Classic Pancakes

I was scrolling through my posts when I realized, to my horror, that our classic panckae recipe has never been published!  At long last, here it is.

Ingredients:

1 cup All-Purpose Flour Mix #6.5 (get recipe here)
1 Tb white sugar
1 Tb brown sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 egg, beaten well
2 Tb vegetable oil
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup milk, increase amount if necessary

Directions:

1.  In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients.  Add wet ingredients.  Mix well, but do not over mix.
2.  Pour batter onto a lightly greased griddle on medium heat.  When bubbles come through to the surface, flip pancakes.  It usually takes a little longer than wheat pancakes.

Growing!

Just an update about me: I am growing! (yay!)  Here's a look at my growth chart thing:

Not only am I growing, but my headaches are almost all-the-way gone.  I still get the occasional headache, but only once every few months at the most.  I feel so much better all the time.

Sushi-o-rama: Making the Sushi

After you cooked the sushi rice and, if you wanted, the cucumber salad, you can start making sushi! A lot of sushi making if finding the toppings you like and figuring out good combinations.  You do need some basic ingredients and supplies, though.

Necessary Ingredients

seaweed, in sheets, or rice paper (most are gluten free)
some kind of sushi rolling device, we have bamboo place mats that work great.
saran wrap
sushi rice (see my sushi rice post to see how to make it)

Then you need fillings.  There are tons of different foods you can use, here are the ones we use.

Fillings

--We have used these--
Cucumber sticks, plain or Japanese cucumber salad sticks.
baby shrimp (we buy them cooked)
avocado
fake LOBSTER- do not use fake crab, it has wheat! For some reason, lobster does not. *UPDATE: we recently bought gluten free fake crab!  Just check the label when buying fake crab/lobster*
smoked salmon
cream cheese
mango or papaya

--We haven't used these, but they would be yummy--
real crab
fish eggs
asparagus
shredded carrots
red bell pepper
Feeling adventurous?  Try raw meat, but it's not my fault if you get sick.

Again, decide on a few toppings that taste good so you don't have tons of shopping to do.

Making the Sushi

--Prep--
1.  Prepare sushi rice and cucumber salad.
2.  Put all the ingredients in little bowls for easy access.  Lay out the sushi rolling mats and cover with saran wrap.  Get rice vinegar to put in little bowls.  If you are handling the rice, you need your fingers wet with vinegar so it doesn't stick to you.

--Sushi--

1.  Lay out sushi seaweed (or rice paper, I am going to say seaweed) on the saran-wrap covered mat in front of you.  The seaweed has a shiny side and a matte side (I don't know how rice paper works).  Lay the matte side up.  Also, there are lines on the seaweed, make sure they are vertical.
2.  Get a spoonful of rice and put it on the bottom of the seaweed.  Spread it on the bottom 3/4 of the seaweed.  Leave a "groove" just above the first quarter.  The groove will be where you put the ingredients.  Try to spread the rice more than squish it.
3.  Choose your fillings, I recommend three ingredients.  Lay them horizontally across the groove, making sure they go all the way to the edges.
4.  Roll the sushi.  This is the "hard part", but once you get the hang of it, it is really easy.  I am ok at it, but my rolls turn out really fat.  My mom has ninja-sushi rolling skills, we don't know how she does it so perfectly.  She has a strategy to her rolling. Here are her instructions:

• Pull sushi down to the very bottom of the mat.  Then, grasp the sushi, saran wrap and mat and push it forward in a rolling motion.
• Once the sushi folds over, pull back the mat and saran wrap in a kind of flicking motion.  
• Continue to roll the sushi, also continuing the flicking.

To watch the rolling, skip to 2:00 on the video above. 

5.  Get a sharp knife and cut the roll into inch-and-a-half slices.  Ta-da! Sushi.

Baking flour mix #1 (ATK)

My dad really likes the America's Test Kitchen How Can It Be Gluten Free Cookbook, mostly because of one thing: non-fat powdered milk.  Including this in a flour mix helps the bread's structure, and also helps it brown, giving it a more traditional appearance.

We call this the ATK mix, even though they only use rice flour.

2 cups brown rice flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup white bean flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup potato starch
1-1/2 tablespoon nonfat milk powder

This gives just under four cups. If you need four cups for a recipe, just add more rice flour. We keep a container labeled ATK, because a lot of baking recipes just use 3 cups, and the extra then goes into storage.

This mix is used in our coffee cake recipe.

Coffee Cake

I'll make this short so you can bake this as soon as possible (because you NEED to)~ this is the best coffee cake I have ever had.  That includes before GF diet.  I know I have said before that "this doesn't taste GF", but this takes it to a whole new level.  It is really, REALLY good.  My mom says, "Seriously, best coffee cake [I've] ever had, even before gluten free.  Loved it!"

Ingredients:

Cake:

4 eggs
1-1/2 cups sour cream and/or plain yogurt
3-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2-2/3 cups Baking Flour mix (see ATK flour recipe)
1-1/4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
1 stick butter (unsalted), cut into pieces & softened
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Topping:

1/2 cup chopped walnuts
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons softened butter
1 cup powdered sugar
5 teaspoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1.  In medium bowl, whisk eggs, then add 1 cup sour cream and 1 tablespoon vanilla and whisk again.

2.  In large bowl, mix all dry ingredients, except the spices, together. Add remaining half-cup of sour cream and the butter. With an electric mixer, mix for one or two minutes. Use a pastry knife to break up big pieces if you have any. Slowly add the egg mixture, mixing on high for another minute.  Batter should end up thick but fluffy.
3.  Preheat oven to 350. Grease a bundt pan (round cake pan with tube in middle).
4.  Put one cup of the batter into a small bowl, and pour the rest into bundt pan.
5.  Add in the remaining 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, the tablespoon cinnamon, and the nutmeg to the cup of batter in the small bowl.  Stir well to make a nice dark batter!

6.  Drop a tablespoon of the cinnamon batter onto the top of the batter in the bundt.  Continue around in a circle, probably making 8 blobs of the cinnamon batter around the top of the regular batter. Using a butter knife, swirl each blob so that it gets mixed up in the column of batter directly below it. It doesn't matter too much how messy you are because this will be covered with the toppings. Basically, you want pockets of cinnamon within the cake. Do your best!

7.  Bake cake for about 50 minutes on bottom rack, until skewer comes out clean. Remove from oven, and let cool in the pan for 30 minutes on a wire rack. Then remove from pan (carefully), and let cool another hour.
8.  While cake is cooking, get the nuts ready. Chop the walnuts finely, mix with the cinnamon, sugar, and softened butter. Spread on cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. Stick this in the oven for about 10 minutes on the top rack while the cake is baking. Open & close door quickly to keep oven hot! Stir after five minutes.
9.  In small bowl, mix the cup of powdered sugar with the milk and vanilla extract until smooth.

10.  Once cake is completely cool, pour the glaze over the top.  It's good to have it drip off the sides!
11.  Spread the nuts on top.
12.  Let sit for 20 minutes or until glaze is somewhat set.

(This recipe is based on the America's Test Kitchen How Can It Be Gluten Free Cookbook, p. 56.)

Spicy Baked Chicken

This is my mom's go-to chicken recipe, so I figured it should be posted!  This chicken always turns out great and isn't super dry like a lot of chicken.

Ingredients

1 3-pound broiler-fryer chicken, cut into pieces 

1 chicken bouillon cube 
1/2 cup boiling water 
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce 
2 cloves garlic, minced 
1 tsp. curry powder 
1 tsp. dried oregano 
1 tsp. salt 
1/2 tsp. dry mustard 
1/2 tsp. paprika 
1 teaspoon Tabasco pepper sauce (for less spice: 1/2 tsp.)

Directions
1.  Preheat oven to  375°F.  Place chicken pieces, skin side down, in a large, shallow baking pan.  
2.  In a measuring cup, dissolve bouillon cube in boiling water.  Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.
3.  Spoon mixture over chicken and bake for 30 minutes.  Turn chicken over and baste with juices (pour juices on chicken) in pan.  Bake another 20 to 30 minutes or until chicken is done.

Classic Sandwich Bread

This bread is just the best, no doubt about it.  Before I talk more about it, let's take a second and appreciate how our bread looks like the picture in the book (America's Test Kitchen, the How Can It Be Gluten Free Cookbook). 

Impressive!

This morning for school, this is the bread I ate.  No embellishments, like you need with Udi bread; just butter.    

My mom says, "It's the first bread that has reminded me of the bread we used to have.  It's not as starchy as a lot of the other breads".  My sister, a girl of few words, says, "Yummy."  My dad, the baker, says, "One of the easiest GF recipes I've tried."

As you can see, this bread is a winner!

Ingredients:

2 cups of warm water (110° F) 

2 large eggs 

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted         

   and cooled 

1 1/2 cup rice flour

1/2 cup millet flour 

1/4 cup quinoa flour

1/3 cup tapioca flour

1/2 cup potato starch

1 1/3 cups gluten-free oat flour 

1/2 cup nonfat dry milk powder 

3 tablespoons powdered psyllium husk* 

2 tablespoons sugar 

2 1/4 teaspoons yeast

2 teaspoons baking powder 

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

Directions:

1.  Spray 5 x 9" (about) loaf pan with vegetable oil spray.  Whisk water, eggs, and melted butter together in bowl.  Using a mixer, mix all the flours, potato starch, milk powder, psyllium, sugar, yeast, baking powder, and salt together on low speed until combined.  Slowly add water mixture and let dough come together for about one minute.  Increase speed to medium and beat until sticky and uniform, about six minutes.  (Dough looks like cookie dough, but does not taste like it.)

2.  Cover and let rise at room temperature until dough has risen by about a third in volume.  This takes about an hour.

3.  Adjust oven rack to the middle position and heat oven to 350°.  Spray loaf with water.  Bake until top is golden brown, crust is firm, and loaf sounds hollow when tapped, about 1 1/2 hours, rotating pan halfway through baking.

4.  Move pan to wire rack and let cool for 10 minutes.  Remove from pan and let cool completely on rack, about two hours.  Eat with butter, honey, or jam.   

*Psyllium husks are tricky to find.  We found ours in a Natural Grocers type store in the bulk section.

How to Cook Quinoa

Quinoa is world-renowned for being a healthy superfood.  In fact, it contains all nine amino acids (amino acids are essential in most bodily functions).  My family cooks quinoa (keen-WAH) pretty often, and every time we go to cook it, we forget how to make it.  It's a nice, healthy break from rice, which is at practically every meal.  Here is the basic how to for making regular old quinoa.

Directions:

For every one cup of quinoa, use two cups water. (1-2, 2-4, 3-6, etc.)

One cup of dry quinoa makes about three cups when cooked. 

1.  Combine quinoa with double the amount of water in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil. 

2.  Cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer until quinoa is tender, about 15 minutes.  

Note: you can rinse the quinoa first, it makes it less bitter. 

Sushi-o-rama: Sushi Rice

This recipe is essential in sushi making.  Sticky rice is not only yummy but also, sticky!  This will keep the sushi together.

Ingredients:

2 cups uncooked white rice (short grain rice is best, but we used jasmine, which wasn't as good)
3 cups water
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1 Tb vegetable oil
1/4 cup white sugar
1 tsp. salt

Directions:

1.  Put rice in a medium sized saucepan.  Fill with water until the water is just over the rice.  Massage rice, stirring it around.  When the water becomes milky, dump it out and refill, making sure the water is just over the rice.  Repeat this process about 3-4 times.
2.  Remove all the water, and fill the saucepan with the rice in it with three cups of water.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to very low, cover and cook for 15-20 minutes.  Rice should be edible-looking.
3.  Meanwhile, mix the rest of the ingredients in a saucepan.  Heat until sugar has dissolved.
4.  Stir vinegar mixture into rice.

Happy Anniversary!

In just a few days, my time being gluten-free will have been one year!  I actually don't know the exact date, but I know it was around my birthday (September first).  It has been an exciting dieting year!

Most importantly, in my opinion, we brought beef, eggs, and..... milk!  I haven't posted for a while to let you know, but we realized that my "bad reactions" to milk happened to be on the days where I slept badly or when I was dehydrated.  To eliminate these "maybes", we waited until summer when I wasn't stressed or busy.  After a few trials, things went well, and over the past month we've brought it back completely, so now I regularly drink glasses of milk.

Also, over the past year I have gained about four pounds, which is pretty incredible considering the fact that I didn't eat a lot of fatty foods like milk or beef.  Plus, I naturally have a body type where it is really hard for me to gain weight, which can be good or bad.  This was really exciting for my mom, because she has always worried about my weight.

Lastly, the whole reason we started the diet, I have grown a grand total of exactly 2 inches since we started the diet!  This may not seem like a lot, but compared to my old growth rate, it is huge.  Now I grow about an eighth of an inch a month, whereas before diet I was growing less than that in two months.

It has been a pretty good year of dieting, and I am glad to see that it worked!  I also feel better.  My only symptoms were headaches, and I would get them about twice a week.  Now, once a month is more like normal.  The gluten-free diet has definitely paid off!

Sushi-o-rama: Cucumber

Before gluten-free dieting, we would have pizza night where the whole family would make pizza.  After we went gluten-free, this obviously didn't work as well.  I really missed this make-it-yourself food, and I also missed going to sushi restaurants (My mom and I would both get sick), so the obvious solution to my problem was to make sushi!  This cucumber salad was a perfect side dish to our Japanese-style meal, and we also cut cucumber sticks for the sushi.  

Ingredients:


2 English seedless cucumbers (Japanese cucumbers preferred, but harder to find in a small town like ours.)
1/4 tsp salt
3 Tb rice vinegar
1 Tb sugar
1/4 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame seeds

Directions:

1.  Slice strips lengthwise down the cucumber.















2.  Thinly slice cucumbers into circles, or chop into sticks for sushi, or both.

3.  Put cucumbers and salt in a large plastic bag and shake vigorously to coat cucumbers in salt.                Place salted slices in colander and put a weight on top of them.

Let drain for five to ten minutes.
     Rinse cucumbers.

4.  In a small bowl, mix rice vinegar, sugar, and soy sauce together until sugar dissolves.
5.  Add vinegar mixture and sesame seeds to cucumbers and mix well.

Aebelskivers

This is a traditional Dutch breakfast that we enjoyed before going gluten-free.  We found a recipe that is GF, and now it is a favorite breakfast.  The only problem is that it takes a long time to cook them.  Also, you need an aebelskiver pan, shown above.  But, in the end, I think all the trouble is worth it.  If you plan to make aebelskivers often, you can make a "dry mix" jar with all the flours, baking soda, etc.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup rice flour
1/4 cup almond flour
1/8 cup potato starch
1/8 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 Tb sugar
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
1 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, separated
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 cup milk, warmed
jam or fruit or apple butter for filling
powdered sugar for garnish (optional)
skewers

Directions:

1.  In small bowl combine dry ingredients. Set aside.
2.  In small saucepan, warm milk and butter until butter just melts.  Add egg yolk, but be sure milk is cool enough that egg won't cook.
3.  Beat egg white until stiff.
4.  Stir the dry mix and the milk mix together.  Fold in egg white.
5.  Heat aebelskiver pan over medium low heat.  Put about 1/2 teaspoon or 1 teaspoon oil in each cup. Place about 1 tablespoon of batter in each well, add 1 teaspoon of filling to the center of each, then cover with about 1 teaspoon more of batter over the top.  Cook until lightly brown on the bottom, and then get the skewer and use them to turn it over.  It takes some practice and is pretty hard to do.  Make it so the uncooked side is underneath.    Cook until light brown all over.  Serve with fresh fruit, powdered sugar, or fruit syrup.

"Meat Lumps"

This unfortunate name comes from my little sister who took one look at the tray coming out of the oven and asked, "What are those meat lumps?"  The real name is something like Mexican Miniature Meatloaves.  Though it has an unappetizing name, it is actually really good!

1 lb. ground beef
1 lb. ground turkey or pork
2 eggs
3 big handfuls of gluten-free tortilla chips
1 can of diced green chiles (4 oz.)
1/2 cup onion
1/4 cup canned or 1 small homemade roasted red bell pepper
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp coriander

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Put the chips in a food processor and grind them up until small.  You should wind up with somewhere around one cup of these crumbs.  Beat the eggs in a separate bowl.  Dice the onion and bell pepper.

In a big bowl, mix everything together well.  Shape into four little meatloaves on a greased baking dish.  Bake for 25 minutes.  Make sure they are done (meat thermometer should read 155 degrees.)  Remove from oven and let rest for five minutes before serving.

Jelly Doughnut Muffins

These muffins are really good, but they don't taste like doughnuts!  These are some of our best muffins, but I think the name should be "Sugary Jelly Muffins".  Tell me what you think!  The muffins make great quick breakfasts and easy snacks/desserts.  They are VERY sweet and sugary, almost too much for me, but my sister thinks they're "perfect".  If they are too sugary for your breakfast, use them as a dessert treat instead.

Muffins:

3/4 cup rice flour

1/4 cup tapioca flour

1/4 cup potato starch

1/4 cup bean flour (we use white beans for appearance, but any would do.)

1/4 cup millet flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp xanthan gum

1 large egg

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup milk (we use a mix of hemp and coconut milks)

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

about 1/4 cup of your favorite jelly, jam or preserves

Topping:

2 tb sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tb melted butter

Preheat oven to 375.

Mix the dry ingredients in a big bowl.  In a separate bowl, beat the egg, not till stiff, but at least get it a little foamy.  Mix the sugar and milk in with the egg.  Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients.  Have some extra milk or water ready; we usually use about 3/4 cup, but it's always best to start with the minimum amount.  The mixture should be a little thicker than pancake batter.

Line a muffin tin (12 muffins total) with paper cups, or grease with shortening.  Put about 1/2 tablespoon of the mixture into each cup.  Using a spoon, spread out the mixture so that it covers the entire bottom.  Put a dollop (about 1/2 teaspoon, or more if you like them really goopy) of jelly on next.  Top with another 1/2 tablespoon of the muffin batter.

Bake for 20 minutes.  Keep them in the pan, but put the pan on a rack to cool for a few minutes.  Meanwhile, melt the butter and mix the sugar & cinnamon on a plate.  Using a brush, coat the top of the muffins with the butter then sprinkle them generously with the cinnamon mixture.  You might have some of the cinnamon left over--save it because it's good for making gluten-free cinnamon toast!  Normally, you would wait for the butter to dry and the muffins to cool, but my little sister ate one right away and said it was delicious!

[This recipe adapted from Camilla Saulsbury's 150 Best Gluten-free Muffin Recipes.]

Milk: Yes or No?

Since it's been about six months, we decided to start introducing dairy again.  We started with hard cheese on top of pasta and stuff like that.  We also tried Kefir, a weird yogurt-milk thing, but I didn't really like it.  At a fundraising event, I also had a gluten free cheese pizza.  After multiple experiments, though, we don't know what to think.  After having dairy-loaded cheese pizza, I was perfectly fine.  But, having some shredded cheese one time had me in bed with a migraine.  Yesterday, we tried cheese again, and today I have no reaction.  Now, I think that whenever I have cheese I should write down what I ate and if I have a reaction.  That might help us figure out what is going on.  It's pretty crazy!

Gluten Numbers Go Down, Down, Down!

When I was first tested for my active antibodies toward wheat in August, my numbers were 122.  This was bad because the normal was between 0 and 20.  I was tested again recently, and my numbers were 15!  The dietitian says this means that we are doing really good about staying gluten free!  This is really exciting because it means that we are on the right track!

Gluten Free Meatloaf

Not only is this incredible meatloaf deliciously yummy, but it makes the best leftovers ever!  I have been having this meatloaf for lunch for many, many days, and I am still not even close to tired of it!  Even though thiss recipie doesn't have it, if you love ketchup then you can take the meatloaf out of the oven ten minutes before it is done coooking and spread some ketchup on top, and then continue coooking.  This will make a slightly crispy ketchup sauce on top.  We don't do this because my mom and I are not  big fans of ketchup, but I have tried it before and it is very good, at least for ketchup.

dad's comment:

  We weren't sure if GF bread would work as a substitute for wheat bread in meatloaf.  Apparently it does.  Note, this contains eggs and egg replacer would not work.

Ingredients:

1 pound ground beef

1 pound mild sausage

2 sliced gluten-free bread, stale or toasted till rather dry, diced

1/3 cup Kellogg's Corn Flakes Crumbs (or equivalent)

1 tsp minced garlic

2 tsp oregano

2 tsp basil or parsley

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp cumin

half an onion, diced

half a carrot, shredded

some spinach, kale or other leafy green (not much, and optional)

miscellaneous other veggies (not much, and optional)

2 eggs

1/2 tsp liquid smoke

few dashes Tabasco (or equivalent)

Directions:

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a big bowl.  You are supposed to do this with your hands, but my dad can't stand the way it feels so he just uses a big fork. Whisk the eggs well, add the liquid smoke and Tabasco, then pour into the bowl with the meat mixture.  Mix very well until mush.

Plop into a bread pan, or form into a loaf-like mound on a baking sheet.

Bake at 350 degrees for an hour, or until the internal temperature reads 155 degrees. Remove from oven, then let rest for 10 minutes.