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.

I Made Cake!

The gluten-free flour mix stuff.

A while ago, I bought some gluten-free flour mix, because it was cheapish and I planned to make pizza bases with it. I then promptly forgot about it, and it's been standing in my cupboard ever since.

Then, yesterday, Francois and I went over to Bergen (my grandparents' home) to meet Dad and Carol for a creative day of decorating stuff to do with the wedding (which is just over a month away now!), and while we were there, everybody had some cupcakes except for me. No, don't feel sorry for me! I've gotten very used to not having wheaty goodies, and I barely felt any cake-envy at all. I swear.

When we left, Carol gave me some of the leftover icing that she had with her, thinking that I could use it for something. Well, that reminded me of the flour sitting in my cupboard, and so today I Googled how to make sponge cake. And I didn't just Google it. I DID it.

I followed the recipe for Basic Sponge Cake from Huletts, and improvised a little bit because I didn't have white sugar, or enough butter (I halved the recipe below), or normal cake flour. Here's what I did:


Gluten-Free Sponge Cake

Ingredients:

• 125g Butter (Meant to be room temperature, but it's HOT today and room temperature meant melted butter in my case. Oops!)
• 200g White Sugar (I didn't have white sugar, I only had brown. And I think my cake turned out alright, so it doesn't seem to matter TOO much.)
• 5ml Vanilla Essence (1tsp)
• 3 Extra Large Eggs (With my halved recipe, I used two average boring normal size eggs from Pick 'n Pay, and as I just mentioned, my cake seemed to work!)
• 280g Flour (Huletts says cake flour, but I say gluten-free flour mix! I used this stuff from Health Connection. I think I bought it at Dischem.)
• 15ml Baking Powder (1Tbs)
• 3ml Salt (1/2tsp)
• 150ml Milk (I just realised I made a hilarious mistake and only used 1Tbs of milk! THAT explains why it wasn't quite runny enough... And why it had difficulty rising. Haha! It's still yummy though.)

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease and line 2 x 20 cm cake tins. (I had one square glass baking dish.)
• Cream the butter and sugar together until light and creamy. 
• Add the vanilla essence.
• Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
• Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together. 
• Fold into the creamed mixture, alternately with the milk.
• Spoon mixture into the prepared cake tins, and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden in colour and a skewer inserted comes out clean. 
• Leave in pans for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely before icing.

After following those instructions (albeit hilariously incorrectly), I then quartered my cake to ice in three different ways. 

On one quarter, I poured some glaze icing (water, icing sugar and vanilla essence) that Carol had given to me. 

Voila! Vanilla sponge cake with vanilla icing!

On another quarter, I poured very thin orange glaze icing (Carol's glaze icing mixed with orange juice) which soaked into the cake - yummy!

Voila! Orange-soaked cake!

On the other two quarters, I smeared the delicious chocolate icing that Carol made. 

Voila! Chocolate-coated vanilla sponge cake!

Well. My goodness. How tasty all of this cake is. It may not be perfect, but I no longer have cake-envy! For that matter, I think Francois is envious of MY cake! :D 

There's only one problem... 

I haven't eaten doughy delights in so long, that I can hardly eat any before I feel overcome by rich, sweet, cakey goodness. I can't eat all of it while it's fresh. I'm going to have to put some of it into the fridge for later. Woe is me. :(

Anyway, have a lovely day, all!

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.

My Gluten-Free Chocolate Mug Cakes

My body hates wheat, and wheat hates my body. They have a bit of a war going on, they do. Quite a while ago, I realised that the reason for my constant discomfort and bloating was that particularly common grain. So for the most part, I've avoided the soft powdery embrace of any goodie or savoury treat that contains flour.

Since my denouncing of the substance, I've been tempted to eat wheaty things a few times, but each time have regretted it thoroughly. As a result, I've started experimenting with flour-free baking alternatives. (Gluten free flours are expensive!!)

Here's the recipe that I use to create two flour-free chocolate and banana mug cakes:

I was late with the camera. Sorry!

Ingredients:

• Bananas - 2
• Egg - 1
• Cocoa - 2 heaped teaspoons
• Sugar - 4 teaspoons
• Salt - 1/4 teaspoon
• Baking Powder - 1/2 teaspoon

Method:

1. If you have a blender, break the bananas up a bit and pop them into the jug. If not, pop them into a small mixing bowl, and proceed to mash them up as well as you can with a fork. I say 'as well as you can,' but actually, don't worry about making it too smooth. A few lumpy banana bits in the cake are not bad at all.
2. Add all of the dry ingredients, and then the egg. (If you add the dry ingredients after the egg, they cause quite a bit of powder to puff up into your face when you start mixing things up.)
3. Mix things up. If you're using a blender, this should take no time at all. You want the texture to be smooth, and the dry ingredients thoroughly and evenly combined with the wet. Obviously. That's what mixing is for. If you're mixing by hand, just use that fork again to mash things in nicely with the banana. 
4. Pour the batter into two mugs. There's no need to line the mugs with butter or anything, because banana isn't as sticky as flour. The mugs are usually pretty easy to wash if you rinse them straight after eating the cake, or if you leave it to soak for a short while. 
5. Microwave each cake separately for about one minute and twenty seconds. You can experiment with the perfect time for your microwave, just remember that less time will make a more gooey, moist cake, and more time will just allow the cake to dry out a bit more. You don't need to worry too much about overcooking it, because the banana stays very moist regardless. 
6. Eat the resulting deliciousness as soon as it's ready. Hot gooey mug cakes are the best puddings, in my opinion. 

Well, enjoy the yummy gluten- and flour-free pudding! Say thank you for the recipe and share it with other people, if you like. ;) Bye!