Rhubarb and Date Cake

Well you've all been asking for it, so here you go :-)



Rhubarb and Date Cake

170g GF baking mix
1 tsp baking powder
1/2c canola oil
100g sugar
1tsp vanilla essence
1 large egg
250g Rhubarb (raw, you don't need to precook it at all!)
120g dates
about 4 tablespoons rice milk

Preheat oven to 170c and prepare a 20cm cake tin

Clean rhubarb and cut into 1 inch pieces. Cut up dates into rough pieces.

In a large bowl, sift flour, add oil, sugar, vanilla essence and egg, mix together with a wooden spoon to make a dryish crumbly dough. Add in the dates and rhubarb and stir in, it will appear as if there is not enough batter but don’t worry. Add the rice milk as needed to loosen the batter.



Turn into the cake tin and press in massaging it a bit with a rubber spatula to spread the batter about and flatten it.




Bake for at least 35mins, take care that it is cooked in the middle, press with your finger and check that it springs back. Cool in the tin for 10mins, then on a wire rack.

Freezes well (so my expert cake testers tell me)

Annette's Lemon Drizzle Chickpea Cake

This one is super quick and easy, I use the little whizzer that clicks into my stick blender.

Lemon Drizzle Chickpea Cake



410g tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed

3 eggs

1 lemon

170g caster sugar

1 - 2 tbspns clear honey



Put the chickpeas in a food processor and blitz until they make a paste. Add the eggs, sugar, zest of the lemon and juice of half the lemon and blitz until it makes a batter.

Pour into a well-greased and lined 2lb loaf tin, and cook in a medium oven, 160C, for around 45 mins. Remove from the oven and drizzle over the honey.

Leave to cool for 15 minutes, then pour over the juice of the other half of the lemon. Leave to cool completely before removing, carefully, from the tin.

This cake has the texture of Madeira cake, and really doesn't taste of chickpeas. You can also make it with orange and with lime. It will keep for up to a week, but does not freeze well.

Chocolate and Pecan Cookies

Measure the baking powder carefully, but be generous with the vanilla! Be sure to cream the fat and sugar well, if you don't they will spread out like pancakes in the oven and be ruined.

110g non-dairy substitute
1/4c sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
1 tsp vanilla essence
1c GF flour
1tsp baking powder
1/4c chopped pecans
1/4c chopped chocolate (whittaker's dark ghana is GF and DF)

Preheat oven to 160deg, line a baking tray with paper.

Cream the fat and sugar, add golden syrup, vanilla, baking mix and baking powder then fold in the nuts and chocolate chips. Roll into balls and place on trays. Press lightly with a fork to flatten and bake for 15mins until golden. Cool on a rack.

Espresso Amorettis

A bit like macaroons, but with coffee :-)

3 tab short espresso
3 eggs
3c almond meal
1c sugar

Preheat oven to 160deg, line a baking tray with paper. Make the espresso and allow to cool. Beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Combine egg whites, almond meal and sugar with the coffee. Dollop table spoons of the mixture onto the tray. Bake for 20mins or until just beginning to brown.

I will try and think of something else to use up the egg yolks.

Following on from corn muffins

Just made them again, 1st time in ages. Added cayenne pepper this time, little bit of an aftertaste which is nice.

Great photo in my remodeled kitchen:

Macaroons

Coconut Macaroons

3 egg whites
1 1/4 c caster sugar
1/2 tsp. coconut essence
1 tsp. grated lemon rind
2 tbsp cornflour, sifted
3 c desiccated coconut

Line 2 baking trays with paper, preheat oven to 160c
In small dry bowl, beat egg whites until firm peaks form
Add sugar gradually, beating constantly until thick and glossy and all sugar is dissolved.
Add the essence and rind, beat until just combined.

Transfer to large bowl, add cornflour and coconut. Using metal spoon, stir until just combined.

Drop spoonfuls of mixture onto the trays about 3cm apart. bake in oven until golden, transfer to wire rack to cool.

Variations:
- sprinkle with coconut before baking
- once cooked drizzle with melted chocolate.

I'm pretty sure I've never had coconut essence so must have made these without it, didn't seem to matter at all!

Bobotie - a way to make mince interesting!

No doubt there are a million different recipes for babotie, but this one comes from the South African side of the family so I like to think its authentic (though I really have no idea!)

I use my cast iron casserole which can go both on the stove and in the oven.

 

Oil to fry
1 Onion, diced
500g lowfat mince
1/2 teaspoon tumeric
1 1/2 teaspoon medium curry powder
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon peel
juice of half a lemon
2 tablespoons chutney
1 cooking apple, grated
25 grams chopped almonds
2 or 3 tablespoons apricot jam, mixed with a little lemon juice
1 - 1 1/2 banana, sliced
1 or 2 eggs
A dash rice milk
3 lemon leaves
Oil

Fry the onions in oil. Add tumeric, curry powder and mince. Fry until browned

Add lemonpeel and juice, apple, chutney and salt and pepper. Cook for a bit. Add almonds.

Put mixture into an ovenproof dish. Top with jam mixture and sliced banana.

Stir up the egg in a cup and pour over. The original recipe says with a bit of milk, its not really necessary but I find a dash of rice milk does make it go a bit further. Let it soak for a bit. Roll lemon leaves and stick into the Bobotie.

Bake at 180 c for about 30 minutes until set and browned.

July + Stew = Dumplings

Lately I've given up on my slowcooker after some very average results, and gone back to the faithful cast iron cassarole dish. What a relief! My stews are tasty again, and I can put them on in the afternoon, I mean honestly, who has time in the morning anyway?

Yesterday's beef stew was bubbling happily when my Dad dropped by to say hello. I took the opportunity of child distraction to try out some cornmeal dumplings. What an inspiration, they were delish and much enjoied by the test team.

Following on from this success I rebooted the stew tonight and tried the dumplings again, buckwheat this time.

Dumplings

1 c cornmeal or buckwheat
1/2c GF baking mix
2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
bt of ground black pepper
25g DF spread
1/2c rice milk
I also added some chopped parsley to my buckwheat ones which was nice. Other herbs to compliment the dish would be good, such as rosemary with a lamb stew?

First cook your stew, it needs to be ready, and you make the dumplings just ahead of serving time.

Measure spread, flours and baking powder. Rub it together, I use a wooden spoon then just get in there with my fingers to get it all done. Should look a bit like breadcrumbs when this is done. Throw in salt & pepper to taste, mix it up, then add the rice milk. At first it won't seem like enough milk but just keep stirring, it will come togeher into a nice ball of dough. Ofcourse you can ad a litle more if this isn't happening after lots of stirring, but use a bit of elbow grease first.

Take spoonfuls of the dough and drop ontop of your hot stew. The buckwheat allowed me to roll the dough into little balls, but the cornmeal would not hold together enough for that, I just plopped them in and poked any really sticky out bits with my finger.

Put the stew back in the oven without a lid for 10-15mins until the dumplings are cooked. No doubt this would work on the stove top also, you might need to experiment with lid on/lid off.

On balance I'd say the cornmeal ones were better, slightly crumbly but in a yummy sort of way. Buckwheat turned out a bit more dense and brittle. I think it would be worth trying them again with cornflour instead of baking mix, but don't get me wrong, they were still yummy yum.

Corn Muffins

I've dreamed about southern USA skillet cornbread, but never come across a recipe which screamed BAKE ME! I don't have a skillet for a start...

This weekend we had a roast chook, and I threw the bones and sundries into a pot and made some chicken and vege soup. Included some home grown celery - very proud of that!

Anyway to get to the point, to make this into a meal for dinner, it needed a bit of suport in the carbohydrate department. I started by adding a tin of cannelini beans to the soup, but my genius moment was corn muffins.


1 cup cornmeal
1 cup all-purpose gluten free baking mix
1/3 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup rice milk

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Grease muffin pan or use those floppy silicone ones like me.
In a large bowl, mix everything together, and stir gently until just combined. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into a muffin comes out clean.

The key with muffins is to work fast, and mix only as much as you have to - not a single mix more! If you see the odd bit of unmixed flour, just stir this little area a bit until it is wet, and go with it. It will turn out ok I promise!

Next time I would use a little less sugar, and maybe a pinch of cayenne pepper. Josh said he loved them, they tasted just how he remembered corn bread.

Instead of muesli

Dr. Bircher would turn in his grave if I called this muesli, but seeing as how oats are out of bounds, I had to come up with something edible.



I have a big plastic container and I just get out all my ingredients and start layering it up. The carbohydrate base is GF cornflakes, or riceflakes (which are just the same thing made out of rice). I also like to put in puffed quinoa or amaranth, and buckwheat groats. Ideally the buckwheat would be toasted but who has time for that?

I also add layers of flaxseed, coconut, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and sometimes chopped almonds.

Fruit wise cranberries are yummy and sultanas are good, neither need chopping up. Dried apricots and pawpaw are good but require some labour with a sharp knife.

Give it all a good shake.

So, this isn't a recipe as such, more trying to pass on some inspiration. Just chuck stuff in until it looks yummy. Next morning you eat some and this creates space in the container to alter the proportions, or add something else you just thought of.