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Kid-approved recipes, all gluten free

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Kid-approved recipes, all gluten free

With a son, Dylan, who has allergies to gluten, eggs and nuts, I am fairly experienced in making allergen-free treats. With “Gluten Free Makeovers,” I am pleased to add a few more recipes to my collection.

Chocolate shortbread (page 196), egg-free and dairy-free coffee cake (page 215), and roll-out sugar cookies (page 201) had great texture and taste and were Dylan-approved favorites for our family and friends. In fact, a friend told me that the Chocolate shortbread was “the best gluten free dessert” she had ever had.

My husband’s praise for the egg-free and dairy-free coffee cake was slightly more diplomatic, “This may be the best thing you’ve ever made that wasn’t your own recipe.” Blond brownies (page 178), however, were a total flop; they were extremely gooey, tasting virtually uncooked. That seemed to be the anomaly, though. I am looking forward to tasting the many other recipes in the book.

Gluten free baking can be complicated because of the combination of flours that need to mixed before the recipe even starts. “Gluten Free Makeovers” takes that a step further by designating various “blends” for advance preparation to have on hand for different recipes (It is a good idea to make these blends in bulk so you have them ready for several recipes). It also uses flours that may not be in every gluten free home, such as millet, sweet sorghum and sweet rice. Although this adds a bit more effort, it’s worth it.

RECIPES

Chocolate shortbread (egg-free)

Makes 24 to 30 squares

2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature

1¼ cups confectioners’ sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups basic blend (recipe follows)

1 teaspoon xanthan gum

½ teaspoon salt

1½ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

¾ cup chopped toasted pecans or walnuts, optional (we used white chocolate chips because of nut allergies in our family)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line a 9-by-13-inch pan with aluminum foil. Lightly oil the foil.

Beat together the butter, sugar and vanilla until blended. In a separate bowl, combine the flour blend, xanthan gum and salt. Add to the butter mixture and beat on low to combine. Press into the bottom of the prepared pan.

Bake for 35 minutes or until the top is golden brown. Remove from the oven and sprinkle the chocolate chips evenly over the top. Let melt and spread with a rubber spatula. If the chocolate chips do not melt, return to the oven briefly. Sprinkle evenly with pecans and press into the chocolate. Cool completely.

Use the foil to lift the cookies onto a cutting board. Cut into squares or other shapes. These handle more easily if frozen for 1 to 2 hours before cutting.

Shortcut: Use any all-purpose gluten free flour blend, but omit the salt and gum if they are already added to the blend.

Basic blend

2¾ cups rice flour

1¼ cups corn or potato starch

1/3 cup tapioca starch/flour

Cookbook Critic runs Wednesdays in the Plus section. This week’s Cookbook Critic is Michelle Rutledge of Nicasio who has a passion for all things culinary, including the Three S’s: Sweet, Salty and Starchy. Since her son was diagnosed with multiple food allergies when he was an infant, she was forced to include a fourth S: Sans, as in sans gluten, sans eggs and sans nuts.

REVIEW

“Gluten Free Makeovers: Over 175 Recipes — from Family Favourites to Gourmet Goodies — Made Deliciously Wheat-Free” by Beth Hillson (336 pages, Da Capo Lifelong Books, $19 )

Love to cook or bake?

Thanks to all the IJ readers who sent in an email asking to be a Cookbook Critic. If you’re still interested, email vlarson@marinij.com and include a little about yourself, your town, your cooking expertise, any dietary restrictions and types of foods you like to cook/bake. Please put “Cookbook Critic” in the subject line.


Gluten free Recipes with Bill & Sheila

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Don't over-egg the Christmas cookbook!

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Don’t over-egg the Christmas cookbook!

By
Melissa Kite

Last updated at 6:47 PM on 21st December 2011

Apparently, it wouldn’t be Christmas without a cookbook by Jamie Oliver in your stocking.

The 36-year-old chef has topped the seasonal bestseller chart for the fourth time in ten years with Jamie’s Great Britain. He has sold 319,217 copies in the past three months, which has led some industry experts to claim that people will actually be cooking these recipes at some point in the New Year.

Of course they won’t. I’m willing to bet you an organic roast chicken with lemon mash that the vast majority of the alleged gourmands who are given a copy of Oliver’s latest tome this Christmas will not get past spilling a glass of wine over the front cover.

Super Chef: Jamie Oliver has sold 319,217 copies of his cookbook in the last three months of 'Jamie's Great Britain'

Super Chef: Jamie Oliver has sold 319,217 copies of his cookbook in the last three months of ‘Jamie’s Great Britain’

At £30 a pop, this is an expensive present to buy so that someone can look at the pictures of Jamie and Union Jacks and then put it on a shelf next to Delia’s cookbook – How To Boil An Egg and Nigella’s cookbook – How To Look Gorgeous While Throwing Any Old Thing In A Pan.

Is anyone really going to cook ’12 Hour Rabbit Bolognese’? Does anyone really need to be told how to make Bubble And Squeak? Seriously. Just stick all your left-over Sunday veg in a blender then fry it. There, I’ve saved you £30.

Who are the recipients of all this cookbook? It would be a brave man who bought a woman a cookbook in these days of equality and tetchiness. But I have a feeling these cookbook are no longer just bought by men for their wives.

The recipes in Mr Oliver’s latest give you some clue: they include instructions on how to make a full British fry-up and a “retro” arctic roll (as if there was any other kind), for example.

A Christmas favourite? Nigella Lawson's ideas put her at odds with other chefs

Cooking charms: Who is buying these cookbook? I have a feeling they are no longer just bought by men for their wives

I suspect that the target audience for the Oliver book is male, that women are buying it for their menfolk. I fear that we now have a generation of men who are more concerned about the latest gravy-making theories than the latest cars.

Like a Top Gear annual, a book on the newest food fads is now the must-have item for trendy 30-somethings, who are buying into an image, an idea of a lifestyle they feel they ought to be aspiring to.

Nothing new: The recipes in Jamie's latest book include instructions on how to make a full British fry-up and a 'retro' arctic roll

Nothing new: The recipes in Jamie’s latest book include instructions on how to make a full British fry-up and a ‘retro’ arctic roll

There is nothing really new when it comes to food, but these books fuel the illusion that if you only roast a turkey in a ground-breaking, fashionable way you will be a rip-roaring social success, the envy of your peers.

Whoever is buying them, the net result is that Jamie is now so important and influential that his website, which I just checked, features the video item ‘Jamie Oliver Christmas Message’.

He’s sitting in his home with a twinkling Christmas hearth behind him if he were David Cameron or Barack Obama. He wishes us well and urges us to continue our good work in the kitchen.

And I will, just as soon as I get out my mother’s trusty 1970s Robert Carrier cookery cards.

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Market Your Cookbook

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Market Your Cookbook

Divine recipes, luscious photographs – this is your first cookbook and you look forward to those big royalty checks. So what’s your marketing plan for this book? What are you doing to increase sales?

New writers often think the publisher arranges for all publicity. Not true. As the writer, you have most at stake so it will benefit you most to take a proactive stance when it comes to promoting and selling your cookbook.

Much of the research can take place while you are planning and writing your book. Visit bookstores and study the cookbooks that are on the shelves. Note the different types of cookbooks and who are writing them. Discern which books are your direct competition for sales. Create ways to make yourself stand out.

After your book is at the publisher but before it is released contact magazine editors, ezine publishers and website owners. Ask if they will review your book and wait for a reply before you incur the cost of shipping.

Write articles or offer excerpts from you cookbook to magazines that cater to your audience.

Tap your local newspaper for interviews and reviews. Pick up the phone and ask for a feature reporter (look for by-lines in the features, lifestyle, or Sunday special sections) and offer yourself up as the subject of an article.

Build a website using your name or your book’s name as the domain. Take all those published reviews, articles, newspaper features and anything else anyone has said about your book and link to it, or excerpt it. You can also use quotes from reviews in any press release you send out.

Once your book is published call bookstores as far as you are willing to travel and offer to do a book signing, cooking demonstration or reading. Do not give up. Keep calling and planning and promoting. Bring along giveaways to book signings. Have bookmarks, recipe cards, or notepads printed up with your name, website and book cover prominently displayed.

Don’t stop with bookstores. Check out cookware stores and gourmet shops that will stock your cookbook, and who might even welcome you to demonstrate your recipes on a busy Saturday.

Ask all your friends to help spread the word by joining food-related discussion lists, setting up book signings in their local bookstores, and writing reviews of your cookbook.

Contact television and radio stations to see if they are looking for a feel-good news story or if you can be a guest on one of their shows.

Having a new cookbook out or being a local published author is newsworthy, but how do you keep the marketing effort up long term?
Find a way to connect your recipes with events. Dessert cookbooks are easily linked with holidays like Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays, and weddings. Healthy food cookbooks are great for January (New Year’s resolutions), spring (getting ready for summer clothes) and right after a new medical report comes out about the danger of fat, meat, sugar, wheat allergies and junk food.

If you want on-going coverage from local, regional and national news media send out announcements on your expertise. Include any food science and nutrition background you have to widen your appeal as an expert.

Donate your cookbook as a prize or to be auctioned off for charity. Not only will the lucky winner learn who you are, but so will all the other readers, listeners and viewers as the contest or auction is promoted for the weeks leading up to it.

The key to marketing your cookbook is persistence. Try everything above, then go back through the list again and again. Marketing your cookbook successfully can be likened to making a snowball. You start with a few individual ideas, add on more each day or week, and soon you’ve got a snowball whose momentum will carry you, and your cookbook, out into the world.
author:Pamela White

Online cookbook launched by Ottawa woman invites recipes for royal newlyweds

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Online cookbook launched

TORONTO – People around the world will have a chance to share their favourite recipes with Prince William and Kate with the launch of an online cookbook by an Ottawa royal watcher.

“Will and Kate’s Kitchen: A Culinary Gift to the Royal Couple” went live this week and Judith Yaworsky, who conceived the idea, said she’s already had recipes submitted from royal fans in places as far-flung as Warsaw, Ind., Portage la Prairie, Man., and India.

Yaworsky helped celebrate the royal nuptials by hosting a party at 5 a.m. the day William and Kate tied the knot.

“And then four days later there’s that picture of Kate pushing a shopping cart. Four days after two billion people are watching their wedding. And then I was cooking supper and on my kitchen counter was a cookbook that a cousin and I had created for our own family about a year and a half ago and suddenly the idea came to me, ‘I’m going to create one for them.’”

While her own family cookbook took over a year to compile, the online book dedicated to William and Kate came together in just three weeks with the help of webmaster Jason Vriends.

“I just asked friends to put recipes in and they did. When I got the one from Warsaw, Indiana, I knew it was going to work,” Jaworsky said in an interview from Ottawa.

As of Friday, she had posted 51 recipes, including Decadently Rich Chocolate Brownies from Esther W. in Indiana and Tomato and Fennel Soup from Lisa Anderman in Los Angeles. Then there’s Southern African “Biltong” from William Knott in Portage la Prairie who says the recipe is “special to anyone who lived in any area of Southern Africa, up to the Congo area” and adds “if you have any left after 2 days, it is a bum batch or you have no friends.”

Yaworsky edits the recipes to give them uniformity and has emailed submitters to clarify a point.

“This is a gift for a future king and queen. So we want it to be nice and look nice too.”

Yaworsky says people love to exchange recipes.

“I’m one of these people who loves to cook, loves to eat and loves to share recipes and people are always sharing recipes and you know that those are the best ones because they’ve been tested by other people and that’s exactly what this is all about — sharing something that’s really great.”

She has no illusions of having the opportunity to present the cookbook to William and Kate during their visit to Canada, which kicks off June 30, but she says that Stephen Wallace, secretary to Gov. Gen. David Johnston, and Kevin MacLeod, Canadian secretary to the Queen and co-ordinator of the 2011 royal tour, know about the effort.

“They may tell them about it and that would be very nice, but when they’re off of this tour, which is extremely busy and very draining, when they get home and they have to cook they’ll know about it. I just want them to have the recipes.”

On the website’s homepage is an invitation to submit recipes to thank William and Kate, now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, for sharing their special day with the world. It’s under an illustration of the couple by Toronto artist Alma Roussy.

“Kate,” clad in her wedding gown, is holding a sceptre and a hand blender, while “William,” resplendent in the scarlet tunic of an Irish Guards officer worn for the wedding, sports a tall chef’s hat and holds a wooden spoon. “It’s a little subtle message — hey, guys, you can get in the kitchen and cook too,” said Yaworsky.

Yaworsky put up $2,200 to get the online cookbook going. Once various expenses have been repaid, net proceeds will go to the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary. The organization was chosen by the couple to be the Canadian beneficiary of a special charitable fund set up to celebrate their wedding.

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Online:

http://willandkateskitchen.com/


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