Like many workplaces and even school yards today, there a few tricky people to bake for, myself included. We have at least three people who are gluten intolerant, a vegan, a dairy free and another that is a little tricky to discribe. Anyway, I consulted with my tricky collegue and we decided she’d like to try the gluten and nut free friand recipe I’d found. And for the vegan and dairy free I had a trusted vanilla cookie recipe that I had from my intolerance testing days that I could jazz up with some icing. Both were reasonably simple recipes that could be whipped up in a couple of hours.
Now there’s a funny story about the first time I tested friand recipe a couple of weeks ago. Neil and I were going to visit his parents and a couple of my friends at the northern beaches. Like my Mum, I always like to take a little treat with us when we go visiting as I hate to arrive empty handed. We were also visiting the friends at lunchtime, so I offered to bring a pot of soup and a freash loaf of gluten-free bread. This all meant for a busy morning in the kitchen, just as well I’m an early riser!
Anyway, I was mixing up the friands after I’d made the bread and while preparing the soup, in a bit of a rush as we really had to get out the door soon. As I about spoon the batter into the friand tins I was thinking it was a bit runny and a bit light on but not having made it before I didn’t have anything to compare it with so I continued on regardless. See at this point I think most normal people who weren’t in a rush, would do a quick check against the recipe, but no not me, I blithely spooned it out and popped the trays in the oven. Then about halfway into the recommended baking time I was getting cooked smells from the oven. At the same time I also went into the microwave to heat up some milk and there was the melted butter waiting to go into the batter. O oh! I was at a loss at what to do. So I had a quick peek and they looked ok and were nearly done so I just left them. I now had butter free friands or maybe they were more like lime and coconut macaroons!
I can’t bear to waste things so I took them with us visiting anyway. Also family and friends have always proven to be very polite and appreciative of my not always perfect attempts at baking. Now these friands, even when you get the recipe right, don’t look like normal friands as they use lindseed meal, which makes them much darker and grainer. And without the butter they were light and fluffy and not dense at all. They were most definitiely edible, even quite tasty! Now I’m sure I read somewhere that chocolate brownies were invented by accident when a baker forgot a key ingredient. So sometimes mistakes have interesting outcomes, who knows I might have discovered a new tasty treat!
Anyway I digress, back to the friand recipe, once again courtesty of Australian Womens Weekly Gluten-free cookbook. As I said it uses lindseed meal which is quite handy if you also know someone with a nut allergy! It also uses both lime rind and juice which helps to balance the butteryness and sweetness, while the coconut gives it a great texture. So all in all it’s a lovely little moist friand that goes perfectly with your favorite cuppa! And this time I’ve included an extra picture of the batter in the tins so you’ve got a bit of a reference, if like me until recently, you haven’t made them before! Also the batter should be thick and relatively easy to spoon. Also to note is that I used shredded coconut instead of desicated coconut and I didn’t put flaked coconut on top, mainly because I only had shredded coconut and couldn’t be bothered buy more!
Lime and coconut friands (The Gluten Free Cookbook – The Australian Women’s Weekly)
Makes 12
6 egg whites
185g unsalted butter, melted
3/4 c linseed meal
½ c desiccated coconut (shredded ok too)
1 ½ c pure icing sugar
½ c soya flour
2 tsp finely grated lime rind
2 Tbsp lime juice
¼ c flaked coconut (optional)
1. Preheat oven 200C. Grease 12-hole friand pan.
2. Whisk egg whites in a large bowl until combined. Add butter, meal, desicated/shredded coconut, sifted icing sugar and flour, rind and juice; stir until combined. Divide mixture among pan holes.
3. Bake friands for 10 minites. Remove pan from oven, sprinkle with flaked coconut and bake for a further 10 minutes. Stand in pan 5 minutes; turn top-side up onto wire rack to cool.
Now for the vanilla cookies. This recipe was a bit of a staple from me several years back when I was going through intolerence testing and pretty much everything was off the allowed food list. They are simple sublte and tasty. They also can be varied in numerous ways with brown sugar, choc or carob chips, nuts, dried fruit or even citrus rind. This time I chose to go with the basic recipe and jazz them up with passionfruit icing (see melting moments recipe). Note I use my Kitchen Aid to do all the mixing and the cookies are quite pale if you use caster sugar, while brown sugar will give you a more golden cookie. Altenatively butter can also be used in same quantities if you don’t need to worry about being dairy free and a more golden cookie will be achieved. A few pictures are provided below recipe.
Vanilla cookies (Friendly Food by Royal Prince Alfred Hopsital Allergy Unit)
Makes 18 (approx)
125g dairy-free margarine
1/3 c caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 c GF plain flour
½ c GF SR flour
1. Preheat oven to 170C. Line two baking trays with baking paper
2. Beat the margarine, sugar and vanilla essence until well combined. Sift the flours into margarine mixture and use a wooden spoon until well combined. Use your hands to mix to form a soft dough.
3. Shape tablespoons of mixture into balls and place on prepared trays. Use a fork to flatten until about 1cm thick. Bake for 12-15 minutes until light golden. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool.
Neil was my official taste tester of both recipes and they go the tumbs up. Well I suppose he needs to get some kind of payment for taking all the pictures for the blog! What was left went to work on Monday. I thin there were a few happy campers, especially from those who generally can’t eat other treats at morning tea!
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