My Gluten-Free Week

I have always dreaded the thought of one day having to go gluten free; I mean I love bread and baked yummies and the gluten free bread I see in the supermarkets always looked so sorry for itself (and I was later to find out almost invariably contained egg anyway). However, my new 10 week old vegan was having a hard time with colic and I had already tried other diet options which hadn't helped and gluten was next on the list. Typically I had just made some awesome looking seitan burgers (if you don't know, seitan is pretty much 100% gluten central!) so my one ended up going in the freezer and I was left salivating over my other half's burger as I ate some baked beans and veg I had managed to rustle up (for some reason I forgot that things like rice and potatoes were gluten free! i blame the baby brain!). Even more typically, that night my little vegan got a lot better and was nowhere near as bad the next day (too early for the diet change to have made a difference; a lot of babies just grow out of it). In spite of this I decided to persevere with the gluten free week challenge as a little experiment to see how hard it was and to see if it made me feel any better like other people often claim it does for them.

My first port of call was obviously BREAD! I looked through quite a few recipes online- there are tonnes and I can't even find the one I made but of the ones I looked at they were all quite similar. My bread didn't rise as much as normal bread does and I also think I must have underdone it slightly as it was still quite doughy inside but I have to say it was actually quite tasty and with a bit of practice would be perfectly adequate to be a replacement for my gluten bread addiction. I think I would have to buy a bread maker if I was to continue as making enough bread for me and my mr (he eats even more bread than me) would probably take half my week up!

Being a new mum, a lot of my daily meals were nothing much to blog about; I had baked beans on my gluten free bread, vegetables and rice, a few soups and the list goes on- when I am only cooking for myself it doesn't tend to be too exciting- especially when I just want something easy and fast.

At the weekend however we were having people round for dinner. I still really wanted to try those stuffed seitan burgers I had missed out on before. I remembered I had seen some gluten-free "seitan" (an oxymoron if ever I saw one!) on pinterest and the mushroom filling would be easy to deglutenise with swapping flour to a gluten free version so I decided to do this. The recipe for the seitan that I used (although there are others) can be found here from Wellsphere and the basic recipe I was making was from The Best Veggie Burgers on the planet. In addition to the mushroom, garlic and onion mixture for the centre I added some fresh spinach leaves and mozarella Cheezly for an even more decadent effect and added some red wine whilst cooking the mushroom mixture. Along with the burgers we served homemade sweet potato and normal potato wedges and salad. The other guests all had a bread roll as I decided my gluten free bread making was not quite perfected enough for guests yet! Everyone really enjoyed these burgers. There aren't proper measurements for the spices in this recipe so it was a bit of guesswork. For me, the end result was a very cumin tasting burger (which in my mind was awesome) and they also can out a lovely dark orange colour. The filling was a little overtaken by the taste of the burgers themselves but it was still lovely and the texture differences really made this burger special.

For dessert I made the most heavenly ice cream I have ever tasted- Peanut Butter Ice Cream!!! I have had a second hand ice cream maker for ages and haven't got round to properly using it properly so this was an awesome excuse. You seriously MUST make this recipe..it is so melt-in-the-mouth perfect! Along side it we had the gluten free cookies I had blogged about in December here.

With timings and people being late I was in such a rush to serve these things I forgot to take photos. Instead, this is the actual seitan burger that I hadn't got to eat taken my my darling other half with as much photographic skill as the next door neighbour's cat (although I can't say I am much better!)

If you look closely you can see the filling but it blends in a bit!

Add a lettuce leaf to boost up the healthiness!!

The next day we had my other half's godson and his mother over for lunch. You might remember that the cookies I had baked before were for a gluten intolerant boy; well this is that boy! We never got to go round and see him for his birthday as him and his mum were ill so we decided to have this lunch instead. For the main course we had homemade pizza and chips. I used a pizza dough recipe from What's Cookin' Chicago? which you can find here. It made a lovely thin pizza base and cooked perfectly. One side was topped with tomato puree, tomatoes and Cheezly mozarella and the other side also had mushrooms, fresh spinach and peppers.

For dessert we had cookies and ice cream again but I made a plain vanilla ice cream by omitting the peanut butter from the other recipe as the little boy had never had peanut butter before (and as it turns out he is not the biggest fan of ice cream- more for us though!). Once again I forgot to take photos *facepalm* but it is my mid-January resolution to do better at this from now on!

At the end of the week I realised I hadn't really felt any different on my gluten free diet so decided to not carry on completely omitting gluten however I will use these recipes again as all of them were successes and went down so well with our guests!

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

It is a very special little boy's birthday on New Year's Day. He can't have gluten or dairy so I decided to make some gluten free vegan cookies for him. I have only used gluten free flour once in a sponge cake and although other people liked it I definitely thought something was slightly strange in taste (although I was pregnant at the time and weirdly some things tasted slightly different). As I wasn't completely happy with the cake I was a little apprehensive about this cookies but I really like these ones!

I chose a vegan recipe from vegweb which you can find here and the only substitution I used was gluten free flour in place of the regular flour.

The dough was quite crumbly when attempting to make cookie shapes but I found the best way was to mould with my hands. They were also quite crumbly when just cooked and when I tried them warm I wasn't so sure but as they cool down they harden and when I tried them the next day I thought they were really nice and definitely something I would bake again! As you can see from the picture they still look as if they are very crumbly but as they have hardened they toughen and you can break them (rather than crumble) quite well.

I will report back with the opinion of the birthday boy- 3 year olds never lie!

Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodles

I hadn't made any cookies from "Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar" (by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero) for a while and even the ones I had made were some of the more simple and usual flavour cookies in the book. As I was going to a family gathering at my Aunt's I decided to take over some cookies for everyone to try and chose these ones as with the spice in them they are a bit more "adult". You can actually find the recipe online from the Post Punk Kitchen here.The teaspoon of cayenne pepper did not seem like it would be very spicy at all but these cookies definitely had a kick and the cinnamon complimented them perfectly. I also loved how the cookies look and I definitely made an effort to make them perfectly round and uniform so they looked very professional when I brought them out at the party. I had many comments about how good they were and where I got the recipe from them. These are a must bake recipe!

Mint Choc Chip Cookies

It's been quite a while since I posted! I am now in my third trimester of pregnancy and it (along with trying to carry on my studying) has been taking it out of me; well it's a very good excuse for a daily afternoon nap. Because of this I haven't been trying out many new things; tending to stick to known favourites to cook. I visited my parents in Cornwall for a week and did do some cooking there including a very successful Broccoli, Cauliflower and Pasta bake but I forgot to 1) take note of quantities and 2) take a picture so I won't blog about that. My dad also made some AWESOME vegetable tempura with cauliflower, mushrooms and sweet potato but again no pictures and no specific recipe so I will have to get him to do it again!!

While I was in Cornwall I had a dream about making Mint Choc Chip cookies including how I'd do it (recipe and methods) which was a bit random and to be honest I wasn't that keen on the idea of mint choc chip in a cookie (I love the ice cream though so I'm not sure why I was apprehensive about these) but if it came to me in a dream I HAD to make them....and I'm so glad I did! They turned out really delicious and look impressive too! I am just hoping that my OH's family will like them as we are visiting this weekend.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

Cookies:
3/4 cup sugar
2/3 cup oil (I used sunflower)
1/4 cup non-dairy milk
1/2 tbs cornflour
4 tsp peppermint flavouring/extract
2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2-1 cup of chocolate chips (depending on how many you want/have!)

Topping:
200g dark chocolate
4 tsp peppermint flavouring/essence

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius
2. Mix together the sugar, oil, milk and cornflour. This needs to be done for a few minutes to get a really good smooth consistency and let the sugar and oil bind properly together.
3. Add the peppermint essence
4. Mix in the flour and salt (it sometimes helps to mix in the flour half at a time)
5. Add the chocolate chips and mix until well dispersed
6. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto lined baking sheets and smooth out to cookie shapes. I made 10 large cookies with this mixture but do whatever size you wish (cooking times may vary though so make sure you check regularly). Make sure there is space between the cookies as they will spread out a little when they cook.
7. Bake in the oven for 8-15 minutes (mine took 15, smaller will take less) until starting to brown all over
8. Remove from the oven to cool completely.
9. Melt the dark chocolate in a bowl over a pan of boiling water. Once melted add in the peppermint essence and mix well.
10. Take each cookie and dip it in the chocolate. Use a spoon to get the chocolate to cover half of the cookie. Set aside on some baking paper to set. Putting in the fridge for an hour can speed up this process!!
11. This makes too much melted chocolate really but it is hard to cover the cookies is you make less. I put satsuma pieces in the left over chocolate and mixed until they were covered then put them in the fridge to set. Delicious!