Gluten Free Banana Bread

**I'm sharing this blog post that originally went up on My THEPUREOIL blog, but since it's totally gluten free and applies for my Gluten free readers as well, I'll share the recipe part here.  To the see the full post with more pictures you can head to the original post HERE at thepureoil.blogspot.ca

Today was a good day to heat up the oven and bake up some Gluten Free banana Bread. 

I decided to stray a bit from recipes of the past and play with an attempt at making it just a wee bit healthier. 

This is the result. It's yummy!

Now, let's have a look at the health-ified ingredients, and the new recipe!


Ingredients:
*1 1/2 cups gluten free flour blend (with xanthan gum already in it.  Otherwise, add 1/2 tsp xanthan gum as well)
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp of pink Himalayan salt

2 large bananas
2/3 cup cottage cheese
1/4 cup milk (dairy or non-dairy)
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 cup raw cane sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 cup coconut oil

Optional
Hand full of certified gluten free rolled oats
Hand full of chocolate chips (gluten free of course!)


Directions:

Mix the first three ingredients in a large bowl with a whisk.

Put everything in the bottom block of ingredients into the blender and blend until smooth.

Pour the contents of the blender over the dry ingredients and incorporate it.  Then add the optional oats and chocolate chips if you elect to use them, then pour into prepared pans.

(This one recipe made the two small loaves and the one large loaf)

Bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for approximately 25 minutes for smaller loaves, and 45-50 minutes for large loaf.

*I use Selections brand Gluten Free flour blend that I buy in Canada at Food Basics.  It's generally $5 per kilo, and I have found it to work well for quick breads.  It does have xanthan gum already blended in. You can also find Selections brand at Metro here  in Canada.  If you have a favourite blend, try it in the recipe and tell us about it!


**This would also make fantastic muffins, and would likely take about 20 minutes for regular sized muffins to bake.

This turned out delicious, and now the wheels are really turning for me on how to incorporate other healthy harvest goodies in quick breads and muffins.  I will hopefully play some more this Thanksgiving weekend and share my results!

Peanut Butter Nougat

It's been AGES since I have posted a recipe here!  

This recipe was given to me by a lady from Pioneer Club many years ago. Gary was on the gluten free diet and she so kindly made these for him, so he could also have a treat.  (All the other kids were having gluten-full cookies).

He absolutely loved them, and I made them a few times, but then the recipe was missing for many years, until today, January 23, 2015 when I cleaned out one of the upper kitchen cupboards.  I have searched online for this recipe so many times, and have never been able to find it anywhere, which in and of itself is amazing, especially given Pinterest! 

I'm not saying it's a healthy recipe, but it IS gluten free, and they are delicious!  I imagine they would also be excellent made with WOW Butter or another PB substitute as well if you have nut allergies in addition to the gluten problem.

Gary’s Favourite Peanut Butter Nougat

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup corn syrup

1 ¼  cup skim milk powder (instant)

1 ¼ cup icing sugar

Mix peanut butter and syrup together well. Add dry ingredients and combine completely.

Roll into balls or roll to 1/2 inch thickness and cut into 1/2 inch pieces.

Can be covered in melted chocolate. 

I plan to make these this afternoon, and Gary will be a super Happy Guy after school today I'm sure!

The big 'ole blob of dough...it's sooo very yummy!  I want to pick a piece off right now and eat it...and then another one...and then another.....

Once they're rolled into tidy little bite sized balls, they're ready for a coating of chocolate if you wish.  Ours went naked.  Really.  Even in our frigid Canadian January!  

To be perfectly honest.  I've NEVER coated them in chocolate.  

We don't see the need.  They're INCREDIBLE exactly as they are in all their un-chocolated glory.

That's not to say that you shouldn't chocolate coat them.  But please taste them first, just to be fair.  

And if you do chocolate them up, tell me all about it!

Gingerbread egg, dairy and gluten free!

Today we're making a Classic Christmas Favourite. 

Gingerbread Cookies!

I had a little help with my Decorating. lol

These are infact GLUTEN FREE and Completely DELICIOUS!

Again, I used the flour recipe from my first post HERE.

The Epicure ingredients I used in these are

Gingerbread spices

Vanilla Extract

Gluten free Baking Powder

VE milk Belgain Chocolate.

Okay, here we go!

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup shortening

1/2 cup dark molasses

1/4 cup water

beat all of the above in a large bowl until very well blended and pale in colour with electric mixer.

2 1/2 cups gluten free flour

1 tsp VE gingerbread spices

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. VE gluten free baking powder

3/4 tsp. sea salt (I used Bob's Red Mill)

Mix together all of the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl and add to creamed wet ingredients.

mix well.

At this point you need to gather all your dough together in some parchment paper, and refrigerate it for 1-2 hours.  It can also be frozen at this point.  The dough will keep for about 6 weeks frozen, or a week in the fridge.

When you're ready to use it, you definately want to keep it between 2 layers of parchment while you roll it out!  Go ahead and use a rolling pin, but don't use it directly on the dough.  sandwich the dough between parchement layers, and roll away.  When you cut with the cookie cutters, you can flour the cutter first, then cut.  To remove the cut raw cookies, you need to remove all the dough around the shape, then carefully use a lifter to transfer to a baking sheet also lined with parchment.  Alternatively, you can transfer your rolled out dough (before cutting with cookie cutters) to the cookie tray and then just cut and remove the excess, and you have then successfully avoided having to move the cookie dough cut outs at all! :0)

Once they are baked, and cooled, they're easy to handle.

Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes. 

We decorated ours with a simple icing made with just water and icing sugar, and then sprinkled with sprinkles, and I used my awesome Epicure Chocolate Decorator to add the Belgain Chocolate outline.  Mmmm...these are DELICIOUS with a cup of coffee, tea or even better yet...a gingerbread latte!

Gingerbread syrup for latte.

1 cup water

3/4 cup white sugar

2 tsp. VE gingerbread spices.

Bring all of the above to a boil while stirring in a medium heavy saucepan.

Boil for one minute, and remove from heat.

Use approximately 2 Tbsp. per cup of coffee, or to taste.

For a latte, fill the coffee cup half full, add syrup and frothed milk.

For a richer drink, add cream and whipped cream with chocolate syrup and cinnamon sugar to top!

Enjoy your bit of personal Heaven at a fraction of the cost you'd pay Starbucks!

Ice box cookies!

Today I'm going to share with you my recipe for Ice Box cookies.  They're delicious, easy to make, and handy to have around!  You make up a batch, freeze them in logs in wax paper or parchment, and then just slice and bake when you need them!  This is one recipe I won't be without at Christmas time.

Here we see our dough. Mmmmmm....

And our finished cookies...albeit slightly over-baked. lol

Okay, time for the recipe!

For this one as for most of my recipes here I use the Nearly Normal Gluten free flour recipe from my first post.

2 1/2 cups gluten free flour

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp sea salt

Mix these three well with a wooden spoon.

1cup unsalted butter

1/2 cup white sugar

1cup icing sugar

Cream together these three ingredients, then mix in the following

1 egg

2tsp. vanilla (I love Epicure's vanilla)

At this point you have a really thick clumpy batter and all that's left to do is to add the cherries!

chop up 1/2 cup each red and green glace. cherries, and add into the mixture. 

Then scoop up some mixture onto wax paper and form into 4 logs using the wax paper to form the logs.  Gluten free batter is REALLY STICKY and not so much fun to work with if you're using bare hands!

Chill for at least an hour in the fridge before cutting into 1/4" thick slices and bake at 350 degrees for 7-10 minutes.

This will keep upto 5 days in the fridge or upto 1 month in the freezer.  They smell wonderful when they're baking, and taste delicious!  You won't even miss the regular wheat flour!

I hope you have a chance to try this recipe out this Christmas.  It's become a family favourite.  Next time I get back to the blog, I'll post my gingerbread recipe!

Happy Baking!

Christmas Baking the Gluten Free way!

Over the next few days I'll be sharing some fabulous recipes with you that I make every Christmas. They work really well Gluten Free!

I am using the nearly normal all purpose flour recipe you can find a few posts down, and I even have pictures to share. I have them to share today infact, but it appears I have some blog sorting to do! I don't have the option to post photos at the moment. Odd.
Anyway, I have a gingerbread, ice box cookie, and confetti bars to share with you this week!
Stay tuned.

Gluten Free with Epicure Selections!

I'm a new Epicure Selections Consultant, and I'm loving that this Canadian women led company is making efforts to move toward an entirely Gluten Free catalogue! They right now have many many products that are gluten free, and just recently began producing the very popular Cheese Chive Bacon dip mix gluten free also! I love it! With a 3 1/2 year old to feed gluten free, and the rest of the family to keep happy too, I absolutley love their products!

I'm going to share here one of their most popular recipes.

Epicure's Extraordinary Cheese Dip
One of our most popular and delicious recipes.

Makes 3 cups (750 ml)
Cost Per Serving: $0.32


Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 20 - 30 minutes

Ingredients
8 oz (250 g) package spreadable cream cheese
1/2 cup (125 ml) grated cheddar cheese
1/2 cup (125 ml) grated mozzarella cheese (I use the cheddar jack pre-shredded from Zehrs)
1 cup (250 ml) low-fat mayonnaise (here I prefer to use 1/2 cup sour cream and 1/2 cup mayo, it's less greasy.)
1 tsp (5 ml) Epicure’s Seasoning for Cheese, Chives & Bacon Dip
1 tsp (5 ml) Epicure’s Lemon Dilly Dip Mix
1 tsp (5 ml) Epicure’s 3 Onion Dip Mix

Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 350° F (175° C).
2. Combine all ingredients until well-blended.
3. Spoon cheese mixture into Epicure’s Baker.
4. Bake for 20–30 minutes, or until heated through.



Per Serving

(2 Tbsp (30 ml)) : Calories 90, Fat 8 g (Saturated 3.5 g, Trans 0 g), Cholesterol 20 mg, Sodium 135 mg, Carbohydrate 1 g (Fibre 0 g, Sugars 0 g), Protein 2 g.

Tips: Lighten up: Try this recipe with light cream cheese and low-fat cheddar and mozzarella cheeses to save 40 calories and 4.5 g fat (2.7 g saturated) per serving.

Preparation Tip: Bake in a hollowed-out sourdough round and serve with scooped out bread for dipping.

Serving Suggestion: Serve with gluten free bread, corn tostitos, gluten free crackers or fresh-cut vegetables.
It's a guaranteed crowd pleaser!!

Getting back into it.

I've been on hiatus all fall, winter and spring with this blog. I hope to be back this week with a recipe or two that I've tried recently.
Do you have a hankering for banana muffins?