So, I’ve been watching Masterchef regularly, as I did last season. I’m interested to see what they’re cooking and blah blah blah. Anyway, they had a challenge, to cook a family dinner for a ‘random’ supermarket chosen family.

Now, considering the families all had spotless houses and various other pretty-ing up bits that led me to believe it was all a load of crap, I ended up screaming at the TV a lot.

You know? When you’re cooking for kids, you don’t get to piss around making the kidlets wait for their meal. Also, cooking a family meal while someone else keeps the kids out from under your feet? Jesus, but I’d love to get that happening around here. Instead the children screech at me from one side of the bench while I juggle hot pans and plates on the other side, well lets just say, cooking in a full tilt commercial kitchen is less stressful than cooking for small children while they screech at you.

Give me an angry chef anyday. Much prefer that to a tantrumming toddler.

Yes. Yes I would.

I thought about it some more and would love to imagine a Masterchef team cooking in my tiny galley kitchen. It’s barely big enough for one person, let along eight of them. And we’ll not mention I would fucking love to see them cook gluten free for a night. Seriously, I would. It’s not that hard, but gosh, it would stretch their resources to have to avoid all wheat and a lot of easy options. No bread, no croutons, no noodles.

It would be interesting, to say the least.

However, the good thing about cooking gluten free, aside from learning to read every single label on food, is that everything really needs to be home cooked, from fresh and simple ingredients. Something I am great at now. It gives a whole new meaning to ‘snacks’ when you can’t just give bread and jam, or sandwiches to tide them over.

Anyway – that’s just me. I’d like to see the masterchef contestants stretched out of their comfort zone a little more.

Plus, I thought while I was complaining about gluten free food and mainstream food shows that I’d share my recipe for Gluten Free Chocolate Cake, which is pretty good.

Gluten Free Chocolate Cake:

Separate 3 eggs, free range is good. I’ve got chooks, so I get eggs from them and I know that they’re happy healthy eggs from healthy chooks. How I know they’re healthy? Well, they’ve pecked all my seedlings of kale to pieces, so they’ve GOT to be healthy, right? Plus, the shells are so hard that cracking them is difficult and my yolks are a lovely bright orange.

Pop the yolks into your mixing bowl with a half a cup of sugar. Leave to beat until they’re thick and lucious looking.

While they’re beating, beat your egg whites until soft peaks form and then add 3-4 teaspoons of sugar and beat until dissolved.

Then melt 200g of dark chocolate with 150ml of cream and 2 tablespoons of butter.

To the thick egg yolk and sugar mix add a cup of almond meal, or hazelnut meal, depending on your taste and the contents of your cupboard. Mix in slowly. Add the melted chocolate mixture to the egg yolks and mix in gently. Add 3/4 of a cup of apple sauce as well. When combined, add gluten free self raising flour until the batter looks thick and creamy.

Yes, I do cook by feel more than by measurements. It generally works out to be about 3/4 of a cup of gluten free flour. I use the Orgran brand and love it, it works well. Almost as well as wheat flour.

Once the batter looks all batter-y and cake like, fold the egg whites into it carefully. Pop it into a well greased 20cm round cake pan. I line the bottom with baking paper as well, but that’s because I don’t have a fan forced oven.

Cook at 160C for around 50-60 minutes, or until the cake bounces back when pressed in the middle. Leave to cool in the pan for 15 minutes, before turning out onto a cooling rack. When cool, ice. I used lemon icing and it was delicious.

Ingredients:

3 eggs, separated
1/2 cup of sugar plus an extra 3-4 teaspoons
1 cup of almond or hazelnut meal
200g of cooking chocolate
150ml of cream
2 tablespoons of butter
3/4 cup of apple sauce
3/4 cup of gluten free self raising flour – more or less, depending on how runny your applesauce is. Mine was home made and thick, so I didn’t need as much flour.

Separate the eggs and beat the yolks with the sugar until they’re thick and creamy. While they’re beating, whisk the egg whites to soft peaks and then add 3-4 teaspoons of sugar. Whisk until the sugar dissolves.

Melt the chocolate with the cream and butter and set aside to cool a little.

When the yolks are creamy and thick, add the almond meal and then the cooled chocolate mixture and apple sauce. Mix gently.

Add the gluten free SR flour and combine. When it looks like cake batter, nice and thick (you may need to add more flour), fold in the egg whites and place the entire mix into a greased and lined 20cm cake pan.

Cook at 160C for 50-60 minutes.

Enjoy!

Yesterday was a cupcake sort of day. I probably didn’t think it through all too well as I ended up with chocolate crumbs all over the house and sticky finger prints on the wall, but whatever, we had fun.

These are easy, and can be made all in one pot. They’re not the prettiest cupcakes though, but I can forgive that as they tasted like tiny mud cakes. I didn’t cook them in paper cases as somone (Amy) had used my paper cases last week to ‘snow’ all over the house. Yay me.

Ingredients:

125g (4.5 oz) of butter
100g  (3.5oz) dark eating chocolate (I used cheap cooking chocolate, because it’s 2 days before payday and that’s what I had in the cupboard. They tasted FINE.)
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup caster sugar (I used Raw Sugar, because again, that’s what I had)
1 cup of GF self raising flour
1/2 GF plain flour
2 TB of cocoa powder (I think I used more.)

NOTE: I like the Orgran Brand gluten free flours, it cooks well AND it’s not deathly expensive.

Preheat the oven to 150C/130C for a fan forced oven (300F/260F fan forced) . Line your muffin pan with paper cases, or if you’re like me, don’t.

Stir the butter, chocolate, sugar, milk and cocoa powder in a medium pot over a low heat until everything is melted. Set aside for 10 minutes or so until it’s cooled a bit. I *may* have left mine for closer to 20, as I checked emails and dealt with small screaming grabby children. It was fine when I came back to it.

Mix in the flours until it’s just mixed and then divide into your cases. Remember to grease your muffin pan if you’re cheating like me and not using paper cases. That’s an important bit.

Bake for 35 minutes or so. Leave in the pan for 10 minutes, or however long it takes you to chase the chocolate covered children around the house and wrestle them to the bathroom. (they were licking the bowl)

Let cool on a wire tray.

Ice them.

Now, the recipe I’m using has a lovely icing mix, but I didn’t use it. Instead I melted 2 tablespoons of butter with a tablespoon of milk. Then I added some cocoa (how much? I don’t know – some) and pure icing sugar. I mixed it all together and then, when it tasted like I might have accidentally caramelised it, I added sour cream as well.

Remarkably, it was delicious. In fact, I’m going to petition for sour cream to be added to all sweets from here on in. If we’re going to eat sweet fattening food, we may as well do it right.

Right?

Right.

I’ve been searching for a recipe for Gluten Free cheese crackers for a few weeks and after coming up with nothing that tempted me, I threw everything together and made my own.

Here is what you do -

Take 200g of chilled butter and cube it up.

Add 110g of Rice Flour, 110g of Tapioca Starch and 130g of Potato Flour. Set it to mix until it looks like fine breadcrumbs.

Then add 230g of finely grated cheese.

and mix until the mixture starts to look a little clumped together. Add 1/2tspn salt, 3 spring onions, finely chopped, 5 cloves of garlic crushed and a bunch of parsley, finely chopped and mix some more.

It should start to hold together a little more, like this -

While the mixer is running, add 2 tablespoons of milk and mix until it balls together.

Pull it out of the mixer and shape into 2 large sausages. Wrap them in cling wrap and freeze for 30 minutes.

Once it’s been in the freezer for 30 minutes, preheat your oven to 180C (350F).

Slice the rolled dough into slices about 5mm thick (1/4 inch) and place onto a tray lined with baking paper.

And then bake for 15 minutes, or until golden brown and crisp.

They’re delicious.

Ingredients: (your American weights are guesstimated to ‘close enough’ with my calculator. It will still work)

230g cheese, finely grated (8 ounces)
200g butter (7 ounces)
110g Rice Flour (4 ounces)
110g Tapioca (4 ounces)
130g Potato Flour (4.5 ounces)
1/2 tspn salt
5 cloves of garlic (optional)
3 spring onions (optional)
a bunch of parsley, about 1/3 c chopped
2 Tbsn milk

Method:

Mix the butter into the flours until it resembles fine bread crumbs. Continue mixing and add your cheese, it will clump together a little after a while. When it does, add your garlic, salt, spring onions and parsley. Mix it some more until it starts to pull together and then add your milk. Mix for another minute, or until the milk is all combined.

Shape into sausages and wrap with cling wrap. Freeze for 30 minutes, before pulling them out of the freezer and slicing into 5mm slices.

Bake at 180C (350F) until golden brown and crispy.

Here I present to you my Grandmother’s Lemonade Scones, as guest-blogged by Frogpondsrock (Mum).

I have been wanting to share some of my grandmother’s recipes for a while now. Soooo seeing as it is getting close to Christmas and because I am a generous type of person I am willing to share the family jewels. and really some of the recipes that I have are little gems.. So thanks to NAN tadaaa

Lemonade Scones…

3 cups of self raising flour.
1 teaspoon baking powder
1cup of thickened cream
1cup of lemonade.

Preheat oven to 230C (450F)

Using a knife, mix together into a dough. Carefully roll or pat out onto a floured bench and cut into rounds with a scone cutter. Place onto a greased and floured oven tray and bake for approximately 10 minutes.

These scones are really light and taste absolutely divine..
the trick with scones is not to handle the dough too much or it will toughen up.
quick hands make light scones…

(Note from Veronica. I edited this post a little to make the method a little more clear. Mum is a great writer, but she tends towards extreme minimalism. Or as I call it, leaving out huge chunks of relevant stuff ism.)

1/2 cup of butter
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar (I didn’t have either white sugar or brown, so I used 2/3 cup of raw sugar and it worked fine)
1/2 tspn vanilla essence
1 egg, beaten
1 2/3 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup chocolate chips.

Method:

Grease 2 oven trays and preheat oven to 180C (350F)

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, gradually add the beaten egg and continue beating. Add the vanilla, chocolate chips and cocoa. Mix to combine.

Add the flour a little (or, if you are lazy like me, a lot) at a time. Continue mixing until everything is combined.

Shape teaspoonfulls of mix into balls and place on tray. Leave enough room for spreading and no, they don’t need squashing prior to going in the oven.

Bake for 10-12 minutes. They will still be soft when you pull them out of the oven, don’t worry, they harden up once they start to cool. Eating them still warm is half the fun though.

If you want to make them even more chocolately, add 2 tablespoons of good quality cocoa powder to the creamed butter, sugar and egg shortly before adding the flour. It makes them delicous.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup of cocoa
3/4 cup of self raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup of oil
1/2 tsp of vanilla essence
1 egg
1/2 cup of pureed beetroot
1/2 cup of castor sugar

Method:

Preheat oven to 190C (375F).

Grease and line a round cake tin.

Place cocoa, flour, baking powder and sugar into a bowl.

In a separate bowl mix the egg, oil, beetroot and vanilla until combined. Slowly add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, mixing together until combined.

Place in tin and place in oven. Bake for 45 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer.

***

This cake uses 1/2 a cup of beetroot which makes it nicely rich and moist. To prepare the beetroot, grab a large fresh beet from the vegie market. Peel it and then boil it until soft. Once soft, you can puree or mash it to use in the cake.