A fun way to dress up no-flour peanut butter cookies

See, I told you that you miss out if you don't click on the Sew Mama Sew links because they don't apply to you (today's theme is Boys, and we don't have any except for Mr. Fixit). The recipe link today is for Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies, which turns out to be the old standby sugar-egg-peanut butter recipe stacked with frosting.  It's obviously not something you can take to a nut-free classroom or church potluck, but if you don't have peanut problems it sounds like a winner.

No-sugar apricot treats: gluten-free, dairy-free

I found this recipe in a Company's Coming Kids' Lunch cookbook, but the identical recipe was posted on a vegan forum six years ago. So I'm not sure who borrowed it from whom. In any case, these are easy and very good. I did think they were a bit strong on the orange peel--next time I would use just a spoonful rather than the whole thing. Cut into small slices, they would look nice on a holiday cookie plate.

Apricot Logs/Balls/Slices

1.5 cups dried apricots (about 40--or a 300 g bag)
1 Tbsp water
juice of 1 medium orange
Grated peel of 1 medium orange (or less, see above)
1/2 cup flaked coconut
Flaked coconut, for coating

Measure apricots and water into casserole dish or large measuring cup. Cover and microwave on high for 2 minutes until moist and plump. (Lacking a microwave, you could pour a bit of boiling water over them and cover, or steam them briefly.) Put the apricot mixture and orange juice into a blender or food processor. Blend, stopping the blender and stirring often, until the apricots are very finally chopped. Pour mixture into a medium bowl.

Mix in the orange peel and first amount of coconut. Divide the mixture in half. Roll into two 6-inch (15 cm) logs.

Place the second amount of coconut on waxed paper. Roll the logs in coconut until well coated. Cover each log with plastic wrap. Chill about 3 hours. Cut into 1 inch (2.5 cm) pieces.

Variation: shape the mixture into 1 inch balls. Roll in the coconut and chill.

Sounds too good not to pass on (Pumpkin Pie Dip)

A Year of Crockpotting posted this Pumpkin Pie Dip recipe--perfect if you have one of the Little Dipper mini-crockpots, and it's gluten-free too (depending on what you dip, of course).

I do have a mini-crock. I bought it at a yard sale awhile back but haven't used it, and I've been watching Steph's ongoing dip recipes and thinking I'd like to try some of them. This one might be fun for Thanksgiving weekend (yes, that's this weekend in Canada).

UPDATE: I made my own version this afternoon, and it's good too!

Gluten-Free Pantry French Bread and Pizza Mix (review)

OK, I made it to the health food store today and got a package of xanthan gum and some other things, so no more excuses. I also picked up a package of Gluten-Free Pantry's French Bread and Pizza Mix, since I wanted to make pizza and had heard good things about that brand.

Price: $4.99 for a mix that makes two 12-inch pizzas seems fairly reasonable, but is a bit misleading because what you're basically getting is the flour mixture and the yeast. You have to add eggs, vinegar, salt, sugar, water/milk and oil, plus your pizza sauce, cheese and toppings. And pay for oven heat if you're making pizza. Still...considering the price of gluten-free flours, it doesn't seem like such a bad deal.

Ease of use / clear directions: Although I didn't bake it as French bread, the bread machine instructions seemed pretty straightforward. The pizza instructions, on the other hand, are a bit vague, and have caused trouble for some people. However, ours turned out fine (see below).

Taste / texture: Excellent. It held together (which is more than I can say for some regular homemade pizzas I've made), was crispy but not rock-hard around the edges, solid on the bottom and bready inside, and tasted more-or-less like regular pizza crust; I'd give the overall texture and appearance 9 out of 10 and the mouth-feel about 8 1/2. Since I bought the mix and prepared it myself (and cleaned up the mixing bowls) and we did not utter the GF word during the meal, the pizza was deemed to be acceptable by the Squirrelings. (As I said, they probably thought it was better than some of Mama Squirrel's previous attempts at pizza.)

Okay, so how did I make it turn out well with the sketchy directions from the package? I put all the ingredients in the breadmaker and put it on "pizza dough" setting--20 minutes to mix, 30 minutes to rise. It needed a bit of help to get mixed properly, especially with the very little mixing blade in our machine--I can see where a mixer might do a better or at least quicker job on that. Or it might even work in the food processor--no guarantees that the batter wouldn't gum things up, but it could be worth a shot.

When the cycle was done, I scraped the whole thing out of the bread machine pan into a bowl, just to see what was up and if it needed any more mixing. Like most gluten-free bread "doughs," it was more of a sticky batter at that point than a stretchy dough. I non-stick-sprayed our two 12-inch metal pizza pans, and used a rubber spatula to push half the dough out on each pan. It still looked a bit rough at that point, and trying to get it to form a ridge around the edges was pretty useless. But this is where I lucked out: since I had a bit of time to spare, I covered each pizza with a piece of sprayed plastic wrap and let them sit on the table while I grated cheese, mixed up sauce and so on. And lo and behold...that dough began to rise a bit, and to cover more of the pans. And I figured out that I could use the spatula, right through the plastic, to keep pushing the dough a little more toward the edges and push it up into a ridge. The dough sat on the table for somewhere between twenty minutes to half an hour, and I think that extra time helped it turn out. I would do it in the same way again next time, let it rise for a short time in the bread pan or a bowl, and then the rest of the time right on the pizza pans.

I was going to par-bake the pizzas and then top and finish them, even though the package just said to bake the whole thing at 450 degrees for 15 minutes; but the oven was hot so I ended up just topping them and putting them in. The time and temperature seemed right; I switched the pans halfway because the top of our oven is always hotter than the bottom. I let them sit for a few minutes when they came out, and cut them with a pizza wheel.

Sorry I didn't take a picture! We still have some leftovers in the fridge, because Mr. Fixit also made a potful of his grandma's potato-sausage-bean soup, and that's a filler-upper.

Gluten-free Dutch Chocolate Chip Cookies, and a story

My mom, my aunt and my grandma used to pass recipes around to each other a lot. The interesting thing was that, like that old game show where moms had to guess which ketchup-chocolate-peanut creation was baked by their own offspring, each person's baking seemed to turn out differently--even using the same recipe. One recipe that they all had a try at, about thirty years ago, was what we called Dutch Chocolate Chip Cookies--because they came out of the Dutch Cookbook--which I can't remember the proper name of or even whether it really was a Dutch cookbook or Pennsylvania Dutch.

These cookies were like nothing I've had in years. They had approximately twice the fat and twice the sugar of any normal chocolate chip cookie (I seem to remember a cup of butter AND a cup of shortening); one cookie on a paper napkin would leave a grease splotch as big as if you'd put a piece of just-fried bacon there instead. The other notable thing about them was their fragility--you needed the paper napkin, because these cookies would break in half without warning and leave a trail of crumbs everywhere--greasy crumbs, of course. We kids thought they were wonderful.

I remember that recipe kind of running rampant for a year or so after my mom and her fellow bakers discovered it; they kept making batches and trying to figure out why one person's were flatter or puffier than another's. Then I think it died a natural death (probably of clogged arteries).

Flash-forward to this week when I got an unquenchable chocolate-sugar craving and decided to adapt (gluten-free, egg-free) an old chocolate-chip recipe from Family Fun magazine. (I looked online but didn't find it on their website.) Results: a pale, slightly fragile chocolate chip cookie with a tiny bit of sandy texture from the rice flour, but otherwise quite an acceptable taste. It was when I was eating a second, or maybe a third, that I realized what was tugging at the back of my mind: made with gluten-free flours, these are about as close to Those Cookies as I've had in about thirty years. Well, without the greasy splotches.

So here's the recipe. The only complicated thing about it (if you have the gluten-free flours) is that I cut down a flour mix from this wonderful post on the Going Gluten-Free blog. I didn't have enough of everything to make a big batch of flour mix, so I made a third-size batch, which was enough for the cookies and left a cupful of mix to use for something else.

Clear as melted chocolate chips?

Gluten-Free Dutch Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 eggs or equivalent replacer (powdered replacer mixed with liquid)
1 tsp. vanilla
2 1/4 cups of this flour mix: 2 cups white rice flour, 1/3 cup each tapioca flour, potato starch, and corn starch; and 1 tsp. Xanthan gum (see note above: you will have some mix left over)
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2 cups chocolate chips or as desired (we only put in about a cupful)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Cream butter, sugars, eggs (or replacer) and vanilla.
Combine dry ingredients and add.
Stir in chocolate chips last.
Drop by spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake 10 to 12 minutes (watch them, don't let them get dark). Cool on pans several minutes, then on rack.
Makes about 60 cookies.