Waffles - Gluten and Dairy Free style

Using a belgian waffle maker this recipe makes 12 full size waffles.  Enough for dinner, um I mean breakfast, with just a few to freeze.  The recipe can easily be halved.  I have never actually made this recipe with real buttermilk.  I always use the Coconut milk with vinegar.  These waffles easily pass as "real" waffles.
A tip: be sure to use Olive Oil to avoid waffles sticking to the waffle iron.

Waffles

6 eggs
3 1/2 cups Buttermilk (or ~2 tsp vinegar in measuring cup and fill to 3 1/2 cups with SoDelicious Unsweetened Coconut Milk)
3/4 cup Light Olive Oil

3 1/2 cups My GF Flour Blend (rice based, or no rice based)
4 tsp Baking Powder
2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp salt

Heat waffle irons, and cook until desired cripness.  Makes 12 waffles.

Gluten Free, Dairy Free Mock Tastycake Peanut Butter KandyKakes!!!

Yep, you know them. Those lovely peanut butter over yellow cake, chocolate covered goodies, packaged in twos, like little delicious hockey pucks.  If you are on a gluten and dairy free diet, these lovable little treats have been off limits.  No more!  The process is (can be) involved if you are looking for a replicate of the real deal. But, the result is amazing, if I do say so myself. These aren’t like “homemade gluten free” food. You all know what I mean. These are good! :)  and, they are gluten and dairy free.  They could even be peanut free if you used Sunbutter. 

To summarize the directions...make cake, bake cake, melt peanut butter over hot cake, freeze peanut butter covered cake, cut out circle shapes and freeze, dip bottoms in chocolate and cool, cover entire cake in chocolate and chill again. Then, admire the copy! :)

I used the Perfect Pound Cake recipe from Glutenfreeeasily.com with some modifications as the base for the cake part of the KandyKakes.

Gluten and Dairy free KandyKake cake recipe:

2 ¼ cup My GF Rice Free Flour mix (if you use another GF flour mix, be sure it has xanthan gum added.  Add 1 1/2 tsp xanthan gum to the recipe if your flour mix does not contain xanthan gum)
1 ¼ tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

¾ cup olive oil

1 ½ cups sugar
1 Tbs vanilla extract

3 large eggs
¾ cup SoDelicious Coconut Milk

½ cup Peanut Butter (or more!)
1 ½ bags Enjoy Life Mini Chips
1 tsp Spectrum Organic All Vegetable Shortening

Combine dry ingredients and set aside. Mix together Olive oil, sugar, sugar and vanilla extract. Add eggs one at a time mixing after each. Add milk and mix for 2 minutes, then gradually add dry ingredients. Pour batter into 12”x9” jelly roll pan (or any pan you can bake the cake in a thin layer). I actually had enough batter for the jelly roll pan and a mini-pound cake.

Bake at 350º for 35 minutes, testing with a toothpick.

While cake is still hot from the oven, carefully remove from pan onto parchment paper, and spread peanut butter over entire cake. The heat from the cake will make the peanut butter soft and very easy to spread. Once the peanut butter is spread evenly, freeze until the peanut butter is hard.

***This is where the magic happens. You have two options; make bar cookies, or make Kandy Kakes. I prefer to make the real thing, so I pulled out a small glass 2” diameter to use as a cutter to make the Kandy Kake shape. ***

Cut the circle shapes out and lay them out on a parchment covered cookie sheet. (just be sure you have space in your refrigerator or freezer for the pan!).

Use a double boiler or microwave to melt the chocolate chips and shortening until smooth. When the cake cutouts are cool and the chocolate is melted and smooth, bring the cake cutouts back out to put the first layer of chocolate on. Spread a thin layer of melted chocolate on the bottom of each cake layer (not the peanut butter side!). You can go ahead and put it peanut butter side down. When all the cutouts have their bottom side covered in chocolate, return the sheet to the refrigerator or freezer to cool the chocolate. The chocolate will change from shiny to matte when it is completely cool. When the chocolate cake cutouts are cool, bring them back out to do the final chocolate covering. There are several ways to do this. What I found worked best was to use the corner of a wire cooling rack. One at a time I set a cake cutout peanut butter side up and poured a little chocolate on top. Then, I shook the rack to completely cover the cutout. This will smooth out the chocolate and make it look real! When it is covered, place it back onto a parchment covered cookie sheet. Place the cookie sheet into the freezer for the final cooling of the chocolate.

What you have when you are done is a pretty good copy of the real thing, a Tastykake Peanut Butter Kandy Kake. If you ask me, it is definitely worth the effort to make the round shape. It is time consuming, but half of replicating the true Kandy Kake experience, is biting into it and seeing the layers covered in chocolate…which you just don’t get if you layer everything in a pan.

Were these a success? Definitely! My boys were raving over these! I have never seen them so excited and express so much appreciation for anything I have made before. That makes it worth every minute, and a success in my book. :)

Extra Thoughts:
* Using the EnjoyLife chocolate chips give it a dark chocolate flavor. Look for a DF milk chocolate for the milk chocolate taste.
* To get a more authentic peanut butter taste, I would use a more processed peanut butter product instead of natural peanut butter. Natural may be healthier, but really, are we going for healthy here? Honestly?
* You will have extra cake/peanut butter pieces after cutting out the circles.  One idea to use this extra cake material to make cakepops!  Crumble it all up, mix in vanilla icing, form balls, freeze and dip in chocolate.  Sounds like a sugar headache waiting to happen. :)

Ways to save

We are always searching for ways to save eating GF, right? I just stumbled across a few things that will decrease costs. :)

Newly diagnosed Celiacs are an amazing resource. Sometimes we get in a rut of what is known and reliable, whereas newbies are on the lookout everywhere. Thanks to one of these experiences I was able to get gluten free (GMO free too!) pasta for $2.00/pound. Seriously! Oh, and rice free too. Big Lots, of all places! Apparently, Big Lots carries all kinds if GF products. It is hit or miss, but I have seen Bob's Red Mills products and GF pasta. Worth swinging by there to see what they have. But, don't look for the pasta this week....I cleaned them out. (as I shirk behind my GF pasta stockpile. Hey, I have boys to feed.) :)

Another sah-weeeeet deal I found was on Amazon. Now, they may change this, but it is worth a shot. If you search for a Bob's Red Mill product, millet flour for example, look to the right of one of the pages to see a list of other sellers. There I saw that Millet Flour was less than $2 per bag from Vitacost. Plus, free shipping if you order $49 in products. Easy to meet the shipping minimum if you buy GF flour components in bulk like I do. Tapioca flour, potato starch, millet flour, sorghum flour, xanthan gum...they were all at least $1 cheaper than going directly to the Vitacost site. Makes no sense, but it works for me!

The final deal idea is going through LivingSocial.com and buying a $50 gift card to GlutenFreely.com which costs $25. Most of their stuff is more expensive than you can buy locally with coupons and sales (ie. Chex cereal), but if you are looking for Better Batter flour blend, it is a deal! $35 total for 12 1/2 lbs of flour. That is 5 of their 2.5 pound boxes. If you can eat rice flour based flour blends then give that deal a try. (if you can't eat rice flour, try my flour blend recipe and buy the ingredients from Amazon!)

More deals as I find them! :)

GF Bagels!!!!

Anyone that knows me knows how much I LOVE bagels.  In grad school, Sunday mornings before church consisted of stopping by the bagel shop for my chocolate chip bagel.  Then, after I graduated, I would stop by the bagel shop on my way to work for breakfast...a fresh, warm bagel.  Needless to say, a good bagel has been sadly missed.  But no more!  These bagels meet my criteria for "a real bagel" unlike any other GF bagel I have had.  I'm still tweaking, so I'll update this as I improve.  Since I said I'd post it, here it is...   Btw, that's an actual picture below!!!

GF Bagels

1 1/4 cup warm water
3/4 tsp active dry yeast
1 1/2 Tbs brown sugar
1 tsp salt
3 1/2 cups Jules Inspired Rice Free Gluten Free flour mix

Boiling solution:
4 cups warm water
2 T sugar
1 tsp molasses (not necessary, but might add some color)

1 egg white, beaten with a bit of water added

Easy Directions: Mix wets(water/yeast/sugar), mix drys(flour/salt), combine wets and drys together, beat until smooth, divide into 6 on floured surface, form bagels with floured hands, refrigerate overnight, boil in sugar water, brush with egg, bake and enjoy.

Detailed Directions:
- Measure warm water in a measuring cup, add yeast and brown sugar then whisk to combine and dissolve yeast and sugar.  Let rest to be sure yeast is active.
-Measure out flour and add salt.
-Pour water mixture into mixer bowl, add flour mixture and beat for 3 minutes (or until it is smooth).
-Lay out a sheet of parchment paper or plastic wrap, and heavily sprinkle with flour.  Put dough onto flour sprinkled sheet and fold over a few times to work it in.  It will be pretty sticky at this point. 
-Get a knife and cut (or mark) the dough into 6 even parts. 
-With floured hands, flop one part of the dough between your hands forming a ball.  Poke your finger through to make the bagel shape.  Make the hole larger than you want it to be in the end.  Remember, the dough will rise and the hole will shrink by more than half.
-Place bagels onto parchment lined cookie sheet.  You could even sprinkle with cornmeal.
-When all 6 bagels are on cookie sheet, cover with saran wrap and place sheet into refrigerator overnight.  Putting it into the refrigerator overnight helps it to rise slowly, but it also allows the next step to happen easily.
-In the morning, turn oven to 425 degrees, and boil 4 cups of water (or a small pan full) and sugar.  Adjust to low boil and slide bagels one or two at a time into the boiling water, allowing to boil for about 30 seconds on each side then return to parchment lined cookie sheet.  When all the bagels are returned to the cookie sheet, brush tops with egg whites and place bagels into preheated oven.
-Bake at 425 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until golden.
That's it!!! :)  Enjoy!!
They are wonderful with eggs for a breakfast sandwich, toasted with butter or jam, or just eaten plain.  They will stay fresh about as long as a "real" wheat-filled bagel.  (I didn't like stale wheat bagels so I always froze whatever I didn't eat...so I'll do the same with these).
Seriously, these are amazing!!!  Gluten free, dairy free, rice free....but every bit as tasty as the "real" thing. :)

*again, sorry for the poor picture. :)

Gluten Free Pretzel Bites!

Yet another food you've probably been craving; a good gluten free, chewy, soft pretzel. Here you go!  Necessity is the mother of invention yet again.

Thanks to Better Batter for their inspiration for this Auntie Anne's clone. I halved the recipe because I didn't want to use too much flour in case it didn't turn out. But they were wonderful! This quantity will make one cookie sheet full of pretzel bites...maybe about 25? Just a guess, I didn't count them before we ate them all.

I mixed up this dough and formed the pretzel bites before heading to bed. I put the cookie sheet of pretzel bites into the refrigerator to rise overnight. In the morning I ran the bites through the baking soda solution, and baked them. It was way easier to do it this way, than wait for them to rise.

One final note, I used the Jules flour recipe, but made my modifications to substitute Sorghum and Millet for the rice flour.  You'll see these changes reflected in the link to the flour blend recipe.  I have not tried my recipes with a rice based mix, so if you are using rice, you may have slightly different results. :)

Gluten Free Soft Pretzel Bites

1 1/4 cups warm water

1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast

1 tablespoons white sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 cups Jules Gluten Free Flour mix Flour, plus some for dusting surface

2 cups Warm Water

2 tablespoons baking soda

Instructions
-Put warm water and sugar in the bowl of your electric mixer; stirring to dissolve. Sprinkle the yeast on top and stir again. Let this sit for a few minutes to make sure the yeast is active (you'll see it 'grow' and 'move').
-Add salt and half the flour and beat on high for three minutes. Dough will be very sticky (that is good). Add remaining flour (about 1 1/2 cups) and stir in. Drop it onto a generously floured surface and very gently fold over on itself a few times. You're looking for a dough that you can form with effort, but not one that you add tons of flour to because sticky dough will lend itself to a lighter end product.
-Get a piece of dough the size of a lemon and roll it out into a long roll about 1/2" diameter. Use kitchen scissors to cut into pieces about 1" long. You could also form this into a traditional pretzel shape too; make a U, cross the ends over twice and lay ends back down on top of the U.
-Lay the pretzel pieces onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, cover with plastic wrap, and put in refrigerator overnight to rise.
-In the morning pull the pan out of the refrigerator, turn on oven to 450 degrees and prepart the baking soda mixture.
-Combine 2c water and 2T baking soda mixture in small pan and bring to a boil. Turn heat on baking soda mixture down to medium, and dip pretzels into baking soda solution for about 30 seconds. After dipping in solution, lay pretzels back onto parchment lined cookie sheet. At this point you can brush with egg to get a more shiny pretzel, and/or sprinkle with coarse salt (pretzel salt or kosher salt works).
-Bake in 450 oven for about 10 minutes or until golden.
Enjoy warm with a dip of mustard, or just eat plain. :)

**My appologies for the poor quality picture.  I took it very quickly this morning on a mobile device since the camera wasn't handy.  :)

Gluten Free, Allergen Free blogs

Here's another post listing blogs.  I'll add more as I gather them.


General Gluten Free recipe sites (paid), some free stuff though
http://www.glutenfreebaking.com/  (I subscribed to this one as the recipes turn out normal tasting! I love Elizabeth Barbone.)
http://allergyfreemenuplanners.com/  (menu planning help)
http://www.glutenfreecookingschool.com/

Gluten Free
http://www.thebakingbeauties.com/
http://www.elanaspantry.com/

Gluten and sugar free
http://networkedblogs.com/gPJ4a

This blog has an excellent list of other GF blogs on the right hand side of the page. :)
http://glutenagogo.blogspot.com/

other GF blogs
http://lifetastesgoodagain.blogspot.com/


On Facebook, friend
The National Foundation for Celiac Awareness
Jules Gluten Free Flour
Better Batter Gluten Free Flour
Karina's Kitchen- Recipes from a Gluten-Free Goddess
Gluten-Free Girl

Making meal prep easier and cheaper

Looking for ways to save money and time?

1. Buy boneless chicken breasts in bulk packs, usually about $1.99/lb.  Grill the entire package at one time.  Then, when cool, slice and put in freezer bags.  Use for grilled chicken salads, or dipping in BBQ sauce for an easy lunch (cheaper than lunchmeat and all natural!), or in any recipe calling for chicken.  Saves time and mess! :)
2. Buy mild Italian Sausage in bulk packs.  Cook the entire package at one time.  Freeze links when cool.  When you need sausage, slice, crumble or use whole.  Cuts down on prep time, and fewer dirty dishes when prepping for dinner.
3. One thing I'm not sure I recommend.....buy a 5 lb bag of onions, chop entire bag and freeze (double bagged or your entire freezer will smell of onion!).  This was quite the experience.  I am glad to have the chopped onion, but the crying was horrible (as I used end of the year, very potent onions). :)  Does save time...but need to compare this to frozen chopped onions you can buy.  Those are amazingly cheap. :)
4. Prepare baking mixes ahead of time.  Cornbread is an excellent one to have on hand.  Mix all dry ingredients into a zipper top bag.  Label the bag with what it is, what needs to be added, and possibly the cookbook page number.  Preparing your own mixes is waaaaaaaay cheaper than buying gluten free mixes.