I think I tasted the best gluten free cupcakes ever on the weekend at the Eveleigh farmers market near Redfern in Sydney.
I was having gluten free expo withdrawals so I headed into town to check out what was on offer at this gathering of boutique growers, makers and bakers.
Most of those in the baker category seemed to have something gluten free in their product line-up and the kids and I had a great time sampling their wares.
But lots of other products were also trading on their gluten free credentials – good to see!
So, back to those cupcakes.
I wanted to take a picture because they were also very pretty but they kind of got eaten. However I managed to grab a business card. They were made by The Cupcake Princess.
Healthy Feastalso had a stall so I got to try a few more of their products including a couple of fruit pies and sausage rolls. Yum!
And I couldn’t resist a couple of gluten free chocolate and raspberry brownies from Fare Gourmet of Castle Hill. 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 »
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 »
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 »
There is more to say about the Sydney Gluten Free expo than I can possibly put into one blog post so please stay tuned over the next few weeks as we report on the many new products, write about some of the experts’ opinions and more importantly review some of the wonderful new products we got out hands on at the show. Here’s a quick summary and a taste of some of the things we will be reporting on here in coming weeks:
Coeliac Vaccination: we’ll give an update on where the vaccine development is at – plus write up some of the (possibly controversial) thoughts about Coeliac disease v gluten intolerance from the man who is leading the research, Dr Robert Anderson.
Lots of brand redesigns and product launches: Prepare for the battle of the cake and bread mixes as some of our favourite brands expand their product ranges substantially.
Bakeries open their doors: A bunch of bakeries are springing up all over town with fresh and gorgeous gluten free baked fare. 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.
Healthy Feast also had a stall so I got to try a few more of their products including a couple of fruit pies and sausage rolls. Yum!
What happens when you own two squishy bananas and a new gluten free cookbook?
Lemon meringue pie has always had a strange magnetic pull on me.
More than a dozen princesses and fairies descended on my house on the weekend to eat, drink and be merry.
