Lemon Poppyseed Coconut Muffins

A lot of kids don't like the taste or texture of shredded coconut, but they do like the flavor. I've been messing around with coconut flour for these last few days and I came up with these and they were a HIT.

Makes 12 muffins

2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups Pamelas baking mix
1/2 cup coconut flour (I used Bob's Red Mill)
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 cup light coconut milk
1/2 cup part skim ricotta cheese
1/3 cup poppy seeds
1 tsp coconut extract
1 tsp lemon extract
zest from 2 lemons

Preheat oven to 350

1 TBSP Brown or Muscovado sugar and 1 TBSP shredded coconut for topping.

Combine the brown sugar and shredded coconut in a small bowl.

Combine the Pamela's, coconut flour and baking powder in a small bowl and set aside.

In an electric mixer, mix the eggs and sugar until they are light yellow and fairly thick.

While they are mixing, combine coconut milk and poppyseeds in a microwave safe container and heat for about a minute and a half to two minutes to soften the poppyseeds. Add the ricotta, extracts and lemon zest and whisk together with a fork.

Before combining have your muffin pan ready to go, either with liners or greased. You want to get this into the oven quickly because once the warm coconut milk combines with the baking powder it will activate it and they won't rise if you don't get them into the oven right away.

Drop the mixer down to low speed and dump in the flour and coconut/ricotta mixture and blend for about 30 seconds and finish by hand with a spatula.

Divide it into your muffin tin and sprinkle the tops with the sugar/coconut mix.

Bake about 20 minutes until the tops are golden brown and watch them disappear!

Gluten Free Pizza Crust

A friend of mine stumbled on a pizza recipe on this blog. But we don't keep all the flours in the recipe, so she used our usual "food philosopher" Annalise Roberts mix. But then one day we didn't have quite enough for the 3 cups she needed. Rather than mix up a whole new batch of flour, she threw in a cup of Pamela's Baking and Pancake mix and the results were fabulous. It is chewy and light and holds up well to lots of sauce and toppings.

Enjoy!

1¼ Cups Cornstarch
2 Cups GF Flour Mix (3 parts brown rice flour, 1 part potato starch, 1/2 part tapioca starch)
1 Cup Pamela's Baking and pancake mix
1½ Tablespoons Xanthan Gum
1½ Teaspoons Salt
¼ Teaspoon Dried Oregano
¼ Teaspoon Garlic Powder
1 Package Active Dry Yeast
1 Teaspoon Apple Cider Vinegar
2 Tablespoons Sugar
1 Tablespoon Honey
1/3 Cup Vegetable Oil
2 Eggs
1 Egg White
1¾ Cups Warm Water (110-115°)

Yield: dough for two 12 inch round pizzas.

Directions

Place Cornstarch, flours, Xanthan gum, salt, oregano, garlic powder and yeast in mixing bowl; mix. Add, vinegar, sugar, honey, oil, eggs, egg white and lastly the warm water; mix. Increase mixing speed to high, and beat for 4 minutes.

Coat your pizza pans with cooking spray. Dough will be a bit difficult to work with (sticky). Work the dough out as best as possible with a spatula. I then spray surface of pizza dough with cooking spray (very light coating). Finish spreading the pizza dough out with hands - if still to sticky, try using a small piece of parchment paper or wax paper sprayed with cooking spray to help spread the dough. Form the dough around the edge of the pizza thicker than the inner region in order to create a nice edge/crust.

Allow to sit in a warm, dry location (free of drafts) covered loosely with plastic wrap for 60-90minutes.

Preheat oven to 375° and pre-bake crusts for 20 minutes.

Remove pizza crusts from oven. Increase oven temperature to 400°.

Add pizza sauce, cheese and any other desired toppings to the pizza crusts and then place back in oven for an additional 20 minutes (note: if using sausage or other raw meat, it should be precooked before adding to pizza).

Remove from oven and allow to cool for a few minutes before cutting.

Lemon Coconut Muffins

This is another tweak from Annalise Roberts. But it's changed enough to be legal :-).

2 Cups Gluten Free Flour
1 Cup unsweetened shredded coconut
3/4 cups sugar
1TBSP Baking Powder
1tsp Baking Soda
1/4 Tsp salt
3/4 tsp xantham gum
zest of 1 lemon

Wet ingredients
2 eggs
1/2 cup coconut milk (or buttermilk or regular milk and 1/2 tsp coconut extract)
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tsp lemon extract

Preheat oven to 350 and line a muffin tin with liners, or spray with canola cooking spray.

Mix together the dry ingredients
in a separate bowl mix together the wet ingredients

Make a well in the dry and pour in the wet and mix well with a spoon. The batter will be quite thick.

Drop into muffin cups. This should make 12 muffins.

Bake for 18-25 minutes and enjoy. You can sprinkle the tops with raw sugar and/or more shredded coconut. They're really good.

Margaret's Hot Fudge Sauce

1/2 cup half and half
1- 1 & 1/3 TBSP unsalted butter
1 cup chocolate chips
1 tsp vanilla

Boil the cream and the butter together to a full boil. Watch it because it will boil over.
Remove from heat and add chocolate chips.
Let it sit for a minute or two and then whisk it together and add vanilla.

Pour over ice cream. The texture is a little different from a traditional hot fudge, as it thickens to a more fudgey consistency. But it's really, yummy.

Gluten Free Chocolate Ricotta Muffins

This is my version of an Annalise Roberts Recipe.

Dry Ingredients
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup gluten free flour
1/2 cup almond meal/almond flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp xanthan gum
3/4 cup chocolate chips

Wet ingredients
1 egg
1/2 cup ricotta cheese (whole milk or skim are both fine)
3/4 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla
3 TBSP canola oil

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a muffin tin, or line with muffin liners.

Mix up the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
Whisk together the wet ingredients in a separate bowl.
Create a well in the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients in and mix well.

divide the batter into the muffin tins. The recipe makes 10-11 muffins. Ba

Bake for 18-20 minutes.

They are very good.

Rosie's Award Winning Brownies Go Gluten Free

I had been dreading trying this recipe out with my new gluten free techniques. I LOVE the original so much that I just figured I'd sneak out and eat them when I needed them. *I* can have gluten, I just don't ever cook with at at home for fear of cross contaminating something my son might eat/put in his mouth. He's four, and he still puts stuff in his mouth.

I finally made them with very few changes and they taste almost exactly like the ones I made before from the Rosie's cookbook.

Hopefully this isn't a copyright infringement because I changed the ingredients around a bit. Rosie/Judy if you find this, let me know. But remember you used to live downstairs from me on Shepard Street and I used to decorate Babycakes boxes for you in 1976.

Rosie's Award Winning Brownies -- GLUTEN FREE!

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 sticks butter
4 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp xanthan gum
3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp Annalise Robert's Food Philosopher's gluten free flour mix
1/4 tsp salt

preheat oven to 350 and line a 9x9 baking pan with parchment paper and spray with canola oil

Melt the chocolate and butter over a low double boiler. Allow to cool for at least 5 minutes.

Pour chocolate butter mix over sugar in large bowl of electric mixer and mix on medium until well blended.

Add the vanilla and mix

Add the eggs one at a time, mixing between each one until well blended About 10-20 seconds each

Put in the "flour" salt and xanthan gum

Mix on low and finish mixing by hand

Put in a 9x9 baking dish

Bake for 25-30 minutes until a soft crust forms over the top. They taste best completely cooled, especially on the 2nd day.

New Cookbook Full of Fatty Goodness

I bought a copy of the latest gluten free cookbook by Rebecca Reilly. She makes frequent use of almond flour, which adds a lot of taste and texture. But in brownies, it was a big gritty.

She is a Cordon Bleu trained chef and it really shows in the recipes. They are FULL of cream and butter. A lot of the recipes are normal entrees, like quiche and spinach pie. They sound good, but I'd have to cut the fat in half or I think that food would kill me. Normal people who cook a lot, just don't cook that way. I made her corn muffins tonight and they called for a stick of butter, and over a cup of cream. Corn muffins are a staple around here. They make a nice starch for just about any meal and they keep well. But I think we'll all be huge if we make them Reilly style.

I'm all about decadent desserts. But I like to keep the meals around here relatively light. (so the desserts can rock) I have no problem plopping a chunk of butter on our green beans, but this food was beyond heavy. We're talking a POUND of cream cheese in an entree! Who cooks like that at HOME?

But there are some great recipes that I hope to explore. I think I can rework the corn muffins and keep the texture and reduce the fat.

Cross posted to You Made That.