Gluten free, casein free cupcakes that don't have the texture of rocks

Gluten free and dairy free cooking is getting easier. It's pretty common now to find plenty of options even at basic stores. A recent trip to France showed me that even in the world of baguettes and Brie, a country Leclerc sells gluten free flour and soy cream as standard.

But the problem is that these substitutes are not perfect - you just won't get the same result as if you had used standard flour or butter. I'm getting better at making up for this though, and here are a couple of tips for cake making:

1.
Use ghee instead of oil or margarine. Ghee is usually casein and lactose free because all the milk solids are taken off in the process, basically leaving some gorgeous tasting fat. Don't tell yourself it's good for you, but as long as you're not spooning it onto your breakfast cereal, it's not really that bad in moderation. Vegetable ghee is another alternative, but as it is hydrogenated to give it the correct texture and appearance, it's probably best avoided (nasty trans fats). If you are highly allergic to dairy, you should probably stick to Nuttelex or canola oil - sorry about that.

Gazpacio of red capsicum with prawns

It's hard not to get inspired in Provence. Sometimes I replicate what I eat to the best of my ability, sometimes I ask the chef for the recipe, and others, I take pieces of inspiration from the dish and create something a little more me. This is the first kind, replicated from an incredible gazpacio de poivron avec gambas from La Bastide de Gordes to the best of my ability. 

 

The rest of my post on Gordes can be found here - the recipe resides below. 

 

Ingredients:

For the soup:

• 4 ripe tomatoes, deseeded and chopped
• 2 red capsicums (peppers)
• 1 medium continental cucumber (or 2 small lebanese), peeled, deseeded and chopped
• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 small salad onion, chopped
• 1 tbsp creme fraiche
• salt, pepper, brown sugar and tabasco to taste

Provincial Lavender and Honey Cake

Below is a honey and lavender bundt I prepared for my children. They are dairy and gluten intolerant, so I have made accordingly – it would possibly taste better with softened butter to replace the oil, cows' milk, and a light country wheat flour to replace my gluten free mix. It's a recipe following my post on cooking with lavender, and its multitude of culinary uses.

Don't you love a little Provincial inspiration?

Ingredients 

• 4 cups (Schar Patisserie) gluten free flour 
• 8 tsp gluten free baking powder 
• ¾ cup rice milk 
• ¾ cup canola (rapeseed) oil 
• 1 tsp salt 
• ½ tsp vanilla 
• 1 cup honey 
• 3 eggs 
• 2 tsp lavender buds (or 3-4 full flowers) 

Caramel and Chestnut pie

Still in France, and finding it hard to stay gluten and dairy free. But the way I figure it, it's only the kids who are supposed to be on that diet, so I'm allowed to fall off the wagon for a month. I love the pastry available in the supermarket here - there are many kinds, brisée is a shortcrust pastry, and there are also some labeled as pizza pastry. I bought some gorgeous pre-made french puff pastry known here as feuillete. This utilises several ingredients that are easily found in french supermarkets, and now in many gourmet stores around the world. Even my local sells French feuillete by the roll and tinned chestnuts (marron).

Ingredients:

• 100g butter with salt crystals
  
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups prepared chestnuts (can be bought like this in tins or vacuum packs)
• 1 sheet round feuillete pastry
• 1/2 cup cream
• 2 egg yolks
• more caster sugar for sprinkling

Cherry Frangipane

A trip to a provincial market is always inspiring, but the recent one I took to Tarascon, in the Bouche du Rhone departement was an eyeful of the grandest degree. I came home with a bundle of goodies, not the least, but the cheapest, being a half kilo of deep purple ripe cherries for the grand total of 1.41Euros. It was hard to look at them and not think of Frangipane. The recipe below sounds a little fiddly, but it's not really - its just a matter of getting the ingredients laid out.

Ingredients:

• 300ml and 100ml almond flour (meal)
• 1 1/2 cups gluten free flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 120g and 80g butter softened and chopped (or use dairy free margarine)
• 100ml plus 2 tbsp sugar
• pinch salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 300g cherries, halved and destoned
• 2 tbsp cassis jelly and a dash of champagne (optional)

Gluten free, Dairy Free Oreos

Did you know that standard Oreos are dairy free? That means the basic recipe is very easy to adjust to also make it gluten free. My kids discovered Oreos during a minor lapse of dietry judgement on holidays, and to stop the tears at the emd of the trip, I promised I would research it. 

I've adapted a recipe from bakingbites.com, and apart from a tiny tweak in the liquid ratio, it works well. I also added a pinch of salt. Because everything tastes better with salt... 

(Measurements are American - a cup = 200ml and a tablespoon = 15ml)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups gluten free flour (I used Schar Dolci)
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 1/2 cup real cocoa
• 1/4 cup cornstarch (make sure it's gluten free!)
• 1/2 cup vegetarian shortening or margarine
• 1/3 cup plus 1 tbsp water
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• pinch salt 

Poached Pears

I usually avoid fruit desserts. They are naughty things pretending to be healthy. I'd much rather eat something healthy pretending to be naughty. Hence the drunken pears. They feel so naughty as you glug in the red wine, but we all know what happens to alcohol when you cook it down. Sure, there's a little added sugar, but if you leave the double cream off, then this cheeky little number isn't really that bad at all, especially compared to a fruit flan or pina colada. And as easy as whipping up a cocktail...

Ingredients

• 4 pears, peeled
• 1 cinnamon quill
• 1 star anise
• 250ml rich red wine (eg. Aussie Shiraz)
• 250ml water
• 1 tablespoon golden syrup (or brown sugar)

Instructions

1. plonk all in a pot with a lid, and bake in a 170℃ (340℉) for an hour, turning once.

Dairy-free Carbonara

Did you know that traditional carbonara recipes often don't contain cream? It's amazing, isn't it, that you can get a creamy sauce without using cream. Think about mayonnaise. It also doesn't contain cream (if you make it yourself - who knows what they put in the jar). Egg yolks are amazing little things - they have so many properties, and when you whip them up with olive oil, they go all creamy. 

Unfortunately, carbonara has always contained cheese. So to make up for lack of the flavour this adds, I've added a little extra salt, a touch of paprika and some crushed garlic.

Ingredients:

• 500g Pasta (I used gluten free macaroni)
• 400g bacon, trimmed and chopped (I used a smoked pork fillet)
• 3 egg yolks*
• 1 whole egg
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• salt and paprika to taste
• chopped chives or parsley for garnish 

Let them eat cake - gluten free eggy bread

The greatest things missed by kids when attempting a gluten free and casein free diet are bread and cheese. I'll get to cheese in another post, but today I'm tackling the daily staple. 

There are ways of making gluten free bread. I have tried tackling it myself, and I have sampled just about every bread mix on the shelf (by the way - I think Springhill Farm is the best one, followed after a large gap by Red Mill and Schär).  It is very possible to make a gluten free bread that tastes good, warm out of the oven with a drizzle of olive oil and some pink salt. But that's the end of it. As soon as it cools down, it the texture rests somewhere between a bag of breadcrumbs and corragated cardboard. The only rescue from this time on is toasting. So how do I put sandwiches in the kids' lunchboxes and send them off to school to eat it four hours later?

I let them eat cake.

I drew my inspiration from old fashioned soda bread. I've made this with some success with gluten free flour. I added in another trick I have learned - separate the eggs and beat the whites into soft peaks to add later - this helps the dense gluten free mix to gain a little air. I also added some extra yolk, because: 1 - I had some left from making meringues the night before, and 2 - because I thought it might add a little glue or chew to the mix, as gluten free flour is notoriously crumbly. Apart from that, I simply adjusted my own banana cake mix. Success!

Cream of Pumpkin Soup

How do you make a cream of pumpkin soup without cream?

Easy – tofu. Not all dairy can be replaced with soy, but if you are living a dairy-free lifestyle like my family is, you will find there are some things that go together. Espresso coffee and soy milk? Not so good. But Pumpkin and silken tofu? Perfect. Most silken tofu actually has less flavor than soy milk, and its dense texture is perfect for blending – none of those miso soup style soy whirlpools. If you hadn’t been warned this was dairy free, you would swear it was full of cream.

Ingredients:

• Pumpkin* – about 500 - 750g, peeled and chopped
• 1 large onion – chopped
• 200g diced bacon
• 2 cloves garlic – crushed
• slurp of olive oil
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 bouquet garnis pouch (or a teaspoon of mixed dried herbs like thyme and sage and bay leaf)
• 1 vegetable bouillon and 1.5L of water (or 1.5L of stock)
• 1 packet silken tofu (about 400g)
• salt and white pepper to taste