Feb. 1, 2011

It has been almost one year now that I have been wheat/gluten free.  What an adventure the past year has been as I have had to change all my previous thoughts about food, cooking, shopping, and eating.  Although I still have moments where the thought of eating a good pizza is about to devour me, I have overall adjusted to this new life style.  My goal this year, is to convert my family.  Of course my husband is at my mercy since I am the cook in the house.  At the start, I was cooking two meals, but that just added to the extreme stress, so around September I stopped.  It is eat what I make or run out and get yourself something.  He has done great overall.  One thing I have not even attempted this past year is baking.  I didn't really bake to much before, and gluten-free baking seemed crazy to even attempt.  Just trying to get all the flours and then figure out where to store them, well it was just to much for me.  But as my gluten-free lifestyle has become more normal, and the fact my daughter bought me a gluten free baking cookbook back in September (Gluten-Free Baking by Rebecca Reilly), I have decided to start giving it a try.  My biggest challenge is I do not  eat white processed sugar either, so I have to adjust recipes to accomodate either STEVIA or Organic Whole Cane Sugar.  The second challenge is I don't use cow milk.
So my challenge of trying out some baking started today, due to the beautiful day off work due to the "blizzard".  I bought all the required flours over the weekend and made the basic flour mix suggested in the cookbook yesterday. 
Today my first recipe was "Blueberry Cake".  I decided to make muffins instead of a cake.  The recipe called for 1 cup of sugar, so I used 1/2 cup of stevia and 1/2 cup of the Whole Cane Sugar.  I found it took me much longer than the 5 minutes the recipe said to mix the sugar with butter until fluffy.  But it did eventually get creamy.  I mixed about 10 minutes.  I feel this is due to the cane sugar texture.  The next change I made in the recipe was using 1/2Cup warm RICE Milk instead of regular cow milk.  Other than that I followed the recipe as written.  The only other change I made, was putting the muffins in the freezer for 20 minutes prior to cooking them.  This tip came from a gluten-free friend who went to a GF restaurant in North Carolina.  She said the desserts were amazing and she asked the chef his secret.  He said putting all desserts in the freezer for 30 minutes prior to baking.  It forms light ice crystals that help keep the desserts moist.  So I gave it a shot.
The result = delicious.  Of course I am used to the GF taste of foods, so the real test was when I gave one to my husband.  He liked it.  He said it had a different taste than any other blueberry muffin he had eaten before, but it was good.  So I had him put it on a scale of 1 to 10 - 10 of course being the best thing ever.  He gave them an 8.  Not bad I thought! 
So I dedicate this first Gluten-free baking experience to my daughter who bought me the cookbook.  It was a success!  Can't wait to bake more later.