Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Gluten-free Baking Success Stories

Giving up wheat is hard--I've said that before. Sometimes I really miss real bread, real pastry items, and real pasta. So I am always excited when a gluten-free recipe works out. I know I have a winner when my boy, Carson, will eat it. I've been playing around with different flours to try and re-create the texture that is found in pastries (cookies and cakes). I think I've finally found some flours that work well...a mixture of sorghum, coconut, and teff. I've tried rice flours, but I think they leave the mix too sticky for the most part. The products of my experimenting... On the left there is Sweet Potato Cornbread and on the right Chocolate Chunk Cookies. The framework for both recipes were from Karina's Kitchen. I added my own "tweaks" to make the recipes work for me...the chocolate chip cookie recipe was vegan and I refuse to go vegan! (I have had to give up enough good stuff). So I used shortening, used sorghum, teff and coconut flours, didn't add the milk (although I'll try that next time). The cornbread called for 3/4 cup of sweet potato puree, but I didn't have enough so I added 1/2 sweet potato, 1/4 creamed corn and cut the oil in half. I also left out all of the spices, except for the vanilla. The flour mixture was sorghum, coconut, and brown rice (1/2 c, 1/4c, 1/4 c respectively). Carson keeps asking to eat my cookies and David gave me a thumbs up for the cornbread. I also took some of the cookies to lunch yesterday and shared them with my lunch table buddies. One of the gals has celiac disease and so is on gluten-free diet like me. The other ladies don't know how we do it. The best two compliments from yesterday about the cookies? Gluten-free buddy asked for the recipe. Another gal, who was a little skeptical at first, said "Mmm. I like gluten-free cookies." If you have friends or family that are living a gluten-free lifestyle, have them checkout http://www.glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com/.

4 comments:

Jenny said...

I think I'd rather just not eat.

Lindsay said...

I'm way behind...do you have celiac disease or are you making these changes because it really is the best way for us to eat?

Nurse Graham said...

I found out about 2 1/2 years ago that I was allergic to wheat; although I do not have celiac. For a long time I just continued to eat all the good stuff in life because it wasn't life-threatening allergy. Then 2 years ago I was having horrible right abdominal pain. I thought perhaps it was the wheat allergy finally catching up to me. So I cut out wheat. The pain still continued, but that was because it was my gallbladder and I had to have that removed. Anyway, while I was off of wheat I noticed that my migraines associated with my menstrual cycles went away. I also noticed that I had much more energy. So I have stayed off of wheat. I have tried to re-introduced it back into my diet on occassion, but the results have not been pretty.

Mindy said...

Gluten-free eating is difficult, especially for we who love our carbs. Celiac runs in the in-law's family, and it scares me half to death thinking that my own little family might have to deal with it one day. I'm glad to hear that you don't have it, and also impressed with your gluten-free experiments.