Gluten-free brownies

I've been utilising my holiday to experiment with new recipes in order to widen my baking repertoire and also to improve my existing good old recipes! It's been so much fun and I've been amazed how many different kinds of ingredients are available when it comes to gluten-free and or or organic baking. We are so spoiled to have all those choices - by the way, I LOVE gluten!!

Anyway, it's always good to offer something different for those who can eat only gluten free goodies, so I'm trying to come up with at least 2 or 3 good gluten-free recipes.

The other day, when I went to check out the markets, I saw spelt brownies. I looked gluten-free information on the net and found that spelt is actually not gluten-free. So I thought a bit and decided to experiment with buckwheat flour. It's full of goodness and is really close to my culture, so it'd be my kind of ingredient:) The only problem with buckwheat is that it's so overpowering and it interferes with other ingredients. I'm hoping that with this brownie - so rich in chocolate and cocoa flavour and a hint of Kahlua, you wouldn't smell too much of buckwheat. It still does have that flavour tiny bit but I think it's not that noticeable.

I may try to substitute almond meal for other gluten-free flour so that people with nut allergy can eat this too:)

Gluten-free brownies

250 g unsalted butter
300 g dark cooking chocolate
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
3/4 cup almond meal
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tablespoon Kahlua leaguer

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees. Grease and line a 4cm deep, 18cm x 25cm slice pan. Shift the almond meal, buckwheat flour and cocoa powder together.
2. Place the butter and chocolate in a saucepan on low heat, stirring occasionally until they melt. Remove the pan from the heat and add the sugar, mixing well to combine.
3. Place the eggs in the bowl and beat well. Slowly beat in the chocolate mixture, then fold in the almond meal, buckwheat flour and cocoa powder. Beat well until combined.
4. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and bake in the oven for about 30 mins or until the top has formed a crust but the centre is still slightly gooey when a skewer is inserted. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the pan before turning out.

Apricot & Walnut Soda Bread

This morning, I had a craving for the amazing breads from the Flour Power bakery but felt so lazy that couldn't be bothered driving all the way to West End just for bread. So, I decided to go for an easy option - making this good old soda bread (a recipe from Japan)!

The original recipe said to use figs but I didn't have any, so I used dried apricots instead. I would have loved to use some sort of healthier flour such as organic wholemeal, etc but the texture of this dough is pretty dense already so decided not to use anything like that. Would be good to experiment with some different kinds of flour and to find a trick to make it still work with flours that give denser texture to dough!!

You'd be able to enjoy this soda bread within 40mins or so after you get up so I totally recommend it for a lazy Sunday brekkie/brunch :)

Apricot(Fig) & Walnut Soda Bread

150 g dried apricots(figs), roughly chopped
50 g chopped walnuts
250 g plainflour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup plain yoghurt
1/2 cup milk

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees.
2. Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar together in a bowl.
3. Add the apricots and walnuts then make a well in the centre. Add the yoghurt and milk and mix everything by hand till everything is just combined.
4. Form a log and criss-cross the top, then bake in the 170 degrees oven for 30 mins. Serve the bread with butter and jam if you like.

Cinnamon & sultana snail rolls

Freshly baked scrolls are one of the things I can never resist when I go past bakeries. As usual, I thought if I make my own, I can have as many as I want, so here they are!

This is originally from Bill Granger's "Sydney Food" but I usually put all the dough ingredients into my breadmaker and get the machine to do the kneading. Then all I have to do is sprinkle the cinnamon sugar, roll the dough up and then bake the scrolls.

If you like something a bit different, you could add 1 teaspoon cardamom with all other dough ingredients.

Cinnamon & raisin snail rolls (makes 12)

dough
14g dried yeast
1/4 cup lukewarm water
1 cup milk
125g unsalted butter, cubed
4 cups plain flour
a pinch of salt
1/4 cup sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2/3 cup sultanas


80g unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup raw sugar
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon


1. To make the dough, put all the dough ingredients into your breadmaker. Set the breadmaker to "knead" mode and leave it until it is finished. Put the dough into a large bowl and leave it until the dough has doubled in size.

2. Punch the dough down and turn out onto a lightly floured bench. Roll it into a 23 x 60cm rectangle. Brush generously with the melted butter and sprinkle raw sugar and cinnamon evenly over the surface.

3. Roll the dough up from the short end, swiss-roll style, to make a log. Cut the roll, seam-side-down, into 2cm thick slices between each slice. Cover loosely to and leave to rise until doubled. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

4. Bake the rolls for 20 - 30 mins. They freeze well if you can't finish them all at once.

That Bailey's Marbled Cheesecake

This is the one I made for the cocktail party the other day.
I found the original recipe on the net but wanted to add some stuff to it, so here it is. I usually don't write the recipes down so it's approximate but hope this works for you.

Bailey's Marbled Cheesecake

1/2 cup butter, melted
2 cups biscuits(I used vanilla and chocolate ones)
500g cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
250g sour light cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup Baileys Irish cream
100g dark chocolate, melted

1. Line a 9-inch springform tin with baking paper. For the crust, roll the biscuits with a rolling pin into crumbs and combine them with melted butter. Press firmly evenly over bottom of the tin.

2. Mix cream cheese with sugar. Beat eggs one at a time. Add vanilla, sour cream and Baileys and mix well.

3. Take about 1/4 of the mixture into the smaller bowl and mix it with the melted chocolate.

4. Pour the plain mixture into the prepared tin and then pour the chocolate mixture on top. Make a marbled design by gently swirling batter with small knife.

5. Bake in a preheated 160 degrees oven for 1 hour. Refrigerate the cake overnight.

Our favourite pikelets recipe

We love these for weekend brekkies!!!
Recently we've been harvesting our first lemons from Ben's grandma so we have more excuses to make these pikelets:)

Pikelets

1 cup self-raising flour
pinch salt
1/4 teaspoon bi-carb soda
3/4 sour milk (3/4 cup milk + 1 tablespoon lemon juice)
3 tablespoons sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon melted butter

1. Sift dry ingredients, add sugar.

2. Mix to a smooth batter with beaten egg and milk, add melted butter.

3. Heat and grease pan, drop batter and cook until bubbly on top, light brown underneath. Turn, cook other side.