Gluten Free Lemon Tart

Gluten Free Lemon Tart

This is a must try, it looks hard but its not.

I will admit the pastry takes a little time, about an hour, and even then it’s just short bursts of time separated by cooling or cooking. A food processor or a mixer with a dough hook will makes it even easier! If you are short on time you can make the base one evening and bake the filling the next. It keeps beautifully.

Pastry

1 1/4 cups gluten free flour (I use white wings)

1/3 cup pure icing sugar

1/4 cup of almond meal

125g cold butter chopped into squares

1 egg yolk

Filling

1 tablespoon lemon zest

1/2 cup lemon juice (about 2 or 3 lemons depending on their juiciness!)

5 eggs

3/4 cup castor sugar

300ml thick cream

1. Process flour, icing sugar, almond meal and butter until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add yolk and process until all the ingredients come together. If this doesn’t seem to be happening add a tablespoon of room temp water. Process again. Repeat this until a dough is formed. (The amount of water you need with vary each time, sometimes you’ll need none other times you’ll need 3tablespoons, I find it seems to depend on the weather). If you are using a pastry hook you can allow the mixer to ‘kneed’ your dough for a minute or two, if not turn out and kneed lightly. Lightly pat into a ball shape and cover with cling wrap. Refrigerate for 30minutes.
2. Grease a 24cm loose-based flan tin. Roll pastry between sheets of baking paper until large enough to cover base of tin and up the sides. Cut off excess pastry along the top of the tin with a knife, use any spare pastry to carefully repair any cracks that might have formed.
3. Cover with cling wrap and refrigerate for another 30minutes. Preheat oven to 200C
4. Remove from fridge and cover pastry shell with baking paper, fill with dried beans or rice, place tin on oven tray and bake in preheated oven for 10minutes. Remove paper and rice and bake for another 10minutes or until shell is lightly browned. Refrigerate cooled pastry case until cold.
5. Preheat oven to 160C. Whisk all filling ingredients in a medium bowl, allow to stand for 5minutes
6. Pour filling into pastry shell. Bake uncovered on baking tray for 40minutes or until middle is set. Slightly shake the baking tray when the middle has minimum jiggle its set.
7. Allow to cool and then refrigerate until cold. I’ve been known to be impatient (or running late) and serve this warm, its quite nice this way but the filling may be a bit melty. It should hold its form well when cool.

Everyone who tries this loves it, I think it’s something to do with the almondy, buttery, pastry combined with the tangy, creamy, lemony-ness. Plus you can always substitute some (or all) of the juice for lime and ta-dah lemon-lime-pie!

I love this pastry. Gluten free pastry often has a lot to be desired, this is not normal gluten free pastry. It never dissapoints. It always turns out buttery and holds its form. Sprinkle it with icing sugar and it will look like it belongs behind glass in a cafe!

Perfect Gluten Free Pastry

It’s the perfect way to finish off a dinner party!

Any one for seconds?

Yes, in case you were wondering this is what I did with my 5 broken eggs. (Yes I do know this recipe needs 6 eggs, I bought more, I needed to anyway right?!)

Scrumptious Breakfast

Here’s an impressive breakfast (or brunch) I whip up on occasion. Seeing as mothers day is tomorrow I thought I’d share this delicious but easy recipe – you know in case you wanted to whip up something for the Mum in your life. They are so simple but so tasty.

Smoked Salmon Omelet

Smoked Salmon Omelet

(makes 2)

Ingredients

4 Eggs

1/2 cup of milk

Filling

100g Smoked Salmon

Spreadable Cream Cheese at room temp (for easy spreading)

Dill or Chives (optional)

Lightly whisk eggs and milk together in a bowl, season to taste with salt and pepper. Heat a medium sized heavy based pan and pour in half of the omelet mixture. The trick to a good omelet is to heat the pan quite hot then quickly and lightly stir the mixture around the pan for a few seconds to get the heat through. Just before the egg begins to set turn the heat down and let it cook through. (This is more of a crepe style omelet than the light and fluffy kind you can get.) Once the surface of the omelet is set but still glossy slide out onto a board or plate and let cool slightly. Spread one half carefully with cream cheese sprinkle with chives and top with folds of salmon, fold over the other half of the omelet. If you really want decadence serve topped with a little more cream cheese and salmon.

I hope all you lovely Mums have a wonderful day, and let someone else make you these.

Quick Dessert

Ok ever feel like something sweet after dinner but you’ve got nothing? Had a surprise dinner guest the day Before the weekly shop and After the shops are closed? Here’s something you can make at the drop of a hat, it will take you less than one minute I promise, and it will still be elegant and impressive.

Its home made chocolate sauce. I don’t like chocolate sauce, that sticky syrupy gross stuff, off the shelf, from the shops. My husband is the same, he almost wouldn’t give it a try the first time I made it, but he knows my cooking is often worth the risk. We both love this. This is chocolate sauce for grown-ups (although your kids will devour it too).

You should have all the ingredients in your pantry/fridge. Well I always do. The only thing that sometimes is missing is the cream but a quick trip to the corner deli or servo will fix that in seconds.

30 Second Home Made Chocolate Sauce

Homemade Chocolate Sauce - Easy

Ingredients

50g Dark chocolate broken into pieces (from fridge is preferable)

3 Tblspns Thickened Cream

2 Tblspns Castor Sugar

Place all ingredients in a ceramic bowl (never use wood or plastic when dealing with chocolate). Heat for 20-30seconds on high, or as long as you need to in your microwave. Cream should be runny and hot but your chocolate wont be completely melted. Stir well until sugar and chocolate is dissolved and all ingredients are combined into chocolate sauce.

Serve on its own with fruit to dip in. Or serve it with icecream, throw in some strawberries or banana or frozen berries. No-one will turn their nose up at this. This is a really flexible recipe, you can adjust it to your taste or thickness of sauce, I never measure the ingredients I just eyeball it. If 20-30seconds does not suit your microwave you just need to be careful to not over cook it. Increase your cooking time by 10second intervals. Allow the hot cream to melt the chocolate for you as you stir. I usually end up stirring for a minute or two.

How about serving it with a hot brownie (you know from my fantastic Brownie Recipe?)

Homemade Chocolate Sauce with Brownies

The best thing about this is that you can pop any left overs in the fridge and it becomes a fudge! mmm.

Long Weekend – what are you doing?

So far my long weekend has involved a lot of this

Baby Food Galore

I’m hoping it will also involve some of this

minky fabric

and the finishing off of this

simply purple

I hope your long weekend is full of getting things done, having fun, and remembering. Just because you can’t eat Gluten doesn’t mean you can’t have an ANZAC biscuit to celebrate this great nation that was fought for, for us.

Gluten Free Anzac Biscuits

Check out my Gluten Free Anzac Biscuit Recipe.

Best Gluten Free Brownies

To me the perfect brownie is moist and fudgey and dark, with a crunch to the top. This is the recipe for just that brownie. I’ve finally mastered the holy grail of the perfect gluten free brownie. Be warned, it is full of sugar and fat, just the way it should be.

Chewy Moist Dense Goodness

200g dark chocolate broken into even pieces

250g butter chopped

1 cup brown sugar

½ cup raw (low GI can be used) sugar

¼ cup sugar

4 eggs

¼ teaspoon baking powder

1 cup of plain flour

1/3 cup of coca powder

Preheat oven to 160C line a 20cm square cake tin with baking paper. Melt butter and chocolate over a very low heat on stove top and cool to room temp. Alternatively you can carefully melt chocolate and butter in the microwave by being very careful and stirring a lot. Start by doing 3x 30second intervals, stirring well between each. The residual heat should essentially melt the chocolate.

Combine, flour, sugars, coca powder, baking powder and eggs. Stir in chocolate butter mix until just mixed through. Pour into tin and bake for 50mins until just set in the center.

Eat as is or serve warm with vanilla icecream.

serve warm with icecream

Baked Lime Cheese Cake: gluten free of course

This is the whole post, bake it and you’ll know why, there are just no words…

Baked Lime Cheese Cake

Baked Lime Cheesecake

Base

125g butter melted, cooled

1 ¼ cup ground almonds (plus extra for dusting)

2/3 cup sugar

zest of one lime (optional)

Filling

900g cream cheese

1 ½ cups of sugar

3 tablespoons of fresh lime juice (about half a juicy large lime)

4 large eggs

Preheat oven to 180C, butter a 10inch springform pan and dust with some extra ground almonds. Don’t be tempted to skip this part, I think the almonds help the cheese cake have something to grip onto as it rises.

Make Base

Combine cooled melted butter, with sugar and almonds, press evenly into the base of spring form pan. Bake 10-12 minutes and cool completely.

Make Filling

Using an electric mixer and a large bowl (this is where a stand mixer really comes in handy) beat cream cheese and sugar on low for a couple of minutes. Add lime juice and beat until smooth. Add eggs slowly, beating well after each addition.

Pour filling over cooled base and bake for 60-70minutes. The cheese cake will become very golden brown by try not to let it burn. Cheese cake will still be a bit slightly wobbly in the middle but will set upon cooling.

Remove cheesecake from oven and put in refrigerator as soon as its cool enough, for at least 8 hours. Let cheesecake sit out of fridge for 10-15minutes then run a knife around the edge of the pan to loosen, and use a spatula to lift gently off base. Cover and return to fridge, or you could just get eating!

get eating!

mini loaf tin love

So this post is many things! It’s my first blog written on my iPhone (provided it works)! It’s also lazy as I took all the photos with my iPhone. Maybe I should have called it iPhone love! It’s also my first test run of my new mini loaf tins (a birthday present from my lovely friend).

These tins are great! Super cute and fun! I happily discovered 6 of them perfectly take one normal sized loaf mix. Which worked out beautifully as I had mixed up one banana loaf mix and I had 6 mini loaf tins.

Ok so here’s the recipe, it’s based on a tried and tested Oma Banana Bread recipe! I don’t have an Oma (this particular Oma, and her recipe belongs to my friend) have a Nan and a Grandma but I’m sure if I got their banana bread recipes it would hardly look any different! Of course none of them would have used gluten free flour! I think its simplicity is what makes it so great. A real nostalgic kind of recipe. How can a recipe be nostalgic you ask? I think when: you always have all ingredients to make it in your cupboard, when the smell of it baking makes you think of hot drinks and warm blankets, when every time you make it it never fails. There you have the making of a recipe that will last the test of time, as birthdays, family gatherings, welcomes, farewells and coffee’s with friends come and go this will be the food that winds through those memories. That’s a nostalgic recipe!

Gluten Free Banana Bread

Gluten Free Banana Bread - Mini Loaves

1 1/2 cups gluten free flour
125g butter melted and cooled
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda (bi-carb)
1 egg
3 bananas smoosched (mashed)
1 cup roughly chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 180C, line one loaf tin or 6 mini loaf tins with baking paper. (i think banana loaf has to be baked in paper, it just tastes better!)

Cake tin lining made easy - use your rotary cutter

Place all ingredients excluding smoosched bananas and nuts in a large bowl and mix until combined. Mix through banana and nuts, place in lined tin(s).

Gluten Free Banana bread in the mixing!

Bake mini loaves for 25-35 minutes or 1 regular loaf for 50-60 minutes – until skewer inserted comes out clean.

Lemon Cream Cheese Icing

100g cream cheese
1 1/2 cups pure icing sugar
A generous squeeze of lemon juice

Beat together and top cooled cakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Icing.

Lemon Cream Cheese Icing

After the first day keep cakes in the fridge for up to 3days.

Oh and here’s one I prepared earlier…a normal size!

Gluten Free Banana Bread - regular size

hedgehog heaven

Well this is my go-to hot-weather baking…hedgehog slice. I love the stuff. Its a real comfort food and its perfect for summer (because yes you still need comfort food in summer). All chocolaty goodness, yet still cool and it doesn’t require baking so it doesn’t heat up the kitchen in the inevitable string of 37degree days that we have during summer.

Comparatively there might seem like a lot of biscuits in this recipe but gluten free biscuits seem to absorb more liquid. I use Arnots Rice Ring Biscuits, they don’t have any ingredients that include gluten but are processed in the same environment as products that do contain gluten. If you are particularly sensitive or just worried I would suggest using another plain gluten free biscuit, Woolworths and Freedom Foods both make one that is relatively easy to buy. Also make sure you use pure cocoa powder.

Gluten Free Hedgehog Slice

Gluten Free Hedgehog Slice

250g butter, chopped
1 ¼ cups caster sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 egg, lightly beaten

2 x 200g packets Arnots Rice Ring biscuits, crumbled
1 cup chopped pecans
½ cup desiccated coconut

Topping
150g dark chocolate, melted

1. Line a slice tin with baking paper, allowing paper to over hang over two edges of pan.
2. Place butter, sugar and cocoa in a medium sauce pan over a low heat, stirring occasionally until butter and sugar are melted. Remove from heat allow to cool a little and whisk in egg.
3. Mix together biscuits, nuts and coconut in large bowl.
4. Pour chocolate mixture over biscuit mixture; mix well. Press into prepared pan. Cover; refrigerate for a couple of hours or overnight.
5. Drizzle chocolate over top of slice; refrigerate for 15 minutes or until chocolate is set but still a bit soft. Remove slice by lifting with extended paper lining; cut into pieces.

This slice should keep for about a week, if you can get it to last that long!

Happy Australia Day

So today is Australia day, I love being Australian and most of the time I love living in Perth. Today is a beautiful sunny day and we had the paddle pool out for the girls.

fun with friends

Very ozzie of us!

We’ve got Lamb for the BBQ and I baked Gluten-Free Anzac biscuits. Seeing Anzacs are mostly oats (not a gluten free product) the oaty substitute is quinoa flakes…yeah! I’ve based my recipe on this (non-gluten free) from the great gals at Exclusively Food. I love chewy biscuits, which is kinda hard to achieve with gluten free cooking as I find gluten free cooking can be dry and crumbly. I think I’ve done it.

Chewy Gluten Free Anzac Biscuits

Gluten Free Anzac Biscuits

Makes about 25 biscuits.

125g butter
40ml (2 tablespoons) golden syrup
3/4 cup quinoa flakes
1 cup desiccated coconut
3/4 cup gluten free plain flour (I use white wings)
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup, firmly packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
2 tablespoons boiling water

Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Celsius fan-forced). If you will be baking one tray of biscuits at a time, place an oven rack in the centre of the oven. If you wish to bake two trays of biscuits at a time, place one oven rack in the upper half of the oven and one in the lower half of the oven, rotate halfway through.

1. Line one or two large baking trays with baking paper.
2. Place butter and golden syrup in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring occasionally until melted.
3. Place oats, coconut, flour, caster sugar and brown sugar in a large bowl.
4. Stir together until well combined.
5. When butter has melted, combine bicarbonate of soda and boiling water in a small bowl or cup, (this is fun, it almost blooms like yeast) and then stir into the butter and golden syrup mixture.
6. Add butter mixture to dry ingredients.
7. Stir ingredients together until well combined.
8. Roll level, firmly packed tablespoons of the mixture into balls
9. Place dough balls/mounds about 5cm apart on the prepared tray/s.

Bake for about 15-16 minutes, until biscuits are golden brown but still soft (a longer cooking time will produce crisper, drier biscuits). Cool biscuits on trays for about three minutes, and then transfer to wire racks to cool completely. The original recipe calls for a cup of flour but I find its best to use a bit less. I’ve written 3/4 of a cup because you can always add more but you cant take it out! You might notice there is no egg in these, now I’ve been told its because eggs were scarce in the days of war. I’ve also heard it was omitted to help stop them from going stale. Sounds like a good reasons to me, and they don’t need them either, so save your eggs for your Pav!

We’ve just watched the sky show from the park up the hill and now everyone is tucked safely in bed. Phew, I love Australia day.