GF Cinnamon Rolls

Gluten-Free Cinnamon Rolls with Creme-Fraiche Icing

I used to be all like, "omigosh cinnamon rolls are my favorite food!" and then we went all gluten-freek and I felt so much better I just kinda wrote off bread altogether. Plus, you know, you can't be eating cinnamon rolls if you are even the slightest bit interested in losing 10 years worth of baby weight...

Anyway, the other day I happened to have this bag of cinnamon-sugar laying around from a donut project I did with the kids at church, and I didn't want to just throw it away. It seemed to me that an attempt at gluten-free cinnamon rolls was the obvious and inevitable solution. In haste I googled "gluten-free cinnamon rolls" and perused a few recipes, but ended up at one of my staple websites for all things GF, Gluten-free Girl and the Chef.

I love that Shauna uses weight to measure her flours, and she explains why on her very informative blog. I'm mostly excited for a chance to weigh stuff on my cute little kitchen scale! For this recipe we substituted the Bob's Red Mill GF All Purpose Baking Flour, because we didn't have almond flour and we are avoiding corn for sensitivity issues. The rest was pretty easy, but it takes all day with mixing, rising, rolling, filling, rolling, rising again, interspersed with going to the park for lunch, doing 4 loads of laundry, cleaning rooms, putting the baby down for a nap, drawing a comic strip and giving the dog a walk. Luckily, Taylor was helping...cooking (and all that life-living!) is always more fun with a little buddy.

I also happened to have a bag of powdered sugar from the same donut project. This sealed the cinnamon roll idea because powdered sugar, when it's not being sprinkled on Aebleskivers or donuts, is begging to be made into icing!* And get this: I didn't have any cream cheese on hand, but I just so happened to have some Creme Fraiche. Three cheers for Creme Fraiche! ...OOO! ...LA! ...LA!

Well, not so accidental on the Creme Fraiche. I'm going to muster another attempt at a home-made mac'n'cheese that Morgen (the Mac'n'Cheese snob of the family) will approve of.

Lots of amazing smells later, this is what we (literally) ate for dinner last night:

The recipe made fourteeen delicious cinnamon rolls. Enough for everyone to have one for breakfast the next day! I would love a softer, squishier dough, but they were pretty good. I might be more about the sugar these days anyway... mmm-mmmm!


*I know I just mentioned a corn-sensitivity and then said we were making icing from powdered sugar, which has cornstarch in it! It's more of a thing we avoid unless we must. eat. icing. If you know of a powdered sugar that is not made with cornstarch (there must be something out there???) please let me know!

Æbleskiver Day 2011

Grandma was a pioneer in
Enterostomal Therapy Nursing

Happy Æbleskiver Day! Today would've been my Grandma's 90th birthday, and every year we make Æbleskivers to celebrate. Æbleskivers are a Dutch pancake, made in a special cast iron pan and my Grandma loved 'em. I told you all about my Grandma Cat two years ago on her birthday. She was born in 1921 and lived a tough life before she settled in as the Enterostomal Therapy Nurse I knew her as. Both of her parents died before she was 10 years old, she lived through the Great Depression, was a nurse in WWII, and became a widow at 48, just when the post-child-rearing fun was about to begin. She volunteered tirelessly for the Cancer Society, and till the day she died was making friends and we have hundreds of photos and Christmas cards to prove it. She saved every photo and letter I sent her, and now I only wish I'd written her more. There's something about writing your grandma a letter; you know she wants to know everything you have to say, no matter how trivial. And she loved my handwriting, which also encouraged me to write. If you are reading this, do yourself a favor and find a grandma to write letters to.

This year, since we are making Gluten-free Æbleskivers, I figured I'd not only post the recipe, but I'd do it food-blogger style. I want to start making my own GF all-purpose flour mix, but I haven't reached that level of gluten-free baking preparedness yet, so it's good ol' Bob and his Red Mill to the rescue.

Here's what you'll need:

2 1/2 cups Bob's Red Mill GF All Purpose Baking Flour
1/2 tsp plus 1/8tsp (or about 2/3tsp) Xanthan Gum
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
2 cups buttermilk (or like I do, 2Tbs lemon juice and milk to make 2 cups)
2 eggs, separated -- BEAT the egg whites and set aside
3 Tbs butter, melted

Sift all the dry ingredients together. GF flours seem to be more dense than wheat flour, and when sifted, seem to be a little more than what I measured. I can't spare any stress for these things; if it's too thick, I'll add milk later.

 Beat the egg yolks and add to the milk. Stir into the dry mixture.

 Stir in the melted butter.

Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Heat the pan on medium and drizzle a little melted butter into the holes. I suppose you could use some low-cal spray, but where's the fun in that?

Do as I say, not as I do: fill the holes with batter to the top, or you won't end up with nice round kugels.

When they start to puff up and rise a little, and look like they are starting to set --oh, who am I kidding? I don't know how to tell you when they're ready. I cook entirely by feel. Just feel it, baby. You'll know when it's time to flip. Just slide that knitting needle down the side and around the bottom of the hole until you've flipped the darn thing. It might take some practice...

...and as you can see, I use a fork to help things along.

 Once again, if you fill them up all the way, you'll have nice, round kugeln (that would be German for "balls" because I didn't want to say "nice round balls," I'm not ...sure ...why ...maybe because there's an eternal twelve-year old living in my head? Anyway, kugeln reminds me of how my friends and I ordered ice cream in Switzerland, c.1994).

This takes some time, seven kugeln every seven minutes or so... so meanwhile, send your kids out to gather blackberries. Because it's August, and they're ready!

And because it's tradition to pick wild berries with Aunt Renee. The minute we know she's coming, our mouths start watering and we grab our gathering bowls.

 Dust on a snowstorm of powdered sugar...

...don't forget a smattering of jams, and if you're from my Grandma's side of the family, Key Lime Curd...

....and yell, "HAPPY ÆBLESKIVER DAY!"

And by the way, this was my Grandma in WWII:

Sharp, yes?

And her husband, whom I never got to meet, but whose middle name I share:

Hello, James Dean!He looks like a pretty cool cat, don'tcha think? I wish I could have known him, and known he and my grandma together. Willard 'n Janet. I hear they had a lot of fun, in their own little way. :)

Celiac-Friendly Pizza/Bread Dough

Nobody in our house has Celiac disease, but the neighbor kid does, and his mom bakes the most amazing treats!  I'm not much of a baker on a normal day, so I'm really impressed with her gluten-free skills.

This is a recipe she gave me for bread.  It works in a bread machine, but makes a much nicer loaf in a bread pan...so I'll let the bread machine mix the dough and then I'll bake it in the oven.  It's a soft/wet dough, so it's not as airy as traditional wheat-based breads, but it's pretty tasty.  I'm an obsessive tweaker of recipes, so naturally I had to wonder if this would also make a decent pizza crust (because hello....Superbowl Sunday a few days ago was pizza torture for me, albeit helpful for the diet!).

Guess what?  It works!  It's like this bread has been reincarnated for a more noble purpose, to hold sauce and toppings!  As someone who had perfected regular pizza crust just before going gluten-free, I'm satisfied, and now Noble doesn't have to be the weirdo eating a bowl of rice when all his brothers and sisters are scarfing down pizza.

Gluten-Free Bread Mix*

(Add ingredients to bread machine in order:)

1 c Hot Water (80 degree)
1/3 cup Rice or Hemp Milk
2 eggs Lightly Beaten
1 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar
4 Tbs Vegetable Oil
2 Tbs Sugar
1 tsp Salt
1 1/3 cups White Rice Flour
2/3 cup Brown Rice Flour
1 1/2 tsp Xantham Gum
2 tsp active dry yeast

To bake in bread machine, use Basic/Wheat setting.

To just make dough, use the Dough setting (duh, I know).

To make it by hand, mix the dry and wet ingredients separately, then combine them together in a large bowl, cover and let rise for an hour in a warm place.  When it has almost doubled, pour into greased bread pan and cook....umm....30 minutes?  Until it looks toasty golden and done!  (heh-heh)  Sorry....I'll have to bake another loaf and see how long it took and then I'll edit the blog.

To make pizza, spread dough onto pizza stone or a greased pan or tray.  It won't ooze and spread around but remember, it's bread dough...it'll puff up a little, so spread it thin.  This one recipe made an awesome 15-in pizza.  Pre-bake the crust a good 8-10 minutes at about 400 degrees (this is why I'm not good at baking: I make things up as I go) until the crust looks pretty set and golden.  Top with whatever.... then stick it back in the oven until it look DELICIOUS.  That'll be about 10 minutes, for you people who don't know what DELICIOUS looks like on a pizza.

So there you have it.  If you try this, tell me what you think, and how it went for you.... 

Dude...you could add herbs to the pizza dough....(just modifying still, in my brain....)


*I don't know where this recipe originally came from, I just have it on a scrap of paper, taped to the inside of my kitchen cupboard.  I would give credit where credit is due, but it's been passed around too much...

In Which I Make GF Pancakes Everyone Can Live With

Lately, Saturday mornings find me standing at the kitchen counter rubbing the sleep out of my eyes with my heart sinking into my growling stomach.  I want to make pancakes and I don't know where to start.

I make killer pancakes...usually.  I won't take credit for the recipe, which I got from my King Aurthur Flour cookbook.  But after years of tweaking a detail here and a detail there, I love --everyone loves-- the results.

And then I went Gluten-Free.

I know there are GF pancake mixes you can buy, but you have to understand: I'm making pancakes for an army.  I haven't actually counted, but I'm making at the least, 30 4-inch pancakes.  Those pre-mixes are expensive!  And besides that, I sort of have a thing for making it myself.  I don't want to just add water.  I want to understand what's going on with my food.  I'm a DIY cook, and I want to know what's so special about flour and how I can imitate it without gluten.

I haven't figured out the science of it yet, but I'm starting to sense the elements and today, I tried something.  Just for the heck of it.  See what happens.  And the result?  These are some pancakes I can live with.  For now.  I won't be done figuring it out until I can make crunchy, nutty, hippy pancakes AND fluffy, white 'n light Diner pancakes.  But today, for the record, this is what I did (based on my King Aurthur Flour recipe) and a little bit of what I'm thinking when I'm assembling the ingredients:

3 cups Montina* All-Purpose Baking Flour Blend (A generous 10 lb bag of this was given to me--woo!  It contains White Rice Flour, Tapioca Flour and Montina Flour, which is an Indian Ricegrass according to the website.  I like the idea of Tapioca Flour for making the pancakes/waffles a little crispy)
1 cup Bob's Red Mill* 'Sweet' White Sorghum Flour (I have a feeling that this makes the mix a little more sticky, binds it together like gluten might do.  And it has 'sweet' in the name.  Sweet is good in pancakes)
2 tsp Guar Gum (Xanthan Gum is the same but more expensive.  I'm not sure why I added this.  Another binding agent, I think.  It just seems to be in everything.  This is the 'something new' I tried today.)
4 Tbs sugar (I just used a combo of white and raw sugar.  I'm stressed out about the gluten today, I can't worry about alternate sweeteners.)
1 Tbs baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
4 eggs
2 cups milk with ~2 Tbs lemon juice (to make sour milk)
2 cups Plain Yogurt
1/2 cup (I stick) melted butter (which I melt on the griddle in my metal 1c measure after I've measured the flours and milk and yogurt.  I like to use the same utensil for everything 'cause I hate looking at dirty dishes all weekend.  We all know no one's going to wash them right away and I did all the cooking.)

Mix wet.  Mix dry.  Combine.  Griddle-up them flapjacks.  Live with it.
Do you have a favorite GF recipe site?  Please share!


*I'm not a name-dropper, but there seems to be preferences on the GF recipe sites I've read as to what brand has the best choice of flours, mixes, etc.  It's also good to become familiar with what's out there, to make shopping easier.