Posts tagged Desserts
A Camping Staple: Graham Crackers

Gluten Free Graham Crackers for Smores www.glutenfreetravelette.com

Thank you to Bob’s Red Mill for supporting this post through providing me the flour to make this tasty recipe along with these Oatmeal Cinnamon Pancakes, this Hiking Bread, and one more upcoming recipe as part of a series of gluten free camping friendly recipes.

In the realm of camping desserts, I’m serious about two things; simplicity and tradition.

While Dutch oven or skillet cobblers are certainly tasty treats to have while camping – I personally do not enjoy the clean up involved from making one of those dishes after a long day of exploring or hiking. Brownies and cakes baked inside orange peels are all the rage on Pinterest as a simple backpacking friendly treat, but that’s not what I grew up eating at camp.

When I think of camping desserts, there is really only one treat on my mind: good old-fashioned smores. Whether the marshmallows are roasted on a stick gathered nearby or on some fancy contraption made specifically for this purpose, I’ve always loved the campfire discussion (or debate) on what makes a perfectly roasted marshmallow. Are you a perfectly golden brown person or a flaming burnt marshmallow person? I used to be the later, but as I find my patience growing – I’m turning to into the former. 

These graham crackers have both a honey and light cinnamon flavor to them and hold up very well in the smore making experience. Far better than the pre-packaged ones I’d been buying at the store to make smores in my microwave (a terribly guilty pleasure of mine). The extra plus is that they’ll stay fresh and crisp, when kept in an air tight container for up to two weeks.

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Date Night Berry Cobbler

Gluten Free Date Night Berry Cobbler www.glutenfreetravelette.com

I recently rediscovered a recipe torn out of Sunset Magazine; Single Girl Melty Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake and I've found it to be a great cure to a night home alone. It's small, comes together quick, and I always have all the ingredients in my kitchen. The only problem is that I'm not a big chocolate person, in the end I always prefer a fruit based dessert instead.

This month's Gluten Free Ratio gave me the perfect opportunity to try and create a similar small and quick treat, as a cobbler instead of a chocolate cake. Again, this recipe is all made of things I always tend to have around the kitchen. You could use different berries if you prefer - I'm stuck with blueberries and cherries (yes, not actually a berry) since I can't have most others. That doesn't bother me in the least since they also happen to be my favorites. While I could easily see myself enjoying this entire cobbler myself, it's also been the perfect size to share with my husband.

For the cobbler topping, my ratio ended up being 7 parts flour, 7 parts milk, 2 parts butter, and 1 part sugar.

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Pumpkin Spice Bundt Cake

It's Gluten Free Ratio Rally time and this month I'm hosting! If you're new to the rally, check out this post from Shauna of Gluten Free Girl & the Chef to read about the very start of the rally. Based off of Michael Ruhlman's Ratio, this great group of gluten free bakers gets together each month to work on ratios for a specific baked good.

Since I joined the group earlier this year, I have to say - I've learned so much more about the science behind baking. I never thought I would be making bagels or angel food cake from scratch at home. In fact, I never thought I would make cake at home ever again, as all my early trials of gluten free cake baking ended up with shriveled and rubbery looking ones.

This month we're working on bundt cake; which we figured would be similar to the ratio for pound cake. Ruhlman's ratio for that is 1 part butter: 1 part sugar: 1 part egg: 1 part flour. Since I wanted to make a pumpkin bundt - I adjusted the ratio accordingly to include the puree. I assume if you wanted to used some other kind of fruit puree you could use a relatively similar ratio to the one I ended up with. My ratio turned our to be 2 parts butter: 2 parts sugar: 3 parts pumpkin puree: 3 parts egg: 4 parts flour.

Check out the other delicious (and quite seasonal) flavor combinations the rest of the ratio rally dreamed up;

Apple Almond Cake | Heather | Discovering the Extraordinary

Blueberry Molasses Bundt Cake | Jenn | Jenn Cuisine

Date Pecan Bundt Cake with Orange Glaze | Caneel | Mama Me Gluten Free

Gluten Free Mini Vanilla Chai Bundt Cakes | Mary Fran | Frannycakes

Pear & Cardamom Spiced Bundt Cake | Rebecca | Salts Kitchen

Spiced Sweet Potato Bundt Cake | Brooke | B & The Boy

Spiked Egg Nog Bundt Cake with Vanilla Bourbon Glaze | Charissa | Zest Bakery

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Cacao Spice Angel Food Cake

Phew! I didn't even think I'd make this Ratio Rally, I sadly had to miss the last one since I was out of town for three quarters of the month! This month's rally is being hosted by Caleigh of Gluten Free[k] - so make sure to stop over there and look at her delicious cake. I've also included a list of everyone else's at the very bottom of this post.

I've never made an Angel Food Cake before and frankly, I haven't had much luck making any kind of gluten free cake - they always seem to sink or shrivel up. So anyway, when I got back from all my travels I was craving bagels. My recipe leaves me with a whole bunch of extra egg whites - which I prefer not to waste. So I decided just to give an angel food cake recipe a try.

My first one came out pretty great, but it was way too sweet for me. On my second attempt, I went for a vanilla orange flavor with coconut palm sugar. It came out way too dense and with too much flavor for my liking. So on my third attempt, I went back to regular cane sugar but reduced it down to 8 oz and tried to replicate some of my favorite chocolate flavor. My final ratio ended up being 3 parts egg whites, 2 parts sugar, and 1 part flour. 

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It's A Pie Party: 2012 Edition

When I saw that Shauna was co-hosting another Pie Party, I couldn't resist joining. 

I'm all about spreading the good word of pie. Instead of cake at our wedding, we had pie (and no, we did not freeze a piece to eat on our anniversary). For breakfast, it really doesn't get better than pie with some nice plain sheep milk yogurt. Except maybe a pandowdy - but that's basically just a bottomless pie.

With pie, I have no need to reinvent the wheel. I took a class with Shauna & Danny at the Pantry at Delancy and that's where I got my pie crust recipe from. I had never had any success with pie crust until I started using their recipe and people love it! Normally I keep a tub of their all purpose flour on my shelf to use, but after a recent incident involving some potato starch gone bad I was out. So I went about converting the percentages to make their 1000 gram mix to the 350 grams for just the pie crust. 

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Chocolate Brownie Pie with Orange Zest

Mary Fran from Franny Cakes is hosting this month's rally for brownies, so check back there for a full listing of all the brownie posts - I've also tried to include a complete list at the bottom of this post.

I'll admit, I really struggled with this month's rally. My initial goal was to create a chewy but not too fudgy dairy free brownie with macadamia nuts, coconut flakes, and orange zest. I tried and tried and ended up throwing out batch after batch. Perhaps my expectations were set too high with all the delicious boxed gluten free brownie mixes out there like King Arthur. So eventually I threw in the towel and went about recreating a family favorite recipe; Chocolate Brownie Pie. I would describe it as somewhere in between a brownie and a chocolate cake, but not at all like a cakey brownie - does that make sense? Anyway, I had much more success with chocolate brownie pie and the dairy free version actually tasted even better!

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Gluten Free Moravian Molasses Cookie

Armed with another gluten free year of experience under my belt, I made my family's Moravian Molasses Cookies again for the holidays. A small amount of quick internet research tells me that these cookies originated in what is now the Czech Republic after the spice trade began to take off in the area. These cookies were meant to highlight those new flavorful spices that were coming through the region. This re-vamped version eliminates the gums I used in my first attempt and changes amount of flour to 140 grams of gluten free all purpose flour mix per cup in the original recipe.

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Gluten & Dairy Free Meyer Lemon Bars with Gingersnap Crust


Each year I wait for Meyer Lemons to show up in the produce section of the store so I can make lemon curd. Last year I had an idea to combine two of my favorite things, lemon and ginger. Instead of a shortbread crust I used crushed gluten free gingersnaps. It made such a difference.  This year I'm refining the recipe to be dairy free as well as gluten free. I did some researching and cataloguing of the different ratios of egg, lemon juice, sugar, butter, flour, etc. My conclusion is that butter is not an essential ingredient and that less sugar makes the Meyer Lemon flavor shine through. I also refuse to add any additional powdered sugar on top because again, it just takes away from that wonderful lemon flavor that only makes a short appearance each winter.

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Accordion Treats

Accordion Treats are another family recipe that I remember having during the holidays for about as long as I can remember.  These gluten free versions are maybe a bit more fluffy than crispy and have to be very gently removed from the foil. Someday I would like to try making these dairy free by substituting coconut oil. But I'll save that for another day and let you enjoy the butter goodness of these! 

And yes, you may also call these Banana Slug Cookies. 

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