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 :)