I will be doing a (free) gluten-free baking demo at the Mother Earth News Fair in Puyallup, Washington!

Details:
* Saturday June 1, 2012  -11:30am-12:30 pm
* Sunday, June 2, 2012  -3:00-4:00pm
* King Arthur Flour Baking Stage

I would love to see you!

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As I look out of my window this morning, the sky is overcast and grey. The air is cool. But yesterday was gloriously sunny and warm.  I spent much of the afternoon in the garden, writing and soaking up the sun.  Such is Seattle springtime. One day it’s hot and sunny and feels like it could never be anything different. And then it rains and rains for days. But, Seattleites have learned to be grateful for the sunshine we get and to dream of the sunshine yet to come.

Our little family has had a bit of a cloud pass over us. dAhub was laid off from his job of 12 years last week. His (former) company is always laying folks off to make their budget projections and it was only a matter of time. He’s been lucky that he’s been there for as along as he has been.

To be honest, I think this is a good thing for him and for us. He’s not been happy there for a long time. And with each layoff, the powers-that-be just gave more work to the remaining folks. It’s not a good atmosphere in which to work. In fact, he had been talking about looking for a different position for the past few months, so this kind of feels to me like the universe telling him it was time for a change.

It’s so odd to think of him as no longer being at that particular company.  He started there when Girlfriend was a baby–so he’s worked there for most of her life.  I keep thinking of earlier times when his company was more friendly and convivial.  Folks who worked there used to give parties and hold gatherings for the excuse to have fun and hang out with each other.  But, over the years, as more and more people got laid off, the friendly nature of the company slowly eroded and it became just another job that was super stressful.

So, this is a good thing.  But, no matter how good it will be ultimately, the present is a bit stressful and unsure. We are fine—please don’t worry about us. But, something like this is always a bit of a blow to the gut. We are in need of a little extra comfort these days. Of course, I turn to baking in times like these. Not only is baking my comfort and haven, but it produces things that are comforting to the people around me. I wanted to share with you a cake I’ve been baking a fair amount lately as a pick me up.  It is a lemon buttermilk snack cake. This cake is simple and so easy to make on the spur of the moment. And it is fresh and lemony and tastes like happy sunny days and hopefulness. So, it’s our favorite treat at the moment.

I will keep you updated on how dAhub’s job search is going. Again, we’re not too worried–we are lucky that computer programmers are always in need. But, if you think of it, send good job-finding thoughts to dAhub as he embarks on this journey of change and following new paths.

Lemon Buttermilk Snack Cake, Gluten-Free
-inspired by The Wooden Spoon Dessert Book, by Marilyn M. Moore

Yield: 1- 8 in x 8 in cake

Ingredients

For the cake
1 ½ cups (210 g)  Jeanne’s Gluten-Free All Purpose Flour mix
¼ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
5 tablespoons (70 g) unsalted butter, soft
½ cup (100 g) granulated sugar
zest from one lemon (you pick the size—larger=more zest=more lemony taste)
1 extra-large egg
½ cup buttermilk (120 ml) or ½ cup milk of choice mixed with 1 teaspoon cider vinegar
extra butter and tapioca flour for pan

For the icing
1 cup (112 g) confectioner’s sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, soft
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F/180 degrees C/Gas Mark 4

Grease and flour an 8 in by 8 in/20 cm by 20 cm pan with extra butter and tapioca flour

In a small bowl, mix together flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda

In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugar until creamy. I use a hand mixer to do this, but you can use a whisk. Add the egg and beat until fluffy—about 1 minute. Add the lemon zest and beat until combined.

Add the flour mix and buttermilk alternately in several batches, beginning and ending with the flour mix.

Scrape batter into prepared pan and smooth top.

Bake at 350 degrees F until tester comes out clean, about 30 minutes.

While cake is baking, make the icing.  In a small bowl, whisk together all ingredients until creamy.

Cool in pan for 5 minutes. Then spread icing over entire surface of warm cake and allow to cool. Cake may be served warm or cold.
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Store in an airtight container for up to 5 days at room temperature.

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Finally, finally, finally I got around to developing a recipe for flour tortillas.  Thank you for your patience!

This recipe turned out to be more challenging to get right than I anticipated. But, I have gotten so many requests for flour tortillas–from my readers and from my family–that I was determined to figure it out.

I have to admit–I don’t really like the commercially available gluten-free flour tortillas.  They tend to be too stiff for me and they don’t really roll around fillings all that well.  And they taste kind of funny to me.  When I started to work on a recipe for these, I had a few some specific goals.  I wanted tortillas that:

1) were soft and fairly easy to roll around a filling
2) tasted like I remember wheat flour tortillas to taste
3) used easy-to-obtain ingredients

Traditionally, flour tortillas are made with lard.  Good, quality lard is somewhat challenging for me to get in Seattle, and I didn’t want to render my own, so I knew that if my recipe contained lard, I would never make it.  It turns out that butter is excellent for this recipe.  It provides a nice taste and the texture is perfect.  If you can’t use dairy butter, I would experiment with using lard, shortening, or coconut oil.  Don’t use a liquid oil, though–that will create a different texture for the tortillas.  Also, I played with the amount of salt in the tortillas until I got it to the level we like.  You can add more or less salt depending on your tastes.

If you are a kitchen gadget hound like me, this recipe is a great reason to pull out your tortilla press.  I got mine at a local Mexican store years and years ago for making my own corn tortillas.  It’s one of those single-use pieces of equipment that’s really fun to use.  I use my tortilla press for the first shaping–to create a nicely rounded disk.  I then transfer the dough to a floured rolling board and roll it out a bit thinner.  If you don’t have a tortilla press and you don’t want to get one, you can roll out the dough with a rolling pin. For the rolling process, I use a small Asian rolling pin. This is a handy tool for rolling out small bits of dough. If you don’t have one, you can just use your regular rolling pin. I will say that I use my small rolling pin much more than I would have thought I would.  It’s also handy to have a ruler to check the diameter of your tortillas as you roll them.  And a small knife is handy for cutting off the ragged edges

Flour Tortillas, Gluten-Free

Yield: about 9- 7 inch/18 cm tortillas

Ingredients
2 cups (280 g) Jeanne’s All Purpose Gluten-Free flour mix
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold and cut into 1 tablespoon pieces
3/4 cup (156 ml) warmish water (about 90 degrees F/ 32 degrees C)
tapioca flour for rolling

In the bowl of a food processor, place the flour, salt, and baking powder. Pulse a few times to mix.

Add the butter pieces. Pulse until the mixture looks like wet sand. Add the warm water and turn on processor until a dough ball forms.  The dough should be soft and pillowy.

Turn out dough onto a piece of plastic wrap and wrap tightly. Let sit at room temperature for 1 hour. This rest period will help to distribute the water throughout the dough.  If you don’t plan on using the dough that day, you can refrigerate the wrapped dough.  But will need to bring it to cool room temperature before you roll and make the tortillas.  Please note that if the dough is too warm, it will be hard to roll and it will be too floppy to move to the pan.  It’s best when it’s on the cooler side of room temperature.

When you are ready to make the tortillas, roll your dough into 9 equal balls of about 1/4 cup/65 grams each.  Cover the balls with plastic wrap while you preheat your pan.

The tortillas need to be cooked in a pan that can be heated to a high temperature.  I use a well-seasoned cast iron pan for this.  Place pan on medium high heat and let preheat well–for about 5 minutes.  If you have a tortilla press, now is the time to use it. Dust the press with tapioca flour (top and bottom). In addition, dust rolling surface with tapioca flour.

Place the first dough ball in the middle of the press and firmly press. Open the press. Most likely the disk (which should be about 5 inches/13 cm in diameter) will stick to the upper part of the press (as it does for me).

Carefully remove the dough disk and place it on the floured rolling surface. Sprinkle the surface of the dough disk with tapioca flour. If you don’t have a tortilla press, proceed to the next step.

With a rolling pin give the dough disk (or dough ball if you didn’t use a tortilla press) a roll.  Give the disk a quarter turn and roll it again. Repeat this process until you have a disk that is roughly 7 inches (18 cm) in diameter.  Don’t roll these any thinner.

If the dough gets too thin it will be almost impossible to transfer from the rolling surface to the pan.  If the ragged edges bother you, you can cut them off at this stage with a sharp knife.

With a large turner, carefully transfer the dough disk to the heated pan.  It might take you a few tries before you are able to transfer the dough disk without it breaking.  If your kitchen is hot, the dough might get too warm and might get floppy and be harder to roll and to transfer.  If this happens, put dough into the fridge to cool down and firm up.

Cook for about 60 seconds–until the surface of the tortilla is covered with puffed up bubbles.

Flip and cook on the other side for another 60ish seconds.  Both sides should look like they do in the photo at top–with brown rings where the bubbles have formed.

Flip the tortilla onto a dinner plate hot side up.  You will now repeat the process with each dough ball.  Flip each successive tortilla hot side up onto the tortilla stack.  By the end of the process, you will have 9 tortillas.  Cover warm tortillas with a towel to keep warm and serve.

Tortillas are best fresh–they will be pliable and should roll around a filling fairly easily.

Cool completely and then store in an airtight container at room temperature (not in the fridge) for up to 5 day.  For longer storage, freeze.  To refresh, microwave for a few seconds before use.

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Greetings from sunny Seattle!  I am coming to you live from my garden.  Whenever it’s sunny and the slightest bit warm, I move my writing operations to the garden table.  I sit in the sun as long as my skin will stand it (about 15 minutes) and then put up the umbrella and settle in.  Being in the garden with the chickens and the other forms of wildlife is one of my most favorite things in the world.  It’s my sanctuary and my joy.

The chickens (or “The Girls”) love it when I come out here.  They are convinced that I am going to give them something delicious to eat.  When Girlfriend was small, she and her pals often had lunch and snacks out here.  The chickens came to learn that little kids eating macaroni and cheese tend to be messy–which means that a lot of macaroni and cheese ended up on the ground–and in the chickens’ beaks.  To this day, their favorite thing to eat is macaroni and cheese.

The Girls also know that if I come out here to garden, chances are that I will dig up some delectable worms and bugs for them to snack on.  Our oldest chicken, Rosie (she’s the only one left from our first flock), follows me around quite closely whenever I’m gardening.  It’s often somewhat difficult to dig because she’s prone to sticking her head in the hole–within garden trowel range.  I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve almost bonked her on the head by accident.  As I garden and she snacks, we chat. She tells me about her day and how much she loves to eat bugs. I tell her how pretty she is. It’s a nice bonding time.

No matter where I am in the garden, all the chickens come by to tell me what’s going on. They usually do it with a high pitched kind of trill in their throat. The also make a “buk buk” sound that is more quiet and subdued than their normal “bawk! bawk!” that they make when they are announcing an egg being laid or sounding the alarm about something.  There’s also a noise they make when they are eating something delicious (like fallen sunflower seeds from the wild bird feeder) that sounds a lot like purring. So, I call it chicken purring. It seems to signal deep contentment. Which is what I feel in the garden. I think I will start purring, too.

As you know, Mother’s Day is in a couple of days.  There’s a cake recipe I’ve been dying to share with you that I think would be perfect for a Mother’s Day treat. It’s called the Pink Cake, and it’s the cover cake on the wonderful cookbook, Vintage Cakes, by Julie Richardson. Julie is the owner and head baker at the Baker and Spice bakery in Portland, OR.  Neither the book or the bakery is gluten-free, but both are so pretty and delicious looking.  I adapt her recipes to gluten-free and they are so good!

I had the good fortune to watch a cake frosting demonstration with Julie while she was in town promoting her book in the fall. And I learned a great deal! She showed us how to prepare and then frost the three layer Pink Cake, which is a chocolate cake with a Berry Buttercream. Not only is it a delicious cake, it’s a stunner!  The combination of pink frosting and three chocolate layers elicits ooos and aahs every time I’ve made it. I’ve now made it several times–for friends’ birthdays and for my own birthday. And, I will be making it for Mother’s Day. I know how to treat myself!

Some of the tips I learned from Julie during her demo are so simple and yet so perfect. One thing she recommends is that you freeze your baked layers before you frost them. This makes the layers less crumb-containing and easier to frost. The other thing she does is brush each layer with a sugar syrup mixture to add more moisture to the cake. This is brilliant! And, finally, she secretly adds a ganache layer underneath the berry buttercream layer–which puts this cake right over the top.

This cake isn’t overly difficult to make, but it does take time and patience. I usually bake the cake the night before I frost and assemble it. After the cake is completely cool, I wrap each layer tightly in plastic wrap and place in the freezer overnight. The next morning I take each layer out as I frost them. This keeps them nice and cold and easy to work with. After the cake is frosted, you want to place it in the refrigerator until about an hour before serving. This way, the frosting doesn’t get too soft and difficult to spread.

Happy Mother’s Day to you and the mothers in your life!

Pink Cake (Chocolate Cake w/Berry Buttercream), Gluten-Free
-adapted from Vintage Cakes by Julie Richardson

Yield: 1- 3 layer cake

Ingredients

For the Cake
4 ounces (115 g) unsweetened chocolate, chopped
¼ cup (28 g) unsweetened cocoa
¾ cup (177 ml) boiling water
¾ cup (190 g) sour cream (make sure it is gluten-free)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups (280 g) Jeanne’s Gluten-Free All Purpose flour mix
¾ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup (1 stick; 115 g) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup (213 g) packed brown sugar (I like dark brown)
¾ cup (150 g) granulated sugar
½ cup (120 ml) neutral tasting vegetable oil (I like Rice Bran oil)
3 egg yolks at room temperature
3 extra large eggs at room temperature

For the Berry Buttercream
6 extra large egg whites. room temperature
1 ¼ cups granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon cream of tarter
2 cups (4 sticks; 1/2 kg) unsalted butter, at room temperature and cut into cubes
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
4 cups (10 ounces; 283 g) strawberries or raspberries, mashed and strained through a sieve to catch seeds. If using frozen berries, measure before thawing. Discard the seeds

For the Sugar Syrup
¼ cup (50 g) granulated sugar
½ cup (120 ml) boiling water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the Ganache
1 cup (240 ml) heavy cream
1 ¼ cups (227 g) semi-sweet chocolate chips

Make the cake
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F/180 degrees C/Gas Mark 4. Line the bottoms of 3- 8 inch/20 cm round cake pans with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, pour the boiling water over the unsweetened chocolate and cocoa and let sit for 1 minute. Whisk until smooth. Add the sour cream and vanilla. Whisk well to combine.

Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and both sugars on medium-high until light and fluffy—about 3 minutes. Scrape down the bowl with a rubber spatula. On low speed, drizzle oil into the mixture until it’s blended. On low speed, add the egg yolks and eggs, one at a time, until well blended. On low speed, add the flour mixture and chocolate mixture alternately, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Blend until smooth.

Divide the batter equally between the 3 pans (there will be approximately 510 g of batter per pan). Smooth tops and tap each pan on the counter to release and large air bubbles.

Bake at 350 degrees F for about 25 minutes—until the centers of the cakes spring back when lightly touched. Place pans on wire racks to cool for about 10 minutes, then unmold onto wire racks to cool completely.

When the cakes are completely cool, wrap each tightly in a piece of plastic wrap and place in the freezer for at least an hour or overnight.

Make the ganache
Heat the cream at very low temperature until bubbles form around the edges. Immediately remove from heat and add the chocolate chips. Let stand for 1 minute and then whisk until smooth. As you make the buttercream, the ganache will start to cool and set up. You want it to be stiff enough to spread like a frosting rather than pour like a glaze.

Make the Berry Buttercream
When you are ready to frost your cakes, prepare your buttercream. This will make a what is called a Swiss Buttercream—which means that the egg whites are cooked as they are beaten with the sugar and cream of tartar over simmering water.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, place egg whites, sugar, and cream of tartar. Use a hand whisk to combine. Place bowl over (not in) a pan of simmering (not boiling) water and whisk constantly. As the mixture warms up, it will become easier to whisk. Continue whisking until the side of the bowl is hot to the touch.

Carefully move the bowl to the stand mixture and using the whisk attachment, whip the whites on medium high until they have tripled in volume and are glossy and they hold stiff peaks, 3-4 minutes. Turn the speed to low and add butter pieces, one at a time. Add each piece after the piece before it has been incorporated into the mixture. The mixture may go through a phase where it looks curdled—that’s OK, it is normal and will eventually smooth out. Once all of the butter is incorporated and the frosting looks smooth, add the mashed and strained berries, vanilla, and salt until combined.

You can now cover with plastic wrap and make your ganache. If you’re not using it fairly soon, the buttercream will keep at room temperature for about 2 days or in the fridge for about 7 days. If you place it in the fridge, you will need to bring it to room temperature. Either way, the buttercream must be re-whipped, either by hand or in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment.

Make the sugar syrup
Combine the boiling water, sugar, and vanilla in a small pan. Stir until sugar has completely dissolved. Let cool to lukewarm before using on the cake layers.

Frost and assemble the cake
Remove the first layer from the freezer and unwrap. Place bottom side up on the cake plate (the bottoms are usually flatter than the tops).

Tip: to save on clean up time, place cut pieces of waxed or parchment paper around the edges of the bottom cake layer—shoving them under the cake. This way, the paper catches frosting/ganache drips. Then when you’re done frosting the cake, remove the paper pieces—and you have a clean plate!

Using a pastry brush, brush the top with the sugar syrup.

Next, spread a thin layer of the ganache on top.

Next, spread with about ¾ cup of the buttercream. I like to do this with a metal offset spatula. The buttercream will be about ¼ in/.66 cm thick.

Unwrap the next cake layer and stack bottom up on top of the first layer. Repeat the sugar syrup, ganache, and buttercream process.

Unwrap the final cake layer and stack on the top of the second layer. Repeat the sugar syrup and ganache process. Now, check your cake and carefully scrape off any ganache or buttercream that has oozed out of the layers. Then, apply a thin coating of buttercream over the entire cake. You should be able to see parts of the cake through the buttercream. This is your “crumb coat.” What this does is contain any loose crumbs that are present on the cake so they don’t get mixed up into your final frosting and make it look messy.

Place the cake into the refrigerator for about 10 minutes to firm up the crumb coat before you do your final frosting. After 10 minutes, remove from fridge and carefully frost the cake with the remaining buttercream.

Store the cake in an airtight container (I like to use a cake carrier) for up to 3 days.

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As you already know, my passion is baking. And, if you haven’t already guessed, one of my other most favorite things to do is to hang out with friends, chatting, and drinking wine. And if this hanging out can be done outside during warm weather, even better. And last week, a combo of all of these things came together at the suggestion of my pal, Jameson, the voice behind the delightful blog Wine Without Worry .

One day a couple of months ago, Jameson called and asked if I would like get together for a wine and baking afternoon. His thought was that we hang out, make the cheese crackers/straws recipe from my book, and then eat the fruits of our labors and drink champagne. Of course, I was delighted to say yes! I can’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon than baking and drinking champagne.

Now, I knew that this wasn’t going to be any old champagne he would bring. He is a wine expert (he was just nominated for the coveted Saveur Best Wine or Beer Blog award). He works as a consultant for wine shops, farms, and organizations around Seattle. And he’s the Wine Editor for Foodista. In addition to all of his other endeavors, Jameson hosts a monthly wine podcast.  Therefore, I knew that when he said he would bring champagne, it would be special–and would be paired perfectly with the cheese straws. I couldn’t wait!  I have to admit: as much as I like to drink wine, I’m not that good at pairing wine with the food I’m eating. I usually pick a wine I like and call it good. Luckily, I have friends like Jameson who can bump up the wine-food experience from just “good” to “wow, this is amazing!”

One of the many things I like about Jameson is that he is curious and always willing to experience and learn new things. He always seems to be traveling to wine growing regions (hello, France!), wineries, wine shops, and to learn from and chat with other wine experts. I think this is a sign of someone who is truly passionate about what they do.  I love being around people who are working in the field they are meant to be in–it’s a joy to behold.  And, I love it when folks like Jameson pair their passion with teaching other people about their field.  This is Jameson.

He is such a busy bee (he is always traveling to gather more knowledge about wine and wine growing), and I had to deal with a long-term virus that felled my family for weeks (not nearly as glamorous as touring the wine country, I’m afraid) that we weren’t able to get together until last week. As it turns out, the day we got together was start of a run of spectacular spring days–a treat for us in rainy Seattle.

As we started, I asked if Jameson wanted an apron and he said, “sure!”  So, I gave him one of the dAhub’s aprons (everyone in our house as at least one apron.  As you can guess, I have many).  As we started making the cheese crackers and straws, I asked Jameson if he ever baked. He said, “a little bit.” I was trying to gauge how much I would need to explain to him about the baking process. He then mentioned, almost off-handedly, that in graduate school he had worked in a bakery and that he had then apprenticed to a pastry chef. LOL! Typical Jameson–he is so humble and low key. So, we got to work in mixing and then rolling the dough.

After we baked the straws and crackers, we went out into the garden to drink sparkling rosé and nibble on our creations. I got out a couple of champagne coupes that I had inherited from my grandparents. Even though flutes seem currently to be the preferred glass for drinking sparkling wine, I love coupes. They are so elegant and pretty and using them makes me feel like I’m hanging out at an elegant 1930s party.

I will admit, I don’t really know much about wine or champagne. I know what I like, but I don’t really pay that much attention to years or appellations or varietals or whatever. Luckily, I have friends like Jameson who know what they’re doing and can bring the appropriate wine to match the food. The champagne he brought–or I should say, sparkling wine (a sparkling wine isn’t officially a “champagne” unless it comes from the Champagne region of France)–was a sparkling rosé from the Tenuta Col Sandago winery in the Veneto region of Italy. And it was perfect with the cheese crackers.  And a bonus: it was so pretty in the coupes!

We spent a convivial couple of hours in the garden, drinking sparkling wine, eating cheese straws and crackers, and chatting about our lives and our work and our hopes and dreams. And, when it was time for him to go, he left the remainder of the champagne with me and I sent him home with the rest of the cheese sticks. He gave me the best compliment ever:”you’d never know these were gluten-free!”  Thank you for the lovely afternoon, Jameson!

Jameson’s blog post about our day.

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Hey all! I just wanted to let you know that I love hearing from everyone about how they have been baking from my book even though it’s not the Thanksgiving-Hannukah-Christmas season. Me, too! Every week I bake at least one thing from my book. And a friend of mine just asked me to make her a bûche de Noël for her June wedding as an extra cake for gluten-free folks. Instead of a Christmas log, we will call it a Spring Woodland log.

I realize that some folks don’t know that the book has recipes that can be made all year round. Even though the book’s focus is on the winter holidays, there are recipes for cookies, cakes, pies, breads, and pastries that fit any occasion.  For example, this week alone I’ve made the Chocolate Chip Cookies for a family treat and the Cheese Straws and Crackers for a wine date with a pal.  This weekend I’m going to make fried chicken and will use the Buttermilk Biscuits as a side.  And Girlfriend has requested that I make the Pumpkin Doughnuts as a snack tomorrow as an end-of-school-testing-week treat.

Therefore, I’d like to offer one personalized and signed copy of my book as a Mother’s Day gift for a special mom out there. To enter, see directions at the bottom of this post.

I’ve talked about my mom from time to time on the blog. She died in 1998, a few days after Mother’s Day. She had advanced breast cancer, but her system was so weak from treatment that she ended up having a heart attack while driving to work, which then caused her to have collision with a semi-truck. The semi-truck driver was fine, thank goodness.  After my siblings and I were able to get past the shock of our mother’s sudden death, we realized that she died just as she lived–in a blaze of glory. If you knew my mom, you know that she lived big. And she died big. I know it sounds crazy, but my siblings and my mom’s friends and I are kind of tickled at how she died because it was so over the top. You couldn’t die in a more dramatic way.  In addition, people told us that they saw an amazing rainbow in the direction of the highway on the day that she died. Everyone said, “I couldn’t believe how beautiful the rainbow was and then I heard about your mom and knew that it was her.”

My mom had a heart bigger than the size of California and enough determination to move mountains. Whenever I think about everything she did, I can’t quite believe it. She had her fair share of adversity. She was an alcoholic as a young adult, and she had two marriages and divorces. By the time I was 13, she was a recovered alcoholic and a single, divorced working mom with four young kids to raise–with me as the eldest.  You would think this would be enough for anyone to handle, but not for my mom–she was involved in everything. She worked full-time as a traveling speech and language therapist for the public school system where we lived. She had two master’s degrees. She not only went to church, but was the organist there. She went to a movie club, a book club, and had regular coffee dates with everyone she knew. She was quick to offer help to anyone.  When a friend’s son was in a coma after a horrific accident, my mom went to read to him several times a week for months.  We always had someone living with us.  One was a dear friend of ours who had bipolar disorder and couldn’t quite get on her feet.  The janitor from church camped out in our yard for awhile when my mom found out that he was homeless.  He didn’t want to intrude and therefore wouldn’t stay inside, but he had a nice tent and our climate was fairly temperate.  One of my high school friends got kicked out of the house by her parents for not wanting to go to the “right” college (!), so she came to live with us.

My mom believed she could do anything–and instilled that sense in all of us. There was never any thought that we couldn’t do what we set our minds to do. Whatever needed to be done, she just did it.  She was the kind of person that climbed up on our roof on rainy nights to put tarps over the holes. There was nothing she couldn’t fix with a little duct tape–I inherited that talent from her. We lived in a small town in California that had a large migrant farm worker population–and many of their kids were my mom’s students. My mom was also an audiologist, so in addition to knowing sign language, my mom learned Spanish so she could communicate well with her charges. We had parties where she invited her students to come over and do sign language “recitations.”  My siblings and I participated.  For years I would regale folks with my sign language version of “I Never Saw a Purple Cow” to rave reviews.

Whenever one of us kids wanted to learn something, she made it happen (although I don’t quite know how she did that–we were on such a tight budget). We all got various music lessons and went to camps.  As a very young kid, I wanted to go into theatre. She enrolled me in acting lessons and camps and classes and then later drove me to community theatres all over our small town to get to and from rehearsal. Finally, when I was about 15, she got me a moped because she needed the freedom to drive my younger siblings to all of their things, too. I grew up knowing that I would succeed at anything I wanted to engage with. I hope that I’m helping Girlfriend to do the same thing.

My mom also allowed me to have free rein in the kitchen. At certain points in her life, she was an avid cook–and had even belonged to a cookbook club when we were really young. I remember standing on a stool in the kitchen one afternoon and helping her to roll dolmades for the “Greek” night at her cookbook club. As long as I can remember, she let me experiment as much as I wanted to in the kitchen. And there were many cookbooks to help me along. I did have an Easy Bake oven for awhile, but that didn’t last long for me.  I wanted to bake “real” things.  I would peruse the cookbooks at nap time (I was an odd kid) and then go into the kitchen and work on recipes I thought looked fun. When I was very little, I had to climb up on top of the counters to get to the cupboards. To this day I can feel the cold counter linoleum on my knees as a hoisted myself up.

Of course, as a kid, most of the recipes that appealed to me were baked items–cookies and cakes–so I worked on those. For a long stretch of time in my elementary school years, our oven was broken and we didn’t have the money to fix it. That didn’t bother me–I just fried the cookies on top of the stove. And I made lots and lots of pancakes. At one point I tried to rig up a stove top oven using cookie sheets formed into a box shape–I don’t think that was very successful. I made do with whatever ingredients I could find in the cupboards.  For the most part, it was fairly well-stocked kitchen in the scheme of things–all of the basics were there–but I used substitutions if necessary.  For example, there was never any vanilla extract in the cupboards, so I just learned to use vanilla beans that were there–which made my cookies and pancakes look a bit odd to me, but they tasted good so I didn’t care.

Of course, when my mom died, it was devastating for all of us. But, it also felt oddly right somehow. She burned so brightly that she burned out sooner than others. I still miss her fiercely and am sad that Girlfriend never got a chance to meet her Grandma Barbara. But, she is with me in spirit and I’m grateful to have been able to call her my mom.

To enter the giveaway: leave a comment telling me something awesome about being a mom yourself or about your own mom or mother-in-law. Please leave a comment by 11 pm PST on Monday, May 6, 2013. I will choose a name at random using the Random Number Generator and contact you via email if you are the winner!

The winner, chosen by the Random Number Generator is Gloria!  I’ve sent an email to her.  Thank you so much for your lovely and moving stories about the moms in your life and about being a mom and a grandma.  I so loved reading them.

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Just to let you know that I will be teaching the following class this summer!

Pasta, Gnocchi, and Dumplings, Gluten-Free

Join Jeanne Sauvage, author of the blog Art of Gluten-Free Baking, as she explains the secrets behind creating exceptional gluten-free doughs. The right ingredients, techniques, and equipment are crucial to creating pastas and dumplings that taste just like you remember the wheat-filled originals. In this class you will revisit the basics of classic doughs in order to understand the challenges and foundations of gluten-free cooking as you learn to make gluten-free pasta with basil–pine nut pesto; gluten-free potato gnocchi with tomato-porcini sauce; gluten-free dumplings in a chicken-vegetable soup. Jeanne will teach you how to choose the right ingredients for your desired textures, and how to avoid cross contamination with gluten-full items.

The Pantry at Delancey, July 20th OR July 21st, 2013, 6:30-9:30 pm, $70
Registration (register early–these classes fill up quickly!)

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2013 Jeanne Sauvage

Every so often I get a craving for Hostess snacks from my childhood.  The majority of my childhood took place in the 70s—which seems to me to have been the Hostess snacks heyday.  Or maybe it was my own personal Hostess snacks heyday because I was a kid then and they were the food of my childhood.

I think my mom kept my three siblings and me supplied with most of the main varieties of Hostess snack cakes: Ho Hos, Ding Dongs, Twinkies, Donettes, and CupCakes. Of course, each of us had our own personal pecking order of favorites. The one we all agreed on to the same degree were the Donettes (the mini doughnuts)—they were considered by our mom as a “breakfast food” (which boggles the mind now)–so we didn’t need to worry about them being around because they were always there. Of course, being a chocolate fiend, I loved the chocolate covered ones best–but the powdered sugar ones were just fine.

Twinkies were at the bottom of the pecking order for me—mainly because they weren’t chocolate, which was an instant strike against them. And sometimes they were banana flavored (the original flavor), which I really didn’t like. I think my brother put Twinkies towards the top of his list, so they stayed in the house. One of my sisters was crazy for Ding Dongs, the hockey puck shaped, chocolate coated, cream-filled cakes. I liked Ding Dongs, but they weren’t my ultimate favorite. I think the problem with them is that I thought the chocolate coating was too thin.  And my other sister liked best the CupCakes with the twirly design on the top.

Even though Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, and the CupCakes were all basically the same ingredients molded into different shapes, I did have preferences. Ho Hos were my favorite, followed closely by CupCakes and then Ding Dongs. I think the reason for this is that you were pretty much assured at getting everything—the cream filling, the chocolate cake, and the chocolate coating–in each bite. With Ding Dongs and CupCakes, you took a chance of getting a bite that didn’t contain all three at once. As I write this, it seems odd to me that Ding Dongs didn’t come in second for me—you were assured of at least getting the chocolate coating and cake in each bite. Yet, CupCakes were my second favorite—the chocolate frosting was thick on the top, so I could forgive it for having more cake than the others (the frosting was my favorite).  Ho Hos were the top for me. In addition to their superior ingredient arrangement, Ho Hos had the further advantage of an interactive component—you could unroll them and eat them flat. So, they were fun as well as delicious.

Every so often I’ve thought about creating a recipe for them over the years. Then, this past Christmas I got the amazing new Bouchon Bakery cookbook by Thomas Keller and Sebastien Rouxel. As you know, in addition to his amazing restaurants, Chef Keller has several Bouchon Bakeries around the US. I’m sad that I have never been able to eat at any of them because I became aware of them after I was diagnosed with gluten intolerance. But, this may change–as you may know, Keller has now come out with a gluten-free flour mix called Cup4Cup. And I’m wondering if he will (or already has) started offering gluten-free items in his bakeries. If you find that he has, let me know! I applaud Chef Keller for opening up his market to gluten-free folks. It’s so nice to have a superstar chef let it be known that he is aware of and is trying to accommodate those of us who are gluten-free.

Like all of Keller’s books, the Bouchon Bakery cookbook is like a coffee table book in size and weight and beauty.  But it’s full of the recipes from Bouchon Bakery—which makes it a goldmine of information. It is so fun look through and to fantasize over, even if it’s not that easy actually to use in the kitchen. I often go through the book and dream over what I’m going to make next. I will say, this book is more of a professional pastry book than an everyday baking book. But, that’s what makes Keller and his team so special and inspiring. They go above and beyond for all of their recipes. For this reason, I consider this book to be more for special, pull-out-all-of-the-stops baking than for everyday baking.

In addition to so many other fabulous recipes, it has a recipe for his version of Ho Hos. And they are the best dang Ho Hos ever. Like his version of Oreos, TKOs (which I adapted into gluten-free Oreos), his recipe for Ho Hos is amazing. It’s the childhood version all grown up. The ingredients are fresh and real. I realize that some folks want recreations of their childhood sweets to be exactly the same as those from childhood, but let’s be honest: actual Ho Hos aren’t that good.  They are plasticky and bland and are full of horrible ingredients like transfats and high fructose corn syrup.  After an adulthood of making my own delicious baked items, I want a Ho Ho that justifies the time and effort that goes into making them.

So, I set about adapting Keller’s recipe for Ho Hos, which he calls “Oh Ohs.” His version contains a cake layer with a cake type called a biscuit joconde, which an almond sponge cake. I took out the almond flour and turned the cake into a chocolate sponge cake. If you have my book, you will know that I used the Italian version of sponge cake, a genoise (which contains butter) for the bûche de Noël. The sponge cake for this recipe is a a classic sponge, which contains no butter.  The filling is a sweetened whipped cream, and the coating is made with melted chocolate chips.

This recipe does take time. It has several steps, including baking, rolling, freezing, and enrobing. I recommend that you read through the entire recipe before getting started so you can plan your time accordingly.  You will be richly rewarded with the best Ho Hos you’ve ever had!

Ho Hos, Gluten-Free
-adapted from Bouchon Bakery, by Thomas Keller and Sebastien Rouxel

Ingredients

For the cake
1/2 cup (70 g) Jeanne’s Gluten-Free All Purpose flour mix
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2  extra-large eggs (1/2 cup/120 ml), whole
2 extra-large eggs, separated
1/2 cup (100 g) plus 3 tablespoons granulated sugar

For the filling
1/2 cup (120 ml) heavy cream
2 teaspoons powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the coating
3 cups (18 oz/510 g) semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F/180 degrees C/Gas Mark 4. Line the bottom of a rimmed half-sheet pan (18 in x 13 in/46 cm x 33 cm) with parchment paper.

Sift together the flour and the unsweetened cocoa into a small bowl. Whisk to combine.

Place the 2 whole eggs, the 2 egg yolks, and the 1/2 cup of sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Mix on low speed for a few seconds to combine. Raise speed to medium high and beat for 10 minutes. By the end of the 10 minutes, the mixture should be light in color and about 3 times its original size.

Place the 2 egg whites into the clean bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Beat for about 1 minute–until foamy. Sprinkle the 2 tablespoons of sugar over the top and beat on medium high for 2 minutes, until the whites are glossy with soft peaks.

Fold the flour mixture into the egg yolk mixture in 2 additions. Do this by sprinkling half of the flour mixture over the egg yolk mixture and folding it in. Sprinkle with the remaining flour and carefully fold it in. Make sure that all of the flour mixture is combined with the egg mixture. You will find hidden pockets of it in the middle of the egg mixture as you do the folding–so make sure it’s all incorportated. Then fold in the egg white mixture in 2 additions.

Spoon out mixture onto the prepared pan. Tip: put equal amounts of the mixture onto each of the four corners of the pan and on the middle of the pan. Carefully spread the batter into an even layer across the pan–using your fingers here and there to stabilize the parchment paper. Smooth the top as best as you can. I use an offset spatula to do this. Be sure the mixture reaches the corners of the pan.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes–until a tester inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Do not overbake. Set the cake, in the pan, on a cooling rack to cool completely (at least an hour).

15 minutes before you want to use it, make your filling. In the clean bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, place the cream. Sift the powdered sugar across the top. Add the vanilla extract along the side of the cream. Beat on medium high until the cream holds its shape when you lift out the whisk. You don’t need it to be overly firm–just firm enough that you can spread it across the cake without it being liquid and runny.

Once the cake is cool, cut it. First, run a sharp knife around the edges of the cake to separate it from the pan. With the long side of the pan facing you, measure and mark with a sharp knife three equal 5.5 in/14 cm sections of the cake from left to right. Cut from top to bottom along the marks. You should now have three rectangular sections of cake cut, each about 5.5 in x 10 in/14 cm x 25 cm.

Spread the sweetened whipped cream on the cake as follows:
Place three heaping tablespoons of whipped cream on each of the three cake sections. Working by section, spread the cream in an even layer, leaving about a 1/4 in/.63 cm margin around the perimeter of each section.


Rolling the sections:
You are going to roll each section separately. Pick up the long end of the first cake (this will be the short end of the pan) and gently start to separate it from the parchment paper. Going slowly, simultaneously roll the cake onto itself while separating it from the parchment paper, being careful not to roll the parchment paper into the cake. The cake will crack a bit, but keep going. You can squeeze together the cracks.  Once the roll is finished, place the cake roll seam side down back on the parchment paper and move on to the next section. Repeat the procedure with the two remaining sections.

Next, tightly wrap each section separately in a large piece of plastic wrap. Lay down the plastic wrap the counter and place the rolled cake log at one end. Then roll up the first section of cake into the plastic and fold the plastic over the ends. Repeat for the other two cake logs.  Place each rolled section into a large ziploc bag and place each in the freezer for at least 1 hour. You will cut and enrobe the cakes in chocolate after they are frozen.

At this point you can leave the rolled cakes in the freezer for up to 5 days.

Enrobing the cakes with the chocolate:
This part needs to be done quickly, so it’s important to have everything set out and ready to go.

Cover a large cookie sheet with waxed paper. This is where you will place your chocolate enrobed cakes to solidify.

Remove your cake logs from the freezer, unwrap (but keep the plastic wrap), and cut each log into 4 equal pieces, each about 2 inches long. Keep the pieces in the log form and rewrap and place back in ziploc bag and return the bags to the freezer.

Place your semisweet chocolate in a heat proof bowl on top of a pot full of simmering (not boiling) water. Have ready another small, deep bowl that is just big enough for the 2 inch cakes to be rolled in.

Watch carefully as the chocolate melts, using a whisk to stir it. Once the chocolate is just barely melted, turn off the heat on the simmer water. You will now need to move quickly.

Spoon out about 1/3 of the melted chocolate into the smaller bowl, taking care not to get any water drips into the chocolate. Remove the first log from the freezer and unwrap. With your fingers, take hold of the first 2 inch section by the open ends. Place the log into the small bowl of chocolate and carefully roll one half.  While still holding the section by the ends, use a butter knife or an offset spatula to spread some of the chocolate that is already on the cake to cover the remainder of the cake, leaving the ends uncoated (it’s too hard to get the ends coated). Note: it’s a messy process. Place the enrobed section on the pan lined with the plastic wrap and repeat the process with the remaining sections in that log.

The chocolate in the small bowl will now have some little bits of cake and cream in it. If this bothers you, scrape out the bowl before you add the next 1/3 of melted chocolate. I don’t bother doing this. I just spoon another 3rd of the chocolate into the small bowl and proceed to the next log sections. Repeat the dipping, rolling, and smoothing process with the remaining 2 cut logs. Be sure to place the remaining 1/3 of chocolate in the small bowl before you dip the last log sections.

Your waxed paper lined baking sheet will now contain 12 chocolate covered cakes. Let them sit at room temperature until the chocolate is fully set. At this point you can eat them. For storage, I place the cake lined baking sheet into the refrigerator to cool down the cakes. Once they are fully cool again (about an hour), I carefully place them into into a ziploc bag to store in the fridge.

Serve cold or at room temperature.

Store the Ho Hos in the fridge for up to 3 days or in the freezer for up to 2 months. To defrost, place in the fridge for 24 hours.

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Note: I am not a medical doctor.  The following is provided for informational purposes only and should not be used as a replacement for speaking with your doctor.

I first learned of Oral Allergy Syndrome (OAS), also know as Food Pollen Allergy, when Girlfriend was in kindergarten.  One of the parents was struggling with many odd food allergies that her doctors couldn’t explain.  She reacted to greens (like kale) when she ate them raw.   I was interested in what could be going on, so I did some research.  At the time (2005) there wasn’t much info out there.  I finally found a personal blog where the person had the same reactions to things that my friend did and he called it Oral Allergy Syndrome.  Thus began my travels into the wacky world of how pollen allergies can affect reactions to food.  And, as it turns out, I am a major OAS sufferer.

What happens in OAS is a cross reactivity between plant pollens and fruit, vegetable, and nut proteins.  It’s actually a pollen allergy—not a food allergy.  So food allergy testing doesn’t help identify it.  Which is really confusing.   The only testing to be done is for pollen allergies to the pollens that cross react with the foods you’re reacting to.   Every time I have a new reaction my allergist looks at my pollen allergy chart and says, “yep, you’re allergic to birch trees (or whatever the appropriate pollen is).”

One thing about me: I’m allergic to everything.  When I got my official pollen allergy testing at my allergist’s office, she had the whole office come in to see my arm (where they did the skin pricks).  Apparently, I reacted the worst of any patient they had ever seen.  I react to everything.  And I have asthma—which also makes OAS more likely.  So, none of this is a surprise to my docs.

The primary culprits in OAS are tree pollens and grass and ragweed pollen.  So, if you react to those, then you may react to the raw foods that have similar pollen protein signatures (say that five times very quickly).    Sometimes the pollen protein signatures are things from the same botanical family, and sometimes they’re not.  And, further, you may react to one, some, or all–or none–of the raw fruits, veggies, and nuts that have the offending protein.  And, you may react to them during some times of the year and not other times of the year.   As you can imagine (or have experienced) this is confusing and annoying.

The reactions one can have to foods via OAS are varied.  Some of the reactions that OAS can cause:

-itchy mouth
-itchy throat
-swollen tongue–can be deadly
-swollen throat–can be deadly
-seized vocal cords (which make you sound like Daffy Duck—ask me how I know, thank you raw celery)
-stomach ache
-vomiting
-diarrhea
-anaphylaxis–can be deadly (I get this from raw bananas)

Part of the fun of OAS (not) is that the reactions can happen some times but not all of the time.  I have found that some of my reactions occur all year, while others of my reactions happen most often during tree pollen season—late winter into spring.  What this means is that I can eat a salad with raw lettuce during the summer and fall but I can’t eat raw lettuce in the winter and spring.  The reason for this is that my body is already overwhelmed with allergies, and adding more pollen proteins to things just makes things worse.  This, as you can imagine, is confusing (and annoying) to friends and family members who can’t keep straight what you can eat and not eat and when you can eat and not eat them.

The other funky thing about OAS is that you can react to some of the things in a pollen category, but not to others.  Also, you can be allergic to a certain tree pollen and not react to any of the foods that bear the pollen protein.  Further, apparently OAS gets worse as you get older.  So, I have been slowly losing things from my diet.  For example, up until Girlfriend was in 1^st grade, I could eat raw carrots with abandon.  Then, out of the blue, I started getting stomach-ache when I ate raw carrots.  I also started getting stomach-ache from apples.  As it turns out, these two are linked by the protein signature.  Each year, I seem to react to a new raw thing.  I joke that I may be stuck eating air pretty soon.  And as I looked back on my life, I realized that I had stopped eating all melons because they make my mouth itch.  Melons are high on the list of OAS foods.

The thing that is very odd about OAS (on top of all of the other odd things) is the fact that once you cook any of the things you can’t eat raw, it’s usually fine to eat.   For example, I get a really bad stomach ache and horrendous diarrhea when I eat raw zucchini (so no raw “zucchini noodle” salads for me).   But, if it is cooked well, I can eat it by the plateful.  This is why I microwave grated zucchini before I put it into zucchini bread.  I found out the hard way that the baking process doesn’t cook the zucchini enough for me.

And, because OAS isn’t logical (at least to me), there are some things you can’t eat even when cooked.  Broccoli falls into this category for me.  It makes me extremely ill even when I cook the heck out of it.  Be on the alert for these types of things.

If you suspect that you have OAS, you might want to talk to you doctor about it.  And be aware if you experience difficulty breathing or a swollen throat when you eat something.  This is a sign of potential anaphylaxis and it can be fatal.  If this is you, you need to make an appointment with your doctor to prescribe an epi-pen.  Apparently, about 2% of OAS sufferers have anaphylaxis to some of the foods they react to.  This is me and bananas.  I found this out the hard way one when I was sitting in on a class one and ate a banana as a snack and all of a sudden, felt my throat closing up.  Oddly, I had eaten a banana the day before and had been just fine.  This is how bizarre OAS can be.

OAS Survival Tips

-If it makes you feel bad, don’t eat it.  It’s not worth it.

-Experiment with peeling your fruits and veggies.  Apparently, the pollen proteins are found in high quantities in the peel.  So peel your apples, peaches, nectarines, cucumbers, etc. and see how you feel when you eat the raw peeled fruit.

-Keep a diary of what you react to and when.  My experience shows me that I react to some things year round and other things during high pollen season.

-Cook things well.  Just lightly steaming something isn’t going to help for most of these things.   I have found that lightly roasting nuts doesn’t help.  They need to be well roasted.  Also, dried fruit and vegetables tend to be OK to eat.  As are canned fruits and vegetables.

-Identify those things you CAN eat raw.  It turns out that I can eat cauliflower raw.  But not broccoli or cabbage.  Who knows why, but I will take it.  Cauliflower and dip is an excellent party choice.  I always make a beeline to the veggie tray at parties and load up on cauliflower.

-Be aware that you may react to more and more things as time goes by.  Just be on the alert for this.  I have learned the hard way not to eat any raw things at parties or restaurants if I’m not absolutely sure that I won’t react to it.

-This may sound odd, but if I am at a friend/family member’s house and they are serving raw veggies, I ask if I can steam/roast/or boil some of them.  I just nip into the kitchen and do this.   Clearly, this is best done in a kitchen that you know well, but it is possible.  And I am sure to clean up after myself.  Also, at this stage, some of my friends just know to steam things for me before I arrive—which is very nice!

-Ask you doctor about allergy shots to the corresponding pollens.  There isn’t a lot of data out there on the effectiveness of allergy shots, but it’s worth a talk with your doctor if this appeals to you.

More information on OAS can be found here and here.

One last note: many OAS information sites/sheets don’t list nuts. But nuts are part of the issue, too.

image from wordplay.hubpages.com/hub/vintage-victorian-flowers-and-fruit

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2013 Jeanne Sauvage

I can’t seem to stop messing with recipes for hot cross buns. It’s not that these buns were particularly important to my childhood Easter celebrations, but apparently they left a big impression on me. I have my basic recipe that I seem to tweak more than I usually tweak my other recipes. In fact, I’ve been thinking about them all week, wondering if I should tweak them again. Then I got a call from my pal, Marc (warning: he is a major potty mouth). He’s having an Easter brunch for friends, and one of them is gluten-intolerant. He sent me a hot cross bun recipe he wanted to make and asked how hard it would be to change it to gluten-free.

I am always happy to help folks adapt recipes in order to allow them to welcome more folks to the table.  I am overjoyed when people want to include those of us who have food allergies or intolerances. And it turns out that the person he wanted to make the recipe for is a mutual friend of ours who just recently realized that she is gluten intolerant.  I will admit, though,  that this kind of thing also fills me with a certain amount of anxiety. Especially since the recipe that he wanted to adapt is yeasted. As you know, yeasted recipes require much more tweaking than just a simple cup for cup replacement of gluten free flour for wheat flour. So, I told him I would work on it and see what I could come up with in short period of time.

It turns out that the recipe is one of the must fussy recipes ever. It requires a million bowls and several steps and cooking and straining and resting and rising. This totally cracks me up because it is soooo Marc.  He is a culinary school graduate.  He and his husband often make elaborate dinners for their friends and family members.  Just listening to his preparations for these meals makes me want to take a nap.  But mostly they make me happy–cooking is not his livelihood but it’s his joy and his passion.

Anyway, I wanted to help out and of course it gave me an excuse to work on hot cross buns, again–win-win!  I spent most of yesterday working on adapting the recipe. It uses a technique that I am wanting to use more and more with my baking—rolling out dough with your hands. I have found that it’s challenging to create a gluten-free yeasted dough that can be manipulated by hand, but that bakes up moist in the middle. Most of the time, a dough that is firm enough to be manipulated often bakes up into an end product that is more dry than I would like it to be.  I am still learning about ways to do this that are satisfactory to me–and I hope to share more in the coming months.

I am really pleased with this recipe because it bakes up into buns that a supremely flavorful and moist–they are more dense than my basic recipe and are chock full of apples, dried fruit, and spices.  And they have an appley-cinnamon sticky glaze on top that puts this recipe right over the edge.  They are a wonderful addition to your Easter baking!

Apple and Cinnamon Hot Cross Buns, Gluten-Free
-adapted from Gourmet Traveller

Ingredients

1 ¾ cups (350 g) granulated sugar, divided, plus 1 tablespoon
1 2/3 cups (375 ml) plus 1/3 cup (80 ml) water
1 Granny Smith apple (or flavorful apple of your choice), unpeeled, cored and diced
1 cinnamon stick
2 tablespoons lemon juice

5 cups (700 g) of Jeanne’s Gluten-Free All Purpose flour mix, divided
2 teaspoons xanthan gum
1 tablespoon double acting baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

2 ¼ cups (530 ml) warm but not hot milk (about 110 degrees F)
2 tablespoons active dry yeast

1 ¼ cups (150 g) golden raisins
½ cup (50 g) dried apples, diced
1 tablespoon finely chopped crystalized ginger
3 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon allspice
Zest from 1 lemon
Zest from 1 orange

2 extra-large eggs
7 tablespoons (100 g; 3.5 oz) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled

Neutral tasting oil for brushing dough bowl (I like Rice Bran oil)
1/3 cup (40 g) tapioca flour for dusting

In a small saucepan set over medium heat, combine 1 2/3 cups of water and 1 1/2 cups (300 grams) of the sugar. Stir until sugar is dissolved. Add the cinnamon stick, lemon juice, and the diced apple, and stir to combine. Reduce heat, and simmer for 25 minutes and the apple pieces are cooked through and translucent. Remove from heat. Carefully strain the syrup into a small bowl and place the cooked apples into another small bowl. Let both cool.

While the apples are cooking, prepare the following:

In a small bowl, combine the raisins, diced dried apple, crystalized ginger, ground cinnamon, allspice, and the zests of orange and lemon.

In a medium bowl, combine 4 2/3 cups of the flour, xanthan gum, baking powder, salt, and 1/4 cup of sugar.

In a small bowl or a glass measuring cup, whisk the remaining 1 tablespoon of sugar into the warm milk until dissolved. Add the yeast and whisk until dissolved. Let sit until yeast has started to foam.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, put the eggs and melted butter. Add the yeast mixture. Beat on low for a few seconds to combine. Add the flour mixture and beat on low for a few seconds to combine and then raise speed to medium high and beat for 3 minutes.

Remove the paddle attachment (scraping off as much of the dough as possible back into the bowl) and attach the dough hook. Add the dried fruit and spice mixture and the strained, cooked apples to the mixture. Turn mixer speed to medium low and beat for several seconds to combine.

Brush another large bowl with oil and scrape your dough into that bowl. Cover loosely with a piece of plastic wrap and let rise for about 1 hour (until doubled in bulk).

After 1 hour (or when the mixture has doubled), turn on oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C; Gas Mark 7) to preheat.

As oven is preheating, line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Place 1/3 cup tapioca flour (not flour mix) into a bowl. Uncover the risen dough. Dip a 1/3 cup measure into the tapioca flour and shake off the excess. Pat your palms in the tapioca flour to cover. Scoop out a heaping 1/3 cup of dough and shake out the dough into your hand—-it may seem like it’s not stiff enough to handle, but it is. With both hands, gently shape into a ball. Place dough ball into the center of the baking sheet.

You are now going to create 2 concentric circles of dough balls that are touching each other around the middle ball. Repeat dipping the measuring cup and your palms into the tapioca flour as needed. Repeat scooping and shaping process for succeeding blogs of dough and place them around the middle ball. Put 7 balls around the middle ball, and then 11 dough balls around this 2nd ring. The dough balls should be gently touching each other. If desired, us a pastry brush to gently brush off the excess tapioca flour.

Cover loosely with a piece of plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for about 40 minutes. The buns should look nicely risen and plump.

Once the buns have been rising for about 40 minutes, in a small bowl mix together the remaining 1/3 cup (40 g) of flour with 1/3 cup (80 ml) of cold water. Whisk until smooth (or as smooth as it gets) to make a flour paste. You will use this mixture to pipe a cross onto each bun. You can use a pastry bag with a medium tip or you can use a Ziploc bag with one of the corners cut off. Pipe a cross onto the top of each bun. You should have just enough flour paste to do this.

Bake at 425 degrees F (220 degrees C; Gas Mark 7) for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C; Gas Mark 6) and bake for another 25 minutes. The buns should be golden brown while the crosses will retain a lighter color.

As the buns are baking, place the syrup mixture in a heavy bottomed pan on the stove and simmer over medium low heat. This will heat up the syrup and reduce it a bit.

Remove the baking sheet from oven and brush the hot buns well with the syrup mixture. Place the baking pan on a wire rack to cool. Be aware that the glaze will retain a sticky consistency as it dries.

Store at room temperature, loosely covered with plastic wrap or aluminum foil.

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