Lab Night #8: "Powdered Sugar Doughnut" Muffins

Lab Night #8

"Powdered Sugar Doughnut" Muffins

The GF baker Elizabeth Barbone was very kind to give us a preview of her forthcoming cookbook "How to Cook Gluten Free". Here is the link so you can check it out:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Gluten-Free-Recipes-Really/dp/1891105515/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_1

She asked us to test drive a recipe, so we chose these muffins.

Here is the recipe and what we used:

"Powdered Sugar Doughnut" Muffins

Gluten-free nonstick cooking spray

Dry Ingredients

3/4 cup white rice flour

1/2 cup cornstarch

1/4 cup sweet rice flour

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 teaspoons baking power

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Wet Ingredients

3/4 cup milk

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 large egg

1 package (1 pound) powdered sugar

Instructions:

1. Adjust oven rack to the middle position and
preheat the oven to 350ºF. Lightly grease the
cavities of a mini muffin pan with nonstick
cooking spray.

None of us actually own a mini-muffin pan, so we just used regular size muffin pans. We decided to make several batches so we could share them. We had 1 new stoneware pan, 1 steel pan and 2 aluminum pans. It is not good to use nonstick cooking spray on stoneware, so we brushed on olive oil for that one.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry
ingredients. 

 

Add the wet ingredients and whisk
to combine.

 The batter will be thin.

 

 And it was.

3. Fill the muffin cavities about half full. Bake for
20 to 25 minutes, until the muffins are golden
brown.

20 minutes was just right.

4. While the muffins are baking, fill an 8-inch
square baking dish with the powdered sugar.

We decided to try some muffins without baking papers and some with. In the end it didn't seem to matter much.

 
 Here is the second snag we ran into: the stoneware pan made the muffins really stick in the cups. We think it is partially because the pan is new and has no seasoned nonstick surface developed yet, and also because it takes a long time for stoneware to cool. The muffins came out much easier once the pan was mostly cooled. The metal pans worked much better this time around.

5. Remove the muffins from the oven and
working in batches, place them directly into
the powdered sugar. Gently roll the muffins in
the sugar to cover them. The steam from the
hot muffins will make the sugar stick to the
muffins. Remove the muffins from the sugar
and tap off any excess.
Pretty easy!

Transfer the muffins
to a wire rack to cool. Store in an airtight
container for up to 3 days or freeze for up to 1
month.

Here is our finished product. 

Our taste testers upon the first bite said "These taste like sausage!" After we had all tasted them, we determined that the 'sausage' taste must come from the nutmeg. Who knew that nutmeg is a sausage seasoning?

We decided that next time we make these, we might try another seasoning instead of nutmeg, maybe cinnamon?

As to whether they really taste like "powdered sugar doughnuts", our jury is still out. You will have to try them for yourself and see! Just remember not to inhale just before you take a bite!

Makes 24 mini muffins

Gluten Free Fun!!

I had the great honor of baking a birthday cake for the adorable Connor for his second birthday. This project was so much fun, the task make a yummy Elmo gluten free rainbow cake and Elmo themed cake pops. Challenge Accepted!!



Betty you ROCK lady!!! I don't get any money for this but this cake is awesome I highly recommend it to any of you who follow a gluten free diet.



Not too shabby for my first candy character if I say so myself.



The finished outside of the cake as you can see I had to do some emergency eye surgery on Elmo.



The beautiful inside!! This cake turned out awesome!!! The layers didn't rise as much as a full loaded with gluten cake but it still looks awesome and tasted fab!



Mmmmmm is it bad that I want to make this again and eat the whole thing myself?!;)



The Elmo cake pops turned out cute. I made them with the same gluten free cake mix and some homemade buttercream frosting. And.....



They are kid approved!! Cute side story after Connor ate the nose of Elmo he looked at the cake pop and got sad because Elmo lost his nose it was too cute and a little sad.

This project was soooo much fun and it was pretty easy. I definitely recommend giving it a shot it makes for a beautiful and stunning cake!! And the cake pops are adorable!

Head over to Sweetapolita for instructions on how to make the rainbow cake.

For the cake pops head over to Bakerella for instructions.


With Love Missy

Chewy Chocolate Meringues

These meringues are super easy and delish. This is my first attempt at making meringues and it was a lot easier than I thought. This recipe comes from the new cookbook Home Baked Comfort, which I discovered over at my new blogssesion Bakerella

P.S. this is a great arm work out






Sorry about the photo quality my camera was having a diva moment and decided not to work so I had to use my iPhone. And we are beating the eggs and sugar.





And still beating






Almost there arms burning. Thank goodness for electric mixers other wise this could have been a disaster.





Finally done now onto folding in the bittersweet chocolate.





Ready for the oven





And yes they are suppose to have cracks in them.





Mmmmmmmm delish!!

I left out the chocolate nibs and the cocoa powder cause I forgot to buy some, but they still came out amazing. I am definitely going to make these again.

Chewy Chocolate Meringues (adapted from Home Baked Comfort)

1 cup large egg whites-about 7
2 cups sugar
5 tablespoons natural cocoa powder
4 oz bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
4 oz cocoa nibs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
In a clean, dry heat proof bowl, whisk together egg whites and sugar. Set over, but not touching simmering water in a sauce pan. Whisk until the sugar is Dissolved and remove from heat. Beat the eggs on high using your mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Beat until stiff and glossy. Sift cocoa over meringue. Sprinkle chopped chocolate and cocoa nibs on top. Then fold together gently with a spatula until combined.
Use a scoop to drop even amounts of batter onto prepared baking sheets about 2 inches apart. Bake for about 8-9 minutes. Rotate pans and bake for another 8-9 minutes until cookies are fluffy and full of cracks. Transfer the cookies, leaving them on the parchment paper, to wire racks to cool.

Makes about 2 dozen.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Link to recipe card: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zjP2VSCNzkAGEFSBR5RmmyBcWLT0U0LTtnEqAvppGfE/edit?authkey=CL2P2J0H

Lab Night #2 Crepes!

For our second GF experiment night, we chose to make crepes.

These proved to be quite easy!

We tried 2 different recipes with varying results.

Batch #1

In large mixing bowl combine:

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup whole milk

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbs brown sugar

3 tbs melted butter

Sift and then add:

1 cup Sun Flour Mills Gluten Free All Purpose Pastry Flour

1/2 tsp xanthan gum

1/4 tsp salt

Scoop by 1/4 cup fulls into a greased (we used cooking spray) frying pan over medium heat. Spread or rotate around pan to get coverage of at least 8 inches.

Shaun oversees the batter building.

Results:

Our batter did not turn out thin enough so we had to spread the batter in the pan.

The pan was too hot. We suggest medium-low heat.

1/4 cup batter was not enough to make a decent size crepe, so we upped it to 1/2 cup.

The flavor was good, but the texture was kind of rubbery probably because they were too thick.

Cream Cheese and Marionberry fillings for the first batch.

Batch #2

2 eggs

1 1/4 cups whole milk

1/2 cup Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Flour

1 tbs melted butter

1/2 tsp vanilla

Dash of salt

In medium bowl whisk together the eggs and milk.

Stir in the flour until the batter is smooth.

Add butter, vanilla and salt, whisk until blended.

The batter should be the consistency of thin cream, if it is too thick slowly add more milk as needed.

Use ladle to scoop about 1/2 cup batter into a greased frying pan, heated to medium.

Tilt the pan quickly so the batter is evenly distributed. It shouldn't be more than a couple millimeters thick.

Use a rubber spatula to scrape the thinnest edges of the crepe into a nice round shape.

Cook until the bottom is starting to brown.

Ideally, you should be able to flip the crepe in the pan, but if you are not so coordinated, you can use a large spatula to flip the crepe and cook the other side until it is also slightly browned.

Slide the crepe out of the pan and fill as desired.

Results:

These turned out perfect!

The batter was just the right consistency and spread out very nice and thin.

We decided to eliminate the sugar in this recipe to try for a more savory flavor than the last batch.

We accidentally added twice the amount of vanilla so it was a bit vanilla-y but it was still quite yummy.

The original recipe suggested you place the frying pan under a broiler to brown the top of the crepe, but this method was not preferred by us. Flipping it is not that hard and you get a better browning finish.

Final savory crepe.

Fillings

We tried 2 desert fillings and a savory dinner filling.

1) Nuttella and bananas

Simple and delicious!

2) Cream cheese and marionberry syrup

Also simple and delicious! You could use any fruit for this.

3) Grilled salmon, cream cheese, diced green onions and tomato

Savory goodness! But don't put in too much cream cheese or it will overpower the fish.

Pretty!

Crepes are very versatile. To make your desert crepes extra yummy, you can add lots of neat things to the batter such as rum or brandy, almond flavoring, chocolate syrup, or just extra sugar.

To make your savory crepes extra yummy, try a hot sauce like siracha, black pepper or garlic. And of course let your imagination run wild with the fillings!

Tim and Connor sample the fare.

Link to recipe card: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Evl0MTnkoeySn_r5bugMCzG4mgYIHkYlnNx_wLANhJQ/edit

Lab night #1 Cannoli!

Hi everyone!

Here is documentation of our first gluten free lab night. We made cannoli. I have typed out the original recipe that we used and then our lab notes follow detailing what we changed or modified and how it worked.

CANNOLI

(Sicilian Cream Rolls)

You can use cannoli tubes from the cooking store, or buy 1 in. diameter lightweight aluminum tubing at a hardware store and have it cut into 4 1/4 in. lengths.

Both the shells and the filling can be made several days ahead but they should be put together just before serving so the shells will stay crisp.

Dough

1 3/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 tb sugar

1 egg

2 tb firm butter cut into small pieces

dry white wine

1 egg white, lightly beaten

salad oil

In a bowl, mix flour, salt, sugar. Make a well in center; break egg into well and add butter. Stir with a fork, working out from center to moisten flour mixture. Add wine 1 tb. at a time, until dough begins to cling together. Use your hands to form a ball. Cover and let stand for 15 min.

Roll dough out on a floured board to about 1/16 in thickness. Cut into 31/2 in. circles With rolling pin, roll circles into ovals. Wrap each oval around a cannoli tube; seal edges with egg white. Turn back ends of dough to flare slightly.

In a deep pan, pour oil to a depth of 2 inches and heat to 350 degrees on a deep frying thermometer. Fry the dough wrapped tubes for about 1 min. or until lightly golden. With tongs remove and drain. Let cool for about 5 seconds, then, handling shells carefully, slip out tube. Cool shells completely. (At this point you may wrap airtight and store for as long as 3 days, if made ahead)

Filling

2 lbs (4 cups) ricotta cheese

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

2- 4 tsp vanilla

In a blender or food processor, whirl cheese until very smooth. Transfer to a bowl. Beat in powdered sugar and vanilla. Mix in your optional ingredients.

Cover and chill for several hours or for as long as 3 days.

For fluffy filling prepare 1/2 the recipe; whip 1 cup whipping cream until stiff, then fold into ricotta mixture.

Optional

chocolate chips or chopped milk chocolate

halved candied cherries or fresh cherries

1/2 cup candied citron

1/2 cup candied orange peel

chocolate syrup

whipping cream

OUR LAB NOTES

Attempt #1

Used: Sun Flour Mills Pastry Flour

Savignon blanc wine @7 tbs

Soybean oil

Frigio Ricotta

4 tsp vanilla

Results:

Dough turned out too crumbly. The filling had too much vanilla flavor. Oil was too hot and we burned a couple. Tasted pretty good though.

Attempt #2

Used: 1/4 tsp xanthan gum per cup of flour

10 tbs wine

reduced vanilla to 2 tsp

Results:

Much better texture on dough.

Better flavor of filling.

Delicious!

Methods we found to work:

If you have a temp controlled deep fryer, use it. It is much easier to set the temperature and keep it constant. We had trouble with the pan method. It was either too hot or too cool.

Don't roll the dough too big, the tubes need to stick out some so you can slide them off after they are cooked. We used a regular red plastic beer cup to cut out the shapes. Roll them into an oval and then widen them just a little.

We found that they worked best just a bit thinner than the recommended 1/16 in.

Rub oil on the tubes before wrapping them to prevent sticking!

Wrap dough on the tubes the long way to get the classic shape. We were not able to get the dough to stay flared long enough to cook in that position.

When wrapping the tubes, be liberal with the egg white. You want it to stick well.

An assembly line of 3 people works well.

1 rolling dough

1 wrapping dough on tubes

1 frying dough

The tubes take a long time to cool with the dough on them so it is advisable to have at least a dozen tubes if not more.

Let the shells cool and then sprinkle powdered sugar over them. If you do it too soon, the sugar will soak into the shell.

Keep the dough in an air tight container whenever it is not being rolled. It dries out very quickly and is nearly impossible to reconstitute.

We used a hand mixer for the mixing the filling. It seemed to work just fine.

Our first attempt.

Caution! Disaster zone!

Not even gonna taste this one.

Jane and Tim mid process.

Our taste testers.

Rachel taste tests the first batch while Tim calls for help.

Jane with the final product.

Sooo yummy!

Download the recipe card here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kuqHav8aXPX9fp2rvDJZQDv_3YzK15xUzti7Mt89MEs