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    Baking More than Meringue Baking More than Meringue

    Baking More than Meringue

Baking More than Meringue

Baking is getting a lot of media coverage here in the UK at the moment. Not that it ever went away, for many of us!

There’s been a lot of coverage of the television series The Great British Bake Off, in which amateur bakers were tested on their baking skills.

You can find recipes from the television series on the BBC site – the link I’ve given you uses the BBC Special Diets filter to find only recipes suitable for gluten free diets, so if you want to see more, use the options on the right hand side to pick and choose what you want to see. Not surprisingly, the recipes tend to be ‘normal’, with the gluten free recipes being meringue based, including macaroons.

If you are feeling brave, and love to bake, put yourself forward as a gluten free baker for next season! Now that really would be a challenge, but it would be great to see gluten free cooking on mainstream television.

And this week (Oct 17-23 2011) is National Baking Week, sponsored by a number of big companies. It’s good to see that their focus this year has been on encouraging baking in schools.

Sadly, no special diets filter or search on this site, so we can’t easily find suitable recipes, and some of them don’t look like baking recipes at all (salsa?). However, there is a recipe for macaroons.

I do like a macaroon, but still…

Looking for more than meringue? Of course you are!

Apart from our own best-favorite chocolate brownie recipe, have a look at these blogs and websites for more information on gluten free baking:

Allergy Alert: Lentilles Vertes (Green Lentils)

Another one! Are we going to get a spate of alerts from companies about green lentils now?

The Co-operative have recalled all date codes of Wholefoods Dried Lentilles Vertes due to undeclared wheat. You know what to do: don’t eat them, but take them back…

It is interesting, isn’t it, to find out how the same supplier supplies so many different supermarkets? That is, I’m assuming that this is a related problem to the Sainsbury’s one from a couple of days ago…

I’ll add any more that come in to this post.

Gluten Free Baking Course at River Cottage

Newly diagnosed? Or maybe just looking for some new inspiration? Perhaps a gluten free baking course would be just the thing…

Naomi Devlin, from Straight into Bed Cakefree and Dried, is running gluten free baking courses at River Cottage, in Devon. And since she’s both a coeliac and a nutritionist, the course should be right on target.

The course is a full day (9.30-5) and starts with tea/coffee and gluten free treats (yay!) followed by two practical sessions on cooking (sourdough and brownies) and another session on nutrition in the morning. Lunch is included, and then in the afternoon, two more practical sessions on cooking pastry and muffins, and a demonstration of cooking pancakes and pikelets – with lots of tasting, apparently!

They suggest that the course is only really suitable for 12yrs of age and upwards – under 16s must be accompanied by an adult. So no need to be worried that it’ll be all about icing cupcakes and decorating them with sweeties…

The course costs £180 for the day – and the next one is in the middle of November. You can find out more here: http://www.rivercottage.net/shop/product/gluten_free_cookery/

I’d love to visit River Cottage myself, as I’m a big fan of Hugh’s food campaigns – and there’s a new River Cottage television series starting this Sunday (16 October) at 8pm on C4, so make a note in your diary. If you’ve been on one of these courses, do let us know how you got on!

Allergy Alert: Sainsbury’s lentilles vertes (Green Lentils)

That gluten gets everywhere, doesn’t it? (Lentils?)

I received an alert late last night that visible wheat grains have been detected in Sainsbury’s Lentilles Vertes (500g) which have – not surprisingly – not been declared on the label. I have to say, it probably wouldn’t even occur to me to check the label on lentils!

Best before dates: All date codes between October 2012 to February 2013

As always, if you’ve bought green lentils with these dates from Sainsbury’s and are living gluten free, don’t eat them, but take them back to the shop.

I know Sainsbury’s did a great job of alerting me to the recent problem with oats, having identified me as a purchaser – I wonder how easy it would be for them to create a message function on their website so that if I logged in to do some online shopping, I’d get a pop-up alert? I know it wouldn’t catch all purchasers, but it might catch some…

Christmas is Coming: Mince pies

I know it’s only the first week of October, but I’ve already eaten enough mince pies to have lucky months until April next year…

We were recently sent a box of the new Genius gluten free mince pies to sample, and I was very pleasantly surprised.

Surprised because occasionally some of the gluten free mince pies I’ve tasted in the past have been disappointing – hard pastry, a strong aftertaste, odd smell or unpleasant ‘feel’, or not enough mincemeat to the amount of pastry. The same is true of many ‘normal’ mince pies too, to be fair!

And because I’ve not been able to track down any of the new pastry from Genius yet, I wasn’t expecting much.

But these are very nice indeed. In fact, I accidentally ate two today – I love a mince pie.

The mincemeat is excellent, and generously dolloped into the pastry shells. It is moist, with a good consistency, and clearly contains a variety of sultanas, currants and raisins. And there’s a good taste of Bramley and spice. No mixed peel or chopped nuts, which do detract from a mince pie, in my view! And the mincemeat is vegetarian; another important factor. Not vegan: the pies do contain egg and milk.

If I was going to quibble, I’d say that the pastry was a little pale, but that was not a problem: it is soft and tasty, with no grittiness or aftertaste. (If you’ve eaten a lot of gluten free products, you’ll know exactly what I mean here!) If the new pastry is anything like this, I’m going to redouble my efforts to find somewhere that will sell it to me.

These mince pies […]