gluten free Archives - Lisa Eggleston Photography

Gluten Free and Dairy Free Old Fashioned Donuts

December 15, 2019 by lisahearts Leave a Comment

GF/DF Old Fashioned Donuts
Plain Donuts
2 cups Bob’s Red Mill 1-1 Gluten Free Flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp fine salt
2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp dairy free butter (Country Crock Plant Butter)
2 egg yolks
1 cup dairy free sour cream (Good Karma)
oil for frying

Chocolate Donuts
1 1/2 cups Bob’s Red Mill 1-1 Gluten Free Flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp fine salt
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp dairy free butter (Country Crock Plant Butter)
2 egg yolks
1 cup dairy free sour cream (Good Karma)
oil for frying

Sugar Glaze (Thick)
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 tbsp almond milk

Sugar Glaze (Thin)
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tbsp almond milk

Chocolate Ganache Glaze
10 oz dairy free semi-sweet chocolate chips (Enjoy Life)
1 cup coconut cream

In a small bowl, prepare your wet ingredients. With a rubber spatula, cream together the dairy free butter and sugar. Add the egg yolks and combine until the mixture is completely yellow. Stir in the dairy free sour cream until smooth. Set aside.

In a large bowl, prepare your dry ingredients. Sift together flour, baking powder, xanthan gum, salt, and if applicable, nutmeg (also add cocoa powder here and omit nutmeg if making chocolate donuts).

Pour your wet ingredients mixture on top of the dry ingredients and stir. Mix everything together until a soft dough forms. Dough will be a bit sticky but will hold its shape.

Form the dough into a smooth ball. Using a scale to weigh, separate dough into 2oz balls, rolling each in your palms to make them smooth. You should achieve 15 balls (if you have any left over, use the dough to make donut holes).

Using the handle of a wooden spoon (or just using your fingers), poke a hole in the center of each ball of dough and gradually stretch it out.

In a large pot, or a deep fryer, heat oil to 350˚F. Carefully place 2-3 donuts in at a time and let fry for 4 minutes, turning donuts over after 2 minutes to cook evenly.

Donuts will be crispy and golden brown when they are finished. Remove from oil with a slotted metal spoon and place on a layer of paper towels to dry out.

Let donuts completely cool before topping.

To make the thick sugar glaze, mix together sugar and almond milk with a fork or whisk, until smooth. Add food coloring if desired. Dip top of donut until it is submerged only halfway to achieve a thick coating on top of the donut. Let access drip off donut for 1-2 minutes before setting donut back down. Top with sprinkles before the icing completely dries.

To make the thin sugar glaze, mix together sugar and almond milk. Completely submerge donuts in this glaze and let dry out on a cooling rack to achieve the glazed donut.

To make the chocolate ganache, start with preparing the coconut cream. Move coconut cream from the can to a medium bowl. There will be a large layer of thick cream and a small amount of liquid to follow. Stir parts together with a whisk to combine into a consistent and smooth cream. Then, measure out 1 cup and 10oz of dairy free chocolate chips and place in a heat-safe bowl. Place in the microwave for 15 seconds at a time, up to 1 minute, stirring between each interval. Chocolate and cream will come together in a smooth, shiny ganache to have donuts dipped. Dip top of donut until it is submerged only halfway to achieve a thick coating on top of the donut. Let access drip off donut for 1-2 minutes before setting donut back down. Top with sprinkles before the icing completely dries.

Plain donut is best enjoyed the next day.

Ok, don’t be overwhelmed by the recipe you see above. It looks like there’s a lot of ingredients, but it’s actually just a lot of the same things rearranged so you have options! Plain donuts, glazed, chocolate donuts with chocolate on top… You can do it all! And they’re all very simple.

So, why dairy free? It’s pretty obvious that I do a lot of gluten free recipes because I have a gluten intolerance and I want to eat all these treats. But I also want to share with others. It makes me happy to include those who wouldn’t typically be able to be included. My nephew has a pretty bad dairy allergy that can’t just be prevented with lactose free products, so when my husband and I visit my nephew and his family, I like to bring something he can enjoy too. That’s where these donuts came from.

These donuts are one of my greatest baking successes. I knew what I wanted to do but I was scrambling a little bit to find solutions to problems like raw dough, sandy donuts, and grainy ganache. Somehow it all came together really well, and it wasn’t even as challenging as I expected!

And, you know me, I only want good dessert. Not OK or good enough for gluten free. So, please trust me when I tell you these are awesome. I keep eating them and thinking, “Wow! I made something really great!”. The plain donuts with the thick white icing and sprinkles teleporting me back to Tim Horton’s, being a kid, and eating a Vanilla Dip donut. Yeah. The one with a thousand sprinkles. Even I was in shock.

HOWEVER.

I have some rules for you.

The chocolate donut is great, right away. Yummy. Chocolate-y (but not too chocolate-y). Crispy.

The plain donut with the nutmeg is actually better the day after though. It’s still good fresh, but it’s kind of too spongy right away for me. I left these donuts out on the kitchen table overnight, and when I ate one the next day (I mean, they were just sitting there, what did you expect?), I was really surprised. There wasn’t any of that stale air taste trapped inside, and the spongy texture was replaced with a really comforting, slightly dense crumb. Just like my Nana makes. To me, this is what makes an old-fashioned donut.

So please don’t judge right away on the plain. Maybe give it a day and then let me know what you think.

Let me walk you through the process.

The start is pretty simple. I actually like doing this recipe by hand since the machine can’t quite reach the bottom of the bowl. These ingredients are easy on my shoulder (I have a SLAP tear in my stirring shoulder – ouchie) so I enjoy the easy mixing. So cream together your dairy free butter (I found mine at Giant Eagle Market District in the vegan section) and sugar, and then add your egg yolks and mix. I like this part because it’s so bright and reminds me of a sugar scrub. Plop some dairy free sour cream in there too (Target!) and stir everything together until it’s smooth and looks like banana pudding. Yum! Don’t eat it though.

In a separate bowl, sift in your dry ingredients. Remember, if you’re making chocolate, it uses less flour and no nutmeg and you have to sift the chocolate powder. It gets all clumped up and will make your donuts just have random dry balls in there. Gross, don’t do it. I mean do sift though.

Then, just scrape your wet ingredients into the flour bowl and stir until it comes together as a nice, soft dough. The chocolate dough will be a bit more sticky, but that’s okay.

I usually turn my deep fryer on at this point so it’s hot when I finish forming donuts. I love my deep fryer, by the way. I thought it was going to be a big angry monster, but it’s actually way more comfortable to use than just a big pot of oil on the stove. It regulates the temperature on it’s own and has a cover I can place right on top. There’s also a built in basket so I can lift and lower everything all at once!

This is where you really start getting messy. I like to lay out a sheet of parchment paper on the counter so when I’m working, the dough and crumbs are contained a bit. You can also use it to tip the dough out of the bowl and knead it into a ball so everything is mixed together smoothly.

Please use a scale here. I tested these donuts a gazillion times to make sure everything was just right. Bigger than 2oz balls of dough made a donut that was too big and didn’t cook all the way though. Smaller wasn’t bad, but would really be better as a donut hole at that point. I tried using my donut cutter too instead of forming by hand, but they were just too wide and thin. SO WE DID IT RIGHT OK.

So, after measuring out 2oz balls of dough, roll them into smooth balls and poke your finger through the center. The goal here is to make this hole a little bigger and smooth, so I employ the bored-swinging-your-keys method here. You kind of spin the donut around on your finger for a second to stretch out the center. Be careful though! You don’t want it to fly away and die on the floor.

Now they’re ready for the fryer. Gently drop in two or three donuts into the oil and let them sizzle for two minutes. Turn them over with a metal spoon and let them sizzle on the other side for another two minutes. Then, take them out and place them on a sheet of paper towels to dry off and cool! If you want your donuts even crispier, dunk them in a bowl of flour before they hit the fryer. I love how crunchy they get on the outside.

So, your donuts are all fried and cooled and you remembered to turn your fryer off. Now you can top them with a billion different type of sweet and pretty things. I always have to do a mixture of everything because I could never pick a favorite topping. Sometimes it’s just a classic glazed donut, but other times I really want a pretty sugar topping with loads of designer sprinkles.

Sprinkles are surprisingly tricky when it comes to food allergies! You might assume they are just all sugar in different shapes, but those metallic rods are almost always a tiny piece of raw pasta with a sugar coating, and many custom sprinkle bags have sixlets (chocolate/dairy). I looked around and found Baking Time Club from the UK. They ave great prices, are top quality, and everything is gluten free and vegan. I spent over $40 on my first purchase here. I have so many sprinkles right now. You can also make your own mix! Wilton sells tiny bags of a single type of sprinkle in craft stores, so I used inspiration from one of my favorite sprinkle mixes that was unfortunately not dairy free, and I recreated it by gathering up the individual pieces. I thought that would be crazy expensive, but since I could purchase small amounts of each piece, it was actually very manageable (and fun).

Go to town. It’s donut time. For everyone!

Gluten Free Pumpkin Gnocchi

November 22, 2019 by lisahearts Leave a Comment

Gluten Free Pumpkin Gnocchi
2/3 cup pumpkin puree (fresh or canned)
1/2 cup ricotta
1 1/4 cup Bob’s Red Mill 1-1 Gluten Free Flour
1/3 cup shredded parmesan
1 egg
1/2 tsp kosher salt

Brown Butter with Sage
1 tsp oil
3 1/3 tbsp butter
20-25 leaves of fresh sage

Measure 2/3 cup of pumpkin puree and place in cheesecloth. Squeeze out liquid until about 1/3 cup of puree remains. Add to your stand mixer along with ricotta and egg. Mix. Mixture will look grainy.

Next, add the flour, parmesan, and salt, and mix until everything comes together in a soft dough.

Tip dough out on to a lightly floured surface and slightly knead until it is smooth and all you can’t see any more clumps of ricotta. Divide into 8 equal pieces.

Roll out each piece into a long snake until it is roughly the circumference of a dime. Slice into 1/2″ bits and press lightly with a fork on the freshly cut edge to create a ridged pattern. Do this with the remaining dough until everything has been cut and patterned.

Bring a large pot of water to the boil and season with salt. Add gnocchi all at once into the pot and allow to cook until dough floats to the top. Stir gently once or twice at the start to make sure nothing is sticking to each other or the pot to prevent them from floating. Once they have come to the top, scoop out with a slotted spoon and place on a paper towel and/or sieve to drain. Cooking should take only 1-2 minutes.

Heat oil and butter in a large pan until butter is completely melted. Bubbles should disappear and butter will begin to turn brown and smell nutty. Add in gnocchi and sage leaves.

Cook in two or three batches to prevent overcrowding if necessary.

Toss gnocchi occasionally to get both sides cooked. Once they crisp up on the outside and turn golden brown, they’re cooked and ready to be plated. Top with shredded parmesan and season with salt and pepper.

What’s everyone been up to this Fall? Eating well, I hope. There’s still time to whip up some pumpkin goodness this season, and I think today is a great day to do it. There are leaves on the ground (so many leaves…) and it’s just chilly and rainy enough outside to have an excuse to stay in and snuggle. This gnocchi is a perfect earthy comfort food to put on the table tonight, so let me show you how.

I felt very weird not starting the instructions for this recipe with “Preheat the oven”. While savory foods aren’t my typical go-to, I could still tackle this one with a fair amount of skill since I still got to mix flour and eggs in my kitchenaid.

The first time I saw gnocchi was on Masterchef Australia, and they called the dough “pillows”. How can you not want to eat something with such a cute nickname? But, I didn’t expect I’d ever get the chance. It’s a pasta, and as you know, wheat and I are not friends. I’m comfortable enough to make desserts gluten free, but pasta felt a little out of my skill set. You know what though? I tried it. And the very first time I made it, it was amazing! I really thought these would be dense and tasteless and pretty much just a mess. I was so thrilled when the butter bubbled and turned nutty and the gnocchi went from soft to crisp and golden.

Ideally, you’ll have some cheesecloth laying around. Not a big deal if you don’t though. The idea is that you want to dry out some of the pumpkin puree so it isn’t so wet and soupy. With a cheesecloth, you can scoop the puree into the middle and squeeze out the liquid. You can accomplish the same thing with a couple paper towels, but you have to be much more gentle when squeezing so the paper towel doesn’t rip. Or, you can lay some paper towels out on a sieve and let the pumpkin sit in there for a bit and drip dry (hahaha oh man).

There isn’t an exact measurement of liquid I can tell you needs to come out, and that would be annoying to try to reach anyway, right? So you just have to eyeball it. You want the puree to be pretty tacky after some of the liquid is removed. In my testing, I always get about 1/3 cup puree left over.

You can toss out out the pumpkin juice (gross) and move the dried out puree to your mixing bowl. Add in the ricotta and egg and let it mix for a minute so it comes together. The ricotta won’t completely mix in, but that’s fine. We’re going to knead it in later. Right now it’s…really gross looking. Lumpy and smells like spaghetti-o’s.

Add in the flour, parmesan, and salt, and mix again. This time, the mixture will come together into a soft dough. Are there still ricotta lumps? Don’t worry, we’re getting to it.

Very lightly flour a large surface so we can begin shaping the dough into PILLOWS. When I say very lightly, I mean it. This dough needs to retain a bit of tackiness so it can grip the surface a little to be rolled out smoothly. Too much flour and it will just slide around. Want to know how I know? You know.

So, tip out the dough onto your floured surface and roll it up into a ball. By shaping it like this, you should be able to knock around whatever ricotta lumps were still poking through. If you can still spot some, just play with the dough a bit more and it should eventually come out smooth.

Divide up the dough into roughly 8 equal parts. Doing so will just make each piece easier to roll out into a long snake-like piece. I kind of just rolled until it felt right. If you have a dime handy, your snake should have about the same circumference as the dime (or 18mm in diameter for you nerds).

Now you want to slice the snake into equal pillows. I cut mine into about a 1/2 inch each. I was having trouble just doing it by eye, and since I apparently don’t own a ruler, I took a sheet of college-ruled paper and cut the length of two lines of space. There must be a name for this kind of ingenuity. Or is it just called being lazy…?

Once you have everything sliced, you can begin making the ridge pattern. While this is optional, the ridged like to hold things like yummy brown butter, and they look nice, so I recommend it. Holding your fork so the tines are flat against the dough, gently press down into the fresh cut edge of your gnocchi. This will squash the rectangle into more of a round shape. If the dough sticks to your fork, gently roll the dough off rather than trying to pull it off straight.

Have all of your gnocchi gathered together because when we go to put them in the pot, you want to try to get them all in at once. If you’re tossing in a handful at a time, they’re going to cook at different rates and you might get some under and overcooked gnocchi sneaking onto your plate.

Start a boil in a large pot and season the water with salt. When it has reach the boil, pour all of the gnocchi in and give them a gently stir so they don’t stick. It should only take a minute or two for them to cook. You’ll know they’re done when they float to the top of the water. Take a slated spoon and skim off whatever has come to the top and place them in a sieve lined with paper towels so they can drain off. Once they’re all out and drained, it’s time for the final cooking procedure.

Heat your oil and butter in a saucepan on the stove. The butter will first melt, then bubble, then it will become suspiciously still. When it settles down like this, it will start the browning process. Keep and eye on it and give it a stir here and there to keep it from burning. Once it has turned brown and you can smell a fragrant nuttiness, add in the gnocchi and sage. Please do not overcrowd the pan! I kept trying to cook them all at once, but it takes forever and they won’t cook evenly, so just do the cooking in a couple batches if you need to and give those poor little guys some room.

Stir and toss them around as they cook so they become completely coated in butter and both sides of the gnocchi get crispy and golden brown. This can take between 5-15 minutes depending on your heat and how full the pan is. Remember, you already boiled them, so you aren’t having to cook them all the way through. This is just to get them flavorful and crispy.

Don’t forget to season these once they’re done. I only keep unsalted butter in my house because I mainly use it for baking, so be sure to salt your gnocchi before serving if your butter is unsalted!

These little pillows are so addicting. I couldn’t stop myself from snacking on them while I was trying to shoot them! It was really dangerous. I seriously had to skip dinner a couple times because I had already eaten a full serving of these. Good luck my friend.

Gluten Free Double Chocolate Cookies – with a Halloween Twist

October 28, 2019 by lisahearts Leave a Comment

Gluten free double chocolate halloween cookies

Gluten Free Double Chocolate Cookies
1 cup Bob’s Red Mill 1-1 Gluten Free Flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2/3 cup white chocolate chips or M&M’S Halloween Candy Corn

Preheat oven to 350˚F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and sugars. Scrape the bowl to get everything combined and add salt, egg and vanilla. Mix until combined.

In a separate bowl, sift together dry ingredients; flour, cocoa powder and baking soda. Add to stand mixer and mix until everything comes together into a thick dough.

Add white chocolate chips or M&M’s and stir until distributed evenly (since the M&M’s are quite large, mixing with a stand mixer will break them up. If you want them to remain whole, stir together with a spatula or spoon by hand).

Form dough into small round balls and place on cookie sheets with room to spread. I put 6 balls of dough per tray. Place in oven and bake for 12-15 minutes. Allow to cool before serving.

Ugh. You guys. I’m still sick. I feel like I’ve been sick for months. It’s like a combo allergies, flu, hormones, and medication, so there’s no way to really understand how much longer I’ll feel so bad. But, I’m seeing my doctor this week so hopefully I get sorted out soon.

Honestly though, the hardest part of being sick is not being able to work. I have all these ideas in my head but my body is like bleh no way man. So today, I’m just pushing on. I’m taking lots of breaks and planning my energy use, so if I have to go to the kitchen, I make sure I have the list of things I need to do and what order to do them. I really wanted to get you these cookies in time for Halloween.

I made two options for you. First is chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips, and second is the candy corn M&M version for a little sweet Halloween fun.

These are really simple and straight forward. No folding or whipping or boiling. They’re pretty quick too. I was able to finish a batch in one episode of Gravity Falls.

Start by creaming a stick of softened, unsalted butter with brown and white sugar. Yum. Add an egg, vanilla, and salt. The reason I’m having you add the salt here and not with the dry ingredients is because I’m having you use kosher salt, which will be too big to run through a sifter. Just toss it in here and continue mixing, and it will distribute fine.

Then, in a large bowl, you want to evenly distribute the dry ingredients before putting everything together. Make sure you run this through a sifter as cocoa powder likes to ball up. This will break it up and make sure you get even cocoa throughout. Add to your stand mixer ingredients and mix until everything combines into a nice, smooth and thick dough.

Here is where you can either make them everyday cookies, or Halloween cookies. If you’re going for straight up cookie time, add your white chocolate chips and let your stand mixer spread them throughout the dough. If you want to go for Halloween magic, you can either mix in the M&M’s by hand or let the mixer do it. If you go with the mixer, the paddle will end up smashing up the candy a bit. This is good if you want smaller candy bits throughout, but if you want whole pieces, go with the by-hand method. It’s really not better or worse, it just depends on what you want. Personally, I like to have them smashed up, but I have a few candies to stick into the top of the dough when they’re ready for the oven so they come out looking all posh.

Posh is a fun word. So is bespoke. And short-shorts.

My method for filling the cookie sheet involves this fun little tool, an ice cream scoop. My husband got it for me after researching what bakers generally agree is the “correct” cookie size. It’s a #40, purple handled ice cream disher. It will scoop up the perfect amount of batter in most cases, including this one. You can place the dough directly on your parchment paper from the scoop, or, for a more uniform edge, you can roll the scooped dough in the palms of your hands to create an even ball. Lightly press this down on your baking sheet and top with M&M’s (though, I do not recommend topping with the chips – they can get a little burnt).

Place in your oven at 350˚F and bake for 12-15 minutes. These cookies are rich, so I recommend a nice glass of milk on the side. Tada! You done.

Have a fun Halloween! And send your kids to my house. I have so much candy!

-Lisa