Vegan gluten free fairy cakes

Posted May 26, 2016

vegan gf fairycakes

My daughter loves home made cakes. As a coeliac who’s allergic to eggs (and very fussy) she has limited choices when it comes to cake so I’m constantly trying to create the perfect baked good for her. I’ve been experimenting with all sorts of different types of flour recently in an effort to eliminate the claggy, chalky texture that you sometimes get in gluten free cakes and I’ve really fallen in love with Kinako, made from roasted soya beans and which tastes like caramel peanuts. I’ve used it here, but you can easily omit it (I give you that option) as it’s fairly hard to get hold of. I also often add ground almonds to a gluten free cakes as they also help with the texture. I’ve included them here but if you can’t eat nuts just omit them and make up the weight in gf flour.

These little cakes, which are sort of a cross between a fairy cake and a cupcake came about because we have friends coming for lunch on Monday (a bank holiday) and their youngest daughter can’t eat dairy. I still wanted to treat everyone to something indulgent so I decided to try making vegan gluten free fairy cakes with chocolate frosting. I used the recipe on the back of the Doves Farm flour packet as my starting point and added a few tweaks (the Kinako for one), plus my own icing which is based on the Hummingbird Bakery frosting recipe and is amazing. I think they turned out really well – light but moist with a beautiful caramel undertone. I think my kids liked the frosting best, but then they always do.

Ingredients:

100g dairy free spread [I recommend using ‘Pure’ sunflower spread. It tastes and bakes the best of the most commonly available dairy free spreads. Pure also do a soya and olive version but don’t get those they don’t bake well]
100g caster sugar
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of vanilla paste or extract
50g gluten free self raising flour blend (I use and recommend Doves)
25g ground almonds
35g Kinako flour (or omit this and just use 85g Self Raising Doves flour blend). You can buy Kinako from Souschef.com or from JapanCentre.com
25g chickpea (or ‘gram) flour mixed with 4 tablespoons of water (this replaces the egg)
3 tablespoons of dairy free milk. I use Koko coconut drink; you could use soya milk or almond milk. I think the Koko cooks best and you can’t taste it in the finished result.

Method:

Pre-heat your oven to 180 fan
Cream together the sugar and dairy free spread (I use a free standing mixer)
Mix in the chickpea (gram) flour mixed with the water
Mix in the dairy free milk and then the vanilla
Mix in the flours, baking powder and ground almonds (I should tell you to sieve the flour but tbh I rarely bother)
You could add some dairy free chocolate chips at this point if you fancied
Half fill 12 cupcake cases with the batter
Bang the baking tray down on your work surface a couple of times
Cook the cakes for 18 minutes or until golden and an inserted cake tester comes out clean.

For the frosting:

Beat together (I use a free standing electric mixer with a paddle attachment but you can use a hand held electric whisk) 100g of dairy free spread (again I use Pure sunflower), 300g of icing sugar ad 40g of gluten free cocoa powder (I used Green and Blacks). If you’re using a free standing machine set it on medium slow until the mixture comes together then turn it down to slow and add 40ml of dairy free milk one tablespoon at a time. Then turn the speed up to high and beat the icing until it’s light and fluffy.

Pipe the icing onto the cooled cakes with a swirly flourish and serve.

vegan gf fairycakes 2

Gluten free white chocolate blondies with dark chocolate chunks

Posted October 20, 2015

Filed under Baking, chocolate, desserts, egg free, Egg free desserts, Gluten free, tea time treats, white chocolate

It’s late, I’m tired, I’ve been to Manchester and back to today and have only just finished working, but I promised someone I’d blog this very tasty blondie by tomorrow and at ten o’clock tomorrow morning I’m going to deepest, darkest Devon with no wifi or phone signal (the reality of this is just sinking in..) so it’s now or never. As you know the daughter has coeliac disease; she’s a very fussy eater; she likes chocolate (no fussiness with that foodstuff – what a shocker) and she’s also allergic to eggs. I’ve developed a blondie recipe that she can eat and actually doesn’t taste like it’s gluten AND egg free (it’s not crumbly and it has a decent rise) so here it is. (I made it with my new miracle egg replacer discovery – whipped chick pea brine, but I’ll give you directions for using the real thing too). It’s yum. When I left this morning the whole cake was intact as per the photo above; on my return this evening there were a few crumbs left. Mr Arabella Cooks and three lively children had demolished almost all of it (and I’ve just polished the rest off).

Ingredients:

1 x 150g bar of gluten free white cooking chocolate (I use Green and Blacks) broken up.
200g unsalted butter, cut up into small chunks
150g of caster sugar
1/2 a teaspoon of baking powder
1/4 of a teaspoon of salt
150g of gluten free plain flour (I use Doves)
50g of gluten free BREAD flour (it has xanthan gum added to it which helps to bind your bake)
Half a bar of dark gluten free cooking chocolate (I use Green and Blacks)
200 ml of milk (full fat)
9 tablespoons of aquafaba (the liquid left when you drain a can of chickpeas), whipped to stiff peaks OR 3 large eggs

Method:

Pre heat the oven to 180 (160 fan) degrees
Grease and line a square 18cm/7 inch cake tin with baking parchment
Melt the chocolate and the butter together in a large bowl over a small saucepan with a small amount of water in it, on a low heat. White chocolate (which isn’t really chocolate) does not react well to being heated too quickly or too much so watch it.
Whisk your aquafaba to stiff peaks with a hand held or free standing mixer; if using eggs, whisk them to soft peaks then add the sugar and vanilla extract and beat until it looks like mousse.
(With aquafaba): Mix the flours, sugar, salt and baking powder together in another bowl.
Make a well in the centre and add the melted chocolate and butter mixture. Stir to combine.
Fold in the whipped aquafaba using a metal spoon (you want to try and retain as much air as you can; it’s difficult as the aquafaba collapses more easily than real eggs).
You want a nice ‘dropping consistency’ batter, so now add as much of the milk as you need to achieve this.
Add the dark chocolate chips to the batter and stir. Add the batter to the prepared tin.
Bake. In my oven it took 45-50 minutes to cook. All ovens vary so test it with a cake skewer at 25 minutes in and then every 5 minutes until it’s done. It’s OK for this to be a bit gooey in the middle – the best brownie/blondies are; it’s better for them to be under than over baked, but you don’t want too much floury taste left (esp as it’s gluten free flour) so make sure it’s got a good colour on the top and is done sufficiently.
Remove from the oven; allow to cool in the tin then remove very gently and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.
If you’re using real eggs to make this:
1. You’ve melted the butter and white choc; you’ve whisked the eggs and added the sugar.
2. Add the butter and choc to the eggs and keep whisking.
3. Add the flours and baking powder directly to the egg and chocolate mixture and fold it in.
4. You shouldn’t need to use the milk if you’re using eggs, but if your batter is too thick, add a little to loosen it
5. Stir in the chopped up dark chocolate
6. Spoon into the prepared tin and bake in the oven. I didn’t use eggs so couldn’t say for sure how long to cook it for but I’d say between 25 and 35 minutes; check it after 25 minutes as above..

Enjoy x

Gluten free ‘petticoat tail’ shortbread biscuits

Posted June 1, 2015

Filed under Baking, Biscuits, Gluten free, Sweet things

My mother does not approve of shortbread. It is the fact that it is entirely comprised of butter, sugar and flour. She prefers her homemade biscuits to have oats, seeds and dried fruits in so as to offset their calorific burden with a nutritional bonus. But my children and I care little for that and find the particular synergy of fat and sugar in a shortbread biscuit a sheer and utter delight. And it works wonderfully well in a gluten free format so we make it a lot. Delilah has a ‘tribe’ fundraiser at school tomorrow. There is to be some biscuit decorating going on so I’ve made some petticoat tails to send in with her so she doesn’t miss out on the fun.

One thing my mother and I do agree on is the use of salted butter in baking. She never uses unsalted butter, reasoning that if you’re going to add a pinch of salt to the mixture anyway, why go to the bother of buying separate butter? I didn’t have any unsalted butter in tonight so I used salted and it works wonderfully well here, not least as you sprinkle them with delicious golden caster sugar anyway, and isn’t everything sweet ‘salted’ in some way these days? It really does enhance the flavour.

One word of warning, these biscuits will spread A LOT whilst baking so go with it when I say make the dough cake thick; it needs it or they melt away to nothing and you want a shortbread biscuit that you can sink your teeth into. It is a fabulous recipe though, the cornflour makes them wonderfully light, and gluten free or not they are a damn fine biscuit. In my humble opinion.

You could of course just make them into rounds (each to their own) but the kids and I find their triangular heart shapedness particularly pleasing.

Ingredients:

230g gluten free flour
110g cornflour
110g icing sugar
230g room temperature butter (salted or unsalted), cubed

Method:

Pre-heat your oven to 180c (fan)

1) Sieve the dry ingredients together into a large bowl

2) Rub in the chopped butter with your fingers

3) When all the butter is rubbed in, press it all together to make one big ball of dough:

4) Wrap the ball in clingfilm and put it in the fridge for 20 minutes or so.

5) After 20 minutes roll out the dough on a lightly gluten free floured surface. Be careful, as it will crack so you need to be very gentle with it and shape and form it with care. You want to end up with a nice thick round cake shape, 2 cm high by 18 cm in diameter:

6) Take a sharp knife and bisect the cake 4 times to demarcate 8 triangles. Then take a fork and with the tines facing down, gently impress the ends of the tines against the edges of the dough like so:

I used the index finger of my other hand to press the edge of the dough in whilst pressing down with the fork as it is quite crumbly.

7) Then cut the triangles out and place them onto two baking trays lined with baking parchment (4 on each, with lots of space between so they don’t spread into each other):

8) Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes.

9) Take out and after a couple of minutes transfer to a wire cooking rack and sprinkle them with golden caster sugar (or regular caster sugar if that’s what you have). They will be very crumbly whilst still hot, but once cooled they do firm up.

They’re probably best eaten the next day/later in the afternoon once completely cooled and firm. Yum!

Bank holiday gluten and egg free pancakes

Posted May 25, 2015

Filed under Breakfast, egg free, Gluten free, Sweet things

We travelled back from Wiltshire today and ended up having a very late lunch, so all I could be bothered to do for the kids’ tea was pancakes. These pancakes are great. They contain no gluten or egg so my daughter can eat them, but the whole family love them. They’re light and fluffy, simple to make and really tasty. And you don’t need to leave the batter to rest so if you want to make them on the spur of the moment, you can.

The main ingredient is buckwheat flour (I use a brand that is labelled gluten free, just to be on the safe side), but the secret, I think, is to add a bit of gluten free bread flour, because it has xanthan gum in it. Xanthan gum is often used as a binder and thickener in gluten free recipes (gluten is what makes the stuff it’s in sticky) and having it already mixed into your flour saves a lot of faff. I also use a branded egg replacer called, originally, ‘no egg’, to really ensure a nice thick consistency. And just for good measure, a tablespoon of Flaxseed because I read somewhere that it can be used as a binder to replace eggs. You could probably leave it out, but at the very least it replaces some of the Omega 3 that real eggs would bring to the dish, plus it contains calcium and iron, so I like to put it in.

Ingredients:

130g gluten free buckwheat flour. I use Doves.
70g gluten free bread flour. Again, Doves is good. If you can’t find bread flour just use gluten free plain flour.
1 teaspoon of baking powder.
2 tablespoons of golden caster sugar.
1 tablespoon of Flaxseed mixed with a tablespoon of water. I sieve the Flaxseed so there are no husks in the batter and Delilah (that’s the daughter) can’t detect its presence (she is monumentally fussy).
2 teaspoons of Organ ‘No Egg’ mixed with 1 tablespoon of water.
1/2 a teaspoon of regular table salt.
200ml milk (any kind; I use full fat) and 150ml natural yoghurt (I usually use a nice thick Greek one) mixed together.

Method:

Sieve the flours and baking powder together into a bowl.
Add the sugar and salt and make a well in the centre.

3. Mix the milk and yoghurt with the egg replacer and Flaxseed, and stir into the flour.

4. If the mixture is too thick, thin it with more milk. You need it to be fairly thick though; it should look roughly like this:

5. Heat some sunflower or groundnut oil in a frying pan over a medium high heat. Add a spoonful of batter. Because it’s a thick and sticky mixture, you’ll need to shape and form it a bit in the pan. I find this sort of ladle really helpful:

6. When you can see little air bubbles in the top of the mixture in the pan, flip the pancake over and cook the other side:

7. Put the cooked pancakes onto kitchen paper to absorb excess oil then serve with your choice of topping. Diggy likes maple syrup, Delilah prefers Nutella: