Chocolate Blackout Cake

I'm always on the look out for REALLY good chocolate cake recipes, this one is brilliant.
I made it for my husbands birthday and the cake mix got the seal of approval from both me and my daughter while making it (it was hard putting it in the cake tin, we wanted to eat it all).

It was super easy and seemed to take being Gluten free really well as it already had lots of moisture.
I didn't have any buttermilk in so I did the old Milk and lemon juice trick and just upped the liquids a touch and added a tsp of Xanthan gum.

This will probably be my new go to recipe for chocolate cake - I was that impressed with it! (did I mention it was easy).

The chocolate pudding was pretty tasty but MESSY. I did the whole cover it in pudding and crumble a layer thing, and it just looked like a chocolate crumby messy blob. It wasnt attractive (so bad I didnt take a picture) so I think next time I shall use a different filling and definitely not do that crumb coating.
I think the pudding recipe will probably come in handy for something else I'm sure - my husband said he thought it tasted like really thick chocolate milkshake which I was taking for a good thing as he likes chocolate milkshake!

Gluten free Pancakes (crepe style)

So it was pancake day the other day and I meant to post this on the day, but I failed at both taking any photo's and actually finding time to post.

I made these crepes based on Tartelette's and they were AMAZING. I love that blog so much - she's a real foodie and un-comprimising on taste so I know when I take a look at one of her recipes they are always going to be great, not just OK but great and I wasnt disapointed with these :)

So I made mine with honey baked pears - which were scrummy, I also had lemon and sugar, maple syrup, and Nutella. I was stuffed.

I have also discovered that my ideal balance of Sorghum flour to Doves GF Plain flour is about 15% - any more than that and the taste is too much, and they are too heavy for me but 15% seems jut perfect in terms of flavour and texture.

210g GF plain flour
40g Sorghum flour
pinch of salt
500g whole milk
3 eggs
15g Butter (melted)
125g Sparkling water

Stick blend everything together until smooth and let rest for at least 1hr (or overnight). Cover the bottom of a frying pan and then cook 2mins each side.

I'm pretty sure this will also make good Yorkshire puds and/or batter to cover things to fry although I havnt actually tried yet but it's definately going to be my go-to recipe from now on.

February - So many cakes so little time!

I've been baking I promise!

Things have been busy, we're getting a new garage, the baby is less baby and more toddler it feels a bit like I've short cricuited recently but I'm still working on things. I'm trying to write things out so eventually I'll have a lovely book that will be organised and make sense. It's a dream (;

So things I have learnt recently? That Gram flour doesnt work in very plain tasting cakes, you can definately taste it as something that just isn't right. It's been annoying me, I'm far too particular but it does seem like if the recipe is suitably enriched with eggs that actually it doesnt seem to matter too much as long as you've still got the xanthan gum in and you give it some time to 'rest' you're getting the extra protien in the eggs and it seems to balance out ok.

This week I'll try making pound cake again, but without the Gram flour.

Last week I made oreo's. I cant tell you how happy it made me I had to send off for some special cocoa powder, black cocoa is basically impossible to get a hold of for some reason but Hershey's special dark is good. It's not perfect but it's pretty close. The bit I was most excited about was getting a biscuit that wasnt shortbread. Custard creams might be next on the biscuit list. But yeah, biscuits that CRUNCH and don't just crumble when you look at it. I was pretty happy, if you use normal cocoa it might not taste quite as 'mellow' but they will still be really good I promise. Also brilliant Brownies that are also pretty frugal (well they don't use real chocolate that makes them a bit frugal, ahem except for the whole block of butter).

So recipes!

Yorkshire puddings

I messed around with the yshire pud recipe and it just wasnt working out for me again. I have some kind of yorkshire pudding curse I think. I'll keep working on it but this was the one I had most success with.

200g GF Plain flour
1tsp Legume Flour (Gram)
1tsp xanthan Gum
1/2tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
150ml milk
150ml Sparkling water
2 eggs
2 egg whites 
Oil or vegetable shortening or lard

Sieve dry ingrediants into a bowl.
Combine milk and eggs and egg whites. Add the sparkling water.
Add Liquid ingrediants to the dry, whisking until a smooth batter is formed.
Rest for 20mins.
Heat oven to 220C, Add oil to tray and heat for 10mins.
Ladle into tins and bake for 10mins turn temp down to 180C bake for another 20mins.

I think next time I'll skip the legume flour and just go with 5 whole eggs.

Chocolate Muffins

These chocolate muffins cake out pretty good:

Chocolate Muffins

150g Plain GF Flour
10g legume flour
4g Xanthan gum
1tsp Baking powder
200g light brown sugar
200g baking margerine (or room temp butter)
4 eggs
50g cocoa powder
150g Milk
100g chocolate chips or chocolate bar chopped into small (5mm) pieces.

Sift flours, gum and baking powder together and put to one side.
Using electric whisk mix sugar and margerine until pale and fluffy, add eggs and whisk until combined.
Add cocoa powder and whisk until combined.
Add milk and combine, and flour mix and whisk until smooth.
Stir in chocolate chips/chunks and divide into cupcake tray lined with paper cases.
Bake for 14mins 200C.

I did these Blueberry ones too but they were too oily and I think next time I wouldnt use the Gram flour there is enough egg in the recipe to skip it I think, I've done some before and they were lovely so Im not sure where I went wrong but I'll have another go sometime soon and amend it:

Gluten Free Blueberry Muffins

100g Olive Oil
150g Sugar
3 Eggs
75g Milk
1tsp Vanilla extract
150g Plain Gluten Free Flour
7g Gram Flour
3g Xanthan gum
1tsp Baking powder
100g Blueberrys (fresh or frozen)

Pre-heat oven to 200C
In a bowl mix oil, sugar, egs, milk and vanilla together until combined.
Sift the flour, gram flour, xanthan gum and baking powder into the bowl and mix together until smooth.
Mix in blueberrys and leave to stand for 15mins.
Bake for 14mins.

These are just SO GOOD. Seriously good.

Brownies (tray bake tin)
250g Butter
250g Sugar
100g Cocoa powder
pinch of salt
1tsp vanilla extract
5 eggs
50g Milk
130g GF flour
3g Xanthan Gum
4g Legume Flour
Optional: 140g Chopped walnuts

Melt butter, sugar, salt and cocoa together either in a bowl over gently simmering water or in a microwave (20secs, stir then 20secs more stir and check if any further time is required).
The chocolate mix should look gritty, but all the butter should be melted.
With an electric mixer add eggs, vanilla and milk until combined. Then sift in the flour, xanthan gum, and legume flour and mix until smooth batter. Stir in nuts if desired.
Bake in oven for 25mins at 160C.



Oreo style cookies
150g Vegetable shortening
200g Sugar
200g GF flour
4g xanthan gum
6g Legume flour
90g Hersheys Special dark cocoa powder (or green and blacks cocoa powder)
1 egg
80g milk
1/2tsp salt
1/4tsp baking soda

Cream sugar and shortening.
Add egg, and milk and cocoa powder.
Sift together flour, xanthan gum, legume flour and add along with salt and baking soda.
Mix until combined, divide into 4 and leave to chill in fridge for 30mins.
Roll each ball out inbetween two pieces of greaseproof paper about 3mm thick. Cut out disks of about 4cm wide.
Bake for 12mins at 160C, leave to cool then bake again 40mins at 100C (to make them crunchy).

GF Pasties

So with the xmas leftovers I made pasties and had a go at making some pastry. I should have used more gravy but they were ok - the pastry I used however tasted like Shortbread. Which was a bit wierd. I used half butter half vegetable shortening and the texture was really good, it was really easy  to roll out so I think it will make a brill pastry for sweet things like tarts and next time I will try using all Vegetable shortening and roll it out a bit thinner and see if that tastes less like Shortbread!!

I'll post the recipe for that when I'm happier with it.

Fizzy Pop cake

So for xmas I needed a cake for after dinner, I ran out of time I wasnt sure what to make so I went with Delia Smiths Chocolate Stout cake recipe and changed it to use cola instead - because that was all I had. It was good.

Then in a moment of madness I amended it again and made it with Lemonade. And it was GOOD. Felt like I had achieved something worthwhile!

So here are the recipes (makes enough for 12 good sized cupcakes or 2 small round cakes):

Chocolate Cola Cake:

180g Plain GF flour
40g Chocolate powder
100g Baking Marg or softened Butter
10g Gram (Besan) Flour
4g Xanthan Gum
1tsp Baking powder (heaped)
3 eggs
200g Brown Sugar
200ml Cola

Cream together sugar and marg. Add eggs. Sift flour, gram flour, xanthan gum and baking powder into mix, and fold in. Mix a little cola with the cocoa powder into a paste, then gradually add the rest of the cola and slowly mix together. Add this mix in stages to the dry ingrediants until combined.
Pour into baking tins and let sit for 15mins.
Bake 17mins and 200C.

Lemonade Cake:

200g Plain GF flour
100g Baking Marg or softened Butter
10g Gram (Besan) Flour
4g Xanthan Gum
1tsp Baking powder
3 eggs
200g Sugar
200ml Lemonade

Cream together sugar and marg. Add eggs. Sift flour, gram flour, xanthan gum and baking powder into mix, and fold in. Add Lemonade mix together until combined.
Pour into Baking tray and let sit for 15mins.
Bake 17mins and 200C.

You could swap the cola for Dr pepper or Dandelion and Burdock or Cherry Cola, and the lemonade for almost any fizzy pop. Make sure if the pop you are using has sweeteners in it that they are heat stable - do your own research! (eg I think that Sucralose might be OK but Aspartame may not be so good - this link may help).

I decided to write a book about everything I'm playing with - I'll still put up the recipes on here though because I'm nice like that - but hopefully when I'm done the book will make more sense and be easier to read.

Recognisable Bread! Yorkshire puddings and other stuff

So I seem to have been have some bad making Mojo recently, I recognise my brain isnt really in the right place and so my baking has been suffering - HOWEVER I did make the closest thing the bread I have yet using Richard Coppedge's recipe (they were SO CLOSE, fluffy on the inside with a really good crust like a baguette but I didnt keep them in the oven long enough and they were a bit soggy still inside).

Also I made the most amazing coffee cream puffs ever. I kept checking the flour because they were so good, and didnt taste GF.
So good infact I forgot to take photo's of them. I'll make some more and post pics later along with the recipe.

Made some pretty decent Yorkshire puddings too, but I think I can improve on them so I'll do some more tweaks before I post that.

I did try and make a pizza base using the bread recipe, but I messed up the order of ingredients and while they didnt come out bad when I pre-baked them, the bases ended up really soggy when I put toppings on. So I need to look into how to avoid that.

So anyway - I just need to persevere and get my head back in the kitchens space these recipe have so much potential (preferably before I go broke from buying so much GF flour!!).
I decided to buy his book from 2008, knowing that the flour blend he uses is a bit out of date BUT his techniques are where it's at and I wanted to see what other interesting ways of doing things he's got. He's got a new book out next year which I might get as well depending on how things go to keep myself updated with how he's doing things.
I nearly died when I opened it - there's recipes for stollen, and doughnuts, sandwich bread, puff pastry. The new year is going to be full of fatty delicious foods by the looks of it! very excited to have a go with it all.

Testing testing - Gluten Free Pancakes.

So this is a bit later than I'd hoped, partly because Asda had run out of the GF flour and partly because I had a stomach bug. No one want panckes made when you've been ill!.

So Step one:
Time to adjust my trusty Doryaki recipe. I choose this recipe because I know it works and makes lovely pancakes with normal flour. Basically it's a lovely soft sweet scotch pancake - fingers crossed it still will be when we're finished!

4 Medium eggs
60g Sugar
60g Honey
1 tsp Baking soda, dissolved in 1 tbsp water
240g GF flour (Doves Farm Plain)
9g Gram Flour
8g powdered egg white
3g xanthan gum
40ml Corn/Sunflower oil
80ml Milk
60-80ml Milk
So the orginal recipe uses 30ml of milk and from what we know about GF flour we-re going to need more as it's thirsty Richard Coppedge recipe 3/4 (around 180ml) milk but uses less eggs.
As a rough guide I tend to add around 2tbsp (30ml) more fluid per 100g GF flour so we're looking at possibly an extra 60-80ml milk maybe we'll see how the batter looks and if we need to add a bit more.

Lucky me when I ordered the Gram flour from Asda what I got was exactly what I wanted - Besan Flour which is a combination of Chana Dal and Yellow pea!

From what I worked out last time, for the whole recipe we'll need around 9g Gram Flour, 8g powdered egg white, and 3g xanthan gum and all I'm going to do is add the gram flour and egg white to the flour and mix it gently with a hand whisk and I'll add the xanthan gum in with the 80ml milk to let it's do it's work as a hydro-colloid (lightly whisking with a fork to incorporate at first - it'll look a bit gunky after it's rested for a while, give it a quick stir before adding it in) - I'm going to add that bit of the milk to the mix before letting it rest (remember thirsty flour!)

Wow! It looks like a stretchy dough at this stage! That's pretty interesting something is definitely doing it's job pretending to be Gluten in this.

We're still going to let is rest, so the the flours have a chance to soak up some moisture. I'm then use the 60-80ml to loosen up the dough to make it a looser batter to fry, it needs to be runny enough to fall off the spoon but thick enough to keep a bit of shape (a lot is down to personal preference anyway so make it to the thickness you want!)

The mix didn't flatten quite a well as I'd hoped and was making quite chunky pancakes so I used the back of a spoon to help smooth it out a bit - this seemed to work pretty well. You need to be very careful with the heat of the frying pan, too hot and they will just burn, you want a pretty low heat 2 or 3 on mine works about right for me, but I had mine too high to start with and they ended up burnt.
If you want to pipe pancake shapes/patterns this batter will be pretty good.

Mine tasted off...so off in fact I decided I better check my ingredients and discovered my oil was out of date by about 6months (this is what happens when you have a baby). Gross.

Apart from their rancid taste - the pancake texture and colour was really good so I will try again but with different oil next time!!