Tag Archive for 'Recipe'

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Delicious Gluten-Free Pancakes

Welcome to Chapter XII in my quest to find the perfect gluten-free pancakes. These pancakes come courtesy of Gaile at Fidgety Budgie, which is another great Portland blog. The resulting pancakes are just the right density, and are hearty and delicious. Before now, I haven’t been able to find a gluten-free pancake that could compete with the combined taste and convenience of the frozen Trader Joe’s, but these may be the ones. She told me that she adapted this from the Culinary Institute of America Gluten Free Baking Book.

Gluten Free Pancakes

Blossome Pancake Recipe

First you make a batch of this flour mix:

1 cup brown rice flour
1 cup sorghum flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup tapioca starch

Second, you make this pancake mix. In a mixing bowl, stir together with a whisk:

1 cup of the above flour mix
1/3 cup soy flour
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup sugar (less if you like)

Third, in a smaller bowl mix together:

2 eggs
1/4 cup melted butter
3/4 cup almond milk

Add the liquid to the dry ingredients, mix till there are no lumps. Cook on an oiled griddle or nonstick frying pan.

For the almond milk, I used an unsweetened store-bought milk, so there was vanilla in it. I substituted canola oil for the butter and used half the sugar and only 1/8 tsp of salt.

Cooking Gluten Free Pancakes

The batter tastes like edamame because of the soy flour, but don’t worry: The flavor somehow goes away when they’re cooked, which is a good thing. It does bear noting, however, that undercooked pancakes will taste bad. Like any pancake, there are a few secrets to success. Number one, test the pan beforehand with some drops of water. If they sizzle, then the temperature is right. If the drops jump around and sizzle, the surface is too hot. Number two, after putting the batter in the pan, wait for bubbles to come up to the surface and then flip. Number three, it is a scientific fact that the first pancake will not turn out well. As the chef, it is your duty to eat this pancake and thus not cause suffering to others.

I found that these brown quickly, so you’ll want to cook them a tad lower than usual. (On my stove I usually use 5 1/2 for pancakes and I turned these down to 5.) I have tried these without the soy flour, and while they’re good without it, the soy flour adds flavor and heartiness to the pancakes.

Many thanks to Gaile for sending me this recipe and also for graciously letting me post it here!

Product Review: Trader Joe’s Gluten Free Brownie Mix

Chocolate! That’s what we’re talking about here. We’ve been making the Trader Joe’s Gluten-Free Brownie Mix for almost a year now and recently it came to my attention that we haven’t ever reviewed it on this site. This mix is really awesome. We don’t make it exactly how the package says you should, though, so I’m going to provide details about what we do.

Trader Joe's Gluten-Free Brownie Mix

The brownie mix is free of wheat, peanuts, tree nuts, dairy, soy, and corn, which is cool because that takes care of quite a few common allergy foods. Of course, it has chocolate, but that’s the point! Here is a list of ingredients: Organic Evaporated Cane Juice (sugar), Sweet Brown Rice Flour, Cocoa (processed with alkali), Tapioca Flour, Arrowroot Flour, Sea Salt, Xanthan Gum. I always list the amount of sodium in the Trader Joe’s products I review (check here to see a list of our reviewed Trader Joe’s Gluten Free products). The package says that it makes 12 servings. Each serving has 125 mg of salt.

Trader Joes Gluten-free Brownie Mix

The recipe on the package calls for 1 egg, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, and 1/4 cup water.

Enjoy Life Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

We always put some of these awesome chips in our brownies. They’re the Enjoy Life Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips. Besides being delicious, they’re free of dairy, nuts, gluten, and soy, and are mini-chips. This makes them ideal for brownies.
As an egg substitute, you can add your own favorite (when we replace eggs, we use the Ener-G Food Egg Replacer because it is gluten-free.) We also replace half of the oil with some applesauce. This sounds kind of weird, considering you’re making brownies, but I think it really improves the brownies, and also the brownies are a lot more healthy. In case you’re wondering, it is possible to replace all the oil with applesauce and end up with edible brownies, but they definitely aren’t as delicious, and don’t seem to keep as well.

Ready to go!

One of the most important things about making brownies is to not overcook them. When you overcook brownies they end up rock hard when they’ve cooled off. It seems like the Trader Joe’s mix doesn’t suffer from this so much, which is cool. With a little bit of adjustment, this mix can also be used to make cookies. Instructions for these are on the package.

Finished Brownie

And here’s the reward. We have made these brownies and shared them with friends and family, and nobody has ever suspected that they are gluten-free. They’re awesome!

We want to know: Are there other gluten-free brownie mixes out there? Do you have any tricks or tips to make better brownies? Let us know in the comments.

Times we have visited: 8+ (so we feel confident about our score.)
Overall rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Price compared to “regular”: About the same

Bread Machine Jam!

OK OK I’m a little late with this feature. We’ve been super-busy. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to slow down a little bit during the next two months. I keep meaning to put together this feature and here goes. We made jam with our bread machine. To be more specific, we used some plums from a tree in our back yard to make jam. We made it without a lot of sugar, too. If you get the right kind of pectin, you don’t have to add a ton of sugar to get your jam to thicken up.

Plums Ready to Go!

Plums Ready to Go!

Everything Else You Need

Everything Else You Need

Here’s what you need: Some fruit, sugar, lemon juice, pectin, and water. And a breadmaker. The pectin we use is Pomona’s Universal Pectin. As mentioned above, this is a special pectin which lets you cut down the sugar in the recipe. It uses calcium to activate it. We did it with plums, but you can use about anything. For jams, you can use kiwi, strawberry, raspberry, gooseberry, blackberry, currant, cherry, plum, pineapple, mulberry, blueberry, pear, mango, peach, apricot, fig, or citrus fruit (for marmalades). For jelly, you could use apples, quince, blackberries, pomegranate, raspberry, currants, grapes, or peppers. We used our Zojirushi bread machine, but most other bread machines also have the ability to make jam. You can get the pectin on Amazon, but we got ours at Whole Foods.

Here’s our recipe:

Low Sugar Plum Jam – Bread Machine

  • 2 cup cubed, mashed plums (about 16 small plums)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 1/2 tsp pectin powder
  • 2 tsp calcium water

(The calcium water is some regular tap water with calcium powder that comes with the Pomona’s pectin. You make that beforehand.)

  1. Cut up plums in 1/8ths and microwave for a few minutes to soften. Mash plums briefly.
  2. Add lemon juice and calcium water to plums.
  3. Add pectin to sugar.
  4. Put all ingredients in bread machine, set on Jam Setting, and press start.
Plums and Ingredients in the Bread Machine

Plums and Ingredients in the Bread Machine

Program up the Bread Machine

Program up the Bread Machine

It's Jam!

It's Jam!

Spread that Jam on some Gluten Free Bread

Spread that Jam on some Gluten Free Bread

  • Resulting Batch – 2 1/2 c
  • Prep Time – 20 min
  • Cooking Time – 1 1/4 hrs
  • Total Time – 1 hr 35 min
  • Difficulty – Semi Easy

Here is a helpful card with recipes and instructions that you can download from Pomona’s website (it’s a PDF).

How is the jam, you ask? The jam is AMAZING! Also, Sienna went through the trouble to put the jam in canning jars. She had a lot of fun.







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