Fab Foodie Weekend

We had a great first Fffood Swap on Saturday. A day showcasing and swapping the most amazing fresh produce, produced locally in the gardens of fab foodie’s around Gloucestershire!  Fffantastic! The yellow Courgettes were my favourite!

I met some really great people (some of you from Twitter came, thank you so much for coming by and saying hello!) and I really enjoyed showing people how to make some delicious food with my recipe demonstration!  Here’s some lovely pictures from the day if you missed it.

I also showcased some of my favourite Gluten Free products. In particular Perkier! Foods new porridge mixes,  B-Tempted foods delicious cakes and Honeybuns Bakery traybakes. We also included some in our giveaway hamper, the proceeds of which went to the Stroud Food Bank.

I picked up some apples and have my eye on making some of my Toffee Apple Pockets with some new Warburton’s new gluten free croissants!

If you’re interested in the recipes and recipe demonstrations that I did at the show, I'll be posting them up in the next few days so stay tuned!  

I also met the lovely lady, Naomi who's behind the Heavenly Pies and Puddings company - Great gluten free pies and pastry... Oh my goodness, heavenly, my Mum and I ate the roasted vegetable one and it was the best pastry I've tasted that's gluten free. Heavenly Pies sell at Stroud Farmers market so definitely worth hunting down!

I feely really lucky to live in an area where fresh and local produce is so readily available, and neighbours generously donate their produce to other's.  People here really appreciate where their food comes form here and continue to champion local producers and makers and to encourage people to buy local where it's possible. It makes such a difference.

 © Matt Bigwood Photography www.matthewbigwood.co.uk www.flickr.com/photos/mattbigwood/

And can you believe that not one penny exchanged hands in return for these goods - yes, swapping, it's the new shopping!  I'm telling you! :)

Big thanks to the Fffood Swap Team who worked magic behind the scenes to make this fantastic event come to fruition!  Well done everyone.

Also a big thank you to other food producers who donated to the Hamper including Tilda Rice and The Artisan Kitchen Preserves.  See you soon for more foodie fun!

Gluten Free Chocolate Brownies in the TV!

Today's blog post is bought to you by the wonder of the small internet television screen!  Yes, it's real, you can watch me make Gluten Free Chocolate Brownies!  Hooray!

This is super exciting and very scary, (because you can see a popper broke on my top and my shirt keeps popping open every now and then! haha, spot that!)

But the main thing is that I'm chatting to you all and we're making gluten free chocolate brownies together.  Even if you're not following a gluten free diet, making these brownies, wheat free, is a pretty special treat indeed, I hope you'll agree!

We had so much fun making this video - biggest thank you to Justin and Alison the creative duo behind Golby Creative and also to Gary and his team at Obsidian Kitchens and Bathrooms in Cheltenham for letting me hang out in their kitchen.

This is the first video in 3 - we've got some more tasty, quick and easy gluten free recipes to share with you soon.

If you don't have a notepad and pen handy to take down the ingredients and method in the video - here it is again below. Enjoy!

Ingredients
340g Plain Chocolate chips
85g Unsalted butter
25g Unsweetened Cocoa (I used Green and Blacks)
40g Cornflour
½ teaspoon Salt
150g Caster Sugar
3 large Eggs
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract (Neilsen Massey's brand is certified gluten free)

Add chopped pecans if you wish
A good local Ice cream to serve (Winstones Ice Cream is great, local and delicious!)

Method

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees.

In a heatproof bow, over a saucepan, melt the chocolate chips and butter together.

Take off the heat, cool for a bit.

In another bowl, whisk up the eggs and sugar together.

Add the Vanilla extract.

Then add this mixture to the melted chocolate slowly.

Sift in the cornflour and cocoa powder.  Mix until well combined.

Pour into a lined brownie tin.  If you line it with baking paper, and let the sides flap over, they make great handles to easily lift it out of the tin afterwards!

Serve warm with ice cream.  Enjoy.  Let your troubles melt away in the chocolate moment!

♥  See you all again really soon! ♥

Gluten Free Banana Bread

What's your favourite food memory?

Shall I tell you mine?  Let me re-live this lovely memory with you and maybe it'll spark a foodie memory for you too.  (I tend to remember a lot from 'food' milestones!)

You see, when I lived out in Australia, before I started on the Gluten Free way of life, one day I went to this local cafe - a really cool cafe called 'Lemon'.  They did this banana bread as part of their breakfast menu and everyone seemed to be ordering this banana bread.  The waitress asked me if I wanted it toasted.  Hmm 'Toasted?' I enquired, 'do you recommend that?'  

'Oh yeah,' She replied in her friendly, peppy, Aussie drawl,  'it's awesome.'

'Cool,' I said, 'I'll have it toasted, thanks.'

A few moments later, banana bread arrived, toasted, warm, smelling outrageously of cinnamon, sweet banana and .... well, what I can only describe as heaven.  It was served with butter on the side, so I spread the warm fluffy banana bread with the butter and I took a bite.  My goodness, that bite will stay with me for a very long time.  Why, on earth, had I not discovered the sweet wonder of toasted banana bread before?  Pinch me.  I'm done.

And with that banana bread became quite a staple in my life down-under.  When I started working at the cafe there, they made banana bread fresh each morning and served it toasted with icing sugar dusted on top.  When working on the breakfast shift, we would be able to take a 15 minute break to have breakfast, choosing anything from the menu.   Looking forward to that Banana Bread break got me through a long shift, I can tell you!

Little did I know that the wonderful banana bread was probably contributing to my very poorly self at the time - with tummy cramps etc (now, looking back, it all makes sense).  But in some ways it was worth it while it lasted.

So, since going gluten free, I often crave banana bread.  So I woke up the other morning and was like, 'I'm going to make Gluten Free Banana Bread!'  And so I damn well did!  And do you know what?  It was absolutely awesome, toasted with butter on top :)

Here's the recipe - enjoy it and make sure you at least try a toasted bit with butter!!

R E C I P E
I n g r e d i e n t s


250 grams Doves Gluten Free plain flour
2 teaspoons Doves or Dr Oetker Gluten Free baking powder
125 grams unsalted butter (room temp)
250 grams caster sugar
4 bananas (ripe and mashed)
2 large eggs (lightly beaten)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

M e t h o d

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F/Gas 4).

Lightly grease a loaf tin and then line it with parchment paper. (No parchment paper? No worries, you will be fine with just a greased tray :)

Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl.

Mix the butter, sugar, banana, eggs, vanilla extract and cinnamon in a separate bowl.

Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir to combine, be careful not to over mix.

Pour the batter into the loaf tin and bake for around 1 hour 15 minutes, or until a skewer comes out kind of clean and the top is golden brown (don't worry if the skewer doesn't totally come out clean - the bread is meant to be of a moist consistency :)

Leave to cool and then serve in thick slices with butter.

This cake is also awesome with cream cheese frosting and coconut on top! (Just saying ;)

The easiest carrot cake - that's also gluten free!

It's finally here everybody!  Spring has sprung.  Yes, just look at that blue sky!  Spring is always my favourite time of the year in the UK - It's so colourful and fresh and the scents of spring flowers and cut grass are wonderful.

So with spring in the air I have been on a bit of a baking mission this past week.  My mission?  I've been recipe testing some gluten free baked treats and first up is a absolutely delicious, moist, scrummy carrot cake, that's not only gluten free, but can be made dairy free too - because it uses sunflower oil in it instead of butter.  Yes, you can believe your eyes and ears!  And it's flipping amazing.  Even if you're not following a gluten free or dairy free diet, this cake is absolutely delicious!

So I laid out all my baking stuff - you see the chocolate in the picture? - well, this didn't actually go in the carrot cake, but it did go in some chocolate brownies which I baked today and will blog about soon.. so stay tuned.

It's just that a picture of some carrots wouldn't have been quite as interesting!

As you know, I've recently moved house and I can't seem to locate my baking tins.  All I have is this brownie tin / lasagne baking tray, which you can actually make just about anything in.  So I used it again to make a carrot sheet cake.  I call it 'carrot cake slab!' :)

The best thing about this recipe is that you don't need a mixer to make it,  as there's barely any mixing at all.  Just grab a large bowl and a wooden spoon or spatula and go bananas!

Carrot Cake ... 
Ingredients


175g Plain Flour (Doves Organic Gluten Free plain flour)
2 tsp Baking Powder (Dr Oetker and Doves Organic both do gluten free versions)
1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
tiny pinch Ground Cloves (when I say a tiny pinch I mean less than a teaspoon, ok?)
tiny pinch Ground Nutmeg (again, teeny tiny)
200g Soft Light Brown Sugar (sometimes called Light Muscavado)
200ml Sunflower Oil
2 Large Eggs (room temp)
175g graded carrot (I used organic, because they're sweeter)
Optional - chopped walnuts for the topping.

1. Pre heat your oven to 170 degrees.

2. Grate the carrots.  3 medium yields about 175g nicely. Any left overs can be sprinkled on a salad for later :)

3. Sift the flour and baking powder together.

4. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar and Sunflower oil.  Then add the eggs one at a time mixing gently until combined.

5. Then add the carrot and spices.

6. Then gently fold the flour mixture into the gooey mixture of sunflower oil and eggs etc.  Just until combined and gooey.  Don't over mix.

7. Pour into a cake tin and bake in the centre of your hot oven for around 30 minute (depending upon the size and depth of the cake tin, might take about 45 minutes if you're not using a brownie tin)  or until the top is golden and a skewer comes out clean.

Cream Cheese Frosting (you can make this dairy free by skipping the cream cheese and mixing together about 50g of coconut oil, icing sugar and hot water and vanilla extract).

Ingredients
50g unsalted butter
200g cream cheese
100g icing sugar
teaspoon vanilla extract
Chopped walnuts for the topping.

Make sure your butter and cream cheese are room temp.

1. Mix together (with the whisk attachment of your mixer) the butter and cream cheese.  Then add in two parts the icing sugar.  Dumping too much icing sugar into the bowl at one time will cause an icing sugar explosion.

2. Add in a teaspoon of vanilla extract and mix in.

3. Pour over the top of the cake.  Top with chopped walnuts if you fancy - I didn't because as you know I've got a nut allergy.  So just a simple topping for me - but I'm sure walnuts would be delicious on this!

Eat 2 slices immediately and save one for breakfast :)  Enjoy!!