Spiced Ginger Pear Muffins Gluten-Free

Spiced Ginger Pear Muffins (Gluten-Free)

I love Costco. That love, however, means that I tend to have large quantities of fruits and vegetables, all the time. Today, I have pears. I love pears! 

Apparently, I am feeling affectionate for many things today.

But, my pears are not going to last very much longer. Therefore, I decided to try and create a new recipe using up these delightful pears, before they go bad.

A few hours later, which included a trip to Target during the Christmas week rush, because I ran out of eggs, I have created a gluten-free recipe for muffins.

Don't run out of eggs on Christmas week. #holidayhappiness??

A photo posted by Mary Opatz (@meogto) on Dec 21, 2016 at 9:08am PST

Sadly, when I was at Target, I thought I was working on a cookie recipe. Now, I have to go BACK to Target and get some muffin cups to bake these up*.

Baking them up without the muffin cups has been successful. Natalie exact words were, "I can't believe I have eaten three of these, already!"

*We tried making these up as mini muffins in muffin liners, but the dough is just too sticky to remove from such a small muffin liner so we ended up using a mini loaf pan with 8 mini loafs per pan, and it worked great.

Spiced Ginger Pear Muffins (Gluten-Free)

INGREDIENTS

1 cups all purpose gluten-free flour

1⁄2 cup oat flour

2 cups rolled oats

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup raw sugar

1/3 cup white sugar

1⁄2 cup dairy-free butter

1 1⁄2 cups chopped pears (2 large pears gave me just a smidge over 1 1/2 cups)

1/4-1/2 teaspoon lemon juice (to keep pears from browning)

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon zanthan gum

1⁄2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoon cinnamon

2 teaspoon ginger

Raw sugar, for topping

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 F degrees.

Peel fresh, ripened pears and purée them in a food processor. If you do not have a food processor, grate them up with a cheese grater or chop them into ¼ inch squares. Smaller, if possible. Add lemon juice to bowl, and stir to cover all of the pears.

You can use canned pears if fresh pears are unavailable.

Drain out excess liquid just before adding to sugar mixture. I used a strainer lined with a coffee filter to drain excess liquid from my puréed pears.

Beat egg and dairy-free butter together in large bowl or stand mixer. Add raw sugar and blend until well mixed. Add puréed or chopped pears and continue blending on medium. Add vanilla.

Separately, mix all purpose gluten-free flour, baking soda and salt together. Add rolled oats to dry ingredients. 

Beat dry ingredients into pear mixture. Mix until well combined.

Fill muffin tin level with top of pan. Oil pan if not using muffin liners.

Sprinkle top of muffins with raw or decorator sugar, if desired.

Bake for 27-30 minutes. Cool in pan for a few minutes and then move to cooling rack to finish cooling.

Makes about 1 dozen muffins.

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Gluten-Free Bread

Soft Gluten-Free Bread 

The past several days have been filled with the excitement of a brand new grandbaby! We are also dealing with finals week and, of course, the hectic rush of the Holiday season.

Still, in amongst all of the crazy, I need to have real food to eat. So, today, we are baking up some bread. Just bread. 
  
Hoping for the best.*

*As luck would have it, we had to leave home just as this bread was due to be taken out of the oven. It baked for 35 minutes, with the last 5 being covered with aluminum foil to prevent over browning. 

The internal temperature reached 175 degrees. I would have liked to see it reach at least 200 degrees, but we did not have time to wait for that due to an unexpected family issue.

The taste is amazing. The almond milk gives it a slightly sweet, nutty flavor, but still keeps it in the sandwich bread zone. The texture, though, is very reminiscent of a banana bread. Extremely moist and dense.

I believe this is partially due to the use of 4 egg yolks in place of the normal two whole eggs. Because I like the flavor of the bread so much, I think I will try making it with two whole eggs and see what that does to the density.

Gluten-Free Bread 

INGREDIENTS:

3 Cups all purpose gluten-free flour

1½ teaspoons xanthan gum

1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons lemon juice

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

4 egg yolks 

1½ cups almond milk

¼ cup honey

1 packet dry active yeast

INSTRUCTIONS:

Makes 9" x 5" Loaf 

Using measuring cup, measure out almond milk and warm in microwave for approximately 45 seconds, less if milk is not refrigerated. Milk should be warm but not hot to the touch.Hot milk will kill yeast; cold milk will not activate it. 

Add honey to warmed almond milk and stir, then add yeast. Yeast last. Set aside and allow yeast to rise for about 10 minutes.

Mix all purpose gluten-free flour, baking powder and salt together in small bowl.

Separate egg yolks from egg whites and add yolks to bowl of stand mixer. Add lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil. Using the the paddle attachment, blend wet ingredients just until combined. 

Add yeast mix and blend, again.

While mixer runs on low, add flour. Once all of the flour is added, turn up to on medium-high and beat for another 3 to 5 minutes.

Prepare your bread pan while the dough mixes. Because this is gluten-free dough, it is hard to over beat this mixture.

We sprayed the 9x5 pan with olive oil spray because EASY, and then we floured the pan and dumped out the extra, obviously gluten-free, flour into the sink. 

This dough is sticky, but has that nice yeasty bread smell! Using a spatula, notice our cute Holiday design, scrape dough into the bread pan. We needed the spatula and a few fingers to convince this gooey sticky dough to go where we wanted it to go.

Now is the time to preheat your oven to 375 degrees. This allows your bread dough to rise on top of the stove while the oven heats up. We allowed 40 minutes for our bread to rise and it did not quite get to the top of the pan.

Bake for 35-40 minutes. 

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Jam-filled Thumbprint Cookies (Gluten-Free)

Jam-filled Thumbprint Cookies (Gluten-Free)

Yesterday was our peanut butter and jelly baking day. A few days ago I used Target's Cartwheel to get 25% off of their Market Pantry Jam. With a new jar of jam, I need a recipe to make use of this new bargin. 

Having never made Thumbprint Cookies before, I was not expecting to like them, but these are really good! Good enough, that I had to go back and write down the recipe, since I was just throwing ingredients into the bowl rather haphazardly.

But, I am actually going to make this recipe, again!

These cookies are soft and chewy. They remind me very much of the cookies that are sold by Knott's Berry Farm. 

Having made them, now, I am thinking they would also work well with apple jelly and the addition of 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. Perhaps, that will be the next version I make of these Jam-filled Thumbprint Cookies.

Ingredients:

2 cups fine milled almond flour

1/2 cup all purpose gluten-free flour

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup coconut oil

1 large egg or 2 egg yolks (for people allergic to egg whites)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup favorite jam

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

I made this recipe late in the day, after baking for hours. Therefore, I just threw all of the ingredients into the stand mixture. This avoided multiple bowls and allowed me to clean and make the dough at the same time.

To begin with, I put the almond flour in and let the mixer beat out the lumps. Then, I added the all purpose gluten-free flour. While these two flours blended, I straightened up a day’s worth of baking in my kitchen.  I put the sugar, baking powder and salt into mixer while it continued to spin away.

Without ever turning mixer off, I added the egg and vanilla and finally the coconut oil. The oil was added ¼ cup at a time. This makes for a very damp, oily dough.

Roll the dough into 1" balls and place on cookie sheet with parchment paper. Again, your hands will get very oily.

Yes, these are ‘thumbprint’ cookies, but I use a small spoon to make an indentation in the center of each cookie for the jam, halfway down or a bit more. Remember, oily. The spoon works great! Then, reform the cookie into a more even ball shape, as they tend to crack when you make the indentation.

Fill up the center of each cookie with about a 1/2 teaspoonful of your favorite jam. It is probably not a good idea to lick the spoon after filling each cookie, because even though the cookies will be baked, but the jar of jam will be filled with all of those germs. (This is my own personal reminder!)

Bake for 10 minutes. The cookies should be lightly brown on bottom.

Let cookies cool on pan for a few minutes or they will crumble apart, then remove to a wire rack and cool completely.

Makes about 30 cookies.

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Sage dressing with sausage, onions and celery -- gluten-free

Sage dressing* with sausage, onions and celery -- gluten-free

As I work on dressing for tonight's dinner, I am also waiting to hear from my daughter about the birth of my new granddaughter. Perhaps that is what has given me more creative energy than on a typical day. 

The kids are joining us for a post Thanksgiving dinner which will be followed up by an evening of Christmas light viewing up at the local Light Show on Thoroughbred Ave. 

As I made up my typical batch of dressing, I realized I really did not want to get sick again, I like I did last week, on Thanksgiving, when I consumed all of the regular wheat and dairy foods. So, in addition to making dressing for everyone else, I decided to make a batch just for me.

My daughter, who is currently busy with all of the baby business, sent me a recipe for gluten-free dressing a few weeks before Thanksgiving. While the recipe is somewhere within the depths of my phone, I do remember the most important part: cut loaf of gluten-free bread into cubes and toast into stuffing 'mix'. That is where I am beginning.

Once I have the bread all cut into perfect bread cubes, I use extra virgin olive oil to oil a cookie sheet. 

Then, I spread the 'croutons' out upon the oil and lightly oil the tops of the croutons, as well. lightly toss the cubes until coated with oil. Then, using powdered sage or poultry seasoning, salt and pepper, season the croutons. Toss, again.

Put pan into pre-heated 350 degree oven. Bake for 10 minutes. Pull out and stir. Bake for another 10 minutes. Stir again. Bake for another 5 to 10 minutes until nice and crunchy.

I am using the mixings, I reserved from making my regular batch of dressing, to mixing into my baked stuffing croutons. They include Jimmy Dean's Regular Breakfast Sausage, celery, red and white onions. In the past, I have always made my dressing with butter, lots and lots of butter. This year, I used only extra virgin olive oil for all of my frying of vegetables and mixing in to flavor the chicken broth for basting our turkey. 

Because I poured my 'hot' croutons straight from the cookie sheet into a glass bowl, I put a metal spoon into the bowl first, to dissipate the heat and keep the bowl from cracking. Then, I added my sausage and veggie mixture.

Finally, I added chicken stock which has been heated up in the same pan I fried both the meat and the vegetables. This gets all of the tasty dripping from the bottom of the pan, and the heat helps the moisture soak into the croutons. The croutons should get enough moisture to begin to soften, but not be soggy.

At this point, you can add more sage and salt and pepper to taste.

Put into bread loaf pan that has been oiled with extra virgin olive oil and cover with foil. Bake 30 minutes. Remove foil for last 10 minutes for crunchier top.

INGREDIENTS

4 cups gluten free croutons  (loaf of gluten-free bread)
1/2 cup sausage
1 stalk celery
1/4 white onion
1/4 red onion
1-1/2 cups chicken stock
2 teaspoons sage powdered (this is to taste)
salt
pepper
extra virgin olive oil

*A fact I sadly did not know for most of my adult life: The difference between dressing and stuffing is dressing never gets 'stuffed' inside of a bird, turkey or otherwise. And, since I don't like to stuff my birds, since it slows down the cooking process, I guess I ALWAYS make DRESSING.

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Lemon Orange Zest Snowballs - Gluten Free

Lemon Orange Zest Snowballs - Gluten Free 

It has been a while since I added any new recipes to this blog. With the Holidays quickly approaching, I am well aware that all of my cookie recipes are filled with butter, wheat, eggs and deliciousness. 

Basically meaning, I can't use any of them. In the weeks since I last put up any recipes, I learned that wheat and dairy products are really bad for me. That, and sesame. Cheating on Thanksgiving put me in bed for three days. 

But, things like eggs and peanut butter, I have a little bit more wiggle room. So, today, I am going to work on a recipe that has egg white in it. My plan is to only use a little of certain ingredients, here and there, and substitute in places where it works easily. Or at least easier.

Lemon is one of my favorite flavors, so I have been looking at many recipes over the past several weeks. This is what I have developed from putting several different ideas together. This recipe has no butter or oil, only almond flour and other basic ingredients.

And, in typical fashion, I have lemon juice, but no lemons, so I am going to use orange zest instead of lemon zest. That way, not only do I get zest, I get to eat the fresh orange. Citrus season in California is fabulous.

These cookies turned out delicious! This is definitely a recipe to be repeated!

Ingredients

2 large egg whites

2 cups fine milled almond flour

1 cup white sugar

1 large orange zested (orange for snacking)

3 cranks of Himalayan pink salt mill or 1/8 teaspoon

2 Tablespoons lemon juice

powdered sugar to roll cookies before baking

Directions 

Preheat oven to 350°F 

Line cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Start beating egg whites at medium speed in stand mixer until soft peaks form or use an electric hand mixer until the same soft peaks occur.  In separate bowl, mix almond flour and white sugar with a fork. Stir out majority of lumps from almond flour. Mix orange zest, lemon juice and salt into flour mixture. Add to egg mixture in two batches. Beat on medium until combined. Dough will be sticky.

Roll dough into 1 1/2 tablespoons size balls, and then roll them in the powdered sugar. Place cookies on parchment papered cookie sheet. Cookies do not spread, so as long as they don't touch, you can put them close together. 

This batch makes about a dozen and a half cookies, so depending on size of your pan, you could possibly bake entire batch at one time.

Bake for 15 to 16 minutes. The bottoms of the cookies will be lightly browned. Cool slightly then remove from baking sheet to keep cookies from over-browning. 

Cookies will have a firm outer edge and soft gooey middle. Because of soft nature, they are best when eaten within a couple of days.

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Sunflower Seed Butter 'Puppy Chow'

Sunflower Seed Butter 'Puppy Chow'

Recipe:

1/2 cup of soy free smart and balance butter

1 cup of sunflower seed butter

1 cup of chocolate chips*

1 box 12 oz box of Crispex**

2 cups of powdered sugar 

additional 1 1/3 cups of powdered sugar

Directions:

Stir dairy free butter, sunflower seed butter and chocolate chips together in glass or microwave safe bowl. Heat at 30 second intervals. Remove bowl and stir in between each 30 seconds.  

Be careful, bowl and chocolate mixture will get hot. Continue until soft and gooey. Do not over heat chocolate or it will burn. It should take only about 2 or 3 times.

Pour box of cereal into large (unscented and new/clean) garbage type bag. Pour warm melted chocolate mixture over cereal in bag. Close up bag and gently shake and roll bag around in your hands to coat the cereal completely with the chocolate. 

When completely coated, but still warm and gooey, add in two cups of powdered sugar. close up bag again and roll around in your hand, being sure to get powdered sugar through out the entire bag. Gently break apart any clumps with crushing the cereal pieces. Set aside.

Add an additional 1 1/3 cups of powdered sugar after it has cooled. Wait at least 10 to 15 minutes to give the 'Puppy Chow' a nice white coating. Store in an airtight container.

*Be sure to choose dairy-free cocolate ships if you want this recipe to be dairy-free.
 **Crispix is NOT labeled as gluten-free, though they have discontinued using barley malt in the ingredients and now use brown rice syrup, which is gluten-free. It is still processed in a facility that also processes gluten and have not tested Crispix to determine its gluten-free status. There are not, however, any gluten ingredients listed in the cereal, itself. 

Both Rice and Corn Chex are gluten-free and can be substituted for the Crispix cereal. Add about 6 cups of each cereal for the recipe.

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Chocolate Suncheroos

We have worked on this recipe for a while now. After having many attempts turn out very flat and overly chewy, we have cut back on the amount of sunflower butter and used a smaller pan for our bars. 

Perhaps the reason it took so many attempts was because we usually make our  crispie rice bars with sugar and corn syrup. But, we thought we would start simple and go from there. A month and 6 pans of bars later, we have a tasty peanut-free, dairy-free treat.

Chocolate Suncheroos (Sunflower Seed Butter Crispy Rice Bars)

Ingredients:

2 Tablespoons dairy free butter 

1/2 cup sunflower seed butter

1 bag large marshmallows 

6 cups gluten free crispie rice cereal link

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips*

1/4 cup butterscotch chips*

Directions:

Line 9" x 9" baking pan with aluminum foil. Spray with oil.

In a saucepan over medium/low heat, melt dairy free butter. Add marshmallows. Stir until melted. Remove from heat, and stir in sunflower seed butter. Mix in the rice cereal until evenly coated. Press the mixture into the prepared pan.

In a glass bowl in the microwave, melt the chocolate and butterscotch chips for 30 to 45 seconds. Stir. Heat another 15 seconds if needed. Stir again until smooth. Spread over the top of crispie rice bars. 

Chill until set and cut into bars or eat while warm and gooey.

*It is possible to order both dairy-free chocolate chip and butterscotch chips from Amazon. You can purchase dairy-free semi sweet chocolate chips from Ghirardelli retail locations, but the semi sweet chocolate chips from local grocery stores are NOT dairy free.

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Chocolate Coconut Barley Cake

Today, I thought I would try something completely on my own. Since it's Thursday**, Natalie is off at school for the whole day. That leaves me in the kitchen alone. I have this bag of barley flour that has remained unopened since we bought it. So, I thought it was time to try a NOT gluten-free recipe. This one is starring Chocolate, of course.



**Now that it is Friday, we are, of course, reworking the recipe. The original recipe attempt is way down at the bottom of this post. While the cake has a nice sweet chocolaty favor, it is very dry and crumbly. This seems to be a problem with anything we bake without wheat flour. 



It also lacks that coconutty flavor that I thought would come through from the oil and the coconut milk. Since the coconut flavor is buried beneath the chocolate cocoa flavor, we are adding an extra pop with unsweetened coconut. The one thing the cake is, is sweet, so we don't want to add anymore sugar. Thus, the UN-sweetened coconut.

We added a starch to our flour to try and work on the crumbly texture, along with coconut creme, instead of coconut milk. Additionally, we increased the amount of oil in the cake. We did this mostly to offset the addition of moisture the shredded coconut would remove from the cake. 

Finally, we are playing around with mayonnaise and egg yolks, trying to find a good balance to replace the missing egg whites from the dough.

To keep this cake moist, we are also cutting down the baking time to around thirty minutes. And, finally, I am going to try an old baking trick I haven't done in years. By using two inch strips of towel, or terry cloth, soaked in water and pinned around the edges of the cake pan, the cake will bake more evenly, keeping the edges of the cake from cooking faster than the center. 

Adding the shredded coconut gives it a nice nutty coconut punch. This is a denser cake that reminds me of Hostess Sno Balls. I have always loved those, so I think this is a fabulous thing. That is also why we are going to work on making a marshmallow frosting to go with this recipe, next.

Chocolate Coconut Barley Cake

Ingredients:

3 egg yolks

6 Tablespoons mayonnaise (yolk only type)

1 cup coconut oil melted

2 cups white sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 1/2 cups barley flour

½ cup potato starch

3/4 cup cocoa powder

½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 can coconut cream
1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Use 9" x 13" baking pan. Coat with nonstick spray.

Beat sugar, egg yolks, coconut oil and vanilla together until smooth and creamy. In separate bowl, stir barley flour together with cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt. A fork works well for this blending process. Add unsweetened coconut and stir until blended. 

Add the tablespoon of apple cider vinegar directly into the open can of coconut cream and stir together. Set aside for two to three minutes. This will create a mock dairy-free buttermilk for the cake.

Mix half of the dry flour mixture into the moist sugar mixture slowly. Add half of the coconut liquid sugar mixture while mixing. This works really well with a stand mixer. Or add liquid and then mix. Add rest of dry mixture and beat into moist sugar mixture and then finish up with rest of the coconut liquid. Blend until everything is well combined.

Pour batter into oiled pan and bake for 28-30 minutes. Cake is finished when  top springs back when lightly touched. 

Original attempt:
4 egg yolks

1/2 cup coconut oil melted

2 cups white sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 cups barley flour

3/4 cup cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 can coconut milk

1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar

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