoria sponge cake
  • Lamingtons

I didn’t want to buy a ton of ingredients for this review, but I’m also weird enough to have tapioca startch, millet flour, psyllium husk, and xanthan gum on hand. I ended up making the Shiny Top Brownies recipe, and the Seeded Buns recipe.

For the brownies, I only had to purchase a GF blend. I didn’t go with either of the DIY blends as technically I did not have the ingredients on hand for them. Since I’m in the US, I didn’t have access to to the store brands that Cermelj has used. I decided to go with Trader Joe’s Gluten-Free All-Purpose flour. (I did not use Trader Joe’s Cassava Cauliflower Blend Baking Mix as that had baking powder and salt mixed in.) The other ingredients for this recipe are dark chocolate, unsalted butter, eggs, light brown sugar, Dutch processed cocoa powder, xanthan gum, and salt. For the chocolate and cocoa, I used Guittard and Drost brands, respectively. Conversions can be a funny thing, but I baked this in my 8×8 glass dish, at 320F, for 28 minutes, aiming for a fudgy texture. In hindsight, I should have baked a few minutes longer because I was baking in a glass dish. The resulting texture was more gooey than fudgy. Did I get a shiny top? Yes!

Cermelj explains that the sugar must dissolve in the eggs as much as possible. She says that if you add water, you can say goodbye to the shiny top. And she is mostly correct. What she fails to mention (or maybe didn’t even realize), the shiny top hinges on the sucrose structure in sugar according to the at-home experiments done by Adam Ragusea. All of Cermelj’s brownie recipes use sugar as the only sweetener so she might not have considered sugar alternatives. Other than that, it’s a good brownie recipe. Nothing about it, texture or flavor, gives away its gluten-free status.

But again, due to it’s low flour content, brownies are easier to make gluten-free. Gluten-free bread, on the other hand, is notorious for being crumbly, dry, unpleasant tasting, or all of the above. The seeded buns appealed to me because of the simplicity of ingredients: yeast, sugar, water, psyllium husk, tapioca starch, millet flour, brown rice flour, salt, and seeds. Brown rice flour was the only item I was missing, and I didn’t mind buying it because I was running out of white rice flour anyway (I use rice flour on my banneton when making sourdough bread). Even though I’ve worked with psyllium husk before, it was such a long time ago that I forgot how much of a gelling agent it was.

The biggest hiccup I had was that the color of my final product did not look like the book photos. I’ve re-read the recipe a couple of times, and I can only assume that it was the oven temperature that might have been the culprit. The book gives 230 C, but I have to work in Fahrenheit. I chose 450 F, but perhaps 445 F or even 440 F would have been better. The buns, while fully cooked, were pale on the exterior. But at the end of the day, it’s texture and flavor that matters. The buns did not disappoint in those regards! The bun flavor is equivalent to a white bread, and great for general purpose. Texture came pretty close to regular bread. It didn’t fall apart after baking, and it chews like bread. It’s not identical to regular bread, but it’s darn pretty close.

Overall, I’m happy with this cookbook! Is it the only gluten-free baking book I need? Very, very possible. Since I still have the Trader Joe’s flour around, I think the next item to make is the plain sweet shortcrust pastry. Oh! Or maybe the chocolate variation. I might even bake this weekend. (I’m just not baking it in time for this review.)

If you like baking and you have gluten-free requirements either for yourself or for someone you know, I highly recommend this book. If you’re in the US, the only hiccup is that you need a kitchen scale for the recipes here. Everything is in grams, even the water measurements. Since I make a lot of bread, I bought a kitchen scale a long time ago.

Oven temperatures will have to be converted with help from an online calculator. You’ll probably have to go a smidge up or a smidge down in temperature to accommodate your oven. For example, my oven only offers temperatures in intervals of 5. 230 C calculates to about 447 F. I had to pick between 445 F and 450 F for the seeded buns.

For me, these are extremely minor issues. I think the excellent results and approachability of the recipes is what matters most. So, ten out of ten, I totally recommend!

Disclaimer – I kindly received a copy of this book from Bloomsbury Publishing for this review.  I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own.  

Reference Links:

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/baked-to-perfection-9781526613486

https://theloopywhisk.com/

https://theloopywhisk.com/baked-to-perfection-gluten-free-cookbook/

https://youtu.be/qpF5B_jHZrw (Adam Ragusea’s video about the secret to brownie skin)

by

Granola clusters, a Kitchen Conclusion post

First of all, I’m going to try to make this a series of posts.  I’m going to try to get off my duff and post more regularly.  I aim to cook more from my cookbook and recipe collection, and I’ll post those items that I feel warrant attention (for better or for worse!).  Here’s the first of (hopefully many) posts that I’m going to call Kitchen Conclusions.

PSA – if this series title doesn’t work for you, feel free to suggest a better one.

I have to admit that I’m a fan of Bon Appetit’s YouTube channel.  I adore Claire, Carla, and Brad who are probably the staff faces that pop up most often.

When I saw Carla make cookies by mixing granola and meringue (which is actually a Claire recipe), I knew immediately that I wanted to try it out.

It also didn’t hurt that it snowed last weekend, and that I had all of the ingredients.  (To be fair, I did make a last minute run to Trader Joe’s before it snowed, because I wasn’t convinced that I had all of the ingredients.)

The process?  Pretty straight forward.  It’s a very sticky mess when you mix the granola and meringue.  Don’t stress out over meringue.  I made a sad looking meringue, and the clusters still baked just fine.  But I highly recommend using parchment paper, because it’s so sticky.

I was good and let the clusters cool overnight, but only because Carla mentioned that the clusters were very flexible when still warm.  If you absolutely don’t have parchment paper to use and you used a greased baking sheet, the clusters will need a thin, stiff spatula to help with removal.  Or maybe just try remove the clusters when they haven’t cooled completely?  One of the baking sheets I was using had leftover coconut oil greased onto it (from making the granola portion), and I regretted using it for baking half of the cookies by the morning.  They were pretty stuck on.

Having said that, I will never ever regret making these granola clusters.  They were delicious!  I ate two and had to convince myself not to eat a third – that’d be extra snow shoveling for the sake of calorie burning than I was willing to do.  Yes, I actually ran the recipe through a calorie calculator just to help convince me not to eat a third cookie.

And then?  On Monday when I was at work, I bought a cookie with me, and basically spent half the morning staring at it.  I was trying so hard to save it for lunch, and it never made it that long.  I also gave some cookies to a co-worker just so that I didn’t end up being the only person to eat all of them.  Said co-worker and her husband also enjoyed the cookies.

In sum?

Recipe level:  Easy

Would I make it again?  Hell yes.  In fact, I might make them again this weekend for a party.  Also, it’s easy to keep these cookies gluten free if you need to.

The recipe:

https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/granola-cluster-cookies

 

The YT video:

by

flourless peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips

This post is dedicated to Martyna of http://wholesomecook.wordpress.com/. The pictures in this post were not taken with my really clunky and heavy digital camera. I recently acquired a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-WX9 as a result of some confusion and lots of generosity. From here on out, I have no good excuses for leaving my camera at home when I go to food events like the Harvard SEAS lectures.  My WX9 is a travel-friendly small size.

Next time David Chang is in town, I’ll get you a picture of David Chang. (^_^)b

ANYWAY!

Continue reading →