I know I don't write a lot about baking and food.
But I always mean to.
It's a big part of my life and the opportunity to bake whenever the mood strikes is one of my favoritist parts of being self-employed.
My inspiration in sharing is Shauna's gluten-free Thanksgiving baking extravaganza.
This weekend, I'll be updating this post with my gluten-free contributions to my Thanksgiving dinners (yes, plural). You can follow (in pretty much real-time) on Twitter (me or everyone with the tag #gfbakingchallenge).
The Recipes
Here's what I'll be baking from (with changes noted in each section):
Stuffing
Gingerbread cookies + pie crust
Cornbread casserole
Stuffing
Remember that I mentioned multiple meals? The first one is tomorrow with my family and the second is on the actual Thanksgiving, with Jay's ginormous family.
We have to travel to get to the actual Thanksgiving, so I'll need to make the stuffing that I'm taking at least a day in advance (refridgerate it and then bake it when the turkey comes out of the oven). Since the thing with Jay's family is HUGE, I don't want to take an untested recipe (especially since I'm not entirely sure it will hold up with making it so far in advance), I'm testing the recipe this weekend for my mom's meal (you'll note, I don't mind serving her an untested recipe!).
All that to say: I made the stuffing this morning, but I'll be making it again this Wednesday. We'll see how this turns out.
I followed Shauna's recipe pretty much exactly except:
- I started with Bob's Red Mill Wonderful White Bread. It's a mix that is so simple to make. I bake a loaf nearly every week and it's my toast, my sandwich bread, my everything.
- I only had one loaf, which was plenty, because I'm the only one that has to be eating this stuffing (at both Thanksgivings, there'll be a big, platter of glutenous, meat-filled stuffing).
- To the meat-filled point, I used veggie stock instead of chicken stock.
- Since I had less bread, I used slightly less stock (maybe 3/4 of a cup).
This is what it looked like as it went into the fridge. Tomorrow I'll put a picture of here of how it looked baked (and how it tasted).
Gingerbread
I'm using this recipe, only for the gingerbread.
I'm using the dough to make a crust that my mom will fill with her cooked-down-pumpkin + spices mixture tomorrow.
The changes I made it were simply because I don't have the 500 kinds of flours it calls for. Here are my substitutions:
30 g buckwheat flour = 30 g sorghum flour (I had it on hand, I have no idea if it's an appropriate substitution)
30 g teff flour = 30g amranth (I had it, it seemed properly hearty)
50 g sweet rice flour = 50 g brown rice flour
Oh, and I used only 1/4 tsp of pepper instead of 3/4 because, well, I just don't want peppery cookies.
And that's the great thing about this recipe: it made enough for a pie crust (pictures tomorrow!) and enough for a few cookies.
To bake the cookies, I rolled out little balls, rolled them in sugar, baked them until they looked done (I was pressing out the pie crust and lost all sense of time…I might have overbaked them a smidge). Delicious!
Cornbread Casserole
Tomorrow morning I'm making a casserole like my grams used to make: cornbread dough (I'll use this, but she used the jiffy box) + one can creamed corn. Stirred all together and cooked for 30 minutes it is DELICIOUS. Just the right amount of corny-ness, but bready enough that it doesn't feel like a vegetable.
More about how it goes tomorrow.