Recipe: Gluten Free Chocolate Brownies

I got this recipe from my friend's mom a long time ago. It really does produce the best brownies. They are fudgey, moist, have a chewy edge (my favorite part), and they are chock full of chocolate. As a confirmed choco-holic I can't live without these brownies. So, I made a few adjustments to the recipe and voila! they're now GF.

mmm brownie bites.

These are just about as simple to make as boxed brownie mixes are. In fact, go to your cabinet and throw away any boxed mixes that you have. After you try these you won't even want to look at those anymore. Trust me.

You can make these the traditional way in a square baking dish, or you can do what I did and make them in a mini cupcake pan.  Making them in the mini cupcake pan is a good way to portion control these babies. Especially if you're like me and can't be trusted to cut a small brownie out of the pan.

Now, without further ado, here is the recipe...

Ingredients: 

• 1 cup of butter
• 4 - 1oz squares of unsweetened baker's chocolate
• 2 cups of sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup of Mama's gluten free almond blend flour
• 1 tsp of Vanilla
• 1/4 tsp of salt
• 1/2 cup of chopped nuts (optional, but walnuts are amazing)

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Grease your baking pan
• Melt butter and chocolate in a double boiler until smooth. (You can also do this in the microwave) Poor this mixture into a large bowl.
• Stir in sugar until combined.
• Add eggs one at a time stirring with a spoon until completely blended.
• Add flour, vanilla, and salt until combined. Make sure you break up any clumps of flour.
• Stir in nuts (optional).
• Poor into baking dish or portion out into mini cupcake pan.
• Bake for 30 to 35 mins. Or until tester comes out clean. If you're using the mini cupcake pan bake for approximately 10-15 mins.
• Cool completely.

The tops will be light and flakey, the bottoms will be moist and delicious! This will be another thing that you won't even know is gluten free. Feel free to share...or not.

Bon appetite!

Recipe: The Best Gluten Free Chocolate Cake

The subtitle to this post should be: The most amazing chocolate cake EVER!!! Seriously! It really is...if I do say so myself. Don't believe me, ask my hubby. He ate more than one cupcake in a day. I found this recipe on Bakespace. I originally followed the directions as written and the cake was good but it wasn't as good as I knew it could be. So I tweaked it a little bit. Now that my family and I are gluten free, I've had to further adjust the recipe to make it gluten free. Actually, I think the GF flours make it taste even better. The cake is light, airy, spongy, and well, perfect.

My dad and step-mom's wedding cake. mmmmmm

I know that parts of this recipe may have you questioning my sanity but trust me, there is reason behind the madness. If you try this out please let me know what you think of it.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 1-3/4 cups Mama's Gluten Free Almond Blend Flour
• 3/4 cup regular cocoa (not dutched cocoa)
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup buttermilk (or one cup whole milk with 1 tbsp of white vinegar)
• 1 cup strong black coffee (let this cool otherwise you'll just end up cooking your eggs)
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
• 1 sm package of chocolate pudding powder

Instructions:

• Heat oven to 350°F.
• Grease and flour 13x9x2-inch baking pan.
• Stir together sugars, flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, pudding powder and salt in large bowl.
• Add eggs, buttermilk, coffee, oil and vanilla;
• beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes (batter will be thin).
• Pour batter evenly into prepared pans.
• Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.
• Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks.
• Cool completely.

If you make this into cupcakes as I usually do it'll yield more than 2 doz cupcakes. Bake them in the oven at 350 for approximately 12-15 minutes. Cool completely before frosting.

This cake and/or cupcakes are amazing by themselves or with frosting. It's not too sweet to hold the frosting and it's not even a little bit plain that it can't take standing in the spotlight by itself. This is by far my favorite cake. The picture is of my dad and step-mom's wedding cake. Underneath the buttercream frosting and decorations is the beloved chocolate cake with a strawberry mascarpone filling. It was delicious! mmmm.

Recipe: French Silk Pie

Happy Labor Day Everyone!
I hope you all have had a wonderful weekend. The family and I had a definitely did. It was chock full of fun activities and a little bit of doing nothing. I also happened to do a lot of cooking and baking this weekend...not that I minded one little bit. There is nothing better in the world than making friends and family smile. The way I see it there is only one surefire way of making that happen and that's to feed them delicious food.

My weekend started last Thursday. I had to leave work a little early because I had some errands to run. So, I had a bit of time before my hubby came home from work and I thought I would make him his favorite pie...French Silk.

This recipe is so very simple to make and so worth every single calorie. This recipe has been adapted from a recipe of I retrieved from Faithanne on Bakespace.

Crust:

• 1-1/2 cups GF All Purpose Baking Flour (I recommend using Bob's Red Mill GF AP Flour and not Mama's Gluten Free Almond Blend)*
• 1/4 tsp xanthan gum + a little extra
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1/2 cup Margarine (one stick)
• 1 Tbsp Vanilla (if you can, use the real stuff not the imitation)
• 4 Tbsp Cold Milk

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 400.
• Mix all ingredients together. To make the job a bit easier cut the margarine into small cubes before mixing the dough together with a pastry blender or fork.  To show you just how well I follow directions I just realized as I was typing this that I've been using butter and not margarine sticks. Don't do what I did. Use margarine and not butter. Using butter sounds like a good idea but it makes the pie crust gooey and difficult to press into the pie pan. 
• Add the vanilla and milk one tablespoon at a time until you have incorporated all of the liquid. The dough might be a little dry and that's ok. I found that it works well to continue to work the dough with my hands (yes, I washed them first) until all of it came together.
• Place dough in between two pieces of parchment, flatten the dough with your hand, then roll out to the appropriate size with a rolling pin. Be careful not to roll it out too thin.
• Remove the dough from the parchment. This might not be easy. The dough might be a little sticky in some places. That's ok.
• Press dough into the pie pan and poke holes in the dough to allow steam to escape while baking. This will keep the crust from bubbling. 
• Bake for 10-20 minutes depending on whether or not your oven runs hot or not. Mine does so 10 minutes is good for me. The crust should be nicely browned.
• Let the crust cool completely before adding the filling.

Use a stoneware pie pan whenever possible. Not glass like I did.

Filling: 

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

3/4 cup sugar

2-oz semisweet or bittersweet (60% cacao) chocolate, melted and cooled**

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 large eggs, room temperature 

Directions:In a large mixing bowl (or the bowl of an electric mixer), cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in chocolate and vanilla extract.
Add in one egg and beat at medium speed for 5 minutes (I prefer the paddle to the whisk if you’re using an electric mixer). Scrape down sides of bowl. Add in the second egg and beat for an additional five minutes. Mixture should be very light and smooth.
Pour into pre-baked pie crust and smooth with a spatula.
Refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving, until firm.
Serve cold, with whipped cream and chocolate shavings, if desired.

Makes 1 pie. Serves 8.

Again, I failed to follow directions and didn't see that I was supposed to beat each egg into the chocolate mixture for 5 minutes each. What I did was to let the mixer run for longer after I added the 2nd egg. It still turned out just fine.

*Mama's gluten free almond blend flour is wonderful to bake with. I did find that it produces a crispier crust. If you prefer your pie crusts crispier I say go for it. If you want a thicker crust stick with using Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free AP flour. Definitely don't forget to add the xanthan gum. 
  
** I did this in a double boiler on my stove. To me it's worth the extra time for a smoother finish. The original recipe calls for 1 ounce of chocolate. 1 ounce of chocolate is definitely not enough in my book so I doubled the amount. 


To finish off the pie I took Faithanne's advice and added a dollop of whipped cream to the pie before hubby and I dived in. Hubby liked it so much he took some to work with him to share with his coworkers. The report was that it was a hit there too. 


Delicious, decadent, creamy, and chocolatey. Who could ask for more? 


Bon Appetite