Gluten Free Cooking School » Breakfast Recipes

Gluten Free Sausage Balls

Mary Frances — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 23:19:58 +0000

One of my absolute favorite recipes to make with my grandmother was Sausage Balls. I loved to grate the cheese with her Mouli grater, and then mix, and mix, and mix the dough to get all of the flour worked it. A few sausage ball sculpture appeared along the way too.

I finally got around to de-glutening this recipe a few weeks ago and made them for my family for the first time. The gluten free sausage balls were a hit with everyone. If you’ve never had sausage balls (I’m not sure how widespread this recipe is outside of the Deep South), you must try them. Heaven in your mouth!

Gluten Free Sausage Ball Recipe

9 oz. (2 c.) Bob’s Red Mill All Purpose GF flour

1 Tbsp. baking powder

16 oz. ground sausage

10 oz. Cracker Barrel Sharp or Extra Sharp Cheddar

Instructions:

1. Let the cheese come to room temperature and then grate it using a Mouli grater, or the small holes on a handheld grater.

2. Mix the grated cheese and the sausage together with your hands until it is very well combined.

3. Mix the flour and baking powder together, and then gradually work all of the flour into the sausage and cheese mixture. Use your hands again.

4. Form the dough into small balls – approximately golf ball size. Place them on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees (pre-heated oven) for 25 minutes.

Notes:

If you don’t have a grater with small holes, you can use a larger holed grater. It will just take you longer to work the sausage and cheese into a homogenous mixture.
If you opt for a less expensive cheese, do go for the Extra Sharp. My grandmother always insisted on Cracker Barrel cheddar for Sausage Balls and Cheese Straws so I’ve kept up the tradition here.
I weigh my flours on a digital scale instead of using measuring cups. If you do the same, use 9 oz. of the specified flour. If you prefer measuring cups, then you’ll use 2 c. of the flour.
If you’ve never made sausage balls before, you’ll probably think that you’ll never get all of the flour worked in. Keep working at it. It takes a lot of hand power. I have a feeling my Grandmother only made these when the kids were around so that she could spare her arthritic hands.
The sausage balls are the best when you cook them long enough to so that the tops start to brown. (The ones in the picture above were from my first batch and they could have used another 5 minutes in the oven). You want there to be a slight crunch to the outside to that there are two distinct textures when you bite it. A crunch on the outside and then soft on the inside.
Always cut a few in half to make sure that they are completely cooked through.
I tested this recipe in our RV’s oven. I have no idea how closely it’s heating to the correct temperature. There was an unfortunate accident with my oven thermometer involving a certain curious 2 yr old. Thankfully, only the oven thermometer suffered harm. So, following the baking instructions, but do keep an eye on things and use the tips in the cooking notes to verify that the baking process is complete.

Cranberry Orange Quickbread by the Ratio – How a New Recipe is Created

Mary Frances — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:26:28 +0000

In my last post I mentioned that I was going to experiment with gluten free ratios and start weighing out my recipes. To hold myself accountable (because we all see how well I’ve done with posting my bread experiments) I decided to join the Gluten Free Ratio Rally that Shauna Ahern of Gluten Free Girl started last month. The Rally experiment for this month was quickbread. The challenge was to make a gluten free quickbread using the ratio specified in Michael Ruhlman’s book, Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking.

Silvana of Silvana’s Kitchen and author of Cooking for Isaiah is hosting the Gluten Free Ratio Rally Roundup, so go by her site to see the full list (and links) of everyone who participated.

Recipe Creation

The ratio for quickbread is 2 parts flour, 2 parts liquid, 1 part egg, and 1 part butter. Since I was late getting signed up for this month’s challenge I didn’t have the benefit of reading about the other bloggers’ experiments and using the community spreadsheet to work on my recipe calculations. I just started with the formula, said a prayer**, and then started working out the recipe amounts. Here’s a step-by-step analysis of how I came up with the final recipe.

First I considered the flour. This is where normal baking ratios get tricky for those of us who are doing gluten free baking. For the ratio (and the recipe) to work then your flour mix needs to act like the wheat flour does. And how the wheat flour acts differs depending on the type of recipe. For example, if you’re making bread then you want the gluten in the wheat flour to develop and create the structure for the loaf of bread. However, if you’re making quickbread or muffins, then you do not want the gluten to activate because that will make the bread/muffin tough.

The flour mix that I usually use has not fared well in my sandwich bread ratio experiments thus far. It seems to be much more absorbent than wheat flour in bread recipes, requiring far more liquids than is called for in the bread ratio. However, I’ve also used that flour recipes to successfully convert other baked goods recipes on a 1:1 basis. I only had one shot at getting this recipe right due to the Rally deadline, so rather than play with new flours I decided to use Mary’s Gluten Free All Purpose Flour Mix without any added xanthan gum. I did substitute coconut flour for the masa harina because I like to use coconut flour in sweet baked goods. Coconut flour and masa harina are both very absorbent, so doing a 1:1 substitution is fine.

With that decided I looked through my pantry, freezer, and refrigerator for some inspiration for the flavor of the quickbread. Two bags of whole cranberries have been hanging out in my freezer since November. Everytime I see them I think, “I should use those for something.” and then I close the door and go about whatever I was doing and the cranberries continue to sit. Enough with that. The time had come to make a cranberry flavored quick bread.

Most baked recipes use dried cranberries, rather than whole uncooked cranberries. I knew the flavor would be tart, but I was okay with that since I planned on topping the bread with a cream cheese icing. I also knew that cranberries contain pectin (pectin is what makes jam (n.) jam (v.), and that the pectin would keep the bread from being crumbly. The pectin was my insurance policy against a crumbly mess, since I had planned on not using any gums, or ground flax seeds for this recipe.

Deciding on Amounts

Finally I needed to decide how much of each ingredient should be in the recipe. I looked at a few quickbread recipes online and they all had around 2 c. of flour. I know that my flour mix weighs 4.5 oz. when I measure it out, so I started with 9.0 oz of flour. (Since my flour mix is a 9 part ratio, this also meant that I could pour the flours directly into the bowl, measuring them by weight, and not have to make up a batch of flour mix).

The quickbread ratio is 2 parts flour, 2 parts liquid, 1 part egg, and 1 part butter. Since I had chosen 9 oz of flour, I also needed 9 oz. of liquids, 4.5 oz of egg and 4.5 oz of butter. For the liquids I went with the juice of one orange, which ended up being 3 oz and 6 oz. of water.

Large eggs are supposed to weigh 2 oz. (and so one would usually start figuring out amounts by deciding how many whole eggs you want in your recipe), but all of the eggs that I have weighed have been less than that. I cracked 3 eggs into a bowl set on my digital scale and them removed one yolk and some whites until the weight was down to 4.5 oz. I ended up using the leftover egg for another recipe later that day.

A stick of butter weighs about 4.0 oz, so I used one stick of butter and 0.5 oz. of canola oil.

Now that I had decided on the main components of the recipe, I filled in the amounts of salt and baking powder from the standard recipe in Ruhlman’s book. I added a bit of vanilla and orange extract and baking soda because it seemed like the right thing to do. The amount of sugar for the recipe is not addressed by the ratio as you are supposed to alter it based on how sweet you want the bread to be and the tartness of your other ingredients. I knew that I’d need a good bit of sugar to balance the tartness of the cranberries, but I wasn’t sure how much. I checked the back of the bag of cranberries and used the amount (1 c.) recommended for cranberry relish. With that my recipe was complete, and it was time to bake it and see what happened.

As you can see from the pictures, the bread turned out really well. It was tart as expected, but I thought that was a perfect excuse to pile on more icing. The natural pectin in the cranberries did a great job of holding the bread together – very moist and dense which is how I like quickbread. John, who is not a huge fan of cranberries, ate a whole slice without stopping to even put it on a plate.

Recipes are rarely done after one attempt, and this recipe is not “finished”. Next time I’ll reduce the amount of cranberries and increase the sugar. The bread itself did not taste sweet and I think that there should be at least a hint of sweetness. I’ll also increase the amount of orange extract in the bread and icing, and top the icing with a few sprinkles of orange zest. This is going to make a very nice holiday bread after a few more tweaks.

**For many years I questioned the usefulness of prayer. I never doubted that my prayers were heard, but I never felt like I received any answers. The problem turned out to be that I wasn’t listening and looking for answers. Over the past few years I’ve realized that God often answers my prayers by giving me an idea that I wouldn’t have otherwise had.

For example, before I started this bread I asked God to help me write a good recipe because I knew that I’d only have time to bake one loaf this weekend. Then at key points while I was writing the recipe I mentally stopped to listen. When I was feeling uneasy about the flour mix, I remembered the cranberries and how they release pectin when you boil them. When I felt uneasy about whether the amount of liquids needed to be adjusted after I boiled the cranberries, I remembered that I could just weigh the liquid and make sure that it was the right amount. These may seem like obvious steps to take, but I promise you that before I stopped to mentally listen for a thought from God I was completely frustrated and unsure. Then He gave me an insight and I was able to go on confidently.

God answers my prayers like this all the time. Sometimes the answer is a thought. Sometimes it’s a Bible verse that I am able to understand in a new say. And the more that we live by faith and depend on God (not our own efforts) for our daily bread, the more we’re able to see him answering prayer through physical means.**

Gluten Free Cranberry Orange Quickbread

3 oz. brown rice flour
3 oz. corn starch
2 oz. sorghum flour
1 oz. coconut flour

1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
4.0 oz. unsalted butter

3 oz. orange juice
6 oz. water
7.5 oz. sugar
12.0 oz. whole cranberries

4.5 oz. egg
0.5 oz. canola oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. orange extract

Instructions:

Step One: Measure the water, orange juice, sugar and cranberries into a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir until sugar is dissolved and then reduce heat to bring the mixture down to a simmer. Simmer until the berries began to pop – 10 to 12 minutes. Set the berry mixture aside to start cooling.

Step Two: Measure the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and mix thoroughly with a fork. Cut the butter into the flour mixture until the butter lumps are the size of peas.

Step Three: Measure out 4.5 oz of egg. A large egg is supposed to weight about 2 oz. I used 3 eggs and then removed a yolk and some whites to bring the weight down to 4.5 oz. Whisk the eggs until no whites are obvious. Add the oil (approximately 1 Tbsp) and extracts and mix again.

Step Four: Pour the cranberry mixture (still pretty warm) into the flour mixture. While whisking the eggs add a small amount (2 – 3 Tbsp) of the batter to the eggs to temper them. Repeat this twice and then add the eggs into the batter. Stir thoroughly.

Step Five: Grease a loaf pan. Pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake the bread at 350 degrees F for 50 minutes. The bread should have slightly browned around the edges and the loaf top will be spring back when touched.

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Gluten Free Pie Crust: Impossibly Easy

Mary Frances — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:20:10 +0000

Making a gluten free pie crust has never been high on my priority list. My grandmother, who made almost everything from scratch, always used store bought pie crusts. And honestly, if she didn’t make it from scratch, then chances are that I won’t either. It doesn’t help that the Whole Foods five miles from our house carries lovely gluten free pie crusts in the freezer section.

I am, however, intrigued by the concept of the Bisquick Impossibly Easy Pies. These are sweet and savory “pie” recipes that General Mills published back in the early 80′s. Bisquick mix is added to the pie filling, and when the pie bakes the Bisquick forms a crust in the bottom of the pan. Easy enough!

I’ve been wanting to try some of these recipes because it seems like an easy way to cook a quick supper. However, until General Mills releases their new gluten free Bisquick this summer, and possibly even after that, I need a Bisquick type mix to use in the recipes.

Bisquick is simply the dry ingredients for biscuits, plus partially-hydrogenated oil. In order to make a gluten free version all you have to do is mix up the dry ingredients for your biscuit recipe (flour, salt, and baking soda/baking powder), cut in the butter or shortening, and then store in the freezer. Depending on your dietary needs, the fat component can be butter, vegan butter, shortening, or coconut oil.

The only real question that I have about making the homemade mix is whether or not to add xanthan gum. My gluten free biscuits recipe does include xanthan gum to prevent crumbling, but I’m not sure that it’s needed for these pie recipes. Xanthan gum reacts to liquids, unlike gluten which is only activated after it has been disturbed by stirring or kneading, so adding xanthan gum to the mix might result in a finished pie that is not the right consistency. Howver, I can’t imagine that the gluten free Bisquick recipe won’t have xanthan gum in it. I think the only option is to try some of these recipes both ways.

Here is the recipe for the biscuit mix if you’d like to join me in this experiment. Many of the Impossibly Easy Pies call for 1/2 cup of Bisquick, so I’ve included the measurements for 1/2 cup and for a larger batch.

Here is a short list of some of the Impossibly Easy Pie recipes – there are many more official recipes on the Betty Crocker website, but you can also find others by googling “impossible pie recipes”. Post your results in the comments; if you’d like to send a picture then email it to maryfrances [at] glutenfreecookingschool [dot] com. Happy Baking everybody!

Pumpkin Pie                        Chicken & Broccoli Pie
Easy Taco Pie                   Ham & Swiss Pie
Bacon Pie                                   Coconut Pie
Cheesecake Pie                        French Apple Pie
Coconut Chocolate Pie         Spinach – Parmesan Pie

Gluten Free Quick Biscuit Mix
(makes 4 and 2/3 cups)
1 1/2 c. brown rice flour
2 c. corn starch
1/2 c. soy flour or sorghum flour
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. xanthan gum (optional)
1 stick of butter

(makes 1/2 cup)
2 Tbsp. + 1 3/4 tsp. brown rice flour
3 Tbsp. + 1 1/4 tsp. corn starch
2 1/2 tsp. soy flour or sorghum flour
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. xanthan gum (optional)
2 1/2 tsp. butter

Instructions: Mix dry ingredients together and then cut the butter into the flour using a pastry blender, or by pinching the butter into small chunks and then whirring everything together in your food processor. Store in the freezer for up to six months.

Gluten Free Waffles

Mary Frances — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 20:10:29 +0000

Our family has found a new favorite weekend breakfast – gluten free waffles! You all know that we’ve been on the gluten free diet for years now, so that first bite of homemade waffles was absolute heaven! We stuffed ourselves!

The recipe is a conversion of the “Basic Waffles” recipe in Joy of Cooking. The only change that I made was to swap my gluten free flour mix for the all-purpose flour used in the original recipe. The original recipes lets you adjust the butter from as little a 4 Tbsp for a low-fat waffle to 16 Tbsp for a super yummy, my mouth is in bliss waffle. We’ve tried 8 and 16 Tbsp and 16 is definitely the way to go.

Gluten Free Waffles

1 3/4 cups all-purpose gluten free flour mix
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt

3 large eggs
16 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 c. milk (soy, cow, rice, etc)

Cooking Directions:
1. Mix first four ingredients together in large mixing bowl.
2. Beat the eggs together until frothy. Add the milk and stir again.
3. Slowly pour the melted butter into the egg/milk mixture. Stir constantly to prevent the eggs from cooking.
4. Now add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix just until all of the flour is wet. You don’t have to get all of the lumps out.
5. Pour the batter onto a hot waffle iron. Follow the affle iron manufacturer’s directions for cooking. For ours we use 1/2 c. batter and let the waffle’s cook until there is no more steam coming out.

Additional Notes:
1. Let your eggs and milk come to room temperature. If the eggs and milk are cold, then they will resolidify the melted butter when you mix them together.
2. These waffles are not sweet, so you can add sweet or savory toppings to them. You could also 1/4 – 1/2 cup of raisins, cheese, bacon, nuts, sliced bananas, grated coconut to the batter before cooking.

Chicken Fajita Quesadillas

Mary Frances — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 03:12:49 +0000

During the month of February I will be featuring some of my recipes that have recently been on the menu for Gluten Free Suppers. Many of these recipes have not been published at Gluten Free Cooking School before because they are from my childhood or our pre-vegetarian days. And since they contain meat, I don’t have any pictures to share. But in these busy pre-baby and tax season day, I’ve decided to publish them anyway. Enjoy!

Chicken Fajita Quesadillas

2 c. shredded chicken
1 large onion
2 large bell peppers
1 tsp oil
1 c. cheddar cheese, grated
16 corn tortillas
Fajita seasoning (McCormick’s suggested)

Cooking Directions: Slice peppers and onion into thin strips. Heat a large skillet to medium heat and sauté peppers and onions in oil. When the vegetables are tender, add the shredded chicken and season to taste with seasoning. Cook until the chicken is hot. Set the vegetables and chicken aside.

Heat a skillet or griddle to medium-high heat. Place one tortilla on the skillet. Sprinkle 1 Tbsp of cheese on the tortilla; spread 1/8 of the chicken/veggie mixture on top; sprinkle another tablespoon of cheese; top with a second tortilla. Once the bottom tortilla has browned, flip the quesadilla and cook until the second tortilla has browned. Remove the quesadilla to a plate in a warm oven and repeat for the remaining 7 quesadillas.

Serving Suggestion: Refried beans topped with salsa.

If you’re interested in learning more about the weekly menu plan with shopping list from Gluten Free Suppers, click here.

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Breakfast on a Budget – Cream of Corn Cereal

Mary Frances — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:29:49 +0000

The theme for January’s posts is Kitchen Management – things like gluten free grocery shopping on a budget, stocking a gluten free pantry, and how to clean a messy kitchen. The posts will be shorter and more frequent than normal (since I won’t have to multi-test as many recipes) and there will be several chances for you to chime in with questions, opinions, and tips.

Yesterday we made a short trip to Whole Foods for fresh produce and soymilk (we’re going through fruit like crazy since John got a juicer for Christmas) and I ended up talking to another couple that looking at the gluten free cereals. They were trying to decide if a small bag of granola was worth $5.

And while I have paid more than that for the same brand of granola (what can I say, I’m pregnant and I was craving granola), we usually don’t by packaged cereal at all. The gluten free cold cereals are expensive, and I don’t think that they are worth the price. Instead we rotate through a pretty extensive selection of hot cereals: grits, oatmeal, kasha, cream of corn, cream of rice. We add a variety of spices and dried fruits to the cereal to provide even more variety.

Here is the recipe for Cream of Corn (or Corn Mush if you have kids that are Goodnight Moon fans). What do you eat for breakfast?

Cream of Corn (aka Corn Mush)
(yields: 4 c. or 4 servings)

1 c. corn meal (we use Hodgson Mill**)
2 c. milk (we use plain soymilk)
2 c. water

Cooking Instructions:
1. Bring 1 c. milk and 2 c. water to boil in a medium saucepan.
2. While the water is heating, mix the remaining 1 c. milk with the cornmeal. 3. When the milk/water mixture is boiling, turn the heat to low and slowly pour in the wet cornmeal. Whisk the mixture continuously while you add the cornmeal to prevent lumps.
4. Cook the cereal over low heat for 20 – 25 minutes, stirring every five minutes or so to prevent scorching. The cereal is ready when it has thickened to the consistency of cream of wheat.
5. Serve in large bowls and top with butter (or CF sub) and salt, and your choice of sweetener. (I’m partial to maple syrup)

Change it Up: If you want to add some variety, try adding 1/2 – 1 c. dried fruit to the liquid mixture in Step 1. Or top the cereal with sliced fruit after serving. We really like sliced bananas on our Cream of Corn, and I think that fresh peaches would be delicious in the summer.

** If you’re tired of looking at the label of every single brand of cornmeal trying to find one that is gluten free, then I would suggest that you buy The Essential Gluten-Free Grocery Guide. I refer to it regularly and its a great help in quickly identifying the brands/items that are gluten free.

Eggnog French Toast

Mary Frances — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 04:01:21 +0000

This is a picture of my stove the morning after Christmas.

The monkey bread that I made on Christmas morning was a little dry and the only milk-like substance in the house was a half empty carton of Silk Eggnog.

So my little elf helper and I pulled out “Joy of Cooking” (picture a dirty white cookbook with a disintegrating spine and round burn marks from where I accidentally turned on the wrong stove burner) and improvised a recipe for Eggnog French Toast.

It was delicious!

Eggnog French Toast
(6 servings unless you have a two year old bottomless pit)

2/3 c. Silk Eggnog
4 large eggs
1 Tbsp. maple syrup
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt
6 thick slices of gluten free bread
butter or margarine

1. Mix the eggnog, eggs, syrup, vanilla, and salt in a shallow dish.
2. Soak the slices of bread in the mixture until completely saturated.
3. Heat a large skillet or griddle over medium heat and add a dab of butter.
4. Place the bread into the skillet (don’t overcrowd; you’re going to need flipping room) and cook until the underside is golden. Then flip the French Toast and cook until the second side is golden (it doesn’t take nearly as long).
5. Serve hot with maple syrup and any other sweet things you can find in the pantry (but don’t tell my husband that this is why our chocolate chips disappeared!)

If you haven’t found a gluten free bread that you like, try my recipe for Finally, Really Good Sandwich Bread.

Gluten Free Bread: Banana Bread

Mary Frances — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 03:11:06 +0000

Last Monday morning I was cleaning up the kitchen and discovered that we had somehow accumulated 10 very ripe bananas in the back of the freezer. John has been asking for a loaf of banana bread for several months and he’d obviously done a good job at stashing away the bananas that I would need for the bread. After the bananas had thawed on the counter for a bit (and after I had rearranged the kitchen) I settled in for a bit of baking.

Sidenote: If you’ve never used frozen bananas, you’ve got to try it. It really is fun (and a bit gross) to squeeze the thawed bananas out of the peels =)

I was feeling a little nostalgic so I decided to use a recipe from my high school’s cookbook. The recipe was contributed by a long time family friend, which seemed appropriate for a recipe that I can remember eating since I was a child. I did my best to stay true to the recipe, but I did reduce the sugar and make the recipe gluten free and casein free. I would have added 2 c. nuts, but we didn’t have any and I didn’t really miss them.

And it was so good! We ate banana bread at least twice a day for four days and the first words out of David’s mouth each morning was “anana bread”. John thought that the bread was a little mushy when we had our slices right out of the oven, but I liked it. The bread stayed moist the entire four days that it took us to eat it, and I was just keeping it inside of our bread container in the refrigerator. I microwaved our slices for a few minutes each morning, and they came out wonderfully moist. They did not need any butter, which I really appreciated since I am trying to feed us healthy foods.

P.S. That’s a picture of David and his gluten free banana bread breakfast. I was about to get a shot of the banana bread when the camera batteries died =(

Gluten Free Banana Bread
(makes 2 loaves)
This recipe is definitely different than our normal gluten free bread. Don’t get the two confused!

2 c. sugar
2 c. coconut oil
4 eggs

4 cups gluten free flour
2 tsp. xanthan gum
1 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. baking powder

1/2 c. soy milk
2 tsp. cider vinegar
3.5 c. mashed bananas*
4 tsp. vanilla

1. Cream sugar and coconut oil until just combined. Mix in eggs.
2. Mix dry ingredients and wet ingredients together in separate bowls, and then add alternately into the sugar/oil/egg mixture starting and ending with the flour mixture.
3. Divide the dough into two greased 10″ loaf pans and cook for 1 hour at 350 degrees F.

*10 frozen bananas, but it will depend on the size of your bananas

Light and Fluffy Gluten Free Biscuits

Mary Frances — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:14:32 +0000

A happy accident a few weeks ago led to yet another change in my gluten free drop biscuits recipe. I ran out of soy flour and added an additional 1/2 c. of cornstarch to make up for the shortfall. The result. . . fluffy, tender biscuits that I would put up against anyone’s gluten filled biscuit.

These biscuits freeze really well too. I usually make a batch on Saturday morning, cook 6 for our breakfast and then freeze the remaining 10 biscuits in two pans. These pans eventually find their way into our oven during the week. Just bake for 30 minutes while you get dressed, and breakfast is done.

If drop biscuits are not quite your thing, then you need to try my recipe for cut-out biscuits. It’s included in my e-book, The Gluten Free Survival Guide.

Light and Fluffy Gluten Free Biscuits
(Yield: 16 large biscuits)

1 1/2 c. brown rice flour
2 c. corn starch*
1/2 c. soy flour or sorghum flour
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. xanthan gum

1 stick of butter* (chilled in the freezer)
1 1/4 c. soy milk*
1 1/4 c. water
1 Tbsp. cider vinegar*
1 egg, beaten (or the equivalent amount of your favorite egg replacement)

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a large mixing bowl thoroughly combine the flours, baking powder, salt, baking soda, and xanthan gum.

3. Grate the butter into the flour using the small holed side of a box grater. Mix the butter into the flour so that there are no large balls of grated butter.

4. Add the soy milk, water, vinegar and beaten egg to the flour and stir until the dry and liquid ingredients are combined.

5. Using a large spoon, drop the dough onto a greased pan to make 16 biscuits. Cook at 350 degrees for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Cook’s Notes:

1. If you’re not vegan or dairy free, feel free to use 1 c. buttermilk in place of the soy milk and vinegar. If you’re allergic to soy, try using your usual milk substitute and keep the vinegar in the recipe.

2. You may substitute potato starch or tapioca flour for the cornstarch.

3. 1 stick of butter = 8 Tbsp. = 1/2 c. = 1/4 lb. = 115 grams

4. Earth Balance Buttery Sticks should work if you need this to be casein free. I just checked their website and the sticks are gluten and dairy free.

5. Thanks to Kate at Gluten Free Gobsmacked for the tip on grating the butter. It was a lot of fun and decreased my prep time by quite a bit.

The Linguistic Challenges of Slicing an Avocado

Mary Frances — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:38:38 +0000

When I posted my recipe for Black Olive Hummus I mentioned that I love hummus sandwiches with sliced avocado, tomato and lettuce. Amy B asked how one should go about slicing an avocado, so I took a few pictures to demonstrate my method. How do you slice an avocado?

First, choose an avocado that is firm, but gives slightly when pressed with your thumb. This one is a bit overripe, as you’ll see in a moment.

Then slice the avocado in two and separate the halves. To remove the pit, hit it with the sharp edge of a chef’s knife so that the knife become stuck in the pit. Hold the avocado half in one hand and pull back on the knife with the other. The pit should come right out.

Next, make parallel slices down the avocado without slicing through the ****.

Finally, gently scoop the slices out of the **** using a large spoon.

Tada! You now have a sliced avocado.

**** John and I cannot agree on what the outside layer of an avocado is called. The options thus far are rind, shell, peel, and skin. Anyone care to set us straight?

This is the method we’ve seen used on TV by several graduates of the best cooking schools. Hopefully it will work for you as well.

Gluten Free Cooking School » Breakfast Recipes

Gluten Free Sausage Balls

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Cranberry Orange Quickbread by the Ratio – How a New Recipe is Created

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Gluten Free Pie Crust: Impossibly Easy

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Gluten Free Waffles

Gluten Free Waffles

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Chicken Fajita Quesadillas

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Breakfast on a Budget – Cream of Corn Cereal

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Eggnog French Toast

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Gluten Free Bread: Banana Bread

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Light and Fluffy Gluten Free Biscuits

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The Linguistic Challenges of Slicing an Avocado

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