My favourite baking books

I love my recipe books as much as I love baking and cooking, such a source of learning and inspiration. I thought I would share a few of my favourites with you. Most recipes I use need tweaking as rarely recipes I want to bake are gluten, dairy and sugar free, but that is all are of the experience :)

Seriously Good Gluten-Free Baking by Phil Vickery

This is one of the book I use the most, its pretty easy to substitute the dairy and sugar. These recipes are full of amazing flavours with consistent textures, easy to trust even when its an untried recipe for you. A essential for my book shelf.

Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar & Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero.

Lots of yummy unusual recipes, especially the cookies. Substituting the flours can often take a bit of practice and tweaking but results are always tasty. The cupcake book does contain a couple of gluten free recipes. These book taught me a lot about the variety of non-dairy ingredients can be used and techniques to use to ensure you have consistent results.

Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook & Bake Days by Tarek Malouf.

These books are great for flavour and combination inspiration. I find that texture and consistency are always great, probably more experimenting and practice required for me with these recipes. The bakeries themselves usually have one flavour of gluten free cupcake, but no gluten free recipes in the books, as far as I have seen.

My favourite cookie recipe that I am always adapting comes from River Cottage Everyday by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Books that are quite new to my shelf and I haven't used yet, but looking foward to...
 

Cake Angels by Julia Thomas - Gluten and Diary Free recipes!

Blackbird Bakery by Karen Morgan - gluten free recipes

I use Jamie Oliver books a lot for main meals, I haven't done any of his desserts as yet, but I definitely should investigate these.

Obviously I use the internet a lot to find recipes, some great sites are:
BBC Food 

BBC Good Food

Delicious Magazine
C4 Food 

Joy of Baking 

Chelsea Sugar Recipes

Happy reading & baking!

My latest discovery

I have just returned from Iceland (country not the shop!). An amazing country with beautiful landscapes and friendly people with a dry sense of humour. And amazing fresh food! 

Fresh fish, caught that day. Organic Icelandic beef that makes amazing burgers.Yum Yum Yum.

I also learned that Icelanders have a very sweet tooth. I discovered their love for an unusual flavour combination, that sounds weird but is out of this world... liquorice and chocolate. I can hear you say What? But trust me its great and not a combo you see in the UK. I am looking forward to creating some recipes that marry these two flavours. 

Watch this space!

My Favourite Smoothies

These are great for a filling breakfast or can be made into a frozen yoghurt snack. I usually alternate smoothies and fresh made fruit/vegetable juices for breakfast. Apart from Sundays, which is cooked breakfast day :)

I only have good things to say about freshly made smoothies; they taste great, have healthy & yummy ingedients in them, they’re quick and easy to make and its easy to adjust the recipe to your liking.

The Equipment
All you need is a blender!

The ingredients
To make smoothie for one (its easy to scale up)
1 ripe banana
1-2 tablespoons flaxseed
1-2 tablespoons gluten free oats
1-2 tablespoons chopped nuts
1 tablespoon of runny honey (you can also use agave or maple syrup instead, whatever you    prefer, its all good)
4 tablespoons plain soya yoghurt
75 ml of unsweetened soya milk

The amount of dry ingredients you put in really depends on how thick you like your smoothie. The more dry ingredients the thicker it will be and may need eating with a spoon :) You can also reduce the amount of yoghurt, and increase the amount of milk to make it a bit thinner. Its easy to play around with the combinations until you get it just right for you.

The method
Stick everything but the milk in the blender as whizz it up, for about 45 seconds. Pour in the milk and whizz again for another 30 seconds. Done!

You can stick everything all at once, if you are making it for one person, but as soon as you start making it for several people, its just easier to blend the solid ingredients first.

The Variations
The Purple One 
The Ingredients
To make smoothie for one
1/2 ripe banana
1 handful of frozen blueberries
1-2 tablespoons flaxseed
1-2 tablespoons gluten free oats
1-2 tablespoons chopped nuts
1 tablespoon of runny honey (or agave/maple syrup)
4 tablespoons plain soya yoghurt
75 ml of unsweetened soya milk

The Pink One 
The Ingredients
To make smoothie for one
1/2 ripe banana
1 handful of frozen strawberries & blackberries
1-2 tablespoons flaxseed
1-2 tablespoons gluten free oats
1-2 tablespoons chopped nuts
1 tablespoon of runny honey (or agave/maple syrup)
4 tablespoons plain soya yoghurt
75 ml of unsweetened soya milk

If you fancy frozen yoghurt, just stick the blended ingredients in a tub and in the freezer for about another an hour. 


The Choccy One 
The Ingredients
To make smoothie for one
1/2 ripe banana
1 tablespoon of cocoa powder
1-2 tablespoons flaxseed
1-2 tablespoons gluten free oats
1-2 tablespoons chopped nuts
1 tablespoon of runny honey (or agave/maple syrup)
4 tablespoons plain soya yoghurt
75 ml of unsweetened soya milk

The Hulk
The Ingredients
To make smoothie for one
1/2 ripe banana
1/4 teaspoon matcha green tea powder  
1-2 tablespoons flaxseed
1-2 tablespoons gluten free oats
1-2 tablespoons chopped nuts
1 tablespoon of runny honey (or agave/maple syrup)
4 tablespoons plain soya yoghurt
75 ml of unsweetened soya milk

I get my matcha from tea pigs. Its really good for you and I have definitely felt a difference since I started taking it every day. Loads of antioxidants and health benefits including mood and energy boosting. You might just feel like the incredible hulk! 

Gluten Free Baking Workshop

Last week I went to a gluten free baking workshop at Leiths School of Food & Wine, focusing on cakes and biscuits.

Adriana Rabinovich ran the course, a lovely and modest lady and extremely knowledgeable gluten free baker and a great teacher.

We had a busy day covering battenberg, lemon bars, chocolate cupcakes & chocolate biscotti with pistachio and fig. These recipes can also be milk free and refined sugar free!

Andriana demonstrated each technique - now I know how to cream butter and sugar properly!

Everyone took notes, even photos, but we also got booklets with the recipes in.

Andriana also revealed a few tips on how to convert normal recipes into gluten free ones, its not always as simple as changing flours using the same quantities.
 
I thought about doing a step by step of what we did, but I don't think I would be able to do it justice.

The Leiths Kitchen was a nice environment, there is enough room for 16, there was 11 in my class, which was a good number, 16 may feel a little busy.

You bake in pairs, which for introverts like me is a quite scary, but it was all good in the end.

The only downside was the dodgy ovens, which meant that everything took twice as long to bake & temperature variations meant that some of the bakes were crumbly inconsistency and I had to finish baking the biscotti at home.

I really hope that Leiths sort this out soon, ovens are obviously an essential component in a cookery school.

Despite this, the day was absolutely worth it, to meet and learn from Andriana. I definitely recommend her as a teacher, she doesn't just teach at Leiths, if you want to improve your gluten free cooking, check out her blog to see when and where Andriana's workshops take place.

I look forward to practicing these cakes and biscuits, the lemon bars are particularly amazing. I am also keen to try Andriana's pizza base recipe from one of her book Gluten Free for Kids. I count myself as a big kid!