Ahh, sad news first – schools are back next week 🙁 I will miss the children being around next week as it has been quite a relaxed and very chilled out holiday in my house these last two weeks. Most days, my children and myself have spent the whole day in our pyjamas – so lazy, I know but brilliant for the children to not be rushing off to school each day. I am dreading next week when all the stress starts again. In the meantime, I am making the most of my time with the children – playing board games, baking together, reading books together and going out for walks for some much needed fresh air (when we get dressed that is). I am rather nervous about the children getting up in time next week as they have been having long lie ins this last week.
Back to the baking, tomorrow is “National Shortbread Day” so I am going to share my recipe for Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Shortbread Cookies which is one of the products available from my webshop at the moment. I made this shortbread as an option for the farm shops which I supply and to sell on my webshop as I know lots of people who are intolerant to gluten and wheat products. When I first baked these cookies I was convinced that they would taste different but actually they don’t especially when you only use the standard gluten free plain flour which I bought in Asda. The changes in flavour occur when you use the other flours which are available such as rice flour as my family and myself could taste a difference when I tried baking the shortbread with rice flour.
When I made these cookies with the gluten free flour I found that the butter was not all absorbed by the flour so really the recipe called for more flour but instead I adjusted the recipe by adding some cornflour into the recipe which helped to absorb the butter and made a shortbread dough that resembled my standard shortbread dough. With this dough I then made the cookies which on baking did spread slightly more than the standard shortbread dough cookies would, but I was expecting that to happen, I think? I sound like I know what I am talking about but this is just in my experience of baking with gluten free flour as I know there are lots of other recipes out there for you to try. I think my recipe produced a cookie which was on par with my shortbread cookie as the cookie was short and crumbly in texture with a melt-in-the-mouth consistency that all good shortbread should have.
[lt_recipe name=”Chocolate Chip Shortbread (gluten free)” servings=”15″ prep_time=”10M” cook_time=”15M” total_time=”25M” difficulty=”Easy” print=”yes” summary= “Nutritionally, one cookie contains 136 calories, 7.5g total fat (10% daily total fat), 16.6g total carbohydrate (65 daily total carbohydrate), 0.5g fibre (2% daily fibre) (based on a 2000 calorie diet).” image=”https://www.love-to-bake.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/glutenfreeshort.jpg” ingredients=”6oz gluten free plain flour;2oz caster sugar;2oz corn flour;125g butter;50g chocolate chips” ]Preheat the oven to Gas 4.;Line a baking tray.;In a mixing bowl, weigh out all the ingredients except the chocolate chips.;Rub the butter into the flours and sugar until a dough is formed.;Add the chocolate chips and mix to disperse them evenly in the dough.;If the dough seems too soft add more cornflour till the desired consistency is obtained.;Roll out the dough to desired thickness and cut out the cookies.;Place on the baking tray.;Bake for 15 minutes till starting to turn golden at the edges.;Allow to cool before removing from the tray.[/lt_recipe]
This is a delicious cookie which due to being gluten and egg free can be eaten by many people but you can go one step further and make the cookie dairy free if you change the butter and chocolate to a milk free variety. This is something I have not tried yet but it is something to think about in the future.
Now to the fun part, I had a baking disaster the other day when I baked some Blondies for the family. I recorded myself baking them and I think because I was so busy sorting the camera that I forgot to add one vital ingredient – sugar. I only realised after I had placed the tray in the oven and the sugar was still sat on the counter top. I looked at the oven, turned around to face the sink and decided that I would see what happened.
After baking, I sliced them up and tried a piece of the sugar free Blondie. They tasted sweet enough as they had been made with plenty of white chocolate but they did seem quite greasy due to the butter in the recipe not being absorbed due to the lack of a major ingredient. I am going to try the recipe again but think I will miss the sugar out on purpose this time, add less butter and more flour to see what happens. If I make a Sugar Free Blondie I will let you know but I may still share the video as it is still the method I will be using . Hehehe – I just need to get my husband to record another tune to add some music to the video then I can upload it to Youtube.
For now though I am off to reply to a couple of emails and write to a company or two about sponsorship as I am looking at some other ideas and avenues at the moment. I will share some more news when I feel the time is right.