Apple Crumble, Apple Cobbler, Apple Buckle. (Buckle? Why buckle?) There must be a dozen names for what has to be the easiest, yummiest dessert in creation. It’s all the best parts of apple pie - the filling, the topping - without the hard part - the crust.

We don’ need no stinkin’ crust! Bring on dessert!

This recipe makes a generous amount for 5 or 6 people, but believe me when I tell you that it won’t go to waste! You can let leftovers sit on the counter up to a day, but any time longer than that I’d put it in the fridge, and re-warm before eating. In fact eating warm, with maybe a dollop of vanilla ice cream on the side, is my favorite!

For the flour I usually use the “Easy” flour blend that I talked about last time, but this is a very flexible recipe and almost anything will work. Feel free to improvise!

Apple Brown Betty

1 cup flour blend
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter or margarine (such as Earth Balance)
optional: 1/4 cup quinoa flakes or gf-oatmeal
*
5 large baking apples (I prefer “Granny Smith”)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
optional: 2 Tbsp corn starch
optional: 2 Tbsp apricot jam
*

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium bowl, combine flour; brown sugar; and oatmeal or quinoa if using. (They add nice texture.) Add margarine to bowl, and “cut” into dry ingredients using either two knives, the tines of a fork, or a tool called a “pastry blender” you can pick up at the grocery store. Basically, you’re cutting the margarine into smaller and smaller pieces while mashing it into the flour and sugar so that you end up with a crumbly mix that they say looks like peas. I say “they” must eat small peas! It’s actually more like lentils. Set that bowl aside.

Next, peel your apples, then slice or dice as you prefer. [Larger pieces will be firmer after cooking, smaller pieces will be more saucy, but it's all good.] [Except the core - throw away the core.]

Put apple pieces into an 8″ square baking dish or 8″ pie dish. Toss the apples with the cinnamon, then the corn starch if using. (It absorbs the liquid from the apples as they cook and makes almost a like gravy in the fruit - yum! Other starches work too if you’re sensitive but corn is the strongest and cheapest.) The optional apricot jam is heavenly - it adds depth to the flavor and a hint of sweetness.

Sprinkle the crumb mixture on top of the apples. Don’t squish the crumbs too much - you want to keep them a little loose. You can pat them down into place, just use a light hand.

Place on middle rack of pre-heated oven for about one hour. Which should be just long enough to run out for that vanilla ice cream! Enjoy!

{Makes a good gf-dessert for 4th of July.}

*
Note: You can buy the blend we’re about to “make” together at Authentic Foods if the idea of a recipe to make the flour to use as an ingredient in another recipe just sounds like too much work. But if you’re ready to get to the bottom of gluten-free baking, this is the place to start.

After all, the whole essence of gluten-free baking comes down to the flour. Obviously, most baking recipes in the world call for flour from wheat (or some other glutenous grain) and the trick is to make the same thing out of gluten-free flours like rice.

But never just use rice. Just rice flour alone would make a very dense cookie. At very least, you want to lighten the rice flour with some kind of starch. Many recipes call for rice & tapioca but when you’re ready to branch out and experiment a little, you’ll save time and get more consistent results if you keep a pre-mixed blend on hand.

I think the easiest blend is also the most popular. It was popularized by the book, Gluten Free Baking Classics, by Annalise Roberts, which is a really good book, chock full of recipes using this exact blend, to make things easy.

There are only three ingredients (I’ve seen recipes calling for six or seven!) though you will still have to buy xanthan gum separately.

As I said, you can purchase the blend ready-made. But even if you don’t use Authentic Foods’ blend, use their extra-fine-grind brown-rice flour - it really does make a huge difference!

Here is the recipe:

Easy GF-Flour Blend
2 cups rice flour
2/3 cup potato starch
1/3 cup tapioca starch

Make sure to blend well. One method is to place the flours in an oversize container with a tight lid and shake well. I always just dump everything into my mixer with a whisk attachment, and leave it on low for 20-30 minutes while I go do something else.

[A lot of people will tell you to weigh your flour on a scale, instead of measuring it. That's the correct way, that's what we do at the bakery. But we're mixing up 30 lbs at a time. When you're making 3 cups or 6 cups of flour-blend at a time, it just doesn't make that much of a difference.]

ADD XANTHAN GUM to specific recipes, at about 1/4 teaspoon per cup, to start. If your cookies crumble too much, try a little more xanthan next time.

Classic blend works well as one-to-one substitute for wheat flour in cakes, muffins, and cookies. (Sadly, it’s not so good for bread.) It’s terrific in Nestle’s Toll-House cookies - go get a bag & try it today!

Note- if you want to keep your cookies dairy-free, we suggest using Earth Balance margarine - it’s the best! The only drawback is that it doesn’t come without salt, so if you use it, don’t add additional salt when called for in the recipe. Also, try the kosher section of the supermarket for non-dairy chocolate chips.

Further exploration; Three Chips for Sister Marsha, Alton Brown, Good Eats.

!
#1 Blueberry Struesel. These muffins are miraculous; tender, fluffy, packed with berries, and they even keep a few days on the counter - maybe even better than the chocolate zucchini, which was always our best-keeping muffin.

#2 Carrot Muffin with eggs and walnuts that’s moist and fragrant for days. We’ll still keep the old vegan-morning-glorys around (they’re free of all eight of the eight major allergens) but even frozen, the eggy carrot muffins are selling like hotcakes!

Non-vegans can now get a Mixed Muffin Set; two each of Chocolate-Zucchini, Blueberry-Struesel, and Carrot, normally $10, but we’ve been running everything 10% off leading up to Passover, so for now, for you :-), it’s only $9. (Soy free.)

**
The Sensitive Baker will be closed for Passover [watch for our annual spring-sale!] but I’m ordering Gluten-Free Oat Matza for my own personal use, and wanted to know if anyone else wants in on the “DEAL.”

These are the same GF-Oat Matzo that Gluten-Free Bay blogged about last week.

They come 3 (only 3) round, handmade, slightly burned matzos to a box, for only $24 (Compare to $23 PLUS SHIPPING if ordered direct from the Lakewood Matzo Factory; and almost certainly approaching $30/box, if not more, if ordered from Western Kosher Market (on Fairfax, (323) 655-8870).)

BUT we can only honor this price if you order by Midnight (Pacific Time) Monday March 23. You’ll PAY NOTHING until your order ships, and if you’re a Southern California resident and subscribe to our “Sensitive Information” newsletter you’ll get FREE SHIPPING! (Out-of area members take $6 off postage.)

Just our way to say “thank you!” And, “Happy Holidays!”

So send an email to sandee { at } thesensitivebaker(.)com to reserve your order NOW! I’m calling the order in Tuesday morning, and I’m not getting any extra — that stuff is way too expensive to have lying around!

**
There’s a new gluten-free cookbook in town, just in time for passover. Packed with hundreds of delicious recipes you can use year-round, Anything’s Possible is a beautiful, full-color cookbook and a real breakthrough for kosher celiacs and gluten-sensitive individuals. And for a limited time, they are offering FREE shipping throughout the United States AND 15% off the price of the book!

I’m going to try the kneidlach recipe:

1 lb. / ½ kilo ground white chicken or white turkey
2 eggs
½ tsp. salt
1 potato, cooked and mashed
1 small onion, diced or pureed

Combine all the ingredients and mix them well. Refrigerate the batter for about an hour to make the batter firm. Make small balls out of it and drop them into boiling water. Cook the kneidlach for about ¾ of an hour. Add them to the soup pot about 45 minutes before the soup finishes.

NOTE:
Kneidlach can be made in advance and frozen. Remove them from the freezer and
place them in the soup approximately 45 minutes before the soup finishes cooking.

(Reprinted with permission from the publisher.)
(There are more recipes online at Anything’s Possible!)

Do you know Video Jug? They’ve got “How-To” videos on just about everything on the planet, and I just came across one from Elana of Elana’s Pantry!

See “How to Make GF-Chocolate Chip Cookies“! (Under 2 minutes.)

Folks, these are not just gluten-free, they’re vegan, low-carb, low-sugar (sweetened with agave), and grain-free (Specific Carbohydrate Diet-Friendly!) {Wait, no, scrap that, see Kevin’s comment, below.} {But they can be adapted - Vittoria of Deliciously Gluten-Free tells us how in a further comment - thanks, Vittoria! ’tis an honor to have you visit.}

If you don’t know where to get any of the ingredients, they’re all available (even the organic chocolate chips) over at Elana’s Pantry Store on Amazon. Enjoy!

Another change we’ve been working on at the bakery, is to cut back our use of tree nuts. Last summer, after Eugenie was on KCRW and said that The Sensitive Baker tries to provide something for everyone, (we thought no-one should be denied cupcakes) dozens of people with multiple allergies came by the bakery every day for whom we could just not provide anything.

I remember one father whose child was severely allergic to nuts. He came in and asked what we could recommend that was nut-free, but he was worried even about traces of nuts, and with the amount of almond meal and almond milk that we were using practically everywhere, plus the cashew-tahini “cheese,” I had to honestly tell him, “nothing.”

He took a long look at me, didn’t say one word, and walked out.
Read the rest of this entry »

Well, it’s official. We can make sugar-free cupcakes. We can even make the holy grail of “-free” baking: Gluten-free, vegan (casein- & egg-free), soy-free, sugar-free vanilla cupcakes. Frosted. I don’t recommend them, but they are available.

We’re also putting sugar-free gingerbread dough on the kinda-sorta-on-the-menu list, which means we’ll try to keep it in stock for now, and we’ll see how it goes. That one I do recommend. It’s sweetened entirely with agave, and it’s delicious! We can also do special-order gingerbread men, decorated, $5 each. [Note to self to get a picture up with this post.] Read the rest of this entry »

After the Hadassah magazine article on us, not a day goes by without someone asking us for challah, or at least the recipe for our mock-”challah” rolls.

[Edited to be more direct & less confusing.]

It starts with Wendy Wark’s Workable Wonder Dough, a recipe I discovered in the book Cooking Gluten Free! by Karen Robertson. Read the rest of this entry »

As I pulled what must be my 1000th failure of a gluten-free / yeast-free loaf out of the oven, I thought to myself (rather nastily, sorry to say), there is a REASON why the rabbis said that wheat & other glutenous grains FERMENT, and grains like rice and millet ROT. It is freaking impossible to make a decent gluten-free yeast-free bread.

***

Duh. Am I the stupidest creature that ever walked the earth or what? OATS. Oats are gluten-free. Oats ferment.

To the lab!!