gluten free – CraftyGuider

Great British Bake Off – Patisserie and The Final

Yes I know. The Bake Off has finished and we all cried along with Nadiya when she won and gave that lovely speech. Back at Craftguider Towers, I was really busy with my volunteering, followed by tonsillitis and a stinking cold and a back that went twang. I’ve been waiting for a good time to do my soufflé for chocolate week, but there hasn’t been the time, so I’m summing up my patisserie efforts and the final traditional bake now before you all forget what a bake off is!I made choux pastry for the first time this year when I chose to make éclairs for my turn on the WI cake rota. This stood me in good stead for my Religieuses that I made for the Great Girlguiding Anglia Bake Off. Even though they didn’t win, they tasted delicious, but I still needed to perfect them. Cue patisserie week on Bake Off and Religieuses à l’Ancienne. Yes, those nuns were back, but this time they were Dalek shaped constructions. Instead of the construction element, I spent my time perfecting my pastry, and I finally managed the crisp choux shells I needed.To represent the traditional bake in the final, eldest Craftyguidelet wanted to make a gluten free Victoria sponge. She roped in Mr CG to replace me, and used the Cake Angels recipe to make a nice sponge.Youngest Craftyguidelet didn’t want to be left out and made some more gluten free custard creams from the Honeybuns cookbook. My originals from biscuit week were mentioned in Homemaker Magazine in October as I used the cutters and stencil from a previous free gift. I won’t let the fame go to my head!

I must make time for the soufflé so I can finally finish my bake along. Ingredients bought so watch this space…

Have you been inspired by the Bake Off to create anything new?

Great British Bake Off – Victorian

OK, I’m running a bit behind on my bake along. Cast your minds back to Victorian week when the bakers were asked to make game pie, tennis cake and charlotte russe. Selecting my bake for this week was quite easy. Game pie was out as I’m a vegetarian, and there aren’t enough hours in my day to indulge myself to make a charlotte russe.I used Mary Berry’s recipe for tennis cake and started preparing the fruit. Be warned. You are in this for the long term! It is a fairly simple recipe to follow, and I converted it to gluten free by substituting the flour and adding an extra egg.The resulting cake took slightly longer to bake than the 2 hours allotted in the recipe, even though I used a slightly larger tin than in the recipe. This meant turning the oven up by 5 degrees for some of the cooking time and then turning the oven off after 2 hours and leaving the cake inside for an hour while I did the school run. These hazards would add an extra challenge to the real life Bake Off!The resulting cake was lovely and fruity and tasted delicious. And I know I cheated by not doing the marzipan and icing. It didn’t need it, and frankly I didn’t have the time to spend on it.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to think about my gravity defying nun…

Great British Bake Off – Alternative Ingredients

I’m a bit behind with blogging my bake along. There is so much going on at the moment with going back to school, starting all my Guiding and WI commitments and having family over, it’s all getting a bit hectic!

When I heard that there was going to be a ‘Free From’ week, I got excited. After all, I do so much gluten free cake baking, I should have something in my repertoire that would cover one of the challenges. Er, no.

The gluten free element was Paul Hollywood’s gluten free pitta bread technical challenge. I Googled a few recipes on some US websites and came up with a long list of specialist ingredients like psyllium husk powder, various rice flours, arrowroot powder etc. which I knew I’d have to pay a fortune for from my specialist supplier and I’d only use them once before they’d fester in the back of my cupboard until they went out of date. Asking Mr CG, the gluten intolerant member of the family, if he actually liked pitta bread, he declined the opportunity so I was let off the hook.

With no ice cream maker to make a dairy free Arctic roll (yes, they may have said dairy-free ice cream roll, but we know what they really are), I went for the sugar free cake (gluten free of course).

I chose a sugar free carrot cake recipe from the BBC Food website and adjusted it slightly to make it gluten free. All I can say is, never again.

On the Bake Off, the bakers were all using sugar substitutes like honey or syrups and my recipe had none. The topping was cream cheese with orange zest. How was that ever going to taste like anything other than cheese on a cake? Husband was bravely trying to eat it, youngest was picking out the raisins and eldest was turning her nose up completely. The relief when I told everyone they could leave it was obvious.

The next day I served this. A lemon meringue roulade full of sugar and cream (although gluten free!) which went down really well.Lovely and soft, marshmallowy meringue, beautiful lemon flavour and indulgent cream. We restrict enough ingredients in this house without cutting things out unnecessarily. The sugar stays!

I’m catching up with pastry this weekend. Think I’m attempting the vol au vent. Eep!

Great British Bake Off – Bread

Unfortunately I couldn’t watch the Bake Off live this week so I don’t know how the bakers got on with the challenges. Looking at an episode write up, the 3 rounds were quick breads, baguettes and 3D bread sculptures.

I tend to try gluten free bakes so that Mr CG can help share the calorie load. However I am yet to find a decent gluten free bread recipe that the gluten eating members of the family could enjoy, so on this occasion, the gluten stays. I chose baguettes which was the technical challenge, and consulted Paul Hollywood’s How to Bake book for his recipe.The dough came together well. It was quite wet but that’s what Paul said it should be like so I didn’t argue. I proved it in a square container as suggested, but then it came time to turn it out and form the baguettes. The dough was still very sticky and I ended up with 4 slug shapes rather than baguette shapes. After proving, it was difficult to score the dough, but I managed to ooze the loaves onto baking trays.They may not be perfectly formed, but they were lovely and crusty and great with some butter. Big thumbs up from the Craftyguidelets!

Great British Bake Off – Biscuits

Week 2 of Bake Off and it is biscuit week! As I didn’t fancy biscotti, and arlettes seemed a bit out of my league, it was the biscuit selection in the biscuit box that were this week’s CG household challenge. Time to dig out a couple of books off the shelf that I’ve neglected. I’ve had the Honeybuns book for a while. It isn’t my gluten free recipe book of choice as some of the recipes need flour blends rather than basic off the shelf gluten free flour. However, I managed to find a biscuit recipe using my store cupboard ingredients plus polenta and custard powder.The Craftyguidelets loved cutting out the bright yellow biscuit dough.The resulting gluten free custard creams, sandwiched together with a custard flavoured butter cream were lovely, even for the 75% of the CG household who eat gluten.Next came the box. I bought the Biscuiteers book some time ago but have never used it, however I thought that the recipes would help me with creating a decorated box.The book is set out differently to a normal recipe book. There is a section on dough making over a few pages. I made the basic biscuit dough, although there are lots of different flavours of dough in the book. The next section is on the different royal icing consistencies and how to colour, pipe and embellish the icing. The largest section is on the different themes of biscuit shapes e.g. Christmas, Bridal, Animals etc. with comprehensive icing instructions, and templates in the back of the book.I just made rectangles based on an ice cream tub. The icing was my first attempt and a bit rushed as I had Craftyguidelet assistance and the time pressure of dinner to make – not something the Bake Off contestants have to deal with!The box was roughly glued together with royal icing and held up with various objects until the icing dried.And the final ‘Ta-dah!’. The pink hearts were made from left over dough and iced by the Craftyguidelets.

I’ve learned new techniques, made recipes from two under-used books on my shelf and completed a real personal challenge. It hardly matches the fantastic creations from the Bake Off, but I’m rather chuffed that the whole thing stayed up!

What baking challenges have you given yourself recently?

Great British Bake Off – Cakes

The Great British Bake Off is back! Episode one is over, the first star baker has been crowned, the innuendos have come thick and fast, The Berry has had her alcoholic fix, a new mudslide cake has been invented and the twelve are down to eleven.

I thought I’d try and do a mini bake-along to see if I could try some new things and step out of my baking comfort zone. Having had the stress of a baking competition myself but the great experience of adding to my repertoire, I looked up the three bakes from this episode to choose something to attempt myself.

It was Mr CG’s birthday this week and he mentioned that he liked Black Forest gateau. My favourite gluten free Cake Angels book had a Black Forest roulade recipe so it was a done deal.The cake is baked in a swiss roll tin and doesn’t contain any flour. The ingredients list looks like it would make a sweet, chocolate omelette, but the resulting sponge turned out well. I dutifully followed the instructions and left it overnight covered in baking paper and a damp tea towel.Once constructed the next day, it needs to be left rolled and wrapped up in the fridge for at least a couple of hours. Cue the Craftyguidelets to lick the spoons, scrape sponge off the paper and generally hoover up everything they can.And this was the final result. I didn’t use kirsch as it was going to be eaten by the Craftyguidelets, but it still tasted delicious. We eat dairy so I used whipped double cream rather than the dairy-free equivalent in the book. It was even nicer the following day when we finished it off.

Next week is biscuit week. I’m not a fan of biscotti and I’m not sure I could do a gluten free arlette. A biscuit box with 36 biscuits inside seems a bit of an excess for a family of four so I might scale that down and attempt my first ever gluten free biscuits.

Have you been inspired to bake something?

Review – Gluten Free Baking by Michael McCamley

In my quest to use more of my book collection, I had to start somewhere, and cake is a very good place to start.

Mr Craftyguider has a gluten intolerance, so to make sure he can share some of the responsibility of consuming cake calories, I mostly bake with gluten free ingredients. Because of the nature of gluten free ingredients, I usually follow recipes that are specifically gluten free rather than just substituting gluten free flour for wheat flour in standard recipes.

Michael McCamley’s Gluten Free Baking book was recommended by someone on twitter and there is a wide variety of bakes inside. I am after the elusive recipe for decent gluten free bread and pastry I can bake at home.The book starts with an introduction on what gluten is, the different problems people can experience with an allergy or intolerance to gluten, where to look for gluten in foods, and what alternatives are available.I chose the recipe for banana muffins with maple cream frosting from the first chapter as I had all the ingredients to hand, as well as some very spotty bananas to use up. The recipe method isn’t as detailed as some I’ve used in the past, and the mix looked wrong at some stages of the process. However, I trusted the recipe and got to a mix consistency I recognised as cake batter at the end.The resulting cake tasted as good as it looks, and I couldn’t tell that it was a gluten free cake. It was lovely and moist, had loads of banana, and the maple syrup cream cheese frosting was divine. We ate them over 3 days and they kept perfectly well in a tin in the fridge.There is a wide variety of cakes and biscuits in this book and I will definitely be trying more out based on my first success. The book gives recipes for flours to blend at home to make the various mixes (e.g. bread flour, self raising etc.), but I prefer using the Doves Farm branded pre-blended flours available from most supermarkets where I can. I once counted 19 different types of gluten free flours and standard wheat flours in my baking cupboard when I used to do home blends. That was too much to store and keep track of, so I’m currently at about 8.Breads and Savoury Pastries are the gluten free recipes I’ve never mastered. I think that the structure the gluten gives them is more important than in a cake. Perhaps this is the book that will solve these problems.These Phil Vickery books were the first gluten free books I tried that I had success with (and also the reason I had lots of flours to blend in my cupboard!).My go to book for easy baking is the Cake Angels book by Julia Thomas. It uses basic ingredients that are easy to get hold of, the instructions are simple to understand, and there is a wide range of cake recipes. Again, the recipes don’t taste like they are gluten free. She does also make the recipes dairy free, but I sometimes substitute the dairy free ingredients for ones that contain dairy as we don’t have a problem with lactose.

Do you have a favourite gluten free baking book which always gives you good results?

Disclaimer: I own all of these books and I haven’t been asked to review them, or been paid to review them. All opinions are my own, and I have added some links to the normal Amazon site where I bought my copies. They are not affiliate links and I don’t get any money if you click on them.

Dear August…

Oh August. Our relationship started so well. You gave me time to start blogging again, I started creating, I got things done.
My nephew came to stay and then later on there was the celebration of his Christening.
Husband’s birthday came and went, and the Craftyguidelets’ vision of a sailing themed birthday cake was realised.
The Craftyguidelets and I found 38 Books About Town book benches in 3 different areas of London, did some sightseeing, fell in love with the impressionists in the National Gallery, and completed the summer reading challenge at the library. Oh August, you kept us busy.

But towards the end it went wrong. A trying extended-family holiday culminated in little Craftyguidelet breaking her arm and spending 2 nights in hospital. How could you let that happen August? My little girl looked so tiny on that big bed as they wheeled her away for surgery under general anaesthetic.
You brought me flowers – hydrangeas to remind me of our lovely holiday in Cornwall and roses from husband for our wedding anniversary.
But it’s too late August. The pain of the hospital stay and seeing my poor little girl’s deformed arm, and now the huge cast that she has to carry around is too much.

It’s over August. I’ve decided to give September a go. The Craftyguidelets will be back at school and my volunteering with Guiding, the WI and school starts up again. I’ll need to be busy preparing Craftyguider for Christmas, as well as starting my own preparations. I’m also joining the Trefoil Guild and hoping to start my Voyage Award.

So long, and perhaps I’ll see you around some time in the future.

Craftyguider x

We’re Jamming – Craftingspiration

Sometimes creativity and vision leave me. I sit there and procrastinate and end up distracted. When this happens, I need to find a way of focussing and finding some inspiration.

As well as my encyclopaedic stash of craft materials, I also have a crafting library to rival Amazon. It’s time to dive in and actually use them. Cue a rummage on the shelves to find something to create.

I’ve had this Good Housekeeping Preserves book for many years. I think it may have been a purchase from one of those book clubs that leave piles of books in workplaces. As I left my last workplace about 8 years ago before working from home and raising my girls, it’s been on the shelf for a long time!

In all that time, I’ve only made one recipe – a rather yummy rhubarb and ginger conserve to use up a glut of rhubarb from my garden one year. As a WI Vice President, I feel it is my duty to have more adventures in the world of jam.9

900g of strawberries, 1kg of jam sugar and 1/2 a lemon later and ta-dah!
Result – 3.5 jars of very yummy strawberry jam. I can hold my head up high in the WI, and I’ve rediscovered a book I’d forgotten I had. Flicking through, there are lots of recipes for jams, marmalades, pickles, drinks and sauces to try.

Anyone for lemon curd?

Meal Planning Monday 7.10.13

Last week was a week of in and out and dashing about which meant meal preparation was tricky. A lot of the meals were either pre-prepared or quick to cook so I could just pop them into the oven or bung a few ingredients in the slow cooker.

Sunday was the exception. For the second week in a row we had a roast dinner. I always make sure we have lots of veggies as I don’t eat meat, and this week we even had a home cooked pudding.

The Craftyguidelets made a gluten free apple crumble. It tasted delicious with a big dollop of custard.

This is what we have planned for this week:

Monday Macaroni cheese

Tuesday Ham egg and chips

Wednesday Freezer dive

Thursday Cider braised pork chops

Friday Fish pie

Saturday Take away or freezer dive

Sunday I’m out all day. Do I get Mr CG to cook a roast on his own whilst looking after the Craftyguidelets?

Linking with Mrs M’s Meal Planning Monday link party. What have you got cooking this week?