Gluten Free Rosemary Flatbread

Someone just happened to warm up peanut sauce (or something nutty) in the microwave by the vending machine just before we needed a snack to get us through until lunch. And we are now at home, my gf is passed out after downing a Benadryl, and I am stocking up our supply of allergy-safe snack foods.

This is a modified version of the recipe found here.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 c brown rice flour
• 1 tsp Xantham gum
• 1/2 tsp salt
• pepper and rosemary (or other herbs) to taste
• 2 c water
• 1 Tbsp olive oil

Combine all ingredients and whisk until smooth. This combination was thicker than I was expecting...more like thick pancake batter and not thin like described in the original recipe. Heat oven to 450 degrees and let batter sit while it warms up. Spray a cookie sheet or pizza pan with olive oil and place in the oven until warm, then pour batter into pan, smooth out and return to the oven. Bake 30 - 40 minutes or until golden brown and crispy.

Enjoy!

vegan biscuits

Here is my attempt at making biscuits from a recipe similar to yesterday.

Ingredients:

• 2 c flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• pinch of sugar
  
• 1/2 c applesauce
• 4 Tbsp canola oil (olive oil should work just fine too)
• 1/2 c rice milk with a splash of lemon juice

In a small bowl, mix applesauce, oil, and half of the salt (1/4 tsp) and chill.

Preheat oven to 415 degrees.

Combine flour, baking soda and powder, salt and sugar and mix well. Add chilled applesauce/oil mixture and mash with a fork until it has the consistency of coarse meal. Add rice milk in small portions. Dump dough ball onto a floured counter top and roll out to 3/4 inch thickness. Cut with a floured biscuit cutter and place cut dough onto a greased baking sheet. Bake 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.

Pictures coming when I finish making these!

update: they are divine :)

cranberry orange scones and biscuits

I made both the scones and the biscuits out of one "batch" of dough in order to get the most out the flour I had left, and to keep us from getting FAT from eating all of these :)

Ingredients

• 2 c flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• Pinch of sugar
• 1/2 c applesauce
• 3 T olive oil
• 2 T butter
• 1/4 c rice milk with a splash of lemon juice
• 1/4 orange juice
• 2 T honey
• 1/4 c dried cranberries

In a small bowl, melt 2 T butter and stir in the olive oil and applesauce. Chill mixture in the fridge until solid. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Measure dry ingredients into two separate bowls. Split all of the ingredients evenly except for the sugar. In the bowl that will be biscuits, add only a small pinch of sugar. In the bowl that will be scones, add two large pinches.

Cut the solid butter/oil/applesauce mixture in half and place one half into the biscuit bowl. Squirt ~2 T honey into the other half of the butter/oil/applesauce and mix well before adding to the scone bowl.

Mash the flour and butter together with a fork until it forms a course meal.

To the biscuit bowl, add the rice milk with lemon juice a little bit at a time and mash together. If it is too wet, sprinkle a little flour and continue mixing. Roll out the dough onto a floured countertop and cut with a biscuit cutter. I have a fairly large biscuit cutter so I got 4 large biscuits out of this dough. Transfer the dough to a greased baking sheet.


To the scone bowl, add the orange juice a little bit at a time and mash together. If it is too we, sprinkle a little flour and continue mixing. Fold in dried cranberries. Divide the dough into 4 pieces with a fork and transfer to a greased baking sheet.

Bake 14 minutes or until golden brown.

Thoughts about this recipe:

Baking at a higher temp may make the biscuits and scones more dense and crunchy....or leaving out the baking soda and using only baking powder.



Orange juice did not give the scones a strong enough flavor. I may need to use orange juice from concentrate and orange zest.

Also, I know that these are not vegan :( I am going to try this recipe without the butter and am optimistic about the results. So far, there is not a soy-free butter substitute that we can use. (The latest one uses pea protein which makes it an allergy no-no.)

the search for rice flour

Recently I have had a hankering to try baking with rice flour. I started my search at the grocery store because they had a wide variety of non-wheat flours that I wanted to try. I grabbed a package of Bob's Red Mill Brown Rice Flour, checked the ingredients (of course) and went on my merry way.

A few days later, I pulled out the package to test it out, and found the allergy label hidden at the bottom of the package, completely away from the ingredients, stating the flour was processed in a facility with tree nuts :(

Today, though, I found rice flour from Ener-G Foods which was not outrageously expensive and is free of the following allergens: gluten, wheat, casein, dairy, egg, corn, yeast, soy, potato, peanut, tree nut. :)

Now, I just have to come up with a fun recipe to submit to the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness Online Recipe Box...

apple cranberry coffee cake with granola topping

Ingredients:

• 1 c flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 c applesauce
• 1/2 c rice milk
• 1/3 c sugar
• 1/2 Tbsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 medium apple diced
• 1/2 c dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine flour, baking powder and salt in small bowl and set aside. In large bowl mix together applesauce, rice milk, sugar, cinnamon, cloves and lemon juice. Stir in diced apple and cranberries. Add dry ingredients to large bowl and mix thoroughly. Pour batter into greased 9 x 9 pan.

I decided to only top half of the coffee cake with granola, and used a fork to push it down into the batter.




Bake 25 minutes, sprinkle with sugar and enjoy :)

I used this tasty granola that is organic and allergy safe!

egg-free, butter-free chocolate cake with crunchy rice topping

This cake is amazing. It's very dense, almost like a brownie, but I was really happy with how it turned out.

Cake Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 c flour
• 1/2 c cocoa (I used Hershey's Special Dark b/c it is tasty and allergy safe!)
• 1/2 T baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/4 c sugar
• 1 medium sweet potato, mashed
• 1/2 c applesauce
• 1 c rice milk
• 1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in medium bowl. Mix thoroughly and set aside. Cream together sweet potato and sugar, then add remaining wet ingredients to large bowl. Add dry ingredients to large bowl in small portions and mix well. At this point I added ~1/4 c more applesauce to thin the batter slightly.

I tried to make this like an upside down cake by putting the crunchy topping in the bottom of the pan. However, the topping will stick to the pan and not to the cake. So here is what I am recommending until I test it myself:

Pour cake batter into pan of choice....I used a meatloaf-sized pan for this amount of batter....and bake 1 hour and 15 minutes. Let cake cool enough to remove it from the pan and "frost" with crunchy topping while still warm.

Crunchy topping ingredients:

• 1/2 c sweet and salty toasted rice (or Rice Krispies cereal)
• 1/4 c sugar
• honey (a few "drizzles")
• 1 tsp butter
• 1/4 dark chocolate chips

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Microwave for 20 s stirring periodically until uniform. Use for cake topping while still warm.

nut substitute?? sweet and salty toasted rice

I took lots of pictures since I didn't really measure out anything. My goal was to find something to sub for nuts in a recipe instead of just leaving them out.

I started with butter, honey and vanilla extract.

I put this in the microwave for ~30 seconds to get the butter melted and then started adding rice that was leftover from dinner.
I added rice until all of the grains were pretty well coated and not "too soggy." I also tasted it periodically and added a little more honey. Then I spread the rice onto a greased baking sheet, and put it in the oven at 325 degrees.Once the rice started to brown, I stirred it every 2-3 minutes.


After 18 minutes, the rice was nicely browned, so I transferred it to a bowl and added a few pinches of sea salt.
It turned out pretty tasty. I do think that next time I will use more honey, and maybe pan fry the rice instead of baking.

tasty pasta bake

Just some photos for now. It's veggie, but not vegan. It was also super tasty!

egg-free, butter-free chocolate chip cookie bars

Ingredients:

• 1 c mashed banana (~2 medium bananas)
  
• 1 1/4 c granulated sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 c applesauce
• 2 1/4 c unbleached flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 c chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine flour, soda and salt in a small bowl, set aside. Cream together banana, sugar, vanilla and applesauce in a large bowl. Add dry ingredients to large bowl and mix well. Stir in chocolate chips. Transfer batter to a greased 9 x 13 pan and bake until golden brown. ( I have not yet timed this exactly, but it is probably ~25 minutes).

Applesauce Protein Muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 c organic unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 T cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 c Nutribiotic Rice Protein Powder
• 1 5/8 c cold applesauce
• 1/8 c sugar
• 1 medium apple peeled, cored and diced

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a small bowl combine diced apple, applesauce and sugar and set aside. In a large bowl combine remaining ingredients and blend well. Add wet ingredients to large bowl and mix until combined. Dough will be a little stretchy. Line or oil muffin pan and fill each cup with batter. Bake 25 minutes or until golden brown.

sweet potato cranberry muffins

Recipe modified from The Whole Foods Allergy Cookbook by Cybele Pascal.

Ingredients

• 2 c organic unbleached all-purpose flour
• 3 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 c mashed sweet potato
• 1 c rice milk
• 1/2 c unsweetened apple sauce
• 1 T vanilla extract
• 1/4 c sugar
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2/3 c dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine flour and baking powder in small bowl and set aside. In large bowl combine all other ingredients and mix well. Add dry ingredients to large bowl and stir until blended. Dough will be stretchy and sticky like pizza dough. Line muffin cups or spray with olive oil. Fill each cup with dough and bake 20-30 minutes until toothpick inserted at center of muffin comes out clean. Makes 12 "standard" size muffins.