First we mix the dry ingredients. Stir together 1 cup of white rice flour, and 1 cup of corn meal, being sure to select a brand of corn meal that isn’t mixed with wheat flour.

Then mix in 1/4 cup sugar, 1 Tablespoon of Argo baking powder, and 1 teaspoon of salt. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

And of course the magic fairy dust of gluten-free baking, xanthan gum. If you haven’t made the leap yet to doing your own baking, don’t be scared of this stuff. It’s just 1/2 teaspoon of magic fairy dust, that’s all. No biggie.

Now for the wet ingredients. First, melt one stick plus another two Tablespoons of Fleischmann’s Unsalted Margarine (not Original) in a large bowl in the microwave.

Then we’re going to add two cans of corn. But one will be a normal can of corn, drained of its extra liquid…

And one will be an undrained can of cream style corn. Note the word “style:” this is a case where a cheap generic brand will be to your benefit, because it will not actually contain any dairy. Mine is pretty much just corn, water, and salt, partially blended to resemble… something creamy, I guess.

Break two eggs into the bowl. One-handed is not a requirement, it just makes you look cool. (You could also substitute 4 Tablespoons of potato starch mixed into 2 Tablespoons of water, if you wanted to make it egg-free.)

Then mix in one container of plain coconut milk yogurt. Or you could go with soy instead, if that’s what you’re into. But I’m definitely not into that, myself.

And finally, 1/4 cup of honey. See that funky measuring cup I’m holding? It’s part of this awesome set I got for Christmas, which are designed as a collection of nesting Russian dolls. Cool, huh?

Finally, mix the wet with the dry, and stir vigorously.

Scrape it all into a well-oiled 9×13 baking dish, and smooth everything into place. Unlike the majority of gluten-free batters, this one is wet enough that you can just use a spatula instead of pressing it into place with your hand. Lucky you!

Bake for 45-50 minutes at 350 degrees, and you’ll end up with something like this. Firm enough to be cut into squares like corn bread, but richer and sweeter: corn casserole!

Happy Eating!

The GFCF Lady’s Corn Casserole

1 cup white rice flour
1 cup corn meal
1/4 cup sugar
1 TBS GF baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp xanthan gum

1 1/4 sticks Fleischmann’s Unsalted margarine (NOT Original)
1 can corn, drained
1 can cream-style corn
2 eggs
1 container coconut milk yogurt
1/4 cup honey

Start with one cup of pure corn meal.

Then add one cup of brown rice flour (or white rice flour, or some other gluten-free blend if you prefer. But I dig the brown rice flour in this recipe, personally.)

2 Tablespoons of sugar,

1 Tablespoon of gluten-free baking powder,

1 teaspoon of salt, and 1/2 teaspoon of xanthan gum to round out our dry ingredients.

In a separate bowl, prepare your wet ingredients. Start with 1/3 cup of canola oil. Incidentally, I’m a complete sucker for photos of liquid in motion. It’s my inner physics nerd.

And this one’s even better! How cool is that? It’s one cup of almond milk, by the way.

And one egg. Beat everything together well, and then dump it into your bowl of dry ingredients.

Now stir like you mean it!

Eventually, you’ll be ready to scrape your dough into a greased 9″x9″ baking dish. Don’t cop out early, you want everything to be nice and blended. And hey, who doesn’t want shapely biceps, right?

As usual, the dough will be thick, and you’ll need to press it down into place with a very wet hand. When it’s nice and smooth, just pop it in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

How easy was that! The texture on these is pretty decent, but I’ll tell you a secret: it is way, way better the second day. Save half of them in an airtight container on the countertop (not in the fridge) and see if you don’t think they’re better the next day too.

Happy Eating!

GFCF Corn Bread

1 cup corn meal
1 cup brown rice flour
2 TBS sugar
1 TBS baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1/3 cup canola oil
1 cup almond milk
1 egg

Imagine how shocked I was to discover that I actually like these gluten-free muffins! I mean, I really like them–I sneak them between meals when the kids aren’t looking, which is the highest compliment I can pay a food.

This may have something to do with it: the recipe starts with 1 cup of sugar. (Actually I know for a fact the sugar plays a big role in my appreciation, because the first time I attempted this recipe I was dumb and forgot the sugar, and they came out inedible. Fortunately I realized my mistake before I threw out the recipe altogether.)

Then mix in 1 cup of applesauce. Applesauce is one of those things that any sane person would want to assume is gluten-free, but as you’ve probably figured out by now, food manufacturers are anything but sane. Check your labels and make sure it’s got nothing but apples in it.

Next, mix up this neato slurry of 4 Tablespoons of potato starch in 2 Tablespoons of water. The result will be this kind of gooey consistency that is a liquid if you are gentle but resists if you try to move it too fast. You may have even played with something like this in school when you were a kid like I did. Anyway, this is actually a basic egg substitute, so if you’d rather toss in two beaten eggs instead, you could do that too. But the potato starch mixture is good for those with egg allergies or concerned about cholesterol.

Then add 1/3 cup canola oil…

And 1/2 teaspoon each of cinnamon and ground cloves.

Also, 1/2 teaspoon each of gluten-free baking powder, and baking soda.

Now, mix in 1 1/4 cups of gluten-free flour. Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose Blend is usually my go-to choice, but in this case that’s actually amaranth flour up there. I’ve made it with several different types, and they all come out good, so use whatever you want.

Drop the batter by spoonfuls into muffin cups. I like making mini-muffins, because they make better serving sizes. You can have 2 or 3 at breakfast, or toss just one in a lunchbox… or snack on however many you want between meals, for example. They aren’t going to rise much, so fill them about 3/4 full. I usually end up with about a tray and a half’s worth of these mini-muffin size.

I also smooth out the tops with a wet finger. It just makes them look better, and appearance is important when you’re trying to get a kid to try something new. It might look tedious, but it goes really quickly if you just put a cup of water right next to the tray. Dip, dab-dab-dab, dip, dab-dab-dab… takes 30 seconds. Of course ugly muffins still taste good, too.

Bake at 400 degrees for 22 minutes. If you’re making larger muffins, you’ll need to extend the baking time a bit. They’ll be done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, just like everything else. Let them cool as long as possible before digging in, because they’re so moist the middles stay hot for a surprisingly long time. They’ll store for several days in a tupperware, or you can go so far as to freeze them for future use.

Also, unless you’re trying to take a picture of them, don’t bother with the kind of restraint I’m showing here. Pop them in your mouth all in one bite. It’s the best way, I promise you.

Happy Eating!

Applesauce Muffins

1 cup sugar
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
4 TBS potato starch in 2 TBS water
       (OR 2 eggs)
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp GF baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 cups GF flour

It’s a pretty standard culinary concept in Asia to stuff a ball of dough with various fillings and steam the whole thing into a delicious bun. There are over a dozen variations of this, and even though mine aren’t really all that similar to the traditional Vietnamese version that banh bao officially refers to, that’s what I call them because that’s the first name I learned for them.

First the dough, and then the filling. So we start with 3/4 cup sugar in a bowl, and add 2 tsp of salt.

Add 2 Tablespoons of baking powder, and one cup of your milk substitute of choice. Make sure your baking powder is gluten-free. I use a generic brand, but Clabber Girl is one safe national brand. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without notice. Always check your labels!]

Also add in 2 teaspoons of xanthan gum, and mix well to dissolve the sugar.

Now, we’re going to add in a total of 4 cups of brown rice flour, but it has to be added slowly.

Start with two cups, and mix well until it looks like the above. Then add in cup number three and get ready to get messy.

Fold and squoosh everything through your fingers again and again until it’s nice and mixed.

You’ll probably want to have the fourth cup of flour already measured out and waiting, so you don’t have to wash your hands an extra time. After you add the fourth cup it should start to be thick enough that you can’t really squoosh it anymore, you’ll have to start doing more proper kneading. Just fold the far edge towards you…

And mash it down again. Repeat until there’s no more loose flour in the bowl.

It’s still not mixed well enough yet, but at this point I lift the cohesive dough unit out and move it to a cutting board on the kitchen table. I do this because it’s lower than my kitchen counter, and I can get much better leverage for pushing down as I knead.

Just keep folding and mashing, folding and mashing, for a good five minutes at least.

And eventually you will end up with a smooth, even ball of dough. Now, set it aside in a bowl covered with a dishtowel while you mix the filling. I don’t actually know why it needs to be covered with a dishtowel, but my original recipe said to do it, so I do it.

Alright, we’re ready for the filling. That’s a head of baby bok choy up there, which is kind of like an Asian spinach with a very distinct flavor. Chop the leaves off, and throw the stalk away.

The leaves are very firm, so you can chop it up pretty easily without all the bits flying everywhere.

Once you have the baby bok choy in little confetti pieces, add in 2 chopped green onions, and 1 Tablespoon of grated ginger.

Then add 1 teaspoon of salt, and a pinch of white pepper. It’s probably not something you’ll use very often, but I’ve tried making it with black pepper and with no pepper, and the taste just isn’t as good. Use the white pepper.

We’re almost there. Add 2 Tablespoons of water…

1 Tablespoon of cooking sherry (which should naturally be GFCF since it’s made of grapes, but make sure you don’t accidentally pick up something weird like sherry-flavored grain alcohol…)

And 2 teaspoons of sesame oil.

Okay! Now you can mix in one pound of ground pork, and your filling is ready to go.

This being a fancy recipe and all, it does require a bit of special equipment. You can get a bamboo steamer at any Asian market, and it comes as a set of large stackable trays that you can combine to be as tall as you want. The other thing you’ll need to prep is these little squares of parchment paper. Traditionally you would use lettuce leaves to keep the dough from sticking to the tray, but then you just end up with a bunch of wilted lettuce. I mean, if you like super-wilted greens, go for it, but I would just be throwing them away, so I use somehing that’s cheaper and easier to clean up.

Pull off a piece of the dough and roll it into a ball about 1 to 1.5 inches in diameter.

Then roll it out flat on a cutting board sprinkled liberally with more brown rice flour to keep it from sticking. Remember to get yourself a new rolling pin that you’ve never rolled in gluten flours before, or you’ll risk significant cross-contamination issues. If you look at the scale of my hand, you’ll realize this is a teeny tiny rolling pin that’s only maybe 6-8 inches long. Fits right in my utensil drawer with all the other junk.

Now spoon about a tablespoon of meat into the middle of your circle of dough…

And fold all the edges up around it.

Pinch everything together so it holds, and place it on top of a parchment square in your bamboo tray.

Repeat about 20 times. It’s important that the parchment be in small pieces like this and not just one large cover, because the steam has to be able to come up in between the spaces and cook the buns.

Somehow I always end up with more meat than dough, so I roll up any leftovers into little meatballs and toss them in the oven for about half an hour. They make for a great lunch the next day.

Fill a large pan with water, and balance your bamboo steamer on top. Once the steam really gets going, put the lid on and let it cook for about 20-25 minutes.

And they’re done! These typically should be dipped in some kind of sauce, but what kind is entirely up to you. We like a sweet chili sauce that they sell in the Asian section of our grocery store, but you could also do a sweet-n-sour sauce, straight soy sauce (gluten-free, of course,) or even a barbecue sauce.

Happy Eating!

Banh Bao

3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp salt
2 TBS baking powder
1 cup milk substitute
4 cups brown rice flour

1 lb. ground pork
1 head baby bok choy
2 green onions
1 TBS grated ginger
1 tsp salt
pinch white pepper
2 TBS water
1 TBS sherry
2 tsp sesame oil

Oh, decadence. How long I spent without thee.

Don’t get me wrong, you can make some GFCF cakes and cookies that are passable, even darn passable. But that gooey moistness they always promise me never seemed to materialize, until I finally figured out that I should just quit trying to make these ridiculous gluten-free flours and milk-free milks do things they’re not capable of doing. There are plenty of foods on this planet that fall into the category of gooey, and it turns out that more than a few of them are good for baking.

Like pumpkin, for example!

We’ll still need flour, of course, we’re just taking the goo burden off its shoulders. I make these with amaranth flour, but that’s only because we’re attempting to rotate our flours around here for food sensitivity’s sake. (Before I started adapting it left and right, the original recipe came from The Kid-Friendly ADHD & Autism Cookbook.) Bob’s All-Purpose Flour will work just fine too, or pretty much any other gluten-free flour you have on hand, because the taste won’t be coming through in the end. Truth be told, the amaranth flour goes in this recipe specifically because it’s apparently “yucky” in everything else I bake with it, but they never notice it here.

Right, so! Two cups of GF flour, and 1/2 teaspoon of xanthan gum.

Then 3/4 cup of sugar. Like most of the things I make, that’s just the starting amount. Once the kids acknowledged that they liked them, I started scaling back the sugar with each batch.

2 teaspoons of gluten-free baking powder…

1 teaspoon of cinnamon…

1/2 teaspoon of baking soda…

And 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Then 8 Tablespoons of potato starch, and it’s finally time to blend all the dry ingredients thoroughly.

Now for the wet ingredients! Add 1/2 cup of canola oil to one 15-ounce can of pumpkin puree. Make sure you use one that’s just plain pumpkin and not some pre-flavored “pumpkin pie mix,” because you can never be sure what weird gluten-y stuff gets put into that sort of thing.

Then add 1/4 cup of almond milk.

Mix it all together thoroughly, then dump it in the bowl of flour and mix it all together thoroughly some more. If you’re not going to use an electric mixer, be prepared to do a fair amount of work getting it all evenly blended. On the upside, you will end up with massively ripped biceps like me.

And just in case the sugar content wasn’t enough to convince the kids, you can throw in 1/2 cup of GFCF chocolate chips to tempt them. (Enjoy Life and Tropical Source are two good brands.) You could also use GFCF mini-marshmallows, or even your favorite gluten-free crispy-rice cereal for added crunch.

Also, add in 1 Tablespoon of water. Why didn’t I add this earlier with the other wet ingredients? I forgot. Don’t tell anyone.

Spray a 9×13 baking dish liberally with canola oil, and scrape in the batter.

Then use a very wet hand to moosh the batter into place. You will probably need to shove your hand back under the faucet periodically to keep the batter from sticking to your fingers.

I can be pretty neurotic about getting the surface totally smooth. I certainly can’t imagine where my son got his OCD genes from…

Bake in a 350-degree oven for 35-40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Set the pan on a wire rack and let it cool completely before slicing. I like to cut them into long bars, because it helps me pretend they’re more of a snack than a straight-up dessert. Ooh, you know what else these are great for? Halloween treats! Don’t kid yourself, it will be October before you know it.

Happy Eating!

Pumpkin Bars

2 cups amaranth (or other gluten-free) flour
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp GF baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
8 TBS potato starch

1 15-oz. can pumpkin puree
1/2 cup canola oil
1/4 cup almond milk
1 TBS water
1/2 cup GFCF chocolate chips

The first thing she had me do was cut back on the sugar in the old recipe. So now we start with 3 eggs, and only 3 Tablespoons of sugar. TheGFCFBoy never missed it.

Then came a major change: she wanted me to switch flours to one that is higher in protein. “But I don’t use flour,” I protested, “I use a baking mix.”

“Pah!” she said. “That’s just flour with xanthan gum, salt, and baking soda mixed in. You can do that, no sweat.” And she was right! So add 1 1/2 teaspoons of xanthan gum…

1 1/2 teaspoons of salt…

And 2 Tablespoons of baking powder. Make sure your baking powder is gluten-free–mine’s a generic brand, but Clabber Girl is one national brand that’s also GF. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without notice. Always check your labels!]

Give it all a good stir, and add 3/4 cup of grapeseed oil. (Or stick with canola oil like in the original recipe. I don’t even remember at this point why grapeseed oil was supposed to be better. Sometimes I think our nutritionist is deliberately making me hunt down weird things for her own personal entertainment.)

Now apparently, even though I switched flours to one that’s higher in protein, this still wasn’t enough to appease the protein gods. (In all seriousness, the majority of kids don’t get enough protein, especially early in the day. Turns out a big breakfast of ham and eggs is actually really good for a growing kid. Too bad my kid won’t eat either of them.) So we supplement the mixture with 1/3 cup protein powder. Yes, it’s hemp. No, it doesn’t make you high. Moving on… This does make the final product ever so slightly green-tinted, unfortunately. I started small and added a little more each time I made a batch so he didn’t notice. You could instead use rice protein powder or golden pea protein powder if the color is going to be an insurmountable issue, but the hemp powder has the most bang for the buck.

The other thing we supplement our waffles with is calcium. Being dairy-free means it’s hard to get enough calcium, and adding this completely tasteless powder into their waffles meant the kids had one less vitamin to take each day. Just 2 Tablespoons ends up being 500 mg of calcium per waffle, which is a lot.

Incidentally, please remember that nothing on this website is intended to be taken as medical advice. Always consult a professional nutritionist or physician (one who’s DAN certified, if you want my personal opinion on the matter.)

Whew! Okay, we’re finally ready for the flour. And hey, turns out it’s the same stuff we use any other time we need a flour substitute, so that’s really handy. Who knew Bob’s All-Purpose was so high in protein? (Well, the nutritionist did, I suppose.) Add 4 1/2 cups to the mixing bowl, and stir it about gently with a fork until it’s a gooey, clumpy mess.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped having trouble getting the lumps out of my batter. I think part of it is just the consistency of the new ingredients, but part of it is I started adding the water gradually instead of all at once. So add just two cups of water to the bowl…

And mix as well as you can with a hand mixer. Then add another cup…

Mix again, and add one more cup of water, for a total of 4 cups.

Now, here’s another incredibly important lesson I’ve learned recently: it’s all about the waffle iron. The quality of your waffle iron will 100% determine the quality of your waffles, end of story. You can tweak your recipe forever looking for a better texture, but the day you get a professional-grade waffle iron you will realize just how meaningless it all was. Say it with me now. It’s all about the waffle iron.

Now, let me warn you, this King of All Wafflemakers is not cheap. Not at all. But you get what you pay for, as I learned the hard way. In just six months, I broke no less than 3 different mid-priced waffle irons–that is, I wasted over $100 on junk–before I decided it was time to get serious about the value of my product. I’ve actually been using this one for a few months now (which is a new record for this house,) because I wanted to make sure it would last before I officially recommended it. But even if there had been a problem, this one comes with a complete no-questions-asked one-year warranty, so already it’s cheaper than a new $35 waffle iron every 2 months. And that’s before you even get to all the reasons why this one’s better than all the others!

Reason number one: when they say nonstick, they actually mean nonstick. You do not have to spray this waffle iron with oil of any kind, ever. No, I am not kidding.

Reason number two: see that little digital timer? That’s the actual amount of time it will take to cook these waffles. The cheap waffle irons all took about 10-12 minutes to cook each set–just think about that time difference for a moment. I can make an entire batch of waffles (including cleanup!) in under 30 minutes now, as opposed to an hour and a half. I don’t know how often you have to restock on waffles, but in my house it’s about every 10 days, so this is a huge quality-of-life improvement for me.

You can manually adjust the cooking time, by the way, and there are settings for both texture and color. I like it on “crisp exterior, soft interior” and halfway between 3 and 4, myself.

There is one drawback to this model, however. The timer beeps very loudly, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to turn the sound off. You can just imagine that if this were in a busy cafe somewhere, it would need to be heard over the din of cooking and customers and everything else, but in my kitchen it’s pretty startling.

The waffles come out as one giant waffle, but they tear apart really easily. You may notice this wafflemaker makes very tall waffles; that is, the squares are very deep. So these new waffles don’t lend themselves as well to making sandwiches as some of my old waffle iron shapes did. Then again, those are broken, and this one’s not. Firmly squashing the waffles into a flatter shape with my palm seems to work just fine.

I’ve also figured out a better way to store them in the freezer, separating the stacks with strips of parchment paper rather than wrapping the whole bundle in plastic wrap. Cheaper and less waste this way.

Oh, and here’s how you clean a waffle iron, which I completely neglected to mention at all last time. After you’ve pulled your last waffle off, dump a Tablespoon of water on the grill and immediately close the lid. Any remaining residue in the crevices will be steamed right out. But there won’t be much, because like I said, there’s no need to oil it, so there’s no oil leftover.

And here’s my soldier line of waffles, ready to go into the freezer. I only get 25 out of a batch nowadays, but on the other hand, with the hemp powder they are definitely more filling, so the kids almost never eat more than one anymore.

Happy Eating!

The GFCFLady’s Waffles

3 eggs
3 TBS sugar
1 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 TBS baking powder
1/3 cup hemp protein powder (optional)
2 TBS Kirkman’s unflavored calcium powder (optional)
4 1/2 cups Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose Flour blend
4 cups water

This is my favorite chili recipe of all time. You can use ground beef if you really want, but give the turkey a try at least once. It tastes better, it’s healthier for you, and it’s cheaper. How much more could you ask from a humble meat?

First, dump 2 pounds of ground turkey into a big soup pot with a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Check out those beautiful blue handles–that’s my Lodge dutch oven, and I’ve been in love with it since the day I got it. The inner surface is this sealed enamel stuff, and it cleans easier than any Teflon-coated pan I have. Plus, you can throw the whole thing in the oven, lid and all. Which means you’ll be seeing it again whenever I get around to posting my pot roast recipe.

While the turkey starts browning just a bit, dice an onion. I’ve seen some official definitions of “dice” that are pretty ridiculously tiny for the amateur chef to achieve, so perhaps you may choose to say I am merely “chopping” an onion. Whatever, just get it into the smallest pieces you can manage without cutting off a finger.

Add your onions to the pot, along with 3 cloves of minced garlic (or 1 1/2 tsp of the jarred kind) and 1 Tablespoon of chili powder. You can add more if you like it spicy, but don’t make that decision yet until you check out the next step.

This, my friends, is chipotles in adobo. It sounds fancy, but really it’s not–a chipotle pepper is actually just a jalapeno pepper that’s been roasted. The “adobo” part is where the real flavor comes from, and that’s what that red sauce is. Recipes vary, but it’s generally a mixture of tomato paste, apple cider vinegar, garlic, oregano, cumin, and black pepper. Think of it as a spicy Mexican barbecue sauce. Anyway, you buy this stuff in a little can in the ethnic foods aisle, but check your brands for gluten. I can’t even remember the name of the brand I get, because it contains whole peppers, which are kind of a pain to work with, so what I do is throw the entire contents of the can in a blender, and store it in a tupperware in the fridge–so that can is long gone. 1 Tablespoon of the blended sauce is equal to about one chili pepper. In this big recipe, 1/2 a Tablespoon will still leave it mild enough for the kids, or if you’re really worried you can just use the sauce without the peppers blended in. Don’t omit it entirely though, because that wonderful smokey flavor is really essential to the final product.

Okay, enough with the chipotle pepper lesson. Mix it all up and let the meat brown, stirring occasionally.

When the meat is cooked, drain a can of Bush’s red kidney beans and dump it in the pot. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without notice. Always check your labels.]

Add a can of crushed tomatoes. My generic brand is probably not available in your area, but really, all a can of tomatoes ought to have in it is tomatoes, water, and maybe a little salt. Don’t even waste time with brands that put extra crap in their cans, whether it’s ultimately gluten-free or not. It’s a can of vegetables, for pete’s sake, it doesn’t need anything else.

Also add in two cups of GF chicken broth. This is another ingredient you have to hunt down a suitable brand for, and in my experience you usually have to spring for the organic brands before you get one that’s safe. As a side note, another thing you have to watch out for is that packaged chicken breasts will often be injected with broth (the package will say something like “Up to 10% solution.”) Take the time to verify with the manufacturers that the broth they’re injecting is gluten-free, or pay more for organic, it’s your call.

Now, give the chili a good stir and let it simmer for about 20-30 minutes. In the meantime, it’s time to make the corn cakes! The number of ingredients can seem daunting, but if you lay it all out in front of you it’s not so bad.

This is 3/4 cup rice flour, 1 cup of cornmeal, and 2 TBS brown sugar.

Then 1 tsp of salt, and 1/2 tsp of xanthan gum. I resisted buying xanthan gum for a long time when I started gluten-free cooking, because the name was just too weird, and I didn’t even know what it looked like, and I just didn’t want to deal with something so foreign, you know? But eventually I figured out it’s just another white powder in a Bob’s Red Mill bag, and hey, I already have like 3 or 4 of those in my kitchen already, so what the heck. And it really does make a difference in these recipes. It adds that fluffiness and stretchiness back in, the things that used to be taken care of by gluten in your old life.

Then 3 tsp of gluten-free baking powder, and you’re done with the dry ingredients.

Then the wet ingredients: 2 eggs, 4 TBS Fleischmann’s margarine, and 1 cup of almond milk. Don’t put that milk away just yet; we’re going to need it again in a second.

Melt the magarine in the microwave, and whisk in the eggs.

Then add the almond milk…

And work that bicep. My great-grandmother must have been super buff, whisking stuff like this every single day.

Now you want to add just a teensy bit more almond milk, to get the batter to the right consistency. It’s usually about 2-3 Tablespoons.

It will still be thick, like all gluten-free mixes, but you want it so the batter stretches, rather than tearing into chunks.

Ladle it into your preheated pan (oiled with Canola cooking spray or dabs of margarine,) and give it several minutes before flipping. You won’t see any bubbles surfacing like there would be with a normal pancake batter, you just have to test the underside every once in awhile and see if it’s easy to slip the spatula under yet or not.

Because the batter is so thick, sometimes an air bubble will get trapped underneath and you’ll end up with strange designs on your corn cakes. This one looks like a key to me, or maybe a guitar, I can’t decide. I’m still waiting for the day I hit the jackpot and get one that kind of looks like the Virgin Mary, and then I can sell it on eBay for a ton of money and hire someone to make all my corn cakes for me.

Right about the time you’ve cooked all your corn cakes, the chili should be ready to serve. You could, of course, serve the cakes alongside the chili, or even forego the whole cake shape in the first place and make them muffins or something instead.

But what I like to do is serve it underneath the chili. You get a bit of corn cake in every bite, and it’s a fun surprise, like fruit at the bottom of your yogurt. Except we can’t have yogurt anymore–all the more reason to adapt the food-hiding-within-food presentation to new and exciting dishes, am I right? Plus, it’s a corn cake, which makes this final product remarkably close to Frito Pie. Truth be told, when I’m running short on time I actually serve it over Fritos to begin with.

Happy Eating!

Turkey Chili with Corn Cakes

2 lbs. ground turkey
1 med. onion
3 cloves garlic
1 TBS chili powder
1 TBS chipotles in adobo
1 can Bush’s kidney beans
1 can crushed tomatoes
2 cups GF chicken broth

1 cup corn meal
3/4 cup rice flour
2 TBS brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
3 tsp GF baking powder
2 eggs
4 TBS margarine
1 cup plus about 2-3 TBS almond milk