Egg-free, gluten-free, dairy-free apple cake for Easter Sunday!

03/27/2013 By 2 Comments

Egg-free Apple cakeThose on egg-free diets have a really frustrating time. Because there are relatively few of them (nowhere near as many as are on gluten or dairy-free diets), they tend to get sidelined, both in terms of recipes and ‘made’ products.

So, with the  prospect of a nice Easter Sunday tea around a blazing log fire (forget the daffodils and Easter lambs….) – and since I had rather a lot of juicy looking Bramley apples in the bowl – I thought I would do some egg-free baking! Inevitably, I ended up by doing two versions – a chestnut flour one and a polenta one, but both using puréed fruit as a partial egg alternative and fresh dates as a sugar alternative. Both were really nice. The polenta one probably looked nicer as it was more golden (chestnut flour tends to be slightly grey) but I think that the chestnut flour one actually kept better. That is always assuming that there is any left after the first sitting…. For what it is worth, of those who happily munched their way through my two cakes, two were dairy intolerant and the other four could eat anything they wanted.

Anyhow, here goes. As always you should be able to adapt the recipe successfully to accommodate your own sensitivities.

 

Egg-free, gluten-free, dairy-free apple cake
Egg, gluten, nightshade and wheat free; can be corn, dairy, lactose & nut free; no added sugar

Makes a reasonable size cake for 6 (I made two small ones if you are wondering about the size in the picture!)

2 large Bramley apples – approx. 700g of apple, cored and chopped small, skin on
10 fresh dates, pipped and chopped  very small
250ml water
120g coconut oil or butter or dairy-free spread
300g chestnut flour or coarse polenta
4 heaped tsp gluten and wheat-free baking powder
pecan nuts, walnuts or almonds to decorate (optional)

Heat the oven  to 180C/350F/Gas mark 4.

Put the chopped apple with the chopped date in a pan with the water, bring to the boil, cover and cook gently for 10–15 minutes or until the apple is totally soft.

In a bowl beat the coconut oil, butter or spread with a wooden spoon until soft. Gradually beat in the apple purée, then thoroughly fold in the chestnut flour or polenta along with the baking powder.

Line the base of a 200cm/8 inch cake tin with greaseproof paper and spoon in the mixture. Bang it till it flattens then decorate with the nuts if you are using them.

Bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool slightly in the tin then turn out and allow to cool completely on a rack.

 

Filed Under: Allergies, Coeliac/celiac disease, Dairy-free, Food, FreeFrom Food, Gluten-free, Recipes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pasta and greens…..

03/13/2013 By Leave a Comment

Pasta and greensThis  scarcely counts as as recipe but is so delicious that I feel that I have to share…..

Through one of those muddles which happen every now and then to everyone who orders on line, I ended up last week with an amazing quantity of fascinatingly different greens in my Farm Direct delivery  - positively enough to stock a shop. So, inspiration was needed to think of ways to use them.

As it happened I also had several packets of Del ‘Ugo’s delicious new chick pea pasta sitting in the fridge – so this one was a no brainer. However, it was so simple – and so delicious – that I thought that I needed to spread the word. However, be warned – you do need a really good olive oil. We are lucky enough to have a can of fresh pressed from a friend’s olive groves in the Tuscan hills – but there are lots  of really good olive oils around.

The dish’s first outing was just pasta and greens and oil, but I then made it again for a family party last weekend and thought I would add a few more ingredients. It works well both ways – the first tastes possibly fresher, the second slightly more complex and interesting.

 

Pasta and greens – scarcely a recipe…..

Pasta of your choice – although the Del ‘Ugo chick pea pasta works particularly well – approx. 75g per person
Greens of your choice – I used a combination  of kale and purple sprouting broccoli – approx. a handful per person – chopped roughly
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
lots of good olive oil

Optional extras:
2 – 3 cloves garlic, sliced
2 – 3 leeks, finely sliced
4 – 6 anchovies, finely chopped, plus some oil from the tin
extra tbsp olive oil

If you are using the optional extras,  gently cook the garlic, leeks and anchovies in the olive oil very gently until they are quite soft: 10–15 minutes.
Cook the pasta in plenty of well salted boiling water.
Steam the greens till quite soft.
Drain the pasta, retaining a bit of the cookng water. Mix the steamed greens and retained cooking water into the pasta, season well and dress very generously with the oil.
If you are using the optional extras mix them in at the same time. Eat and enjoy!!

 

 

Filed Under: Dairy-free, Food, FreeFrom Food, Gluten-free, Recipes Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Kefir – how to make and drink

01/22/2013 By Leave a Comment

kefirSome of the most regularly visited posts on this blog are those about kefir – so I am deeply embarrassed to have to admit that our kefir growing efforts have fallen on very stony ground…. Despite two generous donations of culture, and locating an accessible source of raw milk, between this and that we have failed abysmally to get going properly again.

After our initial success (see  my  post and comments in June 2011) we did nicely for six to nine months  – and  then our kefir ‘plant’ started to shrink instead of grow and finally sort of withered away….. I suspect that we may have been leaving it a bit short of TLC.

So I was delighted to find this very enthusiastic post on the Crohn’s End.com blog which gives you very specific and detailed instructions on how to get going. All you need is some kefir grains – and these days you can even get them on Amazon! Here to buy in the UK and here to buy in the US – or just put ‘kefir grains buy’ into Google and you will be offered a wealth of other sources worldwide.

Good luck!!

Filed Under: Alternative/Complementary Health, Recipes Tagged With: , , , ,
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