Lemon meringue pie has always had a strange magnetic pull on me.
When I heard that it was one of the specialties of the house at gluten free bakery, Healthy Feast in Sydney’s Leichardt, a visit was inevitable.
So last weekend I strapped the bicycles to the back of the car – the plan was to have a gluten free picnic in the park followed by some hardcore pedalling – and off we went.
You can see what we bought in the picture. The lamingtons and lemon meringue pies were amazing. The former tasted just like the gluten-based variety and the latter even better. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the tough parts of being a blogger is reviewing products.
This week we were really put through our paces, chomping our way through a feast of bakery goods, this time dispatched our way from Melbourne bakery, Silly Yaks.
Baguettes, rolls, loaves (fruit and plain) pies (savoury and sweet), sausage and vege rolls, nocchi, quiche, pizza bases; I’ve tasted most of these things over the past seven days and I must say it has been rather a pleasure.
The whole family enjoyed the fruit loaf at breakfast time and the rolls and baguettes were handy to grab from the freezer when we needed them.
The tomato/chilli nocchi made a very nice lunch for two, and I also sneaked a yummy sausage roll when no-one was looking.
But the highlight had to be the pies – both large and little. They have tasty, tender pastry that contains a variety of ingredients such as rice, soy, tapioca and maize flour. Read the rest of this entry »
More than a dozen princesses and fairies descended on my house on the weekend to eat, drink and be merry.
This bunch of belles were in the dark about the gluten free thing and I don’t think the g-word was mentioned even once.
They were thrown off the scent largely thanks to my favourite gluten free mud cake mix – popular as ever with the gluten quaffing crowd – and some marshmallow-garnished red jellies.
Our little party people were also more than happy to tuck into the popcorn, rice crackers (which I cunningly jazzed up with a cheese square and half a mini tomato), a watermelon & kiwi fruit platter, gluten free mini snags, corn chips & dip and some regular chips. Read the rest of this entry »
I got a bit experimental today with one of our favourite mudcake mixes. The Deliciously Free mix by Naturally Good was one of our faves when we did our recent choccy cake bakeoff.
It has an enticing blurb on the back called Cup Cake Ideas in which it suggests you use the mix in this way. The only thing holding me back was the lack of detail on the pack about actual execution of these ideas. There was nothing about how long to cook them or how many cupcakes it could produce.
Given my penchant for mudcake, though, it was only a matter of time before I took the plunge. Turns out that half an hour is enough (about half the time of the large cake version) and it makes about a dozen medium-sized cupcakes.
Because this mix does not include frosting, I topped it with gran’s chocolate icing recipe which is nice and shiny and hardens nicely.
You mix together a a knob of butter, about half a cup of icing sugar and a few tablespoons of cocoa (until it looks right) over a little heat. You will also need a dash of milk, enough to make it nice and shiny and runny enough to spread.
I found the cupcakes a little less spongy and moist that the larger mudcake – but on the upside, they are very cute, handy and freezable.
This weekend we jumped in the car and headed for Choices gluten & wheat free bakery in Sydney’s Turramurra.
It was our first trip because it is a good 40 minutes away in quiet traffic. But we were inspired by news on the Gluten Free Pages that Choices has opened new Sydney stores. It now has outlets in Bondi Junction, Bella Vista and Mona Vale.
Though none of them are close to us, this is still great news and gives me hope that a gluten free bakery may some day open its doors in my neck of the woods.
Like most of the specialist bakeries they will deliver to other areas. But for those like me who like hands-on shopping, there do seem to be more bricks & mortar bakeries popping up. Silly Yaks for instance has opened a factory outlet for its frozen bakery goods in Preston Victoria. Then there is Deeks Bakery & Cafe in Canberra. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s bumper to bumper birthdays in our house at the moment. All four of us get a year older within the space of a few months and fittingly, we do this in age order from oldest to youngest.
With the final celebration nearly upon us, it is time to dust off our gluten free party food ideas.
These will have to please not only our gluten free birthday girl but also her gluten-quaffing kindy buddies.
So I am busy workshopping ideas:
Potato chips, corn chips, rice crackers & cheese and popcorn are shoo-ins.
I’m also thinking little jellies. Individual tubs with fruit are great if the invite list doesn’t get too long.
Then there are chocolate dipped strawberries. I have never quite gotten these right but when you do they are strangely compelling to all age groups. Read the rest of this entry »
Have you ever noticed that all of the truly delicious stuff has glucose syrup in it? Of course you have because the treat makers usually flag that it is derived from wheat on the label.
This declaration alone has kept me safe from thousands of calories in recent years.
Most lollies and a lot of dessert products like icecream have glucose syrup on their ingredients lists.
Then my co-blogger Lucy casually asked a few weeks ago: “So what’s the deal with glucose syrup?” And I said: “I don’t really know”.
So here we are again, finding out together.
For those who like the sciency angle, glucose syrup is a liquid sweetener that is made through the “enzymatic hydrolysis” of starch. It can be made from any type of starch including corn or potato though wheat seems to be pretty common.
The Coeliac Society of Australia says that glucose syrups are so highly processed that no gluten can be detected in them (that means they have less than 20mg/kg). That means for official purposes glucose syrup is gluten free even though, confusingly, manufacturers who use it declare gluten on the label.
A randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled Finnish study a couple of years ago found that starch hydrolysate products (ie glucose syrup, dextrose and maltodextrins) were safe for coeliac sufferers to consume on a daily basis.
With so many gluten free chocolate cake mixes to choose from, which one is officially the yummiest?
We at GFF have donned our oven mits in a courageous bid to answer this burning question once and for all. As a result, we may never eat chocolate cake again, but lets face it, someone had to sacrifice themselves.
AIM: To compare chocolate cake packet mixes on the basis of yumminess (ie taste, texture and longevity). We sought to identify a winning category as well as winners within each category.
We also wanted to take into account the allergy credentials of each mixture. We did not, however, look at nutritional aspects such as fat and sugar content. That’s just not something we take into account when choosing a chocolate cake!
METHOD: We found nine different cake mixes at various outlets around Sydney. These products spanned mudcakes (3), traditional chocolate cakes (3) and chocolate muffins and slices (3). We cooked each category of three together in Lucy’s fan forced oven over two days.
RESULTS:
THE MUDCAKES
Mudcake mixes
The mudcakes proved to be superior in almost every way (assuming you use the full complement of egg and dairy ingredients), but especially so on the yumminess measures: taste, texture and longevity.
They were also easier to make as they all only needed to be folded by hand and water, oil and eggs were the only extra ingredients required.
All three that we cooked were very similar and all were delicious. They were still delicious the next day and all also defrosted beautifully a week later.
However only one of the three came with icing included. We shared this around all three cakes to keep the results consistent.
Two scored well from an allergy angle. These were:
Naturally Good & Well and Good
They had egg and dairy free options and yum! these were also the two best tasting cakes of all.
On the downside, neither had icing included and the delicious ganache icing suggested by both requires cream and chocolate. (You could replace this with a combo of icing sugar, cocoa, margarine and and a tiny splash of rice milk)
Freefrom
Almost as delicious as the above two, it is a larger cake and has chocolate buttons for ganache icing included in the pack. (You have to add your own cream).
This one does have dairy products (whey) included in the mix as well as the ganache.
TRADITIONAL CHOCOLATE CAKE
Chocolate cakes
The traditional cakes were all a bit of a disappointment in terms of taste after the richness of the muds. They were in general dryer, blander and less chocolatey.
Moreover neither of the frostings included in two the packets were especially inspiring and neither was the icing mix suggested by the third. None were the hardening sort which means a big mess if you want to slice and freeze leftovers.
They also took longer to make. All required a hand mixer and two required margarine in addition to water and eggs, making them more fiddly than the muds.
Allergy-wise, they also offered less leeway than the mudcakes. Only one offered a dairy and egg free option.
Freefrom
This was probably the best traditional cake taste-wise and was the easiest to make. It came out of the oven soft but not that chocolatey. It has no dairy free option.
Basco
Taste-wise, this was a touch bland compared to the mud category. It also had diary in it but we appreciated the simplicity of the instructions (for example it gives ingredient measurements in tablespoons and mLs).
Orgran
This dairy free cake had the best allergy credentials with its egg free and vegan options however this has a taste trade-off. Its instructions are a touch cumbersome (for example it asks for 60g of margarine rather than 3 tablespoons). The suggested icing, Orgran chocolate mousse, did not work that well with the cake in our opinion.
MUFFINS AND SLICES
Muffins and slices
This was the least satisfying category overall. We wound up with a batch of standard, albeit allergy friendly muffins of average taste from Orgran (pretty much the exact muffiny version of their chocolate cake), and a different batch of muffins that we found somewhat bitter and upalatable from another manufacturer (we did wonder if one of the ingredients was past its best).
The fudge brownie tasted like a flatter, denser mudcake that was actually quite a bit more fiddly to make than a mudcake – but it was pretty yummy.
Aside from the incredibly sumptuous looking packets, overall we felt a little uninspired by this category.
CONCLUSION:
Let’s hear it for the mudcakes! The Naturally Good mudcake and the Well and Good mudcake share the top honours because of their sensational (and remarkably similar) taste.
Our favourite dish
Woolies brand runs a very close third, impressing us with its larger size and the inclusion of chocolate buttons for icing.
We probably wont venture far beyond these three in the future unless we are catering for specific allergies in which case we’d probably go with Orgran because of its versatility. And if you desperately want muffins, it may be worth experimenting with the mudcake mixes, cooking them for a slightly reduced period of time in a muffin pan. That’s next up on our to do list.
It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it: a chocolate cake bake-off that is.
We love our chocolate cake here at GFF but my co-blogger Lucy and myself can’t agree on which off-the-shelf mix is the best so we have decided to put them all to the test.
If we are feeling really adventurous we’ll even make a little video for your viewing pleasure. Stay tuned for more.
Speaking of bake-offs, Vitarium, maker of a great pancake and bread mix (to name just some of its products) is also getting in the mood.
It has announced The Great Vitarium Bake Off, a national baking contest designed to pull together “delicious sweet and savoury recipes for people living a gluten free lifestyle”.
Dr Sue Shepherd, a dietician and gluten free cookbook author is competition judge. The winner will get a $10,000 home appliance pack and their recipe printed on Vitarium products.
I’m into cafes. I like the coffee, the cake, the background chatter… but add gluten free kids to the equation and they quickly lose their zing. This is usually how it goes:
Me: “No those delicious looking cupcakes with the irresistible pink icing and fairy dust sprinkles are not gluten free.”
Them: (indescribable animal noise)
Me: “What about that yummy orange and almond cake?”
Actually, I don’t say that last part aloud anymore. Though I personally quite like the ubiquitous orange and almond cake, I’m not sure why it, together with a few large, dense, pre-packaged cookies, has become the stock, standard gluten free offering of many cafe chains.
So last Saturday morning I steeled myself for the usual onslaught as I sought out a caffeine hit at Coffee Fest, a cafe near the cinemasat Macquarie Centre in Sydney’s North Ryde.
The kids noses were firmly pressed to the counter glass so I asked – as I always do – if they had anything gluten free.
Imagine my surprise when they pointed out almost a whole shelf of pastry treats including tarts, slices, cakes and about eight different cookies. (In my enthusiasm I spent way too much.)
So it looks like there is a move by cafes to boost their gluten free selections.
At the more upmarket end of the cafe spectrum, for instance, there is The Tea Room in the Queen Victoria Building in the Sydney CBD. It now serves a gluten free high tea including a selection of cakes and pastries made from buckwheat, quinoa, chickpea flour and almond meal.
Feel free to post a comment if you know of any other coffee shops that have a really great gluten free range.
Lemon meringue pie has always had a strange magnetic pull on me.
One of the tough parts of being a blogger is reviewing products.
More than a dozen princesses and fairies descended on my house on the weekend to eat, drink and be merry.
I’m into cafes. I like the coffee, the cake, the background chatter… but add gluten free kids to the equation and they quickly lose their zing. This is usually how it goes:
