Seasonal Sweets

I ended up making some gluten-free stuff after all. I tried substituting Arrowhead Mills All-Purpose Gluten-Free Baking Mixfor the regular flour in three different conventional recipes.

I attempted a gluten-free coconut cake, and it was a total fail. The cake sunk and was so dry it just crumbled apart. But at least I had plenty of cake crumbs to use in the trifles. The turnovers I made came out okay, and are certainly edible, but their texture is off. The cornbread, which I only made so I could have gluten-free cornbread dressing to eat with my turkey, turned out the best. I only have pictures of the turnovers, though.

After using an entire box of the Arrowhead Mills gluten-free baking mix, I'm not really all that crazy about it. I was surprised by how fine and powdery it is, and everything I made with it came out with a grainy texture. That didn't matter so much in the case of the cornbread, which has a rather coarse texture anyway. I suppose this mix might work better in muffins and cookies. I have another box, so I may try making some of the recipes printed on the back, and hopefully I'll like it better.

I saw this turnover pastry recipe in a magazine while I was waiting somewhere. I didn't take loads of photos, but I'm still going to share it. They actually tasted fine, their texture was just too grainy. I added seedless raspberry jam to some, Nutella to a few, and mince pie filling to the rest. The raspberry jam was too thin and oozed out of the seams a bit, and the Nutella really firmed up after being baked, but I got a great result with the mince pie filling.

Turnover Pastry:

1 cup flour (I used Arrowhead Mills Gluten-Free Baking Mix)
1/2 tsp salt
6 tablespoons butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
6 tbsp cream cheese, chilled and cut into small pieces
2 tbsp ice water
1 egg, beaten
filling of choice

In a food processor, pulse flour and salt. Add butter and cream cheese and pulse until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle with ice water and pulse until dough forms a ball. Flatten into disk, wrap and chill 30 minutes.

Preheat oven 425. Flour dough and roll out 1/8" thick (made with gluten-free flour, this is another dough that needs to be floured and not rolled out between pieces of wax paper). Use a 4" round cutter to cut 10 disks (I got 12). Brush egg around rim, spoon 2 tsp filling into center and fold over. Crimp edges with a fork to seal.

Place turnovers on a parchment-lined baking sheet, brush tops with egg, and cut 2 small slits to vent. Bake 15 minutes, until golden.