Gluten-Free Cooking - a thread for coeliacs and gluten-intolerants. Come and share your tips please!

[redridingwolf]

On another thread, people started sharing gluten-free cooking tips, so this is now a home for all gluten-free tips.

My 4yo DS1 has just been diagnosed coeliac, so I am about to get to grips with all this and will be very grateful for all tips :)

redriding - yes if you really concentrate the filtered stock right down by boiling most of the water off (hence very important not to add salt) and then freeze as ice cubes is a very good idea.

Someone kindly pmd me and said Nairns do do a gluten free oatcake, so that is probably worth looking for? And you can buy gf oats to make flapjack.

I'd love a really good pastry recipe for DH. We do try, but although he is appreciative of the efforts DS 1&2 and I have made to formulate something that isn't rock hard it is always hard and unpleasant.

higamous - what type of pastry. Something for the top of a pie like a shortcrust?

A gluten-free Nairn's oatcake, you say, higamous? i shall rush out and buy lots! Hurrah :)

I didn't mention the gf oatcake, but we did have some at Christmas and DH said they were yummy. Yes, RRW, ordinary shortcrust for a quiche would be lovely.

higamous - I experimented for a while before coming up with this shortcrust pastry for a quiche and it worked really well. It is a derivative of the sweet shortcrust recipe I put at the top of the thread. Again, it will not roll out like a normal pastry but you can mould it quite thin into the tin with fingers if chilled first.

A 25 cm quiche/flan tin greased (grease with Pure margarine if DH is lactose intolerant as well.)

150g of Doves Farm plain flour (without Xanthan Gum)
100g of cornflour
100g of cheddar cheese
1 tsp of mustard powder (optional)
2 medium eggs
50g Pure Margarine (dairy free)
1 satchet of Dr Oetker dried egg whites (equivalent to 2 egg whites in place of Xanthan Gum).

Cook blind on Gas 6 as per the tart recipe at top of thread. Fill as per a normal quiche being careful to use lactofree milk in any filling if DH is lactose intolerant and of course avoiding any ingredients with gluten.

By missing out the Xanthan Gum I find I was able to make a pastry that was less like rock and the addition of cheese also made it a softer mouth feel as well as quite a savoury taste with the mustard powder too. If you find the recipe a bit oily then use a harder cheese or less margarine. Cheddar cheese (or any hard cheese) has virtually no lactose in.

a good food processor is essential. DH bought me a all-singing-all-dancing one for Christmas (much from feminist friends, but i really wanted one and it's an essential piece of kit when you have to make so much more stuff from stratch!)

we tend to do several varieties of vegetable fritters/savoury pancakes for DD (2.5yr) - sweetcorn and feta/ courgette and cheddar etc with GF batter mix. also, homemade chicken nuggets and fish fingers using GF cornflakes crushed up for coating (all GF fish fingers i've found in supermarkets have been nasty!).

DD loves 'kid-friendly risotto' (long grain rice cooked in GF stock with teeny pieces of veggies/chicken etc in)... some of these recipes and suggestions sound yummy though, so i'm definitely going to expand her repetoire!

:)

Ross do GF burgers.

We have just found a new company wheatfreebakerydirect.com/ amd they do bagels, rolls, belgian buns and as of next week iced fingers and pastry.

My DS is 2 years diagonosed and these are the first "bought" gf bread sort of stuff he will eat ...

Yorkshire puddings : 90g cornflour, 4 eggs, milk (as normal to double cream consistancy) cook as normal - no-one would be able to tell they are GF and I'm from Yorkshire !

MoreBeta - Thanks - I will be trying it out next weekend.

Couldn't see tht anyone had posted this recipe for a gluten free lemon cake made with mash rathe than gluten free flour. I've made it for my mum and it's delicious. Takes longer to cook than the recipe says though.
www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5870/glutenfree-lemon-drizzle-cake

great stuff here. does anyone have any suggestions for breakfast 'treats' for a child (until now we have occasionally had croissants/petit pain au chocolat at birthdays & Christmas) - anything fun and easy?

will try that cake, katz - looks like a great way to use up leftover mash

FSB - what brand food processor did you get? i may need an unfeminist present also :)

I don't know if you can get it there, but Betty Crocker and Bisquick both do gluten free mixes, which has made my life exponentially easier! :) I also love Pamela's, I can make muffins or scones or whatever without having to mess around measuring different flours.

red - i also made it using soya marg as my mum has diary and wheat free food.

Need some advice please about baking a gluten-free rich chocolate cake. Recipe I am using says use 50g flour and 50g ground almonds - if I just use 100g ground almonds will it come out OK?

Or, I have some polenta and also some semolina - could I substitute one of those for the flour?

Thanks.

GeorgeEliot - semolina is not gf.

I'd recomend you use cornflour if you don't have Doves gf flour.

Hi red riding, it's a magimix cuisine 4-200 and it comes with 3sizes of blender bowl and a whole box of attachments that do all sorts of fun things! (probably getting too excited about it but I've never has one any my mum's was a 40 year old war horse!)

Re breakfast treats; little sweet scotch pancakes with jam always go down well in our house... Just sub normal flour for gf flour

I use a 50:50 mix of polenta and GF flour in a lemon cake I make.

However I have a recipe for a chocolate torte that uses 50:50 almonds and ground hazelnut. It comes out very dense and very rich.

We have protien here for breakfast - sliced ham, chicken, eggs or cheese. DS does not like the GF breakfast cereals at all. Or as a treat I make a batch of GF gingerbread men and he has one of these ...

Yank - I will check out those mixes. I can see it's definitely helpful to have something quick on hand.

FSB - Scotch pancakes, brilliant idea! DS1 loves the supermarket ones. I will practice making some gluten-free ones. And notapizza the protein is an interesting idea. Not sure yet how DS1 is going to react to not being able to have Shreddies (or potentially porridge either) for breakfast as he is very much a creature of habit.

Purty - looking forward to those recipes!

Re chocolate cake... My mum makes a gorgeous flour less and pear cake (I think the recipe was in the times a couple of years ago). It uses ground almonds instead of flour. Always a big hit with coeliacs and non-coeliacs alike!

Just found the link -

Www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/food/recipes/article1782474.ece

It was from August 2007... An oldie but a goodie :)