Another new feature I’ve dragged out for the depths of my imagination (which, judging by my groundbreaking titles is more like a puddle than a never ending abyss of creativeness).
As you probably gathered from the highly innovative concept, each edition will feature one ingredient used two different ways. The two recipes featured here came about after I was sent the Dietary Specials new recipe Shortcrust Pastry.
I must preface this now by saying this is NOT a sponsored post, I just really love this product.
The best thing about these bad boys is that they taste just as awesome with or without the rum. Plus fruit (even if it is mixed with a sugar laced syrup) surely counts as one of your five a day. I’ve seen quite a few recipes which use sugar cane syrup, but it’s not always easy to get hold of. This recipe uses a super duper easy home made sugar syrup which you can knock up and keep in the fridge until the earth ends because it never goes off.
After you’ve finished yakking after reading my vom worthy ‘Daddy Cool’ post I thought you might like to indulge in a yummy-o, calorific Apple Upside Down Cake (the point being you turn the cake upside down,not eat it whilst upside down…but you knew that already). I wouldn’t have ever attempted an upside down anything due to my innate ability to pretty much drop anything I pick up, but my Dad found it while flicking though my new Rachel Allen cook book (a barginlicious £5 from W H Smith) and I had promised him a dessert of his choice for Fathers Day and this was what he chose, and blow me if it didn’t actually come out pretty much perfectly!
I always use sparkling water for batters because you get a much lighter,less greasy batter. Feel free to use beer for the batter if you want, although with this recipe a beer batter will probably overpower the taste of the prawns.
Ingredients
200g King prawns (uncooked) 100g Plain gluten-free flour (Doves Farm,Glutafin) 250ml Sparkling water 25g Cornflour (or you could use potato flour) 1 Egg 2 Pinches of salt 200g Plain yogurt (I used Greek) 2-3 Tbsp’s of mango chutney (Sharwood’s is g/f.
Scones are one of those things that are hard enough to get right when they’re not gluten-free, and they’re even harder to re-produce when you take gluten out of the mix (literally). This recipe is one that I’ve adapted from a Phil Vickery recipe. Phil uses his own flour mixes, but I find the Doves Farm flour mixes are brilliant and work great for this recipe.
Ingredients
300g Self raising gluten-free flour (we need to give these bad boys a fair chance at rising!
As I said before this was adapted from a Delicious recipe. It’s actually gluten-free, but I nearly took the roof of my mouth off with the spices so I have tweaked it a wee bit in order to make it not so spicey, but I’ll also list the ingriedents if you like a bit of spice in your life and aren’t a total wuss like me.
Ingredients
4 Cod steaks (or any other white fish) Sunflower oil A couple of limes to squeeze over your fish or for making your plate look fancy!
So here we go a lovely gluten free macaroon recipe you can get your teeth into. Make sure you make these on a day when you have no appointments/things to do/people to see/sleep to be had. The times I’ve had to ring up and cancel appointments because my macaron’s aren’t ready.. The original recipe is gluten-free anyway, but I couldn’t resist twiddling with the recipe and changing the lemon curd around so I could use my own recipe for it.
Millionaires shortbread seems like one of those things that should be super duper hard to make, but this recipe is actually surprisingly easy. The recipe is in part inspired by a Phil Vickery recipe, but the rest I’ve tweaked and changed to make it easier and even more yummy (if I do say so myself).
Ingredients
120g Butter 60g Golden caster sugar 160g Plain flour mix (Doves Farm, Glutafin) 397g Tin Carnation Caramel (Nestle) 200g Milk chocolate 100g White chocolate A few drops of vanilla extract Extras
A lot of peoples prevailing idea of gluten-free food is that it tastes profoundly different from non gluten-free food. This is another one of those recipes where I dare any non gluten freer to taste the difference. The original recipe is from the February issue of Delicious magazine and I’ve tweaked it here and there to make it gluten-free. It’s not vastly different from a normal pancake recipe but I think the little differences that are there make for a far nicer pancake.
An ability to produce homemade mince pie’s is a skill in other people that I greatly admire, and at the start of the year I decided I wanted to be one of these clever people and endeavoured to make my very own mince pies, from scratch, from the pastry to the mincemeat, every last bit of it would be made by my own fair hands. I talked about the hitch I had with the mincemeat, but luckily I found a Gluten-Free mincemeat recipe (god bless Nigella) which I made at the very start of November, and finally this week I decided the time was right to unite mince with pie and bake a batch.
I harked on about Snicker-doodles in yesterdays post, but actually failed to explain what they are. According to Nigella they’re sort of like an oven baked doughnut and a cross between a cookie and sponge, they remind me of those massive sweet pretzels with the cinnamon sugar, and everyone knows I’m a slut for cinnamon. They’re the sort of thing that could be varied in so many different ways, but for now I’m going to give you the original recipe without any variations.
Phil’s original recipe contains chicken, while I have nothing against chicken, it sometimes doesn’t agree with me, so I generally leave it out. I’ll put the amounts and instructions if you want to add chicken to yours, or you can follow the amounts that I use and add extra prawns./
Ingredients Serves 4
2 Inch wedge or chorizo (you can get this cut to size at the Deli counter at your supermarket) cut into smallish chunks 200g/7oz Prawns (if your omitting the chicken, 180g if not) 1 Large red pepper diced 1 Large onion (i use white, but red is fine) finely diced 1 Crushed clove of garlic A big glug of olive oil 2 Tsp’s of smoked paprika 600ml strong stock (I use veggie stock, but feel free to use chicken) 2 Tsp’s tomato puree Small bunch of spring onions 160g white long grained rice (feel free to use brown rice if you’d like) salt and pepper If you want to add chicken you’ll need one large chicken breast cut into 2cm chunks.
Before we get started you will need a sterilised jar or two to store your cooked mincemeat in. I used a Kilner jar with a one litre capacity. if your new to sterilising jars I’ve included a Tips for Dummies guide just for you!
Ingredients
250g Dark, soft muscovado sugar 250ml Dry cider (I used Henney’s) 6 Tablespoons of brandy Juice and rind of a small lemon 1 kg Cooking apples 1/2 Tsp cinnamon 1/2 Tsp nutmeg 1/2 Tsp ginger 250g Currants 250g Raisins 80g Glace cherries quartered If almonds don’t make your toes curl, you might want to include 75g’s of them finely chopped Method
