Summer Berry Buns

It's the end of the weekend and I have berries that will be considered too 'past it' for packed lunches tomorrow, so I'm popping them into mini cakes instead.

This is adapted from a cake recipe we have on the back of the diet sheet we give to new patients, but for these I cut down the sugar (the fruit will sweeten them enough) and added ground almonds to make them more like a friand.

175g Wheat Free Self Raising Flour

50g Ground Almonds

1/4tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

45g Dairy and Soya Free Spread

45g Caster Sugar

160mls Milk Substitute

1tsp Vinegar or Lemon Juice

1/2tsp Vanilla Paste or Extract

1 cup Chopped Fresh or Frozen Berries

Melt spread, sugar together in a bowl.

Stir in milk substitute, vanilla, vinegar/lemon juice and set aside.

Weigh out flour and ground almonds into another bowl and stir in the bicarb.

Pour in the liquid to mix to give a smooth batter.

Add the berries and fold in.

Spoon the mixture into a greased bun or muffin tin and bake at 190ºC for 18-20mins.

I have a round base bun tin and turn them over to cool (to hide the cracked tops)

Blueberry & Lemon Muffins

Needed a quick second breakfast before swimming this morning, so knocked up a batch of these with some slightly wrinkly blueberries from the fridge!

350g Gluten Free Self Raising Flour (I used Orgran today, so needed the higher volume of fluid)

100g Sugar

75mls Vegetable Oil (or melted dairy free spread)

350-400mls Milk Substitute (some flour blends are more 'thirsty' than others)

Vanilla Paste

Zest & Juice of 1 lemon

160g Blueberries

Weigh flour and sugar into a large bowl.

Add oil, milk substitute, lemon & vanilla and mix to a smooth dropping consistency. If it's too thick, add a little more milk substitute.

Stir in the blueberries.

Spoon into a greased muffin tin.

Bake at 190ºc for 25-30mins.

Great British Bake Off Challenge - Week 2 - English Muffins

After last week's tough start, I lucked out in week 2! For anyone joining us this week, Gemma from Iced Gem Bakes has challenged me to do milk, egg, wheat and soya free versions of all the technical challenges in the Great British Bake off. 

I think English muffins was one of my first recipes on the blog. It felt like cheating putting it straight on Twitter before the programme had even finished airing, but as Mini Monster had a planned trip to hospital this week on the day I would normally do my baking, I was very, very grateful to the producers. Lets hope week 3 is allergy friendly too...

Clic here for English Muffin Recipe.

Great British Bake Off Challenge - Week 1 - Angel Food Cake 

Sausage and Tomato Muffins

Ever on the lookout for a sandwich alternative for Mini Monster, I decided to use up leftover sausages in a savoury version of my muffins for this week's pack lunches. 

2 cups Gluten free bread flour (I used Dove's Farm, you might need to adjust the fluid for a different mix)

1/4 cup sugar 

4 tsp baking powder

8 tbsp olive oil (I used about 100g of melted Pure as I'm almost out of olive oil)

2 tsp Egg replacer*(works without too)

1 cup plus 4 tbsp Oat milk (or other milk substitute)

6 cooked sausages cut into slices

A handful of cherry tomatoes cut into quarters (cut smaller if using large cherry tomatoes)

A few sprigs of fresh herbs out of the garden (oregano, sage and rosemary) - a small amount of dried herbs would be fine too.

Preheat oven to 180º C.

Mix flour, sugar, egg replacer and baking powder together in a large bowl. 

Mix milk substitute and oil in a jug or bowl.

Pour into dry ingredients and mix until almost combined.

Add the sausage, herbs and tomato and continue to mix lightly - do not over mix or they will be tough.

Spoon into greased muffin tin, fill almost to the top.

Bake for 30 mins until risen and golden brown.

Alternative flavours to try:

Spinach, basil and pine nut

Ham and leek

Mustard and herb

Lamb, apricot and cumin

Courgette and lemon

Hale & Hearty

I've never been a fan of packet mixes, not sure I've ever bought one (actually, not entirely true, 4 years ago I bought a biscuit kit for the In The Night Garden cutters in the box, but threw away the mix), but I'm aware some people do and find them easier than weighing out mixes.

Given the lack of suitable 'free from' products available off-the-shelf for multiple allergies, I was intrigued when I found Hale & Hearty cake mixes in Sainsbury's (some are now available from Ocado too). Ingredients looked good (Milk, Egg, Soya and Wheat Free), but instructions involved adding eggs and milk.

I then set about the surprisingly satisfying task of adapting the instructions to make them suitable. Suffice to say, they are now a store cupboard staple. Very easy to use AND fantastic results. Chocolate Raspberry Brownies went down particularly well on Cake Thursday at work.

Here are a few samples of what I have made so far:


Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix

Lovely with frothy Oat Milk

Double Chocolate Muffin Mix

Chocolate Banana Muffins

Classic Vanilla Sponge Mix

Orange Star Cake to take to a birthday party

Rich Chocolate Brownie Mix

Raspberry and Hazelnut Brownie

Ok, so I still couldn't bring myself to just leave the mix alone...

Quick and Easy Pizza Mix makes great breadsticks and if you really don't want to cook, the Pure Oat Flapjack are individually wrapped and handy for snacks on the go.

I will get round to posting recipes eventually...

Blackcurrant and Raspberry Muffins

Apologies for not posting for a while, I now have a massive backlog of pictures to post, but it's been a busy few months. But I think I have finally perfected my Milk, Egg, Soya and Wheat Free muffins! One advantage of the damp summer is that the black currants in the garden have ripened more gradually than normal (usually, they all ripen and fall of the bush in the space of the week we are on holiday!) allowing us to make several batches of these. The first few batches got eaten pretty quickly, but I did eventually manage to freeze some. They defrost really well and are a handy packed lunch or picnic standby to have around

2 cups Gluten free bread flour (I used Dove's Farm, you might need to adjust the fluid for a different mix)

1/2 cup sugar (I used golden caster sugar, but any would work)

4 tsp baking powder

8 tbsp olive oil (or any other vegetable oil)

2 tsp Ener-G egg replacer*

1 cup plus 4 tbsp Oat milk (or other milk substitute)

1 tsp vanilla paste (or extract)

Fruit:

The basic recipe would work with any fruit but for these I used some black currants from the garden and some frozen raspberries (slightly crushed while still hard), probably about 3/4 to 1 cup full, but I didn't measure.

Preheat oven to 180º C.

Mix flour, sugar, egg replacer and baking powder together in a large bowl. *I've just come back from Mother-in-law's house, she made these very successfully without egg replacer, so if you don't have any, don't be put off trying them.

Mix milk substitute, vanilla and oil in a jug or bowl.

Pour into dry ingredients and mix until almost combined.

Add the fruit and continue to mix lightly - do not over mix or they will be tough.

Spoon into greased muffin tin, fill almost to the top.

(optional, sprinkle on a little sugar to form a crust on top)

Bake for 30 mins until risen and golden brown.

Remove from tin to cool, or they will go soggy on the bottom.

Strawberry and Chocolate Chip Muffins

Brunch, second breakfast, or just something for the packed lunch box. These freeze well if you manage to stop your family eating them all in one go!

This is the basic muffin mix I always use at home, I just change what I'm adding for a bit of variety (or just because it's all I happen to have available). In these I used chopped strawberries, which gave a lovely fresh flavour and 3 different types of chocolate, dark(Montezuma's Giant Dark chocolate buttons), 'milk' (Moo Free chocolate) and white (left over homemade chocolate chunks made from Mortimer's White Couverture), but you could use any combination.

400g/14oz Plain Flour (also works with GF, but use less flour, or more liquid)

2 tsp Baking Powder

150g/5oz Sugar 

100g/3 1/2oz Dairy and Soya Free Spread (or olive oil)

300mls Milk substitute

1 tsp Vanilla Paste (or extract)

Chopped Strawberries (about a cupful, but more or less fine depending on how fruity you want them)

Chocolate chunks

Preheat oven to 180ºC. Grease and flour a muffin tin (or use silicon cases) - paper cases don't like the wetter egg free mix, tends to stick.

Add flour, sugar and baking powder to a bowl and mix well.

Melt spread and add to milk substitute and vanilla.

Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and carefully fold in with a metal spoon (don't overwork or they will be tough).

Fold in fruit and chocolate.

spoon into muffin tin.

Bake for about 25mins until the muffins are well risen and golden (wheat free ones never brown so well, you might want to use dark brown sugar for a bit of colour).

The white chocolate tasted great with the strawberries,
but as you can see, quite a lot melted out.

Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

For those eagle eyed readers, yes, that is a raspberry,
I had 4 left in the fridge and bunged them in too!

Eat and enjoy!

Chestnut and Chocolate Muffins

While trying to find a source of dried coconut milk that didn't contain Cow's milk (!), I discovered coconut flour is available and a useful fibre source in wheat free cooking, and is milk free. On a trip to Cambridge this weekend, I managed to get to the health food shop for a rummage, was looking for Chestnut flour, and also spied a bag of Coconut flour. Picked up both, while noting the extortionate price they charge for Oat milk, and set about looking for a recipe to try for the chestnut flour that didn't use the whole bag!

Chestnut flour is a popular ingredient in Italian cooking, but most of the traditional cakes had too many eggs for me to try a straight substitution. Spotted this recipe for muffins and as an added bonus it also used coconut flour. Made the usual substitutions (dairy free spared, oat milk and 120mls oat cream in place of the 2 eggs), but didn't look anything like the consistency in her picture for the uncooked mix. Not sure if original recipe was wrong, or as one of the comments suggested, she didn't actually mean coconut flour, but finely ground coconut, which is more oily and less absorbent. I added more oat milk until it 'looked' right and it seemed to do the trick. 

Chestnut and Chocolate Muffins

Unusually for gluten free muffins, these were actually a better texture (less crumbly) the next day and a welcome treat in today's packed lunch. The flour's have quite a strong flavour and they may be better with less chestnut flour and a little Gluten free plain flour - I'll try that next time.

Have just seen the time, so will copy out the recipe another day, or if you can't wait, follow the link above and make the substitutions yourself.