Vitarium has once again thrown down the gluten-free gauntlet. The GF food maker is calling for your best gluten free recipes in exchange for $10,000 in prizes.
The person who sends in the winning recipe will be in line for a cool $5,000 in cash and a further $5,000 or so in KitchenAid appliances and Vitarium product hampers will be dished out to runners up. Read the rest of this entry »
Rowie's heart-shaped polenta cake.
Recipes were the talk of the show at this year’s gluten free expo in Sydney as Australia’s GF glitterati gathered together to promote their favourite dishes, recipes and entertaining ideas. Read the rest of this entry »
Santa brought us an awesome new modcon this Christmas – a cupcake maker! No it’s not that easy on the eye and yes it takes up a lot of benchspace – but it produces excellent gluten free cupcakes.
Its officially that time of year when gluten free bloggers set aside their oven mitts as they are sucked into the gravitational vortex of the silly season.
As neither of us are hosting festive dinners this year it will once again fall upon our shoulders to help the little ‘uns to duck and dive the wheaten onslaught of puddings and pies.
To this end we are getting ahead of the game by baking a little batch of gingerbread men that may help to ease the seasonal pain. The recipe was swiped from here. (I had hoped to experiment a little with my newfound knowledge about flour substitution but alas as always, time got away and here I am taking the easy road once again.)
As we munch our way through these tasty little fellas, please enjoy a safe and festive season and we will be back around mid January.
LH & MB
Sometimes you just want to break out and do some experimentation in the kitchen – and I’d really like to start creating some of my favourite recipes from some non-gluten free favourites too. So where do I begin?
Once as rare and hen’s teeth, gluten free cookbooks are now popping up everywhere.
The only problem is that the vast majority of them fill their pages with home cooked main meals that few of us struggle with. I mean, do we really need guidance on how to cook our lamb shanks and french beans gluten free?
The ones that I have learned to seek out give gluten free versions of the meals I’ve generally had to do without – lasagne, canelloni, quiche, pancakes – and the list goes on…
These are wonderful books to have on hand – but sometimes you just want to break out and do some experimentation – and because I have been feeling adventurous of late, I really want to start creating some of my favourite recipes from non-gluten free favourites too. Read the rest of this entry »
Chang's pre-cooked noodles
Its not easy pleasing everyone in my family at dinner time, but noodles have stood the test of time as a perennial favourite.
Thin rice vermicelli noodles are probably our favourite type – but on a school night I rarely have time to do all the soaking and drying that is required to ensure they don’t turn to a gelatinous mess at the bottom of the wok.
So it was with some relief that I spotted a packet of pre-cooked gluten free noodles from Chang’s.
They are thicker than vermicelli – more like the width of spaghetti – but they keep their form very well in a fry pan – and have quite a delicious recipe on the packet – which I have (very loosely) adopted. Read the rest of this entry »
corn chip crab cakes (photo supplied)
Sometimes you just hanker for something crispy-coated. Unless you make it yourself though, these types of foods are usually out of bounds.
I have dabbled with a few types of gluten free breadcrumbs over the years. I have made them the usual way by drying gluten free bread slices in the oven on low heat and then grinding them into submission.
You can also buy gluten free breadcrumbs if you can find them. Vitarium are among those who make them and they are pretty good [crumbs from Lifestyle bakery have also recently appeared on on shelves at Coles].
And back in the day when I used to whiz up my own chicken nuggets, I would coat these in rice bubbles crushed by hand with a wooden spoon or in the kitchen whiz.
They offer a very quick, easy, nice tasting last minute solution and they also go well in rissoles, meat balls and patties along with some onion, egg and seasoning – and whatever else you feel like throwing in.
But far and away the yummiest crumbing was introduced to me recently at a work do. Read the rest of this entry »
Against all the odds, I did manage to produce a car-shaped cake for my son’s birthday party.
Yes, it took two attempts and far more time than I am prepared to admit here – but on Sunday I was able to serve him up that big blue car cake as promised.
Here’s how it unfolded. I bought two NaturallyGood chocolate mud cake mixes thinking that would easily be enough mix (6.5 cups) to fill the mold I blogged about last week. As you can see from my picture gallery below, my first attempt at a car lacked – ahem – wheels. And because it took ages to bake, it got a bit crispy on the bottom (or top) as well.
But fortunately the vegetable shortening and flour pan lining held up well and I had no problem at all removing my half-car cake from its mold.
In my second attempt (which I neglected to photograph owing to it being midnight) I used almost three cake mixes (which easily made up the 6.5 cups of mix) and used the rest to make muffins.
When my final result still fell short of a whole car, I concluded that gluten free cakes probably don’t rise as much as ordinary ones and vowed next time to fill the mold almost to the brim and put a tray underneath to catch any drips in the oven.
Luckily I had kept the first cake and was able to carve bits off that to complete the car shape.
As you can see – the pre-made icing was not too hard to handle and didn’t scrub out too much of the original car detail. Read the rest of this entry »
I recently embarked on a new strategy to make carbs more tempting to my gluten free kids.
I blogged about it at the time so I have decided to write an update because we have been having quite a bit of success with the plan – which basically involves them making their own meals.
Here is a chronicle of our latest efforts:
The first involved them designing their own pizzas, a no brainer and predictably popular.
The second was more experimental: roll your own uncooked ricepaper springroll. Read the rest of this entry »
What happens when you own two squishy bananas and a new gluten free cookbook?
Banana bread of course!
Unlike many gluten free cakes, this bakery treat is indistinguishable from its wheat-based equivalent.
And the one I made tonight was up there with the best.
My inspiration was 100 Best Gluten-free Recipes, a new US cookbook by Carol Fenster.
I had to tweak the recipe a little as it asked for a specific US brand of sorghum flour, but it turned out well regardless. Read the rest of this entry »
