Adventures in Gluten-Free Baking

Since we've cut back on gluten, I've made cake and brownies, and even the little cheese breads I blogged about a couple posts back.  But cookies...nope, there have been no cookies. I've been avoiding them. Wait, let me take that back, I found one of those make-it-in-a-cup-in-the-microwave recipes on Pinterest for chocolate chip cookies. Yeah, that was a big mistake and a bad way to break in my new GF (Gluten-Free) Flour.

It was an awful, nasty tasting mess.

So today, while I was perusing my March copy of Everyday Food, I found a recipe for Maple-Oatmeal Cookies. They looked pretty yummy, and since the recipe called for mostly oats, I decided it was time to try my skills at converting a cookie recipe to GF.



It was a not completely awful, pretty good tasting mess.





The "cookies" ended up spreading all over the pan.  Since they were so thin, I had to hurry and scrape them off the pan right away or they were stuck like cement. That's why it looks like I was making granola in the picture above. I'm thinking the recipe might have turned out and actually taken the form of cookies if I would have made a whole batch (5 dozen). But since there are only two of us, and I was short on oats, I halved the recipe. I will have to try again, and maybe use different flour and leavening next time.



Of course, my trusty assistant was there to oversee the operation.



It wasn't a complete loss. I was able to make cookie balls with the mess I salvaged off the cookie sheets.



Brennan thought they were pretty tasty, (I did, too.) so I will definitely try to make these again. I'll keep you posted if I come up with a successful batch. :)

Cheese Bread {Gluten-Free}

On my quest to cut down our gluten consumption, I came across this great recipe from a blog called Dinners and Dreams.  I finally made the recipe yesterday, and oh my, it was sooo good! I wish I had made a double batch! It's hard to explain them exactly, the recipe says bread, but they're like puffy muffins.  Yum! Brennan loved them too, so it is definitely a keeper recipe for us.  And so easy to make!



Here's the recipe:

Cheese Bread
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups tapioca starch (I used this one.)
1/2 cup milk
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup cheese (The original recipe called for mozzarella, I used marbled jack.)
1 egg
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon brown sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a nonstick muffin tin.
Blend all the ingredients in a blender until the batter is smooth.
Pour the batter into the muffin tin, filling each section about halfway.
Bake 20 minutes until golden and puffed. Let cool slightly. Enjoy the cheesy goodness!

Reheat leftover breads before eating.