Jamie's Hummingbird Cake a great GF treat!

I'm always up for a bit of a treat on the weekend, so when I saw Jamie's Comfort Food recipe featuring the Hummingbird Cake, I thought I'd give it a go. I simply substituted the normal flour with a GF alternative (White Wings) and the results were spectacular! Normally a simple substitution results in a cake that falls apart or doesn't rise, but this one worked fantastically. Check out the recipe here: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/recipe/hummingbird-cake/ 

Thanks Jamie for a new hit in our family!

Remedy for a Rainy Day

With all of the rain we've had lately here in Brisbane, we're all in need of a lift. It's tragic to hear that yet another town has gone under water today, just over a month since the last lot of floods. So with a bunch of summer fruit such as nectarines, peaches and plums needing using up in the fridge, I decided that it was time for a pie.

Pies are not often a feature in our coeliac household. I approached this attempt with trepidation, as even normal pastry scares me, let alone gluten free! I followed Sally Wise's recipe for a Free Form Summer Fruit pie. (From Her "My Kitchen to Yours" cookbook. Free form sounded good as it meant I didn't have to have a perfect looking pie top! The pastry recipe seemed a little gooey to do anything with, so I added more flour to the mix and subsequently made it too crumbly. I remedied this with an extra egg. The resulting pastry turned out to be a nice short, crumbly pastry which melted in our mouths. I served the pie warm with ice-cream. Yum! By the end of our indulgence, a little sun was peeking through the clouds and the showers had stopped, so maybe the pie lifted more than our personal gloom. Certainly a good reason to make pie again!

Banana Bread beats the Blues!

What a crazy three weeks - firstly just as we're getting ready to head back to school and work, our house is broken into and our car gets stolen along with our wallets - leaving us with no identity and no transport! Do you know how hard it is to get a new driver's licence and hire a car when you have nothing but a birth certificate! Impossible! So after rekeying the 2nd, smaller car and our house, we set ourselves up to go car hunting on the weekend so that we can cart around our family of six without having to take two cars. This plan was of course thwarted by ex-tropical cyclone Oswald coming along and bringing with it crazy wind and rain and no power for two days - so needless to say we were not baking that week.

This week has been back to school, and I had forgotten how grumpy children can get when they're tired from a change of routine - especially our 13 year old boy who has hit high school - talk about over-reaction!

I also seem to have a glut of bananas which no matter how hard we try, suddenly ripen at the same time and need to be used up. One afternoon I made banana and blueberry muffins, which I would have shared with you except that they were demolished in about five minutes - definitely a winner. I'll have to share a photo with you some other time before the kids get to them!

Yesterday was spent looking for a car - exhausting, so today is catch up on housework day. And guess what - more overripe bananas - so I trawled through banana bread recipes and found one on the Coles website which used coconut milk for moisture. It sounded different so gave it a go. They seemed to take longer to cook than the recipe said, and it was still a bit moist after adding an extra ten minutes, but the taste - yum! Definitely banished the blues of the last few weeks. Nothing like a bit of home cooking!

Café Review - Cinema Cafe, Bulimba

On Friday night I was lucky enough to go with my friend Catherine to see the movie "Quartet". It was a fabulous movie, especially if you're a muso like me, all those temperamental artistic types are very true to life. By 9:30 we were feeling a bit peckish and went to the nearby "Cinema Cafe" on Oxford Street at Bulimba. Now I'm not a coeliac myself, but I am greatly tempted by Chocolate mud cake, and the Cinema Cafe's offering happened to be gluten free. It was served warmed with ice-cream and I'm sorry, I did mean to take a photo of the frosting oozing down the sides of the cake, but by the time I remembered I was going to take a photo I found that it was all gone! It was fantastic. I think it was a hazelnut base with a very stiff almost mousse-like centre. And it wasn't the only gluten free cake on offer. There was a home-baked orange and almond cake which looked a lot more rustic and enjoyable than the heavy, mass produced version which seems to be on offer in most coffee shops these days. There were others, but my memory fails me, I think blotted out by the intense chocolate rush!

I did remember to glance over the menu and there was gluten free bread available and lots of gluten free options listed on all the breakfasts, lunches, mains and desserts. I thought that this offering sounded rather good:
Prawn Hot Pot Ala Puttanesca juicy tiger prawns cooked in evoo w cherry tomato, fresh chilli & garlic, capers, olives, served w warm bread 16.9 GF option anchovies optional.

The prices are on the higher end of cafe prices, but it's a nice sounding menu and I guess that's what you expect in Oxford Street. I am definitely planning to head back there with the rest of the family in tow. Sorry about the photo - here's a photo of the cafe so you can find it easily if you want to try for yourself!

Jam Drops - made by Cameron

Today we are busy trying to keep food up to my coeliac, type one diabetic husband who is busy laying down cement floors for our two bathrooms and laundry which are yet to be tiled. (Fun holiday project - not!) It's his third day and he's nearly done - but burning through his sugars really fast. I'm a bit over cooking today as I have experimented with summer fruit pie, different breads and some peach scones in the last few days, so I sent Cameron (11) off to the kitchen to make Jam Drops. We have a tried and tested recipe that we use from the Sally Wise cookbook, "From My Kitchen to Yours", which is full of gluten-free recipes that she devised to help feed her coeliac daughter. Sally is well known for her preserving and slow-cooker cookbooks. Cameron managed to make a really nice batch with not too much help from me, apart from the cleaning up of course....I think that there was more coconut spread over the floor and benches than there was on the Jam Drops!

I came across Sally's book when I was trying to find a recipe for gluten free pasta. She has a blog which you can find at http://www.sallywise.com.au/category/blog/ and there are a whole bunch of recipes there. I've yet to try making her pasta recipe, but am determined to give it a go when things settle down on the renovation front. I was able to find her recipe book in an ABC Store and have been successful with pretty much everything I've tried. (Love the upside down pear cake!). One problem with the Jam Drops - they're all gone!

Bread.....

I have a fabulous mother-in-law who is a coeliac and regularly makes our bread for us - shop bought bread is just far too expensive. Every now and then I do make my own loaf - usually variations on the Coeliac Society's white and brown rice bread with additional flours depending on what I have in the cupboard. The loaf I made today turned out really well, so I thought I should share the recipe with you. The trick is to mix all of the dry ingredients, then add the wet ingredients and mix in your mixer using the dough hook. I always line my loaf tin with baking paper to prevent sticking before turning the mixture into it. I proved the bread in the oven for 40 minutes with the oven at 35 degrees, then baked it for 40 minutes with the oven at 200. It looks pretty good and everyone said it tasted great. Here's the mix I used, I hope it works for you.

1 cup of white rice flour
1 cup of brown rice flour
1/3 cup each of corn flour, soy flour, polenta and chick pea flour - but you can also use potato, tapioca and arrowroot - sometimes we find the soy flavour a bit too much depending on the batch of flour so you might like to exchange that or the chick pea flour if you're not fond of the taste
3 tsp xanthan gum
3 tbsp sugar (I find the bread sweet - but I've tried reducing the amount of sugar and it falls apart)
1 1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup milk powder
2 1/4 tsp yeast
2 tbsp LSA mix (linseed,sunflower, almonds) - for fibre
2 tbsp sesame seeds
3 large eggs
1 tsp cider vinegar
1/4 cup canola oil
1 1/2 cups water

Adventures with Jamie Oliver!

Like many people, I dutifully tuned in Jamie's Christmas Specials with the hope of creating fantastic festive fair. After a few years of preparing lavish Christmas breakfasts which saw me slaving in the kitchen, I watched in envy as Jamie cooked up griddle pan waffle for a breakfast which owing to the decadent hot chocolate it was being dipped in was probably guaranteed to win the hearts of my children on Christmas morning - more so than the cranberry muffins and yoghurt and fruit from last year. Surely it wouldn't work with gluten free flours - I imagined a gooey, stodgy creation which was sure to stick to the pan and end up a mess. However asChristmas drew closer and other preparations took over, the idea of a two pan breakfast stuck with me and I decided to give it a go.

I dutifully followed the recipe, just replacing the self-raising flour with F.G. Roberts self-raising flour - and I liberally coated the pan with olive oil to make sure that it didn't stick. I poured the batter in, and it rose beautifully - I thought it might overflow. The time came to flip the waffle, but I chickened out, it just looked a bit too sloppy on top and I was sure that being gluten free it would stick, so I chucked it under the grill to cook the top. After it turned a lovely golden colour I took it out and flipped it onto a bread board. Guess what - it didn't stick! I couldn't believe it! We sliced it up, drowned it in golden syrup and served it with the really decadently thick European hot chocolate and it was awesome. Nice and spongy and airy - I couldn't believe it was gluten free! Oh, and we still had some beautiful fresh fruit...just to make it healthy!