Gluten-free, egg-free crumpets

We were fairly broke recently, ran out of eggs, and didn't feel like having mealie pap for breakfast AGAIN. So, after googling a few recipes and improvising with what we had in the fridge and cupboard, I made these:

Gluten-free, egg-free crumpets

Dry ingredients:

1 cup mealie meal

1/2 cup coconut flour

1/2 cup potato starch

1/4 cup maizena (cornstarch)

1 teaspoon tapioca flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

8 teaspoons sugar (or to taste)

Wet ingredients:

2 teaspoons vanila essence

3 heaped tablespoons butter, melted

About 2 cups milk

Optional ingredients:

2 eggs (unnecessary, but eggs are always nice! Add them in with the wet ingredients)

1 or 2 teaspoons Cinnamon (Add in with the dry ingredients)

Directions:

1. Mix all of the dry ingredients together (if you only have mealie meal, that works too! Just use 2 cups of mealie meal instead of all of the other flours and starches)
2. Add all of the wet ingredients and mix everything up (make sure the butter isn't too hot from being melted, or it will cook some of the batter when you add it in) - the amount of milk is an estimate - you don't want batter as thin as pancake batter, it should be about as thick as a runny cooked porridge. Add milk until you're happy - rather add too little than too much, make one crumpet to test the consistency, and then add more as needed.
3. Oil and heat a non-stick pan on medium-high heat (about 1/2 teaspoon oil should be fine, just re-oil before each pancake)
4. Pour some batter into the pan (the size is up to you! You could make a small crumpet, or one as big as your pan! Just start small for testers) and flatten the batter by spreading it out with a spoon. It should be under 1/2 cm thick.
5. Once bubbles start to appear on the surface, check if it's browned underneath by gently lifting an edge with your spatula. 
6. Once it's golden brown, use the spatula to make sure all of the edges are loose, and the crumpet is slipping around the pan... Then flip it! 
7. Cook until the other side is also nicely browned, and serve as desired (I like mine with peanut butter!)

The crumpets should be nice and moist inside, slightly chewy (they won't be as soft as regular crumpets), but not gritty - if they're gritty, turn your heat down and cook each crumpet for longer, giving the mealie meal time to cook properly.

These are very filling crumpets - one batch is enough to stuff two adults with big appetites (we often have a bowl of porridge with three eggs on top for breakfast, so that should give you an idea!).

Typically, I only decided to write this post after eating all of the crumpets... So I'll update this post with a picture the next time that I make some.

Make Your Own Ice Cap

So I completely stole this recipe from the internet in general. So many people have posted it. BUT. They all posted it as a recipe for Magic Shell. And as we all know, it's actually called Ice Cap.

Here's how it's done...

Make Your Own Ice Cap 

This recipe makes about 1 ¼ cups of Ice Cap. You can double it or triple it if you have a lot of kids... Or a sweet tooth.

Ingredients:

• ½ cup cocoa powder 
• ½ cup coconut oil 
• ¼ cup honey (or double if you like it very sweet. I don't.)

Method:

1. Put a little bit of water in a small pot. 
2. Put all of the ingredients into a small jug with a spout. 
3. Put the jug in the pot. Voila! A double boiler that will be easy to pour out of later. 
4. Put the pot on the heat. High, in case you were wondering. 
5. Once it starts melting, stir continously until everything is nicely mixed together. 
6. Once it's very smooth and super runny, turn the heat off. It should be ready before the water in the pot even starts boiling. If not, and the water starts simmering, turn the heat down. No need to get splashed with boiling water unnecessarily. 
7. Pour the sauce out into a pretty bottle. 

A Pretty Bottle!

I used an old olive oil bottle. The little pouring thing in the top is really useful for carefully pouring runny chocolate sauce... 

Anyway, you can keep this in the cupboard for a while, or in the fridge for longer. Just heat it up over some warm water if it solidifies in the bottle. 

And I bet you can't guess what I tested mine on. (Because this is the first time I've made it, by the way. Hence the required testing.) 

No, that funny little brown thing isn't what you're sniggering about.

Yes, you figured it out! Half of a frozen banana! AND IT WORKED! :D 

And, better than that, it tasted good. The sauce is quite bitter on its own, but when it's covering a sweet, frozen banana, it tastes great. So I'm quite chuffed. 

Now go and try it yourself. It's much cheaper than buying the normal Ice Cap, and probably healthier, too, if you care about that. 

Goodnight! (Good morning?) 

Banana Smoothie Milkshakes and MUSIC!

Yesterday was hot. And I mean HOT. It was at least 32°c and I was suffering to the point of intense grumpiness. Before I thought of taking a cool shower outside (which fixed my mood problem), I decided to make frozen smoothies.

It was quick and easy to put them together, because clever girl that I am, I had already frozen a bunch of bananas a few days before.

Before I get to the recipe, here's some back-story about the 'nanas:

Francois and I have REALLY been enjoying banana smoothies for the last little while. So much so, that we keep running out of bananas. I remembered reading about how well bananas freeze, so when we went to the shop on Monday, I bought eleven kilograms of almost-ripe narnars. Yes. Eleven.

This is what I haven't dealt with yet.

When we got home, I chopped up all of the mostly ripe ones and popped them in the freezer. I've been chopping some every day, as they ripen. All of this chopping resulted in a very full container of banana bits.

I've used a lot already, this was full to the brim!

Today, I realised that there's no way that all of the banana will fit in the containers that I have, so I also froze a few whole bananas on a tray.

I'll probably dip those in chocolate and freeze them for lollipop-like treats.

Anyway, the chopped, frozen banana slices were used to make scrummy-liscious fruitshake smoothies!

Ingredients:

• 3 Chopped frozen bananas 
• 4 tablespoons rolled oats 
• 1 heaped tablespoon honey 
• 3 big tablespoons plain yoghurt 
• ½ cup milk 
• 2 shakes of cinnamon 

Method:

1. Put oats, cinnamon, milk and yoghurt into a blender. 
2. Blend until the oats become fairly fine. This shouldn't take more than a few seconds. 
3. Add the honey and blend again. 
4. Add the banana bits, half a banana at a time, blending before adding more. If you have a powerful blender, you can just chuck it all in at once. 
5. Blend until smooth. Add more milk if it's too thick for your taste. (I like it thick, I eat it with a spoon!) 
6. Pour into glasses. This recipe is for two big smoothies, but you can adjust it quite easily to stretch it, if you like. 

I don't have a picture of them, but I'll try to remember to take one tomorrow when I make more. :P


In other news: I've started playing piano again!

I used to play when I was in primary school. That's a while ago, as I'm sure you can imagine, so my skills are rather lacking at the moment.

Francois brought my keyboard downstairs a few days ago after our landlord came to fetch his piano. Then Francois had a song stuck in his head from The Legend of Zelda (Saria's Song, to be specific) and he tried to work it out on the keyboard...

Monkey see, monkey do, and now I'm playing every day, working out tunes that play in my head, practicing scales and reminding myself of how to read sheet music.

It's bloody fun!

We've reorganized the furniture a bit so that I feel comfortable at my keyboard, and Francois has a better layout for playing games at his PC as a pleasant extra result.

This is my spot!

Now I don't play piano RIGHT next to the toilet! Yay!

And for any of you who may be interested to know, this is my keyboard:

It's a Technics KN 1200, just in case you can't read what's in the photo.

Anyway, that's it from me, for today.

Oh! I want to try to make banana ice-cream. But I need a stronger blender to do that. I think it'd be cool to make and sell dairy-free ice-cream to the locals.

Oh oh! And Carrie the Limping Lion gets released on Monday! How exciting! :D

Oh and one more thing. I've turned over a new leaf. My house is neat and tidy almost all the time, and I do dishes just about every day. It's pleasant to be home! Well. Downstairs, anyway. I still need to tackle upstairs...

Okay. Bye now!

Gluten-free Pizza!

I wanted to write a short post about this a while ago, and I completely forgot to do it. Last week (I think it was last week), Francois and I went to his mom's house to make pizza for supper. As you all know, I can't eat wheat. But I know a great wheat-full pizza base recipe, so I decided to try to adapt it.

The original recipe calls for a one-to-one ratio of self-raising flour and double thick plain yoghurt. You just mix it together and knead it until it's nice and puffy, adding lots of extra flour along the way. Then you roll it out super thin, add toppings and bake at a really high temperature. Tada!

Last time that we did it, they were super amazing and looked like this:

We also made an onion pizza.

This time, I did this:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 litre Double-thick Full-cream Plain Yogurt 
• 1/2 litre Potato Flour 
• 1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder 
• Fine coconut flour (not desiccated coconut - I can't remember how much. A cup or two? 

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 230°c. (or 250, whatever, really.) 
2. Mix the yoghurt, potato flour and baking powder very well. 
3. Knead it well while adding coconut flour as needed to dry it out, until you have a dough that resembles bread dough. Unfortunately, it won't spring back when you push it lightly with your finger, so don't knead it forever wondering when it'll happen. It won't. 
4. Butter or spray a baking tray, and dust lightly with coconut flour. 
5. Press the dough down onto the tray, making thin pizza bases. 
6. Pop the plain base into the oven on a low shelf, and let it cook for about five minutes. 
7. Pull it back out, cover with toppings, allow to cook for another ten minutes or longer... But keep an eye on things just in case it starts to burn. 
8. You can grill it for a few minutes if you want crispy cheese. 
9. Gently ease the crispy base off the tray with a butter knife. 
10. Tada! 

Yes, it was actually tastier than the original recipe. Super crunchy, but not too tough or chewey. We loved them! And we had loads of toppings so we made a few variations... 

What class, what style... 

And the best thing? Unlike other gluten-free nonsense, potato flour is very affordable. It was R30 for the bag, and we made five 20cm bases and were too full to make more, so I still have some dough wrapped in cling wrap in the fridge.

I lied. The best thing was the cheese.