So the Christmas/Hanukkah/New Year's/Whatever You Celebrate I a on us, and that inevitably means making. Thanks to a few parties (and a cheeky request from a friend), I'm already on my second round of Christmas baking this season. It's amazing how the initial response of 'What's a Nanimo Bar?' from a Brit, quickly leads to 'Bloody hell, that was amazing, are there more?!' Thankfully, that's a recipe I have mastered.
What I have yet to master is gluten free baking. I have a number of friends who are Ceoliac, and as I am always up for a culinary challenge, I try to make at least one thing they can eat. Alas, this often results in more disasters than results, but hey, not everything can go right!
So this month's Co-op Magazine had a recipe for cinnamon cookies that didn't involve flour, so I thought I would give them a go.
It lists the following ingredients -
1 egg white
200g icing sugar
250g ground almonds
2 tsp of ground cinnamon
As directed, I beat the egg white with the mixer. This was the first problem. I have a standing mixer that has a deep mixing bowl, and with only 1 egg white, there wasn't enough in the bowl to work. So I had to do this by hand with a whisk, which does begin to hurt after a while when you are trying to get it to soft peaks.
Once I did that, I whisked in half the icing sugar as directed. It just kind of became a gunky mess. Then I stored in the ground almonds and the cinammon. The recipe says, 'until you get a stiff, slightly sticky dough's. Instead, I got this -
Neither stiff, nor slightly sticky. More crumbly like pastry. But not pastry, as there is no fat in it (other than the almonds). The directions said to chill it, so I put it in the fridge for a while.
Then the recipe said to divide the dough into quarters and roll it between two pieces of greaseproof paper. Well, as it didn't even stick together, this is what I got -
I tried adding another egg white to see if that would give it more to stick it together, but that didn't help. I gave up and binned it.
So now I was left with two egg yolks to use up, I made something wheat-y -
Don't mind if I do!
What I have yet to master is gluten free baking. I have a number of friends who are Ceoliac, and as I am always up for a culinary challenge, I try to make at least one thing they can eat. Alas, this often results in more disasters than results, but hey, not everything can go right!
So this month's Co-op Magazine had a recipe for cinnamon cookies that didn't involve flour, so I thought I would give them a go.
It lists the following ingredients -
1 egg white
200g icing sugar
250g ground almonds
2 tsp of ground cinnamon
As directed, I beat the egg white with the mixer. This was the first problem. I have a standing mixer that has a deep mixing bowl, and with only 1 egg white, there wasn't enough in the bowl to work. So I had to do this by hand with a whisk, which does begin to hurt after a while when you are trying to get it to soft peaks.
Once I did that, I whisked in half the icing sugar as directed. It just kind of became a gunky mess. Then I stored in the ground almonds and the cinammon. The recipe says, 'until you get a stiff, slightly sticky dough's. Instead, I got this -
Neither stiff, nor slightly sticky. More crumbly like pastry. But not pastry, as there is no fat in it (other than the almonds). The directions said to chill it, so I put it in the fridge for a while.
Then the recipe said to divide the dough into quarters and roll it between two pieces of greaseproof paper. Well, as it didn't even stick together, this is what I got -
I tried adding another egg white to see if that would give it more to stick it together, but that didn't help. I gave up and binned it.
So now I was left with two egg yolks to use up, I made something wheat-y -
Don't mind if I do!
