Category Archives: gluten free

Jack is Cooking Gluten Free Rhubarb Cake

Posted on by under cake, gluten free, rhubarb
Well Hello Internet!

The other day i made a rhubarb cake.  this is a cake my grandmother makes all the time for my dad.  its his favorite cake!  i have modified the recipe to make it gluten free!  

its a fairly easy recipe.  its just a basic yellow cake (not that uranium stuff….) recipe, except using gluten free baking mix instead of cake flour.

heres what you’ll need:

for the cake:

2 cups gluten free baking mix (i like to use arrowhead mills  gluten free all purpose baking mix)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla
3/4 cup milk

First!  Preheat the oven to 350°  and grease up 2 round baking pans

then in one bowl mix the flour, baking powder, and salt with a wire whisk.

in another bowl (i use my mixing machine to do this) Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  (sugar and butter is delicious.  don’t eat it!) then Beat in the eggs.  Add the vanilla and mix until it is totally combined . Slowly add flour and milk.  do this alternately.  a little bit of flour, a little bit of milk. 
when its done it should be nice and smooth.  i found that with the gluten free flour it was even a little airy!  

divide the batter evenly between the two pans, and bake at 350° for about 30 minutes, or until a tooth pick comes out smooth.  while this is cooking you can make the rhubarb filling.

heres what you’ll need
4-5 long pieces of rhubarb
lemon juice
water
1/4 cup or less of sugar

First chop of the rhubarb, and put in a large pan.  put just enough water to cover.  stew this for about 30-45 minutes, until the rubarb falls apart and most of the water has evaporated.  it will look a little bit like jam.  then add in some lemon juice, and add sugar to taste.

After the cake has cooled down, and the rhubarb has cooled down take a good amount of the rhubarb and put it on one side of the cake.  take the other cake and put it on top.  dust it with some powdered sugar!  and that’s all there is to it!



this cake is excellent with tea!


mmmm mmmm delicious!

Jack is Cooking Gluten Free Carrot Cake

Posted on by under cake, carrot, gluten free, walnuts

Well Hello Internet!

Last night i made a Gluten Free Carrot Cake.

its pretty easy to make!  heres what you’ll need:

2.5 cups gluten free flour  (i used arrowhead mills all purpose gluten free flour.  it is a fantastic GF mix)
3 teaspoons baking powder 
1 teaspoons salt 
1 teaspoon cinnamon 
1 cup sugar 
3/4 cup corn oil
4 eggs slightly beaten 
1 tablespoon REAL mayonaise 
2 cups grated carrots 
1/2 cup chopped walnuts 
9 oz or so canened crushed pineapple with juice 
1/2 cup dried cranberries


What you’ll need for the frosting:
Cream cheese frosting: 
1/2 cup melted
8 ounces cream cheese softened 
1.25 cups of powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla 

Directions 
preheat the oven to 350°
i did this in my kitchen Aid, but you can do it by hand if you want.   mix flour, baking powder,  salt, sugar and cinnamon.  Mix in the  corn oil, eggs, and mayonaise. Stir well. Stir in the carrots, the nuts, the cranberries, and pineapple. 
i used 2 circular 9″ cake pans.  this mixture makes the perfect amount for these two pans.  grease the pans and fill them with the batter.  bake for 35 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Cream Cheese Fosting 
whip all ingredients together till fluffy.


when the cake cools down, put one layer down, and spread frosting on the first layer.  put the second cake on top, and spread the frosting all over the top and the sides!  then you can put nuts all around the side, and a little more on top. 

(yes this is actually the cake that i made! did i mention i am a photographer?  i took the cake to work with me, so i could take a picture outside of my kitchen)
mmm mmm delicious


Jack is Cooking Gluten Free Pancetta Chestnut Stuffing

Posted on by under carrots, chestnuts, gluten free, pancetta, Stuffing

Well Hello Internet!

Another Huge part of any christmas meal, or any meal involving turkey for that matter is the Stuffing.
Stuffing also contains a huge amount of Gluten, so my sister and I set out to make a gluten free stuffing.

We started with a recipe we saw on the food network, and then changed just about everything to make it far more delicious and far more Gluten Free.

Heres what you’ll need:

3 cloves garlic
6 tablespoons butter
8 oz pancetta diced
2 large onions chopped
2 carrots peeled and chopped
2 tablespoons chopped Fresh Rosemary
1 large jar of roasted whole peeled chestnuts (coarsely chopped)
1 lb of crusty gluten free baguettes chopped up into little cubes(you can often find these in the frozen section of fancy-ish grocery stores.  but if you are gluten-free you probably know where to get these kinds of things.  Whole foods definitely has it, as do more and more stores these days)
1 cup of chicken/turkey broth
salt and pepper
2 large eggs beaten

First!
take 2 tablepoons of the butter and melt in a pan.  fry up the pancetta until its kinda crispy.

drain all the grease out and put into a bowl

Next,
take the rest of the butter and melt into a pan.  cook the onions, carrots, rosemary, and garlic together until the onions are tender.
stir in the chestnuts.
put everything in the bowl with the pancetta and stir until mixed.
add in the bread chunksand toss to coat.  add the broth until its nice and moist, season with salt and pepper, and then mix in the beaten eggs.
pour into a baking pan
If you are cooking a huge meal (as we were) it is advisable to do this the day before, and refrigerate until the next day when you are ready to cook.
so
next day!
put some of this stuffing inside the turkey!  yum yum
the rest of the stuffing cover with tinfoil and bake at 350 for 30 minutes  then remove the tinfoil and bake another 15 minutes
Heres a tip:  if you are cooking this stuffing as part of a larger meal, remember this takes only 45 minutes to cook, and the turkey takes like 4 hours or something.  so cook this at the end!
in my larger conglomerate post about Christmas Dinner i will talk about the timing of everything!
mmmm mmmm delicious!

Jack is Cooking Gluten Free Chipolata Sausages

Posted on by under chipolata, gluten free, pork chops, sausage

Well Hello Internet!

In England, a traditional part of any Christmas Lunch/Dinner is Chipolata sausages.  these sausages are extremely delicious, and go along very well with all the other deliciousness that is the traditional English Christmas Dinner.  Sometimes they are wrapped in bacon and served as an appetizer, and sometimes they are just served right along with the turkey.

Two problems have arisen with chipolatas however!

the first problem is that, they are impossible to find in the good old U.S.A except for in a few specialty shops in NYC.  (after all, New York City is not really part of America, but really just a buffer between America and the rest of the world.  I have come to realize this more and more, every time i venture inland and visit the landlocked states.  woah!  this is a blog about cooking!  enough of this topic!)

Anyways, the Second problem with Chipolata sausages is they are inherently filled with Gluten!
so we can’t go to the fancy specialty shops in the city to buy them.  our only option is to make them from scratch!

so heres what you’ll need to make these delicious Gluten Free Chipolata Sausages:

(i used half this because i didn’t want to make 8 or more lbs of sausages!!)

7.5 lbs pork butt
1 lb pork fatback
(if you don’t have a meat grinder, just use ground pork, but make sure its kind of on the fatty side.  like 85% lean, or maybe even less.  these sausages need fat in them.  when they cook it all melts out, but its very necessary for the authenticity)

1 tablespoon sage
1 teaspoon dried onion flakes
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon mace (mace is the outer shell of a nutmeg… nut.  if you cant find any you can grate some fresh nutmeg instead)
1.5 tablespoon salt
6 oz GLUTEN FREE bread crumbs
1 tablespoon pepper
1 pint water
Sausage casings!

so grind up the meat if you are grinding it yourself.  then put it in the fridge.  if you have preground pork, skip this step just put it in the fridge…

next in a bowl put the water, and all the herbs and spices and breadcrumbs.  mix together into a kind of mush.

then take the ground meat out of the fridge and in a food processor, blend the meat and the spice mixture together.  until its totally mixed!:

The next part is getting this mixture inside of the sausage casings!
i recommend a sausage stuffing machine…
i did not have one.
after  many different failed attempts of this my dad figured out a solution.
what you’ll need is a large soda bottle.  and a small soda bottle.
the large one we used was plastic. cut the large bottle in half to make a funnel
the small one was glass.
heres the machine at work:
Pull the sausage casing all the way up the spout of the big bottle.  fill the big bottle with meat, and use the small bottle to push it down forcing it out into the casings.  it takes a little while, and a lot of patience!
but in the end, you have sausages!  yay!!
mmm mmm delicious!

Jack is Cooking (Baking) Gluten Free Croissants – That taste like REAL Croissants

Posted on by under croissants, gluten free

Well Hello Internet!

Normally on Christmas morning we all wake up early and open our stockings (YES Santa still comes and visits our house even though we are all grown up! 🙂  ) and then eat some kind of delicious pastry before moving on to the more serious presents that have piled up under our enormous Christmas Tree.

However, in the last few years we have been at a loss as what kind of pastry to eat because both my mom and my sister can no longer eat gluten.

so i took it upon myself to figure out how to make Gluten Free Croissants.

i’ve never even made regular croissants before, but how hard could it be i figured…

haha!  apparently croissants are complicated!  but i did it anyway.
and i did it gluten free.

and guess what!  they were perfect.  they were more than perfect.  they are so perfect that im not even going to put the recipe here, because i feel like i’ve discovered some kind of Gold!

Gluten Free Croissants people!  all the gluten free people out there are gonna be breaking down my door to eat these things.

and since it was the first time, i know that i can make them even better, and even more perfect than they were before!

Anyhow,
here are some pictures of the process – minus the ingredients…

Here i am preparing the dough:  it takes lots of pounding and punching!

Then there is a rising period…  followed by more punching, and then more rising.
Then the dough is rolled out, and butter is added.  LOTS of butter!!!  mmmm mmmm can’t have croissants without butter!
The butter is encased in the dough, and then all the folding and rolling begins
Roll and fold and chill and roll and fold and chill and roll and fold and chill
(this whole process takes about 11-12 hours at minimum btw)
finally they are ready for cutting and rolling!
 yum yum
then these little rolled croissants are frozen before baking

and tah-dah!  croissants!
that one in the middle got a sausage in it!  how did that happen?  mmmmm  check out the sausage post too.  we made those from scratch also!
mmmm mmmm delicious.
p.s. one day in the near future perhaps a bakery will open that i will bake in where people can buy gluten free croissants….