What To Leave Out For A Gluten Free Santa

My favourite place to be in the run up to Christmas is the kitchen. That's when I finally get that Christmassy feeling. Music on, oven on, apron on. So begins my Christmas baking. 

Please see my 'Cups For Cooking' page for measurement conversions.

First up - Gluten Free Whipped Shortbread. This is a one bowl wonder that makes 4 - 5 dozen cookies with a melt-in-your-mouth texture. Preheat oven to 150 degrees C.

Ingredients:

2 cups or 1 lb butter softened

1 1/4 cups icing sugar, sifted

1/2 cup corn starch

1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups Doves Farm Gluten Free Plain White Flour

Candied red and green diced cherries or edible sparkles to garnish

Method:

- Cream butter and icing sugar together with a mixer or Kitchenaid (not a food processor!) until light & fluffy.

- Beat in corn starch and vanilla.

- Gradually add flour, beating constantly until mixture is light and fluffy. 

- Drop batter by heaped teaspoons onto a non-stick (not greased!) cookie sheet. As you can see in the picture opposite, I mistakenly used a silicone baking sheet for the first batch, which turned out to be a disaster!

- If using cherries to decorate, add a single piece of diced cherry in the centre of each cookie.

- Bake for 15-20 mins or until very light and golden.

- Make sure to let each batch cool for at least 2 minutes before lifting them off your cookie sheet with a very thin spatula and placing them on a cooling rack.

- If using edible sparkles, decorate cookies after they come out of the oven, while they are still on the cookie sheet.

The cookie batter will be like a fairly hard 'play doh' in consistency, before baking. Keep an eye on them while they're in the oven. They may not look cooked, but they can turn brown all too quickly, so if they're browning at the edges and still pale in the middle, get them out. They will be ready. It may seem like a lot of cookies, but they are all too edible and eaten at a very quick pace, especially when you have a hungry family waiting for the goodies to come out!

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Next up are Butter Tarts. An absolute must have at Christmas time. For me, Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without them! It is a lot of effort to make them, but so worth it. This is my take on a recipe which I have tweaked and added and subtracted to until I got them just right, especially in terms of how to remove the gluten-free pastry from the tin. This recipe has taken me 4 years to get just as I wanted them to be! This will make 2 dozen butter tarts. Preheat the oven to 190 degress C.

Ingredients:

Pastry:
(measurements for pastry ingredients taken from the Juvela white mix box)

8oz (200g) of Juvela white mix

2oz (50g) of butter

2oz (50g) of lard or vegetable fat

1 egg, beaten

Cold water to mix if needed

Method:

- Place the Juvela in a bowl and using a pastry cutter combine the butter and lard until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs.

- Lightly stir in the beaten egg to form a soft, but not sticky, dough.

- Knead well on a surface dusted with Juvela until the pastry is very well combined and has mild elasticity to it. If it is still a little tough add the cold water and knead well. You have to throw out the rule book when you're making gluten free pastry as traditional light, flaky pastry requires a soft touch and as little keading as possible so that it doesn't toughen. However, with this recipe, the more you work the dough, the better it will be.

- Divide dough into 2 and roll out one section onto a lightly floured surface (using Juvela) to around 3-5mm in thickness. 

- At this point you need a muffin tin that can hold a dozen deep filled tarts, like you would use for yorkshire pudding. 

- Here's the key to your success - fill each space of the muffin tin with a silicone baking cup liner. This will allow you to remove your butter tarts easily once they are baked and out of the oven.

- Using a circular cookie cutter or something that will fit the size of your muffin tray (I use a large mug to cut my pastry circles) cut your 12 pastry circles and line the silicone cups. Any loose cuts of pastry can be gathered and kneaded again, making sure to add water when recombining as it dries out quickly, and then rolled out. You should be able to make a dozen pastry cases with half of the dough, leaving the other half in the bowl until the first lot has baked.

Filling:

2 cups of soft brown sugar (not muscavado or demerara)

1 cup dark brown corn syrup

1 1/3 cups melted butter (not margarine, they're called BUTTER Tarts for a reason!)

4 eggs, beaten

8 tablespoons milk

4 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups of crushed pecans (or any other preferred nut) OR 1 cup of raisins

Method:

- Combine all the ingredients and beat together, stirring in the nuts or raisins when finished.

- Spoon mixture into pastry cups until 2/3 full. 

- Bake in the oven for 20 mins. 

- Keep an eye on them after the first 10mins, as the pastry has a tendency to over-cook around the edges. 

- Put a piece of tin-foil gently on top of the tin to avoid this while baking, around 10 minutes in or when you see the pastry starting to get very dark.

- When done, remove from oven and leave them to rest for 5 minutes in the baking tin.

- Remove the butter tarts one at a time from the tray, gently removing the silicone muffin lining from the pastry and place each tart on a cooling rack.

- When finished, wipe silicone liners down and place back into the muffin tray and start the process all over again for the next dozen. 

- Leave the butter tarts to cool a little bit before serving, as they will be extremely hot.

So there you have it, two of my favourite recipes converted over to gluten free goodness for you to enjoy. Remember the Juvela mix I use is the Gluten Free White mix, but that is essentially de-glutenised wheat. If you also suffer from a wheat allergy as well as a gluten allergy, I would suggest their Harvest White mix instead, or whatever mix that works for you - as that will cover all your bases. Please note that the Juvela White Mix is a very fine mix, so if you decide to use something like Doves GF flour or a tritamyl, you'll have to adjust your flour measurements for the type of flour you  use.

Nothing left to do but to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a brilliant and prosperous New Year!

I'll be back in 2011!

A Taste of Christmas, perhaps a little too early...?

Last weekend I had the great pleasure of attending the Taste of Christmas festival that was held in the new convention centre down by the docklands in Dublin city. http://www.tasteofchristmas.ie/  It was an adventure to get into town on the day as there was extreme snowfall the night before and driving conditions were treacherous. So we got a train in and then we had to walk to the docklands as the Luas wasn't running from beyond Smithfield. We definitely worked up an appetite walking down.

First impressions, lose the terrible gospel choir. They could not sing a note and the song choices left a lot to be desired. They were situated right at the entrance. Painful. My husband pointed out that as it was in fact a Christmas festival it would've been nice if they had played and sung classic Christmas music throughout the day, rather than awful music played by wedding bands and cheesy soloists and bad choirs. Music aside, the food up for grabs was pretty tasty indeed. My memory fails me as to which restaurant belonged to which  food stall, but most of them were offering lots of variety on the sample menus available. Thankfully, there was plenty of food that was edible for my gluten free self. As my gluten intolerance is minimal, it doesn't affect me too severely if there is mild cross-contimnation. I did ask about the gluten content everytime I got some food and everyone was pretty keen to check and make sure for me, which was nice and made it easy for me to choose.

I did also go to the theatre show where the special guest was Heston Blumenthal. The theatre show was hosted by Hector who was on form. The other chef on duty in the show was Gino D'Acampo who was obscenely inappropriate. Prior to seeing this show, I had absolutely no real opinion on the guy, but after witnessing his extreme misogynistic behaviour, I can truly say this guy is awful. Genuinely a nasty piece of work. Not only is his arrogance and self-appreciation over the top, but he was rude and just simply painful and cringeworthy to watch. *shudder* It almost over-shadowed the whole event. His 'meal' was a dish of spaghetti out of a packet and some pesto. Very unimpressive stuff. Unfortunately Heston did not do any actual food demonstration, which was a shame as I really wanted to see him do his thing in reality. The show was entertaining at points, but there was no mention of food allergies of any sort or their alternatives at all.

After the show, my husband went to Pieminister to indulge in some tasty (off-limits for me) pastry goodness, which I was truly jealous of. I remember eating pies from Pieminister. Being the decent man that he is, he did return to where we were sitting with some really nice micro-brewed dry cider. I'm not a cider fan, but it was lovely. Sitting around with mates, by the Pieminister stall, trying to avoid the bad music and drinking cider. Was like being at Electric Picnic at Christmastime. Nice.

What made the event, really, was the company. Good mates allowed us to tag along with them and then we later met up with a few more good friends and had a brief catch-up with folks we hadn't seen in awhile. Altogether a brilliant time. As it was the first time they ran this Taste of Christmas festival, it's in its infancy, so it can only improve from here. I went home with a shopping bag full of tasty goodies. Nom.

It wasn't a bad first attempt and I look forward to what's on offer for next year!