Gluten Free Cheese Straws

Posted on November 14, 2011 by rubyophelia

Since I had some of the gluten free puff pastry left, that I had frozen last week, I made a handful of ‘trial’ cheese straws.

First thing to report – the puff pastry freezes fine, it just needs defrosting (but not in the microwave or you’ll ruin the butter!). We decided the best place for mine was the fridge as the temperature is so up-and-down at the moment, I didn’t want to rely on leaving it out on the work top while we were out!

Ingredients

200g Puff Pastry

100g gradted cheese (for more puff pastry use 50g cheese per 100g puff pastry)

1. All I did was take 100g grated cheese and sprinkle a little between each layer of the pastry and then flatten it down. If that doesn’t make sense, then remember the folding like a letter steps from the gluten free puff pastry recipe? Well, the pastry should unfold again after defrosting, so sprinkle cheese, fold over, sprinkle cheese, fold over then just flour the top, roll out to 5mm thickness, slice into rectangles or cut out whatever shape you like using pastry cutters (I’m thinking of using Christmas cutters when it comes to the ‘real thing’… I know, i’m crazy!) I made mine quite thin, but you could make them double or triple thickness! it’s up to you really.

2. Brush the tops with milk or egg for a glaze that will help give the crunchy outside you’re looking for with puff pastry.

3. Place on a greased baking tray and pop in the oven for 15-20 minutes.

Here’s the cheese straws after baking (they had that proper crunch to them):

CHALLENGE 4 – Gluten Free Puff Pastry (rubellesmoon.wordpress.com)

CHALLENGE 4 – Gluten Free Puff Pastry

Posted on November 10, 2011 by rubyophelia

I’ve been wanting to make gluten free puff pastry for SOO long now. And now I realise why it takes so long to make! Wow! But, it is totally worth it, and i’m looking forward to perfecting my recipe! There are some tweaks, bumps and hiccups along the way, but I really enjoyed today as it felt like one of those points where you achieve something! So i’m really happy.

The puff pastry day…

Rubelle’s Moon‘s Puff Pastry:

Dough:
1/2 Cup Sweet rice flour (see my photo for what the packet looks like)
1/2 Cup Flaxseed
1/2 Cup Soya flour
1/2 Cup Gluten Free Plain Flour
1/2 tsp Salt
2 x tsp Xanthan gum
3/4 cup cold water

Here are the flours (in order of the list)

Butter:
3/4 Cup Unsalted butter (take it out the fridge when you set out your ingredients, so it’s somewhere between cold and room temp.)
1 x tbsp Sweet rice flour (see my photo for what the packet looks like)

Instructions:

The Dough-

1. Sift all of the flours into a large mixing bowl with the gum and salt.

2. Make a well in the middle of the flours (etc.) and pour in a little water at a time like this – pour water, gather together, pour water, gather in flour and so on, until you have a dough. Then knead it all together into a ball (don’t over-work it though! This isn’t bread, it just needs gentle encouragement). Tip – keep your hands cold during this so the dough doesn’t become claggy (clogged up/sticky/whatever word your area of the world uses?)

3. Once you’ve got a ball of dough, cover it in cling film and put into the fridge for 1 hour.

The butter:

1. Take a sheet of greaseproof paper about 30x30cm and sprinkle the flour onto it. Place the butter straight on top (not cutting or flattening, it just needs to be a pile o’ butter – see picture). Sprinkle more flour on top of the butter.

2. Put another piece of greaseproof paper on top, take a rolling pin and in stages, flatten down the butter (I gave this lovely task to the boyfriend who enjoyed – I think – this part as it was obvs the most manly part of making puff pastry!!). One flattened to about hand size, remove the top sheet of paper, fold the butter in half on itself and repeat the flattening stage. Repeat this process until you have a finger-thick pat of butter.

3. Shape the butter so it resembles something like the picture below, wrap in clingfilm and chill for 10 minutes maximum – you don’t want the butter to get too cold or too hard! If you make the butter too soon before the pastry is done, just leave it out and then put it in in the last ten minutes (I speak like a pro on this part as this is what we did… I got way too over-excited for the pastry!!)

Assembling the dough and butter:

1. Roll out the dough to 1cm thickness (the pic is halfway through rolling).

2. Put the butter pat into the middle of the rolled out dough and score around it.

3. Cut into the dough up to the corners.

4. Fold the pieces over the butter (be careful as the dough is a little crumbly!)

5. Smooth down the edges.

6. Smooth down the edges of the parcel some more with a little water (that’s floury water there in the shot glass, not murky vodka! Come on!!! This was tricky, but not that bad!)

7. Roll out the pastry – be really careful about this (the butter peeking through the dough is where I was testing to see how much force I could put on the dough, and it really is hardly any, so be so careful and do the rolling little bit by little bit, gradually moving up the dough rather than going from top to bottom!! Bet you’re glad I tried it as now i’m expecting perfect pastry from you!)

8. Finally, fold the dough in three as you would a letter, wrap in clingfilm and put in the fridge for one hour.

9. Remove from the fridge and roll out to 1cm thickness, then fold over three times again. Wrap back in clingfilm and put back into the fridge for one hour. Repeat this three more times. On the final time after rolling, leave in the fridge for two hours or overnight (I think overnight would be best as mine was still a little crumbly after a few hours!)

My notes:

1. Try different flours (need to find a sweet one so think i’ll go to the Chinese Supermarket)

2. No flaxseed – think this made is crumble too much

3. Try to use cornflour for a different texture

3. Leave overnight in the fridge (we only had a day to make this, so I would like to try it again for the time-scale)

The recipes that I researched:

http://www.tarteletteblog.com/2010/04/recipe-gluten-free-puff-pastry.html

http://glutenfreegirl.com/gluten-free-rough-puff-pastry

Here’s the first recipe I tried out with my puff pastry (which I really wish of left in the fridge for longer, but i ran out of time on Sunday -it was already last dinner time- so I’m hoping when I try out the other half it will be better after a night in the fridge):

Beef Wellington

So, it’s a little uneven? So it isn’t all golden and shop-bought-fantastic? I’m proud of my gluten free puffed up pastry! It tasted yum! And i’m going to get better!

I used the recipe from Gordon Ramsay aka Chef Ramsay on the Channel 4 website. Here’s the original recipe:

http://www.channel4.com/4food/recipes/chefs/gordon-ramsay/beef-wellington-07-12-21

I then adapted this recipe to be gluten free by making a few changes! It was absolutley delicious! I know my pastry needs some work, which I’ll be working on soon, but at the moment, i’m happy with my first attempt as it was light and crispy on the outside and soft on the inside (I got that tip from watching the Britain’s Best Dish section on Saturday Kitchen!) So, give it a go! Definitly one to serve up on a Sunday as an alternative to a roast beef.

Gluten Free Changes:

1. Gluten free puff pastry

2. Gluten free mustard

Serving tips:

1. Served with veg as I thought any potato dish would have been too heavy, and i’m glad I did this as I was full but not too full.

2. This dish serves two with veg or I think 4 if you did potatoes and all the trimmings!

Enjoy!

Rubelle’s Moon

Late night/Early morning baking…

Posted on October 30, 2011 by rubyophelia

I had to post this up, as, on Friday night I had a massive craving for something sweet. I also had a box of Dove’s Farm cornflakes that I wanted to use for something rather than just pouring milk over them and munching a bowlful (which they are delicious for too… but I wasn’t in a conventional mood!). So, I decided to make proper, old-school cornflake tart! So yummy and so easy to make. The cornflakes stayed crispy and helped to bring about the taste I was after – proper, school-style cornflake tart! Although I think M&S ‘Strawberry Conserve’ was a little extravagant, especially as I went to a tiny, little village school in the middle of the countryside where the jam was the sort that was in the big catering tubs and the sugar to strawberry content was of a questionable amount – probably the reason we all had to be let outside to run around so much after lunch…!

Instructions

1. So, the base was easy, that was a vanilla pastry (just add a tsp of vanilla essence and 2 x tbsp of caster sugar to your regular gluten free short pastry mix.

2. Roll the pastry out until it’s about 5mm thick and transfer to a greased baking sheet.

3. Take your jam (or conserve… this was the only option available to me, all other shops around me are not set up for late-night-baking and jam supplying) and spread it out across the pastry – too much and you’ll have a boiling over jam disaster and too little and you’ll a) look stingy (come on, you’ve just shelled out £1.49 on conserve, the least you can do is share the stuff!) and b) you’ll end up with cornflake pastry, not cornflake tart, so spread a generous layer without being too generous over the pastry.

4. Take a handful of cornflakes and throw them at the jam (i say throw, i really mean sprinkle delicately, but this just sounds pathetic for something that is basically a sweet pie). Make sure there is an even layer of cornflakes that is just about covering the jam.

5. Pop the tray into the oven for 15 minutes.

6. Remove from the oven and serve up! Great on it’s own or with ‘proper’ custard!

If you want to reheat at any time, pop in the microwave or in the oven, both will work Just don’t make it too soggy in the microwave (about 30-40 seconds should do) or too burnt in the oven (5-10 mins at 150 will be fine).

As for the early morning baking session… well, following the boyfriend being out on the ‘lads night out’ it meant I had the morning to myself – cue typical girls morning of fake tan, nail painting, bath running etc. Only – hot water not on due to bloody gas card running out and even more curses for the shop downstairs not opening until 10am… I NEED THINGS BEFORE 10AM, so I had to boil kettles of water and fill the bath up in proper old-fashioned manner… I felt Victorian at this point, only with an electric kettle and clean water and not wearing any form of crippling clothing, but still, pretty primordial as I was running back and forth running a bath of water with the kettle. Oh and not so old-age as I was also microwaving tubs of water too – so I was kinda bringing 2011 into the mix a little…

So the bath was running, but not itself (I need a house-elf desperately, all applicants please DM me on twitter or something…) and I was covered in fake tan from last night’s midnight fake-tan job (note to self and all reading: NOT RECOMMENDED, i resemble a tiger/zebra/someone who ran full-force at a tub of wood paint and it is not a good look – thankfully it’s cold out, so I can cover up and the housemates and the boyfriend are used to this look by now for internal-flat-based wardrobe-dilemmas!) So what better thing to do than to make Cinnamon Rolls?! I am all about the time-efficiency aka how much baking can I fit into the time I have? So I went to the recipe I’ve been studying on Tenley Molzahn’s website and made the Cinnamon Rolls from there: http://www.tenleymolzahn.com/gluten-free-me/ They are AMAZING! And the flat smelled lush like a proper bakery that you want to walk in and eat everything in sight, only it was my flat and I could eat everything in sight (I didn’t… but the fact I could is what i’m getting at in this story…).

So here’s some pictures of me making the rolls, but if you want the recipe, go to Tenley’s page as i’m not going to take credit for it as all I did was sub in cornflour for Tapioca flour and anything unique America, I used the UK equivalent! Go for it… a lot of processes, but entirely worth it. And, if you have a bath to run by using a kettle, a microwave and a large amount of patience (for the water, not the rolls) then go for it, otherwise, just do it when you’re feeling like you need a sugary pick-me-up as it is soo worth the time and it makes a huge batch that can be frozen and enjoyed whenever

Enjoy!

Rubelle’s Moon

Gluten Free Quorn and Leek Pie with Mrs Crimble’s Pastry Recipe

Posted on October 9, 2011 by rubyophelia

Long-winded title aside, this is aaaaaamazing (if I say so myself…) and will fast become a favourite of your family, friends, fellow students, neighbours-who-smell-it-and-are-magnetically-drawn-to-your-kitchen… generally anyone who loves a good PIE.

Time to prepare – 20 mins

Time to cook – 20 mins (but it’s extra amazing if you can simmer it for up to an hour)

You will need:

For the filling

3 x leeks

1 x red onion

1 x clove of garlic

1 x tbsp sunflower oil

1/2 packet of Quorn pieces

1 x chicken stock cube (Knorr as it’s the best for gluten free stock cubes)

200ml warm water

200g cheese (dairy free if you like – i’ve recently discovered ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cheddar)

300ml milk

2 tbsp margarine (I use Vitalite as it is dairy free and pure sunflower so a healthy choice too)

1/2 cup Cornflour (check the label that it is definitely gluten free)

Plenty of Salt and Pepper

For the pastry

1 x packet of Mrs Crimble’s pastry

What you need to do:

Preheat the oven to 220 C

1. Slice up the leeks (finely for the white end, chunky for the darker end), the onions (finely) and the garlic

2. Pour the sunflower oil into a large frying pan and add the sliced leeks, onions and garlic and heat the ingredients over a low heat for 20 minute, until the ingredients are softened and have created their own sauce to cook in

3. In the last 5 minutes of the vegetables cooking, pop the Quorn into a microwaveable bowl, add the stock cube, pour over the water and place in the microwave on high for 4 minutes.

4. Add the Quorn and stock mixture to the pan of leeks, onions and garlic and continue to simmer on a low heat. Place the life on the pan and allow to cook in its own juices, stirring occasionally while you prepare your cheese sauce.

5. To prepare the cheese sauce, you will need a large, non-stick pan. Add the margarine to this pan and heat on low until it is melted, don’t be tempted to turn up the heat as this will cause the margarine to boil and burn, so be patient (I know it’s tempting to make this happen quickly… i’ve been there…)

6. Once the margarine is totally melted, turn the heat right down and add in the milk. Remove the pan from the heat and using a plastic whisk (not a metal once as you don’t want to scratch your lovely non-stick pan) blend the margarine and milk together – there will be some separation, but this will be fine once the cornflour is added.

7. Sift in the cornflour and put the pan back onto a medium heat. This point is critical, so don’t disappear and leave it to do it’s own thing as it won’t (again, i’ve been there, so i’m just making sure you don’t make the same mistakes I did!) So, first whisk the cornflour into the melted mixture until it is smooth. Then take a wooden spoon and continue to stir the mixture until it thickens up into almost a paste, if it is getting too thick, simply add more milk and make it a little thinner.

8. Add the cheese to the sauce mixture and stir with the wooden spoon until it is all melted. Add plenty of salt and pepper to this mixture. Turn off the heat.

9. Turn the heat off on the leek mixture and pour this into the pan with the cheese mixture (or the other way around, depending on which pan is biggest). Turn on a low heat and mix everything together so that the leeks are totally coated in the delicious cheesy mixture. Turn off the heat and transfer the mixture to a large oven-proof dish and leave to rest on the side

10. Make up the pastry using the instructions on the back of the Mrs Crimble’s pastry packaging then transfer the rolled out pastry onto the top of the leek and cheese filling

11. Score the top of the pie, place into the oven and bake for 20-30 minutes, depending on the thickness of your pastry

12. Remove from the oven and serve!

Great served with Sweet Potato wedges and fresh vegetables

Enjoy!

Ruby

Baking vs. Packaging (rubellesmoon.wordpress.com)

No gas = No pie… almost!

Posted on October 7, 2011 by rubyophelia

I am ridiculously happy it is Friday, because it means a whole weekend ahead of chilling out, movies, exploring and generallyre-charging my batteries.

This weekend I plan on cooking up some delicious recipes including mussels, prawns and white wine spaghetti, garlic butter dough balls and some kind of spicy dish (undecided although it could be an old favourite of home-made gluten free flour and corn tortillas and fajita mix).

Last night I made my pie with leeks and quorn. It’s a dish that always seems to warm me up and puts a smile on mine and my boyfriends face as it is something I can make on auto-pilot (and if needs be have a glass of wine in the processs) and pop in the oven and have a half hour chill out while it cooks.

Doesn’t that sound idylic? Yepp, I thought so too, until I discovered the gas had gone out! My poor housemate had tried to load the card up on the reader, but as it was her first time to do it, she didn’t quite get it, so after both myself and my other housemate trying to amend the meter, we were back up and running (literally as I am the top flat, so it was a lot of running up and down the stairs). So, the leeks, onions and quorn were all steamed in the microwave and I was so close to making my cheese sauce in the microwave too (something that can be done, but I was quaking in my boots at the thought of doing as, call me old fashioned, I like cooking on a gas oven-top!).

So with all my ingredients prepared using about 5 times more bowls than necessary what with the huge amounts of leeks vs. the tiny microwave oven and the way I cook in general – everything into a separate bowl Blue Peter style – I was away and ready to bake my pie!

The special addition to last night was the use of a Mrs Crimble’s pastry kit – AMAZING. I would definitly get this again as it made everything so easy, the pastry didn’t really need chilling (although I popped it in a plastic food bag and chilled for literally 5 mins) and rolling it out was a dream.

TOP TIP FOR PASTRY ROLLING:

1. take a sheet of greaseproof paper larger than the size you want the pastry to end up and place the pastry in the center

2. place another sheet of greaseproof paper of the same size on top

3. roll to the required size

4. voila, no sticky mess, no need to flour surfaces and the best part – no washing up, just recycle the paper in the paper bank and your rolling pin is clean as it hasn’t touched anything but the paper!

In the end, the pie was yummy, we were both super-happy and warm inside after a day of being freezing with air con still functioning on full in most places after last weeks ‘heatwave’. And we have left overs for dinner tonight!

I hope you all had a more successful start to cooking your dinner than I did! But sometimes, slightly crazy episodes in the kitchen can add to the fun (except for when the fire alarm goes off… but that’s another story…)

Recipes will be loaded up this weekend!

Ruby