GF Oven "Fried" Chicken

Here is a quick and easy, healthy alternative to fried chicken. Served with a salad served sprinkled with mandarin oranges and almonds, and a light dressing of olive oil, rice wine vinegar and agave, it is a staple at our house.

Wash and dry 4 chicken drumsticks.

In a plastic bag, mix together 1 cup almond meal and 1 cup brown rice flour. Add about 1/2 tsp salt and pepper. Add your favorite ground herbs to taste if desired.

Place chickens in bag and mix together till chicken is thoroughly coated.

Meanwhile heat an over to 375 degrees.

Lay chickens out on foil lined tray sprayed with olive oil to prevent sticking.

Bake for 45-50 minutes or until chicken is crispy and well cooked.

GF Rice Pudding (Vegan)

Rice pudding with golden raisins and pistachios

Rice pudding is one of those comfort foods when made perfectly. It is easy, quick and this recipe does not require eggs or an oven. The secret is using the right rice. I have tried this recipe with basmati, glutinous, long grain but the perfect rice that seems to have the perfect starch consistency is a good medium grain short grain white rice. Made with creamy hemp milk (you can use rice milk) and agave. The sweetness of the raisins with the saltiness of the pistachios gives it a nice balance of salty sweet.

Start by boiling 1 cup water. (The normal proportions would be 2 water to 1 rice.). Add in
1/2 cup medium short grain white rice and a pinch of salt. Simmer on low for 15-20 minutes as you would when making regular rice.

Add 2 1/2 cups hemp or rice milk, 1/3 cup agave and cook on low for another 30 minutes. Pudding will be cooked when spoon stands up straight in the mix.

Add 1 tsp vanilla, 1//2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 cup golden raisins and 1/2 tsp pistachio nuts.

YUMMY! How easy is that!

All GF Flours are not Created Equal -Rice Flour

A friend of mine, new to the GF world, mentioned buying a quinoa bread that was totally inedible. Her whole family was convinced the bread was bad after one bite. I told her of a similar experience I had trying a GF bread touted as "the moistest gluten free bread on the market today". Its weight was a tip off as to what the texture was going to be like. Dense, heavy, pungent and crumbly, I was convinced it had gone bad in the shipping until I opened the sister loaf and it had similar unearthly characteristics. I immediately felt very sad for all the customers who buy this bread thinking that this is the gold standard of breads. That the sentence for being gluten free was a life with this bread and this is all there is out there. Rest assured it is not!

Filling your pantry with these wonderful alternatives is very exciting. GF recipe books abound on Amazon and after a few tries you will find your cookbook that will make the difference for you. These renegade authors and chefs, often take their professional traditional pastry training and after countless tries turn a wheat classic into a GF classic. We should applaud them for the hours of work and the failed experiments to get closer to baking perfection. So lets start our journey with flours and the myriad of choices out there.

This posting I'll start with rice flour, because it is readily available in many forms and each behave differently.

Rice Flour comes in many forms - white, extra fine white, brown, glutinous or sweet rice. Knowing what type to use and when is more science than art.

White Rice Flour is milled from polished white rice and is grainier than the other varieties of flour. It is best when mixed with other flours to make bread, cakes and cookies. When used alone can sometimes have a gritty texture.

Extra Fine White Rice Flour - Is a finer ground white rice flour with a soft powdery texture. I mix this flour with other flours when making finer cakes. Its consistency helps with with the gritty texture of white rice flour but when used solely can add a gummy texture to a cake.

Brown Rice Flour has similar properties to rice flour but has better nutritional value as it is milled from unpolished brown rice. Because it contains more oils, it is best kept refrigerated. It has a nutty taste and grainy texture. Again, this rice is best when mixed with other flours.

Glutinous or Sweet Rice is also known as sticky rice. It is very elastic when mixed with liquid. It is one of the most perfect gluten free flours widely used in Asia and is said to have been used in China for over 2000 years in both savory and sweet dishes. This type of rice can be milled or unmilled. Milled Rice is typically white and unmilled which contains the bran can be black or purple. The famous Japanese "mochi" which is a small round cake with typically a bean filling is wrapped with a sometimes white glutinous cover. Vietnamese cultures also use the flour to make the distinct "Banh" cakes (they also may use cassava or tapioca flours) filled with sweetened mung beans. Filipinos will make a version called "Palitaw" which is glutinous flour shaped flat and dipped in boiling water then rolled in sesame seeds, sugar and coconut flakes.

As you can see this variety of rice flours makes it a versatile alternative in GF baking. If you are looking for the traditional crumb of a Western made cake, you will be best using a combination of flours when using rice flour. Rice flour with potato and tapioca starches seem to be a good combination. Try a mix of 1 cup brown rice flour to a 1/3 cup potato starch and 4 tbsp tapioca starch to make a versatile GF flour mix in these proportions. You can make this mix in batches using it as needed when baking most of your cakes when replacing flour.

Perfect Vegan GF Chocolate Cupcake

The search for the perfect vegan cupcake has taken me 6 months, countless recipe trials and modifications. Finally, I can share with you success..best yet, no eggs, gluten, sugar or dairy. I served this at a recent gathering of very picky eaters who called it the best cupcake they've ever had -firm and moist - no one could ever guess it was gluten free. I owe this find to the Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen blog whose recipe won out on all the others. I used it as a base and modified to enhance the moisture.

The biggest complaint of gluten free baked goods is that it is crumbly and dry. With any of these ancient grains that lack gluten it is sometimes necessary to let the batter sit with the liquid to allow it to absorb. In classic baking, this is a no-no as this cannot be done with recipes which are heavily leavened with eggs as the incorporation of eggs give the lift and rise to the cake. However, with vegan desserts, this is possible with the absence of eggs. I have tried soaking the batter after mixing for 15-20 minutes for this recipe and it makes a noticeable difference in the texture of the crumb.

This recipe I tested both with rice and hemp milk. The hemp milk gave it a creamier texture and the coconut sugar I use for its low glycemic properties. (It is one of my favorite sweeteners and works great in recipes where brown sugar is used.) I am sure this recipe will fool even your toughest critics. This recipe yields about 9 large or 20 mini cupcakes:

1 cup sorghum flour
1/4 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/3 cup grapeseed oil

3/4 cup coconut sugar
1 cup hemp milk
1 tsp vanilla

Heat oven to 350 F. Spray muffin tins.

Mix together sorghum, tapioca flours, cocoa powder, xanthan gum, baking soda and sea salt.

Beat oil, coco sugar, hemp milk and vanila together .

Beat in dry ingredients until well mixed. Let sit for 15-20 minutes to absorb the moisture.

Fill pans 3/4 full. Bake for 15-18 minutes for mini cupcakes and 20-15 for regular size cupcakes.

When cooked, wait 5 minutes then remove from tins and cool on rack before frosting.

This frosting seems to work well with these cupcakes and it isn't too sweet. It does pipe on very soft and you may need to modify it to the stiffness you want by adding more coconut oil which solidifies at room temperature. The coconut gives it a nice taste.

Chocolate Frosting

1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup palm shortening
3 tbsp cocoa powder
3 tbsp arrowroot powder
1/2 cup agave nectar
1 tsp vanilla

Mix all ingredient together until fluffy. Pipe on to cooled cupcakes.

A world of discoveries in Asian food stores

Head off to your local Asian market and spend time discovering the variety of goodies available. A myriad of alternatives await you from tapioca crackers to mung bean noodles to tofu soup to rice desserts wrapped in banana leaves. Though most labels might seem intimidating in their native language, almost all will have an English ingredient list. The tapioca crackers from Indonesia for example had tapioca flour, water and salt listed. Now be aware that most of the desserts come with a hefty dose of refined white sugar but if ideas are what you are looking for, the Asian market has all the ingredients to allow you to make your own low sugar alternative. A steamed rice Philippine cake wrapped in a banana leaf cane be made with glutinous sweet rice, coconut milk, a banana leaf (they come frozen in the food aisle) and substitute the sugar with your sweetener of choice. A tofu pudding, a traditional Chinese dessert of creamy soft tofu in a sugar syrup served warm can be made with an agave syrup - you control the sugar content.

Meandering through these aisles with your mobile phone allows you to use technology to instantly understand what your a looking at. A quick web search of what "chana" is brings up wonderful chickpea or garbanzo flour recipes commonly used in Indian cuisine in dishes such as vegetable pekoras. The great thing about many of these foods is that inherently they are not only gluten free but lactose free. Coconut milk or rice milk is often substituted for the milk as pasteurized cow milk in many of these countries is not native to their cultures. Try substituting sugar with low glycemic agave or coconut sugar. Try making a vanilla Thai custard which is not only easy but contains healthy antiviral coconut milk or bring home ingredients for the classic Thai sticky rice with mango dessert or Pick up some Japanese mochi (sticky sweet rice buns filled with red beans) or even a fresh young coconut with a straw to sip the freshest natural good for you juice you've ever had then scrape off the coconut meat to grate on your desserts.

Enjoy your trip to the Asian store, it opens a world of possibilities!

Art of Baking Gluten Free

As you start to venture out making your own creations, there are a few basics that can help guide you in your substitutions. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, first use an existing recipe then tune your ingredients. Prepare to summon up all your patience as sometimes getting the final result can take several tries. For one recipe I am still working on, I've done 11 tries and counting! But I hope these guidelines can help you somewhat.

When substituting wheat with any of the "ancient" grains (as many of these alternative grains have been used for centuries in some cultures before wheat was brought to their shores), keep in mind that wheat absorbs water at a higher rate than other grains. Wheat swells to soak up the moisture you add to it. So soaking the flour in your liquids before mixing can help the common complaint on dryness with GF goods. Too little moisture often results in a crumbly texture, too much hydration and the crumb will be dense and heavy. This rule holds most true with breads. As you experiment you will find each recipe to be a little different. When baking cakes, remember that leavening, or incorporating gasses into your batter to give it volume and shape by using baking powder or yeast, may require only a short soak to make a nice difference in your cake(5 minutes). There are exceptions, when using egg foam as you will quickly lose volume after beating since the trapped air in the foam allows for proper leavening of your cake.

In addition, if you use finer ground flours like fine ground rice or almond flour you increase the surface area of the grain adding to the changes in the hydration required. In one GF tart crust recipe I used almond meal and experiencing crumbling so much that I had to use an egg to bind everything, I substituted finely ground almond flour and removed the egg. The result was a perfect crust - held its shape without crumbling, could be filled without getting soggy and was crispy. Huge difference from the original.

In many cake recipes, try using a fine ground rice flour (Gustos Mills makes a good one) instead of the regular rice flour and you will see a significant change in the texture of your cakes, the grainy texture will now have a moist mouth feel.

Finally, try using warmer liquid to accelerate the swelling and absorption of the liquid into your grain. Particularly true with bread where a thermometer is indispensable - 120 typically for yeasted doughs.

Hopefully these tips can help you as you modify your favorite wheat recipes. Your journey may be sometimes frustrating but with a little bit of trial and error you won't miss any of your favorite desserts.