Gluten-Free Cranberry Clementine Christmas Bread

This recipe is free of gluten and dairy.

Well everyone, it's that time of year again! Time for presents, family, friends and food. The Christmas season brings on a world of fragrances of its own, my childhood olfactory Christmas memories are just spilling with everything from pine to turkey dinner. Living away from family is hard this time of year, though every Christmas I go to be with them, having a limited amount of time there I find myself yearning for these familiar smells to get myself in the spirit! 

One delicious aroma that always gets me in the Christmas mood is the smell of baked fruit dishes. Fruit cake, dessert breads, any kind of carb-filled fruit dessert really kick starts my Christmas spirit. So, last night me and Navada got together and baked a Cranberry Clementine Christmas loaf. 

It came out more than ideal! This is my new favourite dessert bread and I'll definitely be baking it for my family once I get home. Served warm with a bit of butter it was just fantastic. Definitely a Christmas bread I'll be making over and over again.


Yield: 1 loaf

1 cup brown rice flour
½ cup tapioca starch
½ cup arrowroot starch
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
½ teaspoon guar gum
1 cup sugar
1½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup cranberries (I used frozen)
3 clementines
Zest from 1 inch clementine peel
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup chopped pecans


Grease a loaf pan with coconut oil and preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C.

Zest one inch of a single clementine. 

Peel all the clementines. Place cranberries, clementines, zest, oil, vanilla, egg and pecans in a food processor. Pulse but do not liquefy.

Combine dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Mix well.

Add the wet ingredients slowly to the dry, making sure only to mix until a dough is formed.

Transfer the dough into the pan. Bake for 1 hour.

Remove the loaf from the pan, but leave it about 15 minutes before portioning. Serve warm (re-heating is totally okay) with butter for dessert!

Enjoy! Happy holidays!


Post by McKayla

Gluten-Free Double Chocolate Brownies

This recipe is free of gluten and nuts.

What you want to do is you want to make these... now!
Here's the recipe:

3 ounces unsweetened or semi-sweetened baking chocolate
1/3 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup golden brown sugar
2 large eggs (room temp°)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup potato starch
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup dutch process cocoa powder
1 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup milk, warmed
1/4 cup chocolate chips
coconut oil for greasing

1. Preheat oven to 350°F/180°C/Gas Mark 4. Grease an 8 x 9 inch baking pan. 

2. Cream together butter and sugar.

3. Add in eggs and vanilla extract and blend.

4. In a separate bowl, mix all dry ingredients until well combined. Add to wet mixture and blend until fully incorporated. 

5. Pour into baking pan and with a wet spatula, spread evenly across the top. Add garnishes of your personal taste or leave bare to enjoy the classic brownie.

6. Pop into oven and bake for 20 minutes. After you take the brownies out of the oven, leave to cool completely in pan, then cut to divide.

Post by Navada

Gluten-Free Honey Oat Sandwich Bread

This recipe is free of gluten and dairy. 

We all love a great sandwich and there are a wealth of condiments, fillings, and textures available, but what about the bread?

A while back my significant other came home with a loaf of the regular honey oat, made a sandwich and declared it to be his "all time new FAVORITE bread!".

Saddened, and slightly jealous because I couldn't have any, I decided to develop my own. Here is the result of combining and interchanging about 20 different gluten free bread recipes over the last 5 years; this honey oat is one of the sweetest and best textured GF breads I have come across.

1/2 cup gluten-free rolled oats
1 cup boiling water
2 1/4 tsp active dry traditional yeast
1 tsp sugar
1 cup warm water
2 large eggs (room temp°)
1/3 cup of honey
1/4 cup canola oil
2 tsp cider vinegar

1/2 cup tapioca flour

1 3/4 cup potato starch
3/4 sorghum flour
1 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp guar gum
1/2 tsp salt
Coconut oil for greasing

1. In one bowl, mix oats and boiling water and leave to sit. In second bowl, mix sugar, yeast and water and leave to sit for about 5 minutes. 

2. Grease a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan. I prefer coconut oil as it forms a nice crust, a nice colour and makes everything slide out of the pan ridiculously easy. 

3. In a large bowl mix together all your dry ingredients and whisk to combine them really well. In another large bowl (I use KitchenAid Professional 550 Stand Mixer) beat eggs until they are pale and frothy using whisk attachment. Blend in your wet ingredients and switch over to dough hook attachment, then add in your dry ingredient mixture all at once and blend again until thoroughly combined. 

This recipe will produce a batter-consistency type dough, so don't be alarmed if it doesn't look "kneadable".

4. Scrape the dough into your loaf pan and smooth over the top as best you can, a wet palm or spatula works quite well. Cover with plastic wrap and a tea towel and leave to rise in a warm place. It should rise until about a half inch above the pan.

5. Preheat your oven to 375°F/190°C/Gas Mark 5. With a sharp knife make 3 diagonal slices into the top of the loaf, for the steam to escape. Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until internal temperature reaches 205°F/96°C. If you don't have a baking thermometer, you can get one here or just check with a wooden skewer so that it comes out dry. Remove from oven and let cool in pan for up to 10 minutes, but no longer, as it will cause your bread to be soggy, and nobody wants soggy bread. Take it out of the pan and cool it on a wire rack. 

Note: If your bread looks like it is browning a little too much for your taste, cover it with foil to prevent too much further browning.

Post by Navada

Gluten-Free Whole-Grain Flax Bread

This recipe is free of gluten and dairy. 

This is my ultimate bread. The white sandwich bread is a variation of this bread, which I created first. I tried to make it as healthy as possible, and most important as delicious as possible! It's soft and fluffy, with the texture and taste of wheat-based breads but without the pain and suffering us gluten-freebies get when consuming "regular" bread. If you're going to try any bread recipe I have up or will put up in the future, try this one! It's super healthy and delicious.

Yield: 1 loaf

2 cups brown rice flour

½  cup tapioca flour

½ cup arrowroot powder

⅔ cup ground flax

2½ teaspoons guar gum

1½ teaspoons dried yeast

1½ teaspoons salt

3 tablespoons sugar

1½ cups soy milk
2 tablespoons olive oil

4 tablespoons melted butter (dairy-free or substitute margarine)

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

3 eggs

Place ingredients in bread machine and be really excited for 4 hours while it does all the work. I bake this on the generic "white" bread option. If you don't have a bread machine and can't wait for Navada to update the recipes with her oven-friendly versions, you can follow this guide here.

Enjoy!

Post by McKayla

Gluten-Free Yogurt Blueberry Lemon Scones

This recipe is free of gluten, nuts and has a low lactose content.

Scones are one of my favourite breakfast/snack foods. Their delicious biscuity texture has been sincerely missed since I had to drop gluten from my diet. I used to work in a coffee shop, and the smell of fresh scones would stab me in the heart every time. 

My first concern when trying to create a gluten-free scone recipe was the texture. As many of you gluten-freebies know, when baking gluten-free a lot of the time it comes at the price of texture... In this case, not so! These scones are exactly what I was hoping for; crumbly and not as flat as a pancake!

Yield: 8 scones

1½ cups rice flour

½ cup tapioca flour

¼ cup arrowroot starch

½ teaspoon xanthan gum

¾ teaspoon salt
⅓ cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ cup cold butter, minus 2 tablespoons

1¼ cups fresh blueberries

½ lemon; zest

⅓ cup yogurt

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

Preheat oven to 400° F.

Mix flours, arrowroot starch, sugar, xanthan gum, salt, and baking powder in a large bowl.

Cut butter into tiny pieces and mix into dry ingredients. Rub the butter and flour together until it's completely crumbled evenly into the mixture and you can no longer feel its sticky presence.

Stir in blueberries and lemon zest.

Mix yogurt, vanilla extract and eggs together in a separate bowl. Create a hole in the middle of the dry mixture and pour the wet mixture in.

Mix JUST until you get a dough, do NOT over mix. Dough will be sticky as gluten-free doughs usually are, and that's fine.

Transfer entire mixture onto a lightly floured surface and flatten out into a square about ½ inch - 1 inch thick. Cut this square into 4 smaller squares, and then half those squares into triangle shapes. Place onto a pan/pans lined with parchment paper, and brush a little bit of yogurt on top of each scone.

Put the pan(s) in the oven for 22 minutes. My oven goes a little cooler than most ovens so I put mine in for 25. I also used two pans for the scones, so keep that in mind when baking yours.

Remove and let cool.

Enjoy!

Post by McKayla

Gluten-Free White Sandwich Bread

This recipe is free of gluten and can be free of lactose if clarified butter is used.

After many months of uncomfortable symptoms and trial-and-error, I came to the realization gluten had to go. Co-founder of Pumpkin Bits, Navada, has been eating gluten-free for most of her life, but this is all new to me! The first thing I needed to do was find some sort of bread substitute. 

I poured through the internet but none of the recipes suited my needs; I also can't tolerate lactose, so it's double the fun for me. I have actually never baked bread before, and this is a recipe I composed first try from researching the requirements for a basic loaf of bread and comparing it with other recipes. May I add it's an extremely LUCKY first try as Navada tasted my whole-grain flax version and said it was one of the best GF breads she's ever tasted. Her fiance and 1 year old also loved it. Her 1 year old loved it so much she climbed on top of the table to get the rest of the bread I brought over - now that's a good review! It's made in my bread machine, but Navada bakes all her bread in the oven, so an oven-friendly version will be coming soon!

Yield: 1 loaf 

2 cups white rice flour

1¼ cups tapioca flour

½ cup arrowroot powder

2½ teaspoons guar gum

1½ teaspoons dried yeast

1½ teaspoons salt

3 tablespoons sugar

1½ cups soy milk

4 tablespoons melted butter

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

3 eggs

I make this bread on the generic white bread cycle on my bread machine, medium crust.

Heat soy milk in the microwave for 2 minutes. Stir and place back in the microwave for another 2 minutes. My bread didn't rise the same (it over-rose, actually) unless I did this. Leave to cool until room temperature - DO NOT add it to anything until it has cooled down, it will kill the yeast and ruin the bread. Can you tell I learned that from unfortunate experiences? 

Place dry ingredients in the pan. Mix wet ingredients together, except the butter. While mixing, melt the butter, then add it to the wet ingredients. Add all the wet ingredients to the dry slowly, allowing it to mix as you pour. Some people add them at different times, but honestly it made absolutely no difference in this bread.

The beauty of the bread machine is that this is absolutely the end of your involvement in the bread. It's fantastic, just walk away and in about 4 hours you'll have a delicious loaf of bread. The upside to this bread is that it's flexible and doesn't crumble, so it's perfect for sandwiches or even hot dogs. The texture is great, and it's not flat like some gluten-free breads. 

Personally I love eating mine toasted with some crunchy peanut butter. Mmmm.

Enjoy!

Post by McKayla