Gluten-Free Adventures: Cherry Clafoutis

Gluten-Free Cherry Clafoutis, version 1. Top., a photo by sherimiya ♥ on Flickr.

This summer we were gifted with the biggest, juiciest, sweetest cherries ever. While my kids are perfectly content to suck them down as is, I thought it would be nice to make something special with them. Cherry clafoutis is a French baked dessert of cherries in an eggy batter. Ooooohhhh. And, there are gluten-free versions. Hello? I tried two recipes.

This first one is from the book "125 Best Gluten-Free Recipes" by Washburn and Butt. It was my first clafoutis, and I thought it was pretty good. It's a wrinkly and lumpy looking dessert, if you've never seen it before, and I had to google pictures of it to make sure mine looked right. This one turned out more on the pancake-y, bread-y side. I won't post the recipe here in the interest of space, but I've made other desserts from these authors and I think the book is worth looking at.

Then I tried another version, by the Gluten-Free Goddess, who based her recipe on adaptation of Julia Child's recipe by Cooking with Amy. This one varied quite a bit from Julia Child's basic cherries-eggs-flour-sugar-milk version, especially with the extra egg. But oh, man, it was good. It's basically a cherry egg pie. I mean look at it. It's yellow and custardy, almost like a flan. I'll pass along the recipe for this one, since it's a bit more involved with the coconut flour and maple syrup, but those give a lot of extra flavor. This is not a traditional clafoutis, I think, but it sure is worth making, if you're looking for a crowd-pleasing, easy-bake, gluten-free summertime dessert.

Gluten-Free Cherry Clafoutis
(from Gluten-Free Goddess -- it's also dairy-free and refined sugar-free)

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup vanilla almond milk or coconut milk
4 organic free-range eggs
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
1/4 cup coconut flour
1/4 cup brown rice flour or sorghum flour
1 tablespoon bourbon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
3 cups fresh cherries, pitted

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Using your favorite vegan butter, grease the bottom and sides of an 8x12-inch oval gratin baking dish. Set aside. (I used regular butter, and a regular pie plate)

Using a blender or Vita-Mix, whip the almond milk, eggs, maple syrup, coconut flour, brown rice flour, vanilla extract, and sea salt till smooth and frothy.

Pour roughly half an inch of batter into the buttered gratin dish and bake it in the oven until it is lightly set- just a few minutes. Take the baking dish out of the oven and add the cherries in an even layer. Pour on the remaining batter.

Return the dish to the oven and bake for about 50 to 55 minutes, until slightly golden around the edges, and set in the center.

Gluten-Free Adventures: Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies, homemade, a photo by sherimiya ♥ on Flickr.

Okay, remember how I feel about chocolate chip cookies? Yeah, I like 'em. A lot. So at the top of my gluten-free baking list was making a delicious chocolate chip cookie that could "pass" as the real thing. I have done a lot of experimenting, let me tell you. The things I do in the name of research! If you do a search you'll find a ton of recipes, all insisting that they're the best in the world, etc. I had to analyze and test them all; that's just the way I am. A lot of misleading claims of excellence are out there, so you really have to be careful.

But lucky you: you have me! And you can trust me! And let me tell you: these are really, truly the best! Okay, they're the best so far. And only if you like the kind of chocolate chip cookie that I like -- crispy, puffy, slightly soft inside, just the right amount of crumble, and packed with chips and nuts. 

Still with me? Alrighty then. Here it is, the one you've been waiting for! Well, the one I've been waiting for. My recipe:

Sheri's Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 cup butter, softened (1 stick)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/8 cup raw sugar (you can add more if you like it sweeter)
1 egg
1/4 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup almond flour
1/8 cup sorghum flour
1/8 cup millet flour
1/4 cup potato starch
1 T buckwheat flour (this gives a nice brownish color to the dough)
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp xanthan gum (I'm still trying to sub out this binding ingredient with something else; stay tuned)
1/4 tsp salt
dark chocolate chips
chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 375F.
In a medium bowl, combine the brown rice flour, almond flour, sorghum flour, millet flour, potato starch, buckwheat flour, baking soda, xanthan gum and salt. Mix.
In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars. Stir in the egg and mix. Add the dry ingredients a fourth at a time and mix well. Add in the chocolate chips and walnuts.
Drop rounded teaspoons of cookie dough onto a baking sheet approx. 2 inches apart.
Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden brown.
Makes about 20 smallish cookies. Double recipe for bigger batch.

Gluten-Free Adventures: Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Bars

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Bars (gluten-free), a photo by sherimiya ♥ on Flickr.

Okay, so I have been hard at work experimenting with treats and snacks in the gluten-free vein. When I saw this recipe for GF peanut butter chocolate chip bars, I thought: perfect! And also: so easy. I love bar recipes, because they're so much less labor-intensive than ones requiring you to make crusts, or roll out balls, or scoop into muffin tins. You just pour it into a pan and forget it until the timer dings. And it's usually at least a half hour or so, so you can kick back and relax too. This recipe, from Serious Eats, is no exception. I liked that the main flour is brown rice flour, which I've grown to realize I like the flavor of. And the peanut butter should mask any other taste issues as well.

Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Bars (Serious Eats)

Ingredients
3 3/4 ounces (3/4 cup) brown rice flour
2 ounces (1/3 cup) potato starch
2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 ounces (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
4 ounces (1/2 cup) smooth peanut butter (I used chunky)
3.5 ounces (1/2 cup) granulated sugar
4 ounces (1/2 cup) dark brown sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup chocolate chips
[I added chia seeds and flax meal too]

Preheat oven to 350°F;. Grease 8x8x2-inch pan with nonstick cooking spray.

In small bowl, whisk together brown rice flour, potato starch, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In large bowl, cream together butter, peanut butter, and sugars until light and fluffy, about one minute. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat well between each addition. Stop mixer and scrape down bottom and sides of bowl. Turn mixer back on and continue to beat until mixture is light, fluffy, and almost white. Turn off mixer. Add dry ingredients, turn mixer to low and blend to combine. Add chocolate chips. Mix until just combined.

Spread batter evenly into prepared pan. Bake until bars are puffy, golden brown, and a cake tester interested into the center of the bars comes out with a few moist crumbs, about 35 minutes. Place pan on wire rack to cool. When cooled, cut into 12 bars.

I have to say, these bars turned out perfectly. They look and taste exactly like gluten-filled peanut butter bars. Mine came out a tad bit dry, but that was my fault; I let them cook longer than the recommended 35 minutes because I thought they looked anemic (and I like my baked goods to look nicely golden brown). I won't do that next time. They were deeeeeeeelicious. A definite kid-pleaser!

Gluten-Free Adventures: Lemon Bars!

Lemon Bars (gluten-free), a photo by sherimiya ♥ on Flickr.

Since we were gifted with a couple of bags of Meyer lemons recently, I thought it would be a good excuse to try out some gluten-free lemon recipes. I used some of them for the lemon blueberry bread I posted about here, and this time I decided to try lemon bars. I'm not a big fan of lemon bars; neither am I expert at crust-making, but that said: these lemon bars were pretty darn good! I found a recipe at Serious Eats that seemed easy enough, and I followed it very closely. It requires a bit of muscle (and talent) to make the crust well, but if I'm not mistaken, it's really the buttery crust that MAKES the lemon bar. I mean, the rest of it is just lemon, sugar and eggs, right?

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Gluten-Free Lemon Bars (Serious Eats)

Ingredients

yield: makes 12 bars, active time 30 minutes, total time 3 hours
For the Crust
2 ounces (1/2 cup) white rice flour
1.25 ounces (1/4 cup) sweet rice flour
1.25 ounces (1/4 cup) cornstarch
1.25 ounces (1/3 cup) confectioners’ sugar
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
4 ounces (1 stick) butter, cold and cut into small pieces
For the Filling
5.25 ounces (3/4 cup) granulated sugar
Zest of one lemon, about 1 tablespoon
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons white rice flour
Non-stick cooking spray
Confectioners' sugar for dusting, optional

Prepare the crust: Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray eight-inch pan with non-stick cooking spray. Line pan with two pieces of parchment paper. (Paper should crisscross in the pan and overhang the edges by about two inches.)
In bowl of food processor, combine white rice flour, sweet rice flour, cornstarch, and xanthan gum. Pulse to combine. Add butter. Pulse until no large pieces of butter remain. Add water. Pulse until water is absorbed and dough forms, about 45 seconds of long pulses. (At first dough will be sandy. Keep pulsing until it comes together.)
Turn dough out onto counter. Press into a ball.
Press dough evenly into prepared pan. (To make this easy, I divide my dough in four pieces and place one piece in each corner of the pan. I then press the dough down and toward the center of the pan until the pan is evenly covered by the dough.) Chill for 15 minutes.
Bake crust until golden brown, about 40 minutes.
While crust is baking, rub sugar and lemon zest together in medium bowl.
When crust is golden brown, remove pan from oven. Set aside on a wire rack. Add eggs, lemon juice, and white rice flour to granulated sugar. Whisk until smooth. Pour over crust. Return pan to oven. Bake until filling is set and does not jiggle, about 12 minutes.
Remove pan from oven and place on wire rack to cool. Chill bars for two hours, or overnight, in the refrigerator. Lift bars, using parchment paper as an aid, out of pan. Dust with confectioner’s sugar, if desired. Cut into squares.

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Oh, and is this really a gluten-free recipe? Who can tell? I could've eaten the whole crust by itself, lemon or not. But of course, the lemony part was just sweet and eggy enough. My crust was a bit uneven and lumpy in sections, and the lemon part not uniformly thick, but I'll tell you the kids didn't care. And the lemon zest sugar? I couldn't stop inhaling that. This one was a hit. Definitely one to repeat!