Gluten Free Baking – Chocolate Eclairs

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I couldn’t help myself, they were serving chocolate eclairs for pudding at school this week. Just watching people devour that lovely chocolate coated, cream filled patisserie, my mouth was watering. Of course, to my knowledge, you can’t buy GF eclairs, not round here anyway but you can buy GF profiteroles from Tesco so they can’t be impossible to make! In those famous words….how hard can it be?

I tend to take a ‘normal’ recipe and see if I can substitute in GF flour. Quite often due to the fineness of GF flour it often takes more than the recipe calls for, the key is to work out how much more.

I set about with an online recipe and by a little trial and error modified the recipe until the consistency felt right.

The ingredients are fairly straightforward;

150g GF self raising flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp sugar

150ml water

75g butter

2 eggs

Start by sifting the flour into a bowl and add the baking powder and sugar.

Melt the butter and water in a saucepan on a low heat, then bring to the boil.

As soon as it is boiling, remove from the heat and add the flour mix in one go. Using a wooden spoon beat to form a soft dough.

Allow to cool a little then add the eggs to the mix and beat thoroughly to mix them in, initially it will feel like they don’t want to mix in, but keep going they will eventually form a smooth shiny dough.

Break off balls of dough and form them into eclair shaped pieces, lay them onto a grease-proof covered baking tray.

Bake in a preheated oven 170 deg for 25 mins. remove from the oven, turn over and pierce the underside to release the steam. allow to cool for 10 mins.

Cover in melted chocolate and fill with squirty cream

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Enjoy…….

Gluten free soda bread, a quick and easy recipe

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I’ve been diagnosed coeliac for the last 10 years and during that time have experimented with many different GF recipes. Mostly they have been very successful but one area that has not yielded much success is making bread. I brought a bread maker about 5 or 6 years ago in the hopes that this may be the answer, but unfortunately no luck for me. So no matter what I’ve tried, I seem to have spent hours, mixing and proving only to end up with a heavy, solid loaf.

The success came when our sons jointly bought me a KitchenAid, a special treat for my ‘big’ birthday. Also I found a recipe for a no yeast, no proving needed, soda bread recipe.

The kitchen aid comes with three attachments, one of which is a dough hook,

 

The dough hook has the action of kneeding the mix to add air, which I do remember back from my childhood days of my Mums old Kenwood Chef.

 
                                                  credit: pinterest

So I set about experimenting to create the soda bread. One of the key things it seems to me, is that you are always told not to overwork the GF flour, so in the past I would’ve done a limited amount of kneeding, but oh no, it seems that allowing the dough hook to thoroughly mix and then kneed the dough seems to be the answer.

Recipe:

400g GF Self raising four (some extra if the mixture seems too wet)

1/2 tsp baking power

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

300ml butter milk

1 egg

Mix the egg with the buttermilk, then add all ingredients into the KitchenAid

With the dough hook attachment, allow all the ingredients to thoroughly combine, ensure all the flour has mixed in,

Then allow the dough hook to mix for at least 10mins.

Prepare either a 1lb loaf tin or a baking tray.

Either put all the mixture into the loaf tin and bake at 160 deg for 35 to 40 mins

or place small balls of dough on the baking tray and bake at 160 deg for 25 -30 mins.

The dough will rise beautifully giving tasty soft textured bread.

 

Best eaten the same day ?