to ask for your tried and tested gluten free baking recipes?

[Tinklewinkle]

DD1 is coeliac.

She hates most of the GF bread/treat stuff you can buy so we do a lot of baking.

We have a bread maker and make a lot of rolls/bread/pizza dough, etc and bake a lot of cake stuff.

We thought we’d have a bit of a bake up over the weekend and try some new stuff - she really misses croissants so tried a couple of recipes but they were a complete disaster.

We’ve never really mastered nice baguettes

She loves brownies, but they are my baking nemesis

We’ve got bread/rolls/pizza dough and stuff like chocolate muffins/lemon drizzle cake mastered.

But stuff like brownies, chewy chocolate chip cookies, croissants, chocolate eclairs - we’ve tried what feels like a million recipes over the years but they never come out quite right so wondered if anyone had some foolproof recipes they could share please

Thanks!

Doves Farm have recipes on their website which are designed to use their gluten free flour. I use this brownie one quite often and it always works well and is quite simple.

www.dovesfarm.co.uk/recipes/chocolate-brownies

I made a lemon drizzle the other day with mashed potato and polenta instead of flour - was amazing.

I often use almond flour as a sub but it's pretty expensive for every day use.

My favourite blogs are Elana's Pantry and Against All Grain.. they are US so have to do some thinking with the recipes sometimes but have made some lovely stuff

Yogibear - is that link correct - when I looked it they link it to their organic flour which is made with wheat - are you just supposed to substitute it with the gluten free flour?

I too struggle - you don't seem to be able to just swap gluten free flour for "normal" flour - the cake never turns out right! :(

These cocoa brownies are amazing (make sure you really brown the butter). I’ve substituted the flour for ground almonds to make them GF, worked really well. I guess you could substitute any GF flour, as there is very little flour in the recipe.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/jun/04/brownie-recipes-hugh-fearnley-whittingstall

Thanks!

I’ve used the Doves website a few times and found it a little hit and miss. Some turn out fine, some need a bit of tweaking.

Unfortunately she doesn’t like almonds

I’ll have a look at the blogs

Thanks!

Sorry can I thread jack briefly, can I use cornflour to make a gluten free roux or will it not work to thicken sauces?

I bake them all, often pick up great reviewed recipes on Pinterest but to be honest all the different flours you need is such a faff

Of late ive been cheating with Andrew James gluten-free mixes from amazon or eBay often on really good multi buys, the dc go mad for the muffins scones and cookies but I’ve also go a brownie mix to go at shortly

sorry, x-posted - thanks for the brownie link, will have a look

MV yes you can, but don’t use as much - about half the amount

Or GF flour works just as well as normal flour

Oops, sorry, it’s this one - although I think it is the same recipe just lists different flour.

www.dovesfarm.co.uk/recipes/gluten-free-chocolate-brownies

MVLipwig I’ve always used cornflour to thicken sauces, regardless of if I’m making it specifically gluten free.

Because of the science to produce crossiants and eclairs it is always going to be tricky to replicate then as gluten free.

Eclairs not home made, but the frozen ones in Tescos are not bad. Crossiants the only thing vaguely close is marks and spencer chocolate twists.
I spend a lot of time searching the internet for recipes.

Thank you, my new housemate is gluten free and just trying to get my head round it. These recipes looks great too

Banana bread made with ordinary recipe and gluten free flour - it is divine but seldom makes it past the cooling rack as the family descend!

For brownies, I'd recommend Googling Felicity Cloake's Perfect Brownie on the Guardian website, and just sub in the equivalent in GF flour. It's pretty much failsafe.

For those struggling to bake GF cakes more generally, your main issue is moisture content. Most GF flours are thirstier than wheat flour. So if your normal recipe calls for medium eggs, sub in GF flour and large eggs, or be prepared to give the mix a couple of minutes at the end of mixing, then test dropping consistency and add more fluid to get it right... milk, lemon juice, etc.

Making croissants will always end up with a sub-par result because they are a case where none of the chemistry to date has managed to replace gluten. But you can make a rough puff pastry whirl easily enough to get a decent savoury pastry for breakfast. Make your pastry with 50:50 butter and grated cheese (cheddar or hard goats cheese, for example). Roll it out. Nuke some additional butter until it's soft enough to spread over the pastry but not liquid. Spread the butter, fold the pastry into thirds, pop in the fridge for five minutes. Roll it out, repeat the spreading, folding and fridging. Repeat as many times as you can be bothered. When you're ready, roll out the chilled pastry, spread a little more butter, sprinkle some grated cheese over it all - and some thin slices of prosciutto, if you like - then roll it up from the edge closest to you until you have a sausage of dough. Using a sharp knife, cut through the sausage at one inch intervals, place on a lined baking tray, brush a last time with butter and bake at 180 until they're golden and risen and the smell in the kitchen is making you drool. Usually about 15-20 minutes. My non-coeliac DH cannot be trusted in a room alone with these, they're that good.

I use Doves in my normal recipes, but add a bit extra liquid, e.g. a few squeezes of golden syrup/honey or a few drops of milk. No one can taste the difference between my GF baking and non-GF baking so I usually bake GF by default so more people can eat it.

Doves is brilliant!

Nigella Lawson’s GF brownies are great and easy to make; I did them for the Macmillan tea party thing at work last year and they went down really well (didn’t bother with the sauce!)
www.nigella.com/recipes/flourless-chocolate-brownies-with-hot-chocolate-sauce

I make a lovely italian biscuit with 200g ground almonds, 2 egg whites, almond essence and 75g sugar

Mix, make into small balls, add almond to the top and bake for about 15mins

@Tinklewinkle try the Jamie Oliver best ever brownies- think there is only about 60g of flour in it, so negligible and they are v tasty!

@Tinklewinkle just omit the fruit and nuts......

www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/chocolate-recipes/bloomin-brilliant-brownies/

Its a pity she doesn't like almonds as I can make fab gf chewy choc chip cookies easily with almond butter. I also found a recipe on Pintrest which weirdly used Angel Delight powder and that was good.

Croissants are never going to work alas, but eclairs can be done with tapioca flour or buy the frozen ones as they are v nice

DDil is coelliac, so when I take the family a cake it has to be gluten free.
any cake recipes that use bananas are great as the mashed banana "glues" it all together.
i make banana and choc chip muffins, which are very nice (google recipe) Mary Berry's "superb carrot cake" (Book Fast Cakes) and MB's "Holiday Banana Cake" (Book Foolproof cookery)
In short any cake recipe using bananas I just substitute the ordinary flour for gluten free.
ASDA's own brand gluten free pasta (according to DIL) is very good especially their lasagne.
I make excellent gluten free brownies by substituting the flour and using Xanthan gum.
A lot of guten free recipes are quite complicated. My DIL makes some lovely choc chip cookies, that are easy (she makes them with the kids)
i find any pastry/bread type recipes quite tricky and have had mixed results, it is very much trial and error.
I had a moderate sucess last week with a gluten free pizza base, but it was my second attempt!
Good luck!

Can she get Juvenal flour mix on prescription? DS is coeliac and I have found that it’s better than the Doves farm.

Thanks for all the suggestions, I’ll have a look through them with her later and get her to pick some to try.

She was gutted that the croissant recipe didn’t work, will try those swirls suggested though

DamsonWhine Unfortunately we don’t get any GF products on prescription here. Will have to see if that brand is available to buy. We use the ASDA GF flour at the moment as I find that better than Doves

I have coeliacs. DS found this recipe and makes it for me all the time. Very easy to do and works well every time.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5870/glutenfree-lemon-drizzle-cake%3famp lemon drizzle cake]

Oops I forgot the double brackets. Think the link should still work