Tag: gluten-free

Going Gluten-Free???

So my 10 yo has been sick for several months now and I’ve been wondering if I should even continue this blog.  We don’t know what he has.  We do know he’s in constant pain, both with his head and stomach.  We tried gluten-free for three weeks.   During this time, I was like, now how can I write a baking blog of all the things I know when I know nothing about gluten-free?!  Turns out I don’t need to become an expert as it made no difference and his celiac test came back negative.

Gluten Geekdom

From a purely geeky perspective, it was quite fascinating to do some gluten-free baking tho so I have added a tag for it and am now at least much more aware of the need for gluten-free recipes for those with celiac, those who are gluten-intolerant, and those who make the choice to go gluten-free for other reasons.

For the unaware, gluten is a protein in wheat (barley, rye, etc.) and oats.  More precisely, it’s a string of amino acids.  The string in oats is ever so slightly different from wheat so some people who can’t have wheat, can have oats, and some can’t.  Gluten is what gives bread it’s wonderful rise (besides yeast) and chewiness.  When you knead bread, you’re developing the gluten in it, stretching out those chains.  When you make cookies, you don’t want to develop the gluten ’cause you’ll end up with tough cookies.  Similarly with cakes.

That’s the whole point of different kinds of flours.  With cake and pastry flour you have very low levels of protein so your cakes and pies will be tender and delicate, not tough and chewy.  Bread flour on the other hand will have some of the highest protein levels around, for higher rise and better texture.

Gluten Free

What does this mean if you’re going gluten-free?  That you need to find a substitute for the gluten.  This is where xanthum gum comes in.  It takes the place of gluten, but it still won’t give you the same texture to your dough and there’s waaaaay more to learn about baking gluten-free than what I’ve picked up these past few weeks.  The texture of bread dough becomes very airy, almost like foam.  And cookies?  I have no idea how people use a cookie scoop with this kind of dough.  It’s crumbles instead of a mass of dough.  I found myself grabbing handfuls to squish together to form balls of dough.  Amazingly enough, it worked!  The cookies were actually quite good, too.  Just don’t expect the exact same flavors.  Afterall, these are made of bean and rice flours largely.

There are some great all-purpose, gluten-free, flours out there (Bob’s Red Mill, King Arthur Flour) which will give you a start so you can see the kind of airy dough you end up with when baking this way.  Betty Crocker and Bisquick even have some gluten-free mixes so that you’re not totally left in the dust if you find yourself completely lost.  I’ve made both Betty Crocker’s Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies and Bob’s Red Mill’s Gluten-Free Pizza Dough mix.  We all loved the pizza dough when I made it into Focaccia, drizzling it with olive oil and sprinkling it with salt and dried rosemary.  Mmmmm Good!  This will be a keeper for the future for sure!

When using gluten-free all-purpose flours, unfortunately, you can just take your favorite recipes, substitute in gf all-purpose flour for regular all-purpose flour, and add a bit of xanthum gum.  I wish.  I asked about this on the King Arthur blog because that’s what the xanthum gum package implied.  There’s more to it than that tho and like I said, I don’t know enough yet to explain it all.

There is lots of information out there to be had on going gluten-free; just google it.  Meanwhile, I highly recommend checking out the King Arthur Flour web site for recipes and information.  Also check out glutenfreegoddess.com.  I have not tried her recipes yet, but they look promising and she gets great comments from her readers.  She also has tags for dairy-free, vegan, etc.

Future

So what does the future hold on this blog?   I have no idea 🙂  My son is awaiting a pediatric gastroenterologist appointment, but I will be back to blogging and working on getting at least a couple of posts out each week because I really enjoy doing this.  When the recipe is gluten-free, I will tag it as such.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled blogging… 🙂

Vanilla Blueberry Syrup

So I went to make waffles for the kids this morning and realized I was out of maple flavoring to make the syrup.  Ok, what to do.  Make Vanilla Syrup?  I use both vanilla extract and maple flavoring to make my syrup normally.  Then I remembered some blueberries I had in the freezer and thought, aha! blueberry syrup!

So I threw a cup of frozen blueberries into a saucepan, added water, white sugar, and brown sugar and brought it to a boil.  After a little while, when the blueberries were bursting and it was starting to thicken a little, I strained out the blueberries, squishing them a little in the strainer to get more juices out, and returned the syrup to the pan.

A little more thickening and it was time to taste.

A spoon. A sip. and aaaah 🙂

But then what did I do?!  Me and my vanilla habit 🙂  I added 1/2 a teaspoon (2.5 ml) of vanilla extract.  That was it!   Not much, right?  What did I discover?  That the blueberries really brought out the vanilla flavor 🙂

So it was still quite good, but I probably should have either left it as is or added just a smidge of lemon juice to brighten the blueberry flavor, like I do in my pie, if I truly wanted blueberry syrup.  Nonetheless I thought it was very worthy of a post, both for the flavor and for the bizarre discovery.

Thus Vanilla Blueberry Syrup was born, with a wonderful flavor of vanilla amongst blueberry overtones.

Ingredients:

1 c. (135 g) frozen blueberries

1/2 c. (4 oz, 113 g) cold water

1/2 c. (100 g) white sugar

1/2 c. (110 g) brown sugar

1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) vanilla extract

Directions:

1.  Put all ingredients except vanilla extract into a small saucepan.

2.  Boil 5 minutes or so, until the blueberries have burst, the syrup is a beautiful blue, and it has thickened slightly.  Use a spoon to sample it and you’ll be able to taste that it has thickened slightly if you’re in doubt visually.

3.  Strain through a sieve into a bowl, squishing the berries a bit to extract more juice.

4.  Pour it back into the pan and boil a few minutes more.  Note that I did this rather than straining at the end because it was easier to see how the syrup was doing.

5.  Stir in vanilla.

6.  Remove from heat and let it cool a bit and it will thicken more.

Enjoy!

 

UPDATE 2mar2012:  Changed ml measurement to grams for water.  Why use milliliters, a measure of volume, when everything else (except vanilla) is in grams, a weight?!  Why not give vanilla in grams?  For a couple of reasons.  One is that my scales are in increments of 5 grams, but rounding up vanilla to 5 grams would have a vastly different effect on a recipe than a difference of 5 grams of flour.  The other reason is that most non-US recipe sites that I see still use teaspoon measurement increments rather than grams for ingredients with such a small quantity even if everything else is in grams.

Brigadeiros

I first saw these little gems on an America’s Test Kitchen (ATK) post.  They were just so cute!  Simple, too – just three ingredients + decorating candies (nonpareils)!   In all of the posts I found around the internet, none used vanilla, but they screamed vanilla to me, so mine have four ingredients + nonpareils 🙂   My little brigadeiros are not quite traditional, but they sure are good!

The other thing I noticed is that many of the recipes around the web had very little cocoa.  2 tablespoons, 3 tablespoons.  Ummm.  I guess I’m a chocoholic ’cause that’s not much at all to me.  Eight tablespoons, which is what ATK used did seem a bit much to me so I guess there are even chocolatier chocoholics out there.  I put in 7.  You could get away with 6, but I wouldn’t drop it much more or you may as well scoop the sweetened condensed milk right out of the can and into your mouth 🙂

Something else widely noted was that The United States’ version of sweetened condensed milk isn’t as sweet as that found in Brazil.  wow.  I have a sweet tooth, but I cannot imagine using something even sweeter.  If you’d like, using Nestle’s Quick chocolate drink mix was suggested in several recipes instead of cocoa to make up for the less sweet condensed milk we have.  I did not do this as they are plenty sweet to me.

I also added more butter for a creamier candy, and used natural cocoa instead of Dutch processed, so in the end, I tweaked this quite a bit, but I think you’ll like it.

ok.  enough background info.  Grab a can of sweetened condensed milk, some cocoa powder (regular, natural cocoa, not Dutch processed), some butter, and your vanilla and let’s get to this!

Ingredients:

1 can ( 14 oz, 397 g) sweetened condensed milk (_not_ evaporated milk)

7 tablespoons (40 g) natural cocoa powder (Penzeys is wonderful!)

1/2 stick (2 oz, 57 g) butter

1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla

Directions:

1) Cut up the butter a bit and put it in a small saucepan on medium-low heat along with the condensed milk and cocoa powder.

2) Keep stirring until you think your arm’s going to fall off, occasionally swiping a rubber spatula down the middle to see if it leaves a path.  Once it does, remove the mixture from the heat and stir in the vanilla.  This will take about 15-20 minutes.

3) Pour the mixture into a buttered 8″ x 8″ (20 cm x 20 cm) glass dish and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

4) After 30 minutes, pull it out and scoop the mixture into little balls using either your fingers or a small spoon and your thump to scoop it off.

5) Roll into small balls and roll the balls into nonpareils.  You could include various colorful ones and chocolate shot, or a mixture thereof.

Enjoy!

Frosty the Fudgeman

Hi Blog!  I’ve missed you 😦  Let’s make some fudge shall we?  I have a recipe that was handed down from my Grandma to my Mom to me.  I’ve been making it since I was about 9 years old.  It’s quick, easy, creamy, and delicious.  Don’t have a candy thermometer?  No worries; you can still do this.

A word of caution.  While I started making this as a kid, please please please supervise closely if you are allowing your kid to make this.  I recommend making it yourself first, so you know what to expect.  Sugar burns are nasty.  Please be very, very careful. Also note, this pot is heavy when you pour it out; you’re pouring 3-1/2 pounds of fudge. Doesn’t sound like a lot of weight, but it sure feels it when you’re holding the pot in one hand and and scraping it out with the other.  Rest it on a hot mat if you need to.  And if you want seven pounds of fudge?  Don’t double it; make it twice.

Another word of caution.  It’s addictive 🙂

Here’s all you need:

Update: Be sure to check your labels to confirm all items are gluten-free if you are gluten intolerant!

semi-sweet chocolate chips, milk chocolate candy bars (It originally called for three 5-cent Hershey bars.  They’re a bit more expensive now :)), marshmallow creme, evaporated milk, and sugar:

oh, and a marble slab or plastic mold and some butter to coat.  If you don’t have these, then a cookie sheet or regular casserole dish will work just fine.

A candy thermometer will be handy to have, but is not an absolute necessity.  If you don’t have one, grab a clear glass and fill it with ice cold water.

Let’s talk candy cooking stages for a moment.  You’re going to put the milk and sugar into a large sauce pot and cook it for about ten minutes, bringing it to a stage of boiling called “soft ball” stage.  This is because when you drop a bit of this mixture into cold water, it will literally form a soft ball.  It will be 234 F (112 C) on your thermometer.  My thermometer says 240 F (116 C) is soft ball stage.  If yours does, too, ignore it or you’ll have grainy fudge.  Initially the milk and sugar mixture does nothing, and stays that way.  Then all of a sudden it decides it’s time to boil and and will look like this…

And it will rise. Fast.

See how it rose about an inch and is more golden colored?  Once it gets here, it will stay here a few minutes.  Watch the thermometer crepe up.  Again, if you don’t have a thermometer, just test your mixture.  If your water is ice cold and the mixture goes splat, it has not cooked enough.  Wait a minute and try again.  You’ll eventually see it form a ball.  Put your fingers in and feel it; it will be squishy.  If you cook it a bit too long, it will form a hard ball (hard ball stage) and if you cook it a lot too long you’ll eventually reach hard crack stage where the mixture will literally spin a hair in the cold water.  This is peanut brittle, not fudge.

Once you’ve reached softball stage, you simply remove it from the heat, add the chocolates and marshmallow creme, stir and poor onto your slab or into your mold.  I buttered my mold and added confectioner’s sugar for ease of release and to make it look like Frosty 🙂

Stover’s Fudge

Update: Be sure to check your labels to confirm all items are gluten-free if you are gluten intolerant!

4-1/2 c. (855 g) white sugar

1 lg can (12 oz, 359 ml) evaporated milk     [_not_ sweetened condensed milk]

1 lg package (12 oz, 340 g) semi-sweet chocolate chips

3 milk chocolate bars [1.55 oz. (44 g) each for a total of 4.65 oz (132 g)]

1 jar marshmallow creme (7 oz, 198 g)

2 c. nuts, optional

Cook sugar and milk together until soft ball stage. (See notes above recipe for candy stages.)  Stir constantly or it will stick.  Remove from fire.  Add marshmallow creme, chocolate chips, chocolate bars, and nuts (if using).  Mix well and poor into buttered dishes.  Cool.

This cools really fast when you pour it onto a cool surface so don’t worry about it running over the edge of the slab.

To serve, I cut pieces as needed.  If you cut it in advance they’ll dry out.  For gift giving, cut off small sections and wrap in plastic wrap.

Enjoy!

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