Bûche de Noël - GF/DF Christmas log

The French traditional Christmas cake is called "bûche de Noël" which means "Christmas log" and consists in a cake roll often filled with buttercream. My grandmother used to make a really sickly one and as kids we all loved it very much! Not being a big fan of buttercream nowadays (and I can't have real butter anyway!), I tried to make a lighter filling and went for a chestnut mousse instead. But feel free to use a buttercream filling to make it more traditional.

I used Valérie Cupillard's recipe for the sponge cake and it turned out wonderfully light and soft, I would definitely use it again.

I was so focused on eating the cake that I forgot to take a picture of the inside...

Ingredients

For the cake roll
4 eggs separated
100 g of caster sugar
60 g of brown rice flour

For the filling
150 g of chestnut puree
2 egg whites

For the ganache icing
100 g of dark chocolate
10 cl of almond cream

Directions

1/ Separate the eggs. Beat the egg yolks with the caster sugar until the colour gets lighter. Add the rice flour.

Whip the egg whites into firm peaks. Fold in the yolk mix delicately.

Spread on a big rectangular tin or an oven tray lined with greaseproof paper. The mixture should be about 1 cm thick.

2/ Bake for 10 min in the oven preheated on 180°, then lower the temperature to 150°C and leave the cake in 5 more minutes. The top of the cake should be barely golden.

(Mine got golden very quickly so I lowered the temperature after 5 minutes only and covered with foil, then left a bit longer than stated in the oven. So watch carefully!)

3/ Take the cake out of the tin and roll while hot. See on this link how to roll the cake in a moist towel, it will explain much better than what I can do! Leave to cool down.

4/ Make the chestnut mousse: whip the egg whites into firm peaks, fold in the chestnut puree.

When the cake has cooled down, unroll carefully, spread the chestnut mousse all over, and roll again. Place in the fridge for a few hours (overnight if possible).

5/ Make the chocolate ganache: melt the chocolate, add the almond cream and stir well.

Spread the ganache on the log with a spatula once it has cooled down a bit and decorate as you like! (if only I had some icing sugar to dust some snow on it...)

Merry belated Christmas!!!

Christmas almond biscuits

Ok, I'm a bit late for Christmas, but I couldn't find the time to bake these amazing biscuits earlier, and I really missed their orangy taste. Plus I had some organic oranges in the cupboard, so I had to make good use of them :)

I discovered this recipe years ago on Camille's lovely blog and as it's naturally gluten and dairy free, it's still one of my Christmas classics. I was a bit lazy today and skipped the icing (and it's sweet enough anyway!) but here is the complete recipe.

Ingredients

For 30-40 biscuits:
300g of ground almonds
250g of sugar
2 egg whites
zest of 1 organic orange

For the icing:
150g of icing sugar
1 egg white

Directions

1/ Combine ground almonds, sugar and orange zest.

2/ Beat egg whites into soft peaks, fold in the almond mix to get a soft dough. If it is sticky, add a bit of sugar.

3/ Spread the dough with a rolling pin. (It's easier if you place the dough between 2 sheets of greaseproof paper.) It must be about 5 mm thin. Form little stars, moons, etc. with a cookie cutter and put them on a baking tray.

4/ Cook for 10 to 15 min in the oven preheated to 150°C. The biscuits must stay soft and barely golden, they will harden when cooling down.

5/ Prepare the icing: beat the egg white into stiff peaks, fold in the icing sugar. Dip the top of the biscuits in the icing and let them dry out on a baking shelf. They will smooth and dry overnight at room temperature.

GF quinoa and chocolate chip cookies

Ok, ok I know it doesn't sound very Christmasy, but I bought some quinoa flour for the first time (my trip to Peru inspired me and I now want quinoa in everything!) and came across this recipe while searching for ideas on what to do with it. Actually I also found a recipe of pancakes but they were so yummy that I didn't get the chance to take a picture of them before eating them, so I guess I'll have to cook some more before posting!

Anyway these quinoa and chocolate chip cookies are absolutely gorgeous and are the closest thing I found to the wheat cookies I used to bake. I'm already loving quinoa flour.

Ingredients

- 125 g of quinoa flour

- 1 ½ tsp of GF baking powder

- 80 g of sugar (I used half muscovado/half demerara)

- 25 g of almond butter

- 25 g of oil

- 1 egg

- 100 g of dark chocolate chips

Directions

1/ Mix the almond butter and the oil until you get a smooth texture, add the sugar and whip for a bit. Stir in the egg.

2/ In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder and chocolate chips. Stir in the first mix. Leave it aside for 10-15 minutes.

3/ Preheat the oven on 180°C.

4/ On a baking tray covered with greaseproof paper, form little bowls of dough (leave enough space between them, they are going to spread a bit). Flatten them.

5/ Bake for 10 to 15 minutes. They are ready when they get a nice golden colour but are still soft inside. You can keep the cookies for a few days in a tin.

Dark chocolate truffles

It's time to get ready for Christmas :)

And I don't know if it's the same for you, but I can't imagine going through December without a box of biscuits and chocolate in my cupboard. Naturally, it gets more complicated when you have to eat gluten and dairy free, especially when you are used to your Christmas fix full of nasty gluten :-S

But my will of eating sweet things and my desire to enjoy this time of the year being what they are, (and because I have some spare time to bake), I have decided to accept the challenge and find the best gluten and dairy free Christmas recipes.

Let's start with a French classic, chocolate truffles. The recipe comes from La faim des délices.

 

Ingredients

- 300 g of dark chocolate 60-70% cocoa

- 15 g of honey

- 70 g of water (I added a bit of almond milk too, but I would stick to this quantity of liquid next time to get harder truffles, maybe half water/half dairy-free milk)

- 25 g of vegetable oil

- some cocoa powder for coating

Directions

1/ Carefully melt the chocolate in the microwave, give it a stir.

2/ In a bowl, warm up the water, oil and honey. Pour over the melted chocolate and stir until you get a smooth and even texture.

3/ Add anything else you like to personalize the flavour : vanilla, rhum, orange blossom, cinnamon, chestnut puree, bergamot oil... I put half a teaspoon of cinnamon, 1 tbsp of chestnut puree and chose a strong chestnut tree honey.

4/ Leave it to cool down and keep in the fridge for a few hours (or overnight) until the chocolate mix sets.

5/ Prepare a bowl with some cocoa powder in. Scoop a teaspoon of chocolate mix and roll between the palms of your hands until you get a nice round truffle. Coat into cocoa and keep aside. Start again until you run out of the preparation. Have fun and enjoy! ;-)

Hazelnut cake

I had a whole pot of ground hazelnuts that I had bought in France last summer with my mum. I had somehow forgotten about it until yesterday when I found myself a baking mood. I was remembering the taste of a really moist hazelnut cake, even though it would be impossible for me to tell when and where I had it. So I decided to try Scally's recipe in the hope that it would match the cake I had in mind.

Here is the recipe of what seems to be called a gâteau creusois.

Ingredients

130 g of sugar

200 g of ground hazelnuts

100 g of melted salted butter/margarine

5 eggs

Instructions

1/ Preheat the oven to 180°C.

2/ Separate the eggs. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar for 3 minutes. Add the butter, then the hazelnuts and stir well.

3/ Whip the egg whites until soft peaks. Fold delicately in the egg yolk mix.

4/ Pour in a greased/lined baking tin and bake for 45 minutes.

This cake is awesome! Really moist, light and full of flavour, plus it's naturally gluten free :)

It will keep for a few days without a problem if you don't eat it all before! Enjoy!

Chestnut pancakes

I woke up this morning and wanted something special for breakfast. Because it is my day off, I have all the time in the world to cook so that's perfect :) 

In my cupboard, some chestnut flour that I really need to finish (the packet is small but because chestnut flour is quite strong you only use a tiny bit at a time), in the fridge, eggs and almond milk. Ok, I should be able to manage some pancakes with that, shouldn't I? After a quick look on internet for gluten free pancakes, I found a recipe on La Table de Clémence of pancakes with chestnut and rice flours. Sounds good to me!

Here it is.

Ingredients (for a dozen of pancakes)

55 g of chestnut flour
40 g of rice flour
15 g of demerara sugar (I put 30g)
1 teaspoon of GF baking powder
1 egg
10 cl of dairy free milk (I added a bit more at the end because I found my batter was too thick)
35 g of vegetable oil

Directions

1/ Combine dry ingredients in a bowl (flours, sugar, baking powder).

2/ Combine wet ingredients in a second bowl (egg, milk, oil).

2/ Combine wet and dry mixes and mix well. Let the batter rest for 10 minutes.

4/ Heat up a frying pan on medium heat with a bit of oil. When it's hot pour some of the pancake batter to form the pancakes. Cook until you see little bubbles (about 2 minutes or so), then flip the pancakes, cook for a bit longer on the other side and take out of the pan.


The result is very different from traditional wheat flour pancakes, so don't expect your pancakes to taste like them. The taste of chesnut is really lovely and because I put a bit more sugar than stated in the recipe, I could have eaten my pancakes on their own (I still spread some home made jam on them though!). Enjoy!

Gluten and dairy free courgette and potato quiche

I had been trying different recipes for a gluten free shortcrust pastry but could not find anything really satisfying, until the other day I came across this recipe by Valérie Cupillard: a vegetable quiche with a pastry made of rice and buckwheat flours, olive oil and rice milk. I had all the ingredients in my cupboard so it was perfect!

The pastry

- 60 g of brown rice flour

- 60 g of buckwheat flour

- 2 tbsp of olive oil

- 6 cl of rice milk

- 1/2 tsp of gluten free baking powder

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and roll the dough on a floured board with a rolling pin. 

(I usually put the dough between two sheets of grease proof paper and then use the rolling pin. It is much easier to roll and to lay the pastry in the tin.).

Lay the pastry in a quiche tin lined with grease proof paper.

The filling

- 1 large potato

- 1 small courgette

- a few dried tomatoes

- 3 eggs

- 10 cl of non-dairy cream (I used rice cream as I'm avoiding soy)

- some herbs/spices of your choice (basil, cumin, parsley...)

Peel the potato. Cut the potato and courgette into dices. Stry-fried them for a few minutes (the original recipe says to steam them). They must be al dente.

In a bowl, beat the eggs and the cream with a fork, add salt, pepper and spices/herbs.

Line the pastry with the cooked vegetables and some dried tomatoes, then pour the egg mix on top.

Cook for about 35 minutes in a oven preheated to 180°C.

It's really really easy to make so no excuse, plus now that you have the base, you can use the recipe with whatever filling you like :)

Gluten free blackberry cake

So I found out there was a blackberry bush growing up in our London garden! Some might see it as a thorny invasion, but I chose to see the bright side of it: I just have to open the door to get some fresh fruits for free :) Not quite as sweet as the blackberries growing up back home in France, but perfect for a cake!

Ingredients

- 180 g of flour (I used rice flour today with a bit of chestnut flour to give a nutty taste to the cake)

- 2 tsp of baking powder (gluten-free)

- 3 eggs

- 125 g of sugar (demerara as usual + a bit of agave syrup)

- 80 g of sunflower margarine (replace it with butter if you don't eat dairy-free)

- some cinnamon

- 300 g of blackberries ( but it can be any other berries)

Directions

1°/ Preheat the oven to 180°C.

2°/ Combine eggs and sugar and whisk for a bit. Then add melted margarine, flour, baking powder and cinnamon. Stir well.

3°/ Add the blackberries and stir gently. 

4°/ Pour the mixture in a greased round cake tin (or loaf tin) and bake for about 45 minutes (I covered with foil after 30 minutes).

So easy to make and really moist, it's the perfect summer cake. I couldn't wait until it had completely cooled down to try it... but I can now tell that warm, it's delicious too :)

Gluten free marble loaf

I got a great book by Valérie Cupillard in which everything is gluten and dairy free (some recipes are eggless too) and taste amazing. Today's test was a marble loaf. A really basic cake but great at any time of the day.

Ingredients

- 120 g of brown rice flour

- 90 g of demerara sugar

- 80 g of dairy free margarine

- 40 g of ground almonds 

- 3 eggs

- 1 1/2 tsp of GF baking powder

- 1tsp of liquid vanilla

- 1 tbsp of cocoa powder

Directions

1°/  Preheat the oven to 210°C.

2°/ Whisk together the sugar and margarine. Add the ground almonds and eggs and keep whisking. Then add in the rice flour and baking powder.

3°/ Divide the dough into 2: pour a smaller half in a bowl and add the cocoa powder to it. Add the vanilla to the first half. 

4°/ In a greased loaf tin, pour half of the vanilla mix. Then pour over it the chocolate mix, following a central line, and the rest of the vanilla mix, still following the middle of the cake. 

5°/ Bake for 10 minutes at 210°C, then lower the temperature to 180°C and bake for about 30 more minutes.

Gluten free muesli cookies

... or how to transform a boring gluten free muesli into an exciting breakfast :)

So I bought that gluten-free muesli with rice, millet and soya flakes in the hope of getting a healthy nutritive breakfast. But when I poured my almonf milk on it, it turned into a really mushy thing that I didn't enjoy eating at all! So I tried to find a use for it - because it is a big pack and I don't like waste - and adapted a muesli cookies recipe that I found online. The cookies are a bit crumbly but taste great and I'm really happy that I saved my bag of muesli!

Ingredients (for a dozen of cookies)

- 200 g of gluten free flour mix

- 100 of gluten free muesli (mine contains rice, millet and soya flakes, raisins, currant, cashews, almonds and walnuts)

- 30 g of dessicated coconut

- 150 g of demerara sugar

- 125 g of dairy free margarine

- 1 egg

- 1/2 tsp of vanilla

- 1/2 tsp of bicarb

- 1/2 tsp of gluten free baking powder

Directions

1°/ Preheat the oven to 180°C.

2°/ Combine flour, sugar, muesli, coconut, bicarb and baking powder.

3°/ Whisk the egg and the melted butter. Add the vanilla.

4°/ Combine dry mix and wet mix together. Stir well.

5°/ Line a baking tray with parchment paper. With a spoon, scoop balls of cookie dough and place them on the tray (leave some space between them as they will spread out). Cook for 10-15 minutes.

Amazing brownies

I've been looking for the perfect GF/DF brownies recipe. The one where you wouldn't feel like something is lacking. It's really easy to replace the flour since brownies don't contain much, but I was sceptic as far as butter was concerned. Surfing French cooking blogs, I found the lovely blog Bien fait pour ta pomme and a recipe using almond butter instead of butter. I had to try it :)

Ingredients (for a big brownie)

- 400 g of dark chocolate

- 180 g of caster sugar (or 100 g of caster sugar and 80 g of muscovado sugar)

- 55 g of corn flour

- 4 eggs

- 70 g of almond butter

- 70 g of vegetable oil

- 2 tbsp of cocoa powder

- 60 g of nuts (I used half hazelnuts/half almonds)

- 50 g of dark chocolate chips

Directions

1/ Preheat the oven to 180°C.

2/ Melt the chocolate in the microwave. Stir in the almond butter and the oil to get a smooth mixture.

3/ Stir in the sugar, then the eggs (one at a time until well incorporated). Sieve in the corn flour and cocoa powder. Add the nuts (whole or chopped, as you prefer) and the chocolate chips. Stir well.

4/ Pour the mixture in a square tin lined with greaseproof paper. Bake for 25 minutes.

I have done the recipe twice so far and both were a huge success (although the first one was with half of the proportions only and I found the brownie far too thin, that's why I'm doubling it!)

Variations : You can replace the almond butter by another nut butter (I still need to try with peanut butter!), add cranberries, raisins, etc., use all different kinds of nuts. Enjoy!

Gluten free banana, hazelnut and chocolate cake

Here is a really soft and tasty banana loaf, perfect for breakfast or tea time. And it's also gluten-free and dairy-free :)

Ingredients

- 2 medium bananas, diced

- 60g of chopped hazelnuts (or any other nuts)

- 50g of dairy-free dark chocolate chips

- 2 medium eggs

- 100g of dairy-free margarine (I use sunflower margarine)

- 150g of icing sugar (I ran out and used 50g of icing sugar + 100g of muscovado sugar, and I think it's tastier this way!)

- 100g of gluten-free plain flour (I usually use the Doves Farm mix or half rice flour/half corn flour)

- 1 tsp of gluten-free baking powder

- optional : 1/2 tsp of xanthan gum (if not already included in the flour mix)

Directions

1/ Preheat the oven to 180°C.

2/ With a hand mixer, cream the margarine and icing sugar until light and fluffy. Then add the eggs one at a time while whisking.

3/ Combine flour, baking powder, xanthan gum, nuts, bananas and chocolate. Add to the first mixture.

4/ Pour the mixture in a loaf tin, greased or lined with greaseproof paper. Bake for about 45 min.

NB: You can keep the cake for a few days in a sealed box, you'll be surprised how moist it stays!

Canelés bordelais (dairy-free version)

My dad's family lives in Bordeaux, a city in the South-West of France, and, as a child, I used to spend some of my holidays there. I remember how I was always excited about going downtown, partly because of all the shops I didn't have in my little village, but most of all for the sweet treat I was hoping to get during those errands, the delicate canelé, typical of Bordeaux.

The canelés are traditionally baked in copper moulds, but nowadays you can easily find canelés silicone moulds. However it is important to get the right one since their special shape will make all the difference during the baking!

It was my first attempt at baking cannelés and although they are usually made with milk, being on a dairy-free diet I tried to replace milk by the Blue Diamond almond milk I usually drink. It turned out really well and I was really impressed by the result even if they could have done with 10 more minutes in the oven. I hadn't eaten canelés in ages so I might have forgotten their exact taste but from what I remember it is quite close, close enough to share the recipe with you today. Next time I will try a gluten-free version as well but I didn't want to be too ambitious on my first attempt ;)

Ingredients (for a tray of 8 cannelés)

- 250 ml of almond milk (or any other plant milk)
- 1 whole egg + 1 yolk
- 1/2 vanilla pod, split lengthwise and scraped
- 1  tbsp of rhum
- 50 g of plain flour
- 100 g of sugar
- 25 g of dairy-free margarine
(- a pinch of salt if the margarine in unsalted)

Directions

1/ In a saucepan combine the milk, vanilla pod and its scraping. Bring it to a boil.

2/ In the meantime, combine the flour, sugar and egg. Then whisk in the boiling milk (without the vanilla pod). Stir until the mixture is really smooth (like a crepe mixture). Leave it to cool down, then add the rhum.

3/ Refrigerate for a at least 2 hours (ideally overnight).

4/ Preheat the oven to 270°C. Butter the canelés mould if it is not a silicon one.

5/ Give a stir to the mixture and pour it equally into the 8 holes of the mould. Bake for 5 minutes at 270°C and then lower the oven temperature to 180° and bake for another 50 to 70 minutes, depending on how dark/cooked you want them.

All the secret is in the cooking time but it can vary a lot depending on the oven :S Anyway the canelés should be dark and crunchy outside but still very soft in their centre. I like mine a bit underdone so actually I got them almost right for my taste, but a bit longer in the oven would have been perfect!

Jamie Oliver's Laksa Soup

Winter is long in England, very long, so quite unexpectedly I started to cook soups. For the record, I had always been complaing about having to eat soups, at school as well as at home. I didn't use to consider soups as a meal, after all, they are very liquid indeed! But well, all things change and my taste for food too, so I decided that this winter was going to be a soup winter. I invested in a blender and in a soup cookbook (that I never use) and I started to turn into my mum and ate (drink?) soups all winter. When I got bored with the traditional garden vegetable soup, I started to look for something a bit more original and found this amazing laksa soup with coconut milk (I slightly changed the recipe, but you can fing the original one there). And I can't stop cooking it since!

Ingredients

- 600 g of butternut squash, halved, peeled and deseeded

- 560 ml of chicken or vegetable stock (make sure it is dairy and gluten free)

- 200 g of basmati rice

- 800 ml of coconut milk (I use only half when I want a thicker soup)

- 1 to 3 chillies, deseeded and finely sliced

- 2 thumb-sized pieces of fresh ginger, peeled

- 1 onion, chopped

- 2 cloves of garlic, finely sliced

- a large handful of fresh parsley, chopped

- 1 heaped teaspoon 5 spices (I make the mix myself with star anise, cloves, sichuan pepper, cinnamon and fennel seeds, that are not grounded except for the cinnamon)

- 1 teaspoon ground cumin

- salt and pepper

- olive oil

Directions

1/ Chop the butternut squash into 5 cm pieces.

2/ Chop the chillies, garlic, ginger and parsley into tiny pieces, mix with the spices, add the chopped onion and cook gently in a high-sided pan with a little olive oil for about 10 minutes.

3/ Add the butternut squash, stir well, and add the stock. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and leave it cook for about 15 min with a lid on.

4/ Add the rice and give it a good stir. The butternut squash should start to mush up. Continue to simmer until the rice is cooked (about 10-12 more minute), then add the coconut milk, salt and pepper.

5/ Enjoy!

NB: You can freeze some of the soup for later.