Carrot Date Muffins (gluten free)

Here's yet another recipe I found on my Whole Foods Recipes app, but if you don't have an iPhone, the recipe is also posted on the Whole Foods website. Let me just go ahead and admit that I didn't have any amaranth or millet flour when I decided I had to make these muffins, but I did have exactly 3/4 cup of Pamela's Baking Mix sitting in my pantry just begging to be used, so that's what went into my muffins instead.

For the muffins, you'll need:

2 medium carrots, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 cup chopped pitted dates
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup melted coconut oil
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
3/4 cup amaranth flour or millet flour (except I used Pamela's Baking Mix)
3/4 cup ground almond flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon sea salt

I hadn't beat the eggs or melted the coconut oil when I took a picture of the ingredients, but don't worry, it all got done.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees and line a 12-cavity standard muffin tin with paper baking cups. Put the dates and carrots in a food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Add the walnuts, and pulse until they're finely chopped.

 

Transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl, and then add the coconut oil, lightly beaten eggs, and maple syrup. Stir it all together to combine completely.

In a separate bowl, combine the remaining dry ingredients. 

The recipe says to then pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients, but I did it the opposite way because my wet ingredients were in a bigger bowl. Stir the mixture until just combined. 

Divide the batter evenly between the lined muffin cavities. I forgot to snap a photo of this step, and I didn't do such a great job of dividing the batter evenly, but they still came out okay.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. After a few minutes, remove them from the pan and let the muffins cool completely on a wire rack.

These are delicious, and I really want to make them again using amaranth or millet flour like the recipe calls for, just to compare and see what (if any) difference it makes in the taste and texture. They are plenty sweet and don't need any kind of topping, but they also taste a lot like carrot cake, so I think a modest amount of cream cheese icing on the top would be seriously yummy. If you like carrot cake, that is. 

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Namaste Foods Gluten Free Bread Mix

Recently I made a loaf of bread using a bag of Namaste Foods Gluten Free Bread Mix. I bought this on sale at some point, and it subsequently sat in the pantry for a while. I'm not sure how long, but there's another 8 months to go until the use-by date, so I'm not worried. I like to have stuff like this on hand because sometimes I get in the mood to eat bread, and that usually means I have to make it myself. This time, I was also in desperate need of clearing out some pantry space, so making this mix was the easy answer.

This is the third loaf of gluten free bread I've made from a mix (Pamela's and Bob's Red Mill were the other ones I tried), and it did fairly well. It rose way more than I thought it would, but it was still heavy and moist the first day, only to very quickly dry out by the third day after baking.

  

The bread mix consists of a flour blend made from brown rice flour, sorghum flour, tapioca flour, arrowroot flour, rice milk powder, evaporated cane juice, millet flour, salt, xanthan gum, and a separate packet of yeast is also included. All you need to add is 1 egg, 3 egg whites, 1/4 cup of oil, and 1 cup of warm water.

 

Add the yeast to the water and give it at least a good 5 minutes to dissolve and proof. I was actually quite worried because after 20 minutes mine still didn't look all that active, but I went a head and used it and the bread rose just fine.

  

Combine the egg, egg whites, and oil. Add the yeast, and then the package of flour blend. Beat for 3 minutes with an electric mixer on medium speed, scraping the bowl down as needed.

   

Spray a bread pan with nonstick cooking spray, and if you're not using your oven to let the dough rise, you can go ahead and let it start preheating to 350 degrees. Pour the bread dough (it's more like quickbread batter) into the pan. Cover loosely and let rise for at least 30 minutes. It doesn't double, but you can see it clearly does rise, just compare the pictures above to those below.

 

By the way, I was too lazy to look for couldn't find my loaf pan, so I used one of these casserole dishes because it was the first baking vessel I could access without potentially disturbing a precariously stacked tower of teetering crockery and bakeware. It worked out great--I used the lid to cover the dish for proofing, and then again during baking so the top wouldn't over brown. Well, at least not much... And here's the finished product. I was very pleased to see that it rose even more during baking.

    

I apologize for not having any pictures of the inside of the loaf. I kept meaning to take some, but I seemed to either not have my camera handy when I was slicing the bread, or my kitchen was way too dark. But the crust is more flaky than crusty, and the inside has a coarse crumb, like most gluten free bread, even though the flour blend was fairly fine.

For me this bread was moist on the day of baking, but soon developed a more cornbread-like texture and quickly dried out. It has a deeper flavor than regular bread, and it goes well equally with sweet or savory toppings. I tried it with cheese and Branston Pickle, lemon curd, and honey. It worked well with all of them.

Simpli-Made Gluten Free Pancakes

Several days ago I posted a review of Simpli Gluten Free Apricot Instant Oatmeal, complete with pictures and a smoothie recipe that calls for a packet of the instant oatmeal. I also mentioned that on the company website there were more recipes, including one for gluten-free pancakes, and promised that I would feature the pancakes recipe in another post. Well, here it is.

The first time I made these pancakes, I didn't have any oat flour on hand. Anxious to try the recipe anyway, I substituted quinoa flour because that's what I had in the pantry. I do not recommend using quinoa flour in this recipe. It leaves a distinct quinoa aftertaste, and my younger son and I were the only ones who would eat them. Even I didn't think they were all that great. However, knowing neither the recipe nor oatmeal were at fault since I didn't follow the instructions, I decided to try it again, this time using the proper flour. That made all the difference. These were at hit with my kids. So much so that out of the 14 pancakes yielded, I only got to eat 2.

Ingredients:
1 package Simpli Gluten Free Apricot Instant Oatmeal
2 cups gluten-free oat flour
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
2 cups milk (can also use dairy-free milk like almond, rice, etc.)
½ teaspoon gluten-free vanilla extract
5 tablespoons butter (melted but not hot)
1/2 cup water

Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl, mix together well, and set aside.

 

Beat the eggs, milk, and vanilla until well combined, then slowly add melted butter. Then gradually add the dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated.

 

The recipe says to stir in the water to thin the batter, but I thought the batter was already pretty thin, so I didn't add any.

 

Preheat skillet and oil with melted butter or nonstick cooking spray. Use about 1/4 cup of batter per pancake. When the top starts to bubble, flip it over and cook until done. These cook pretty quickly.

  

You can keep the pancakes warm in an oven on the lowest setting until you've made them all. Usually what happens around here is they eat them as fast as I can make them, which is why I don't have a nice photo showing a big stack of pancakes with maple syrup dripping down the sides, but I was very impressed with how well these turned out once I used the right kind of flour.

Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Tarts

I saw this recipe on the Food Network website: Truffle Tarts with Raspberries. The picture looked so deliciously tempting, but I wasn't thrilled with the idea of using Oreos or chocolate wafer cookies, due to the gluten and other ingredients I try to avoid in processed foods. So, I did a little experimenting, trying to come up with a healthier version. They came out pretty good, so I thought I'd share my results. I think this recipe could be improved. Maybe next time I'll try using walnuts instead of toasted pecans.

If you're lucky enough to have individual loose-bottom or springform tart pans, now is a great opportunity to use them. Otherwise, cut strips of parchment paper to line the cavities of a standard cupcake pan like this:

Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Tarts

For the crust:

3 cups pecans (I toasted mine)

3/4 cup pitted dates, roughly chopped

3/4 tsp salt

2 tsp pure vanilla extract

2 TBSP cocoa powder

1/2 cup frozen raspberries (more or less to taste)

Toast pecans on a sheet pan in a 350 degree oven if desired.

Pit and chop dates.

(Sorry, the photo of the chopped dates came out too blurry to use)

Process pecans, salt, and cocoa powder in food processor until mixed into a coarse powder. Add dates and vanilla and process until well mixed.

Evenly divide and press mixture into the cups of muffin pan. Now, the reason I use frozen raspberries is because they're easier to handle and you can crumble them into small pieces. Place about a teaspoon of crumbled frozen raspberries in the bottom of each tart shell. You can use more or less to suit your own taste, or try something else like toasted shredded coconut, or add nothing.

Chocolate Truffle filling:

1 cup coconut milk

16 oz good-quality bittersweet chocolate (go for the best you can find, at least 60%)

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Melt chocolate using your method of choice (microwave, double boiler). Add coconut milk and vanilla extract. Stir until smooth then allow to cool to room temperature. Place in mixer bowl and beat at medium speed until it thickens and becomes light in color. It will go from this:

To this:

Handy tip: Place a food storage bag/plastic disposable piping bag inside a tumbler to fill it with the ganache.

Then cut off the tip and squeeze the filling into the tart shells, completely covering the raspberries.

Smooth the tops with a spatula, and then refrigerate for 2 hours. They will come out of the pan easily thanks to the parchment paper strips.

Here's a shot of the inside. Mmmm, raspberries.