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

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

Until now! Here I will present to you the best sandwich bread recipe I have ever come across, by far. We start with Fleischmann’s active dry yeast. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change their formulas without notice. Always check your labels!]

Pour one packet into a small bowl with 1 Tablespoon of sugar.

Now, heat up 1 1/3 cups of water to between 105 and 110 degrees. About 40 seconds in the microwave should do it, but do test it if you have a kitchen thermometer available. Yeast is a delicate little creature, and if the water is too hot, it will kill it, and if it’s too cold, the yeast won’t fully activate, and both of these will result in a bad loaf of bread.

Pour the warm water into the bowl with the yeast and sugar. Give everything a good stir, then set it aside while you mix the rest of the ingredients. As it sits, a thick foam should start to appear in the bowl. This is good, it means the yeast is going to work.

In a large bowl, mix 2 1/2 cups of Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose Gluten Free flour, 1 teaspoon of salt…

And 2 teaspoons of xanthan gum.

Next, add in 4 Tablespoons of potato starch, and whisk everything together very thoroughly. If you have a flour sifter, that’s even better, but you can get the job done with a plain ol’ fork, if you work at it enough.

Now, measure out 1 1/2 Tablespoons of your preferred type of oil. You don’t actually have to get another bowl dirty for this, I was just setting things out methodically for this post. You can dump it straight into the flour.

And the other liquid ingredient, 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar. This stuff is critical for the baking process, it’s some kind of chemical reaction thing with the yeast. I don’t understand how it works, but I know it’s necessary. Bragg apple cider vinegar is definitely the best option since it’s minimally processed, but other brands will work too–just make sure it is actually “apple cider vinegar” and not “apple cider flavored vinegar,” because the latter very likely contains gluten.

Now your yeast bowl should be nice and frothy. If it doesn’t look like this, something’s wrong. There’s absolutely no point in trying to bake this loaf if your yeast hasn’t foamed, because that means it’s dead. Try and figure out what happened–you don’t, for example, want to microwave the water with the yeast already mixed in. Not that I ever did that, or anything. Yeah.

Dump the bowl of yeast right into your flour mixture, and the oil and vinegar as well if you haven’t already done so.

And get to stirring! I find that a whisk just fills up with dough in the middle and doesn’t mix things together very well at all, a fork is really what you want to use. Make sure you scrape along all the sides and bottom underneath the dough to get all the flour nice and blended in.

Now scrape your dough into a greased 9×5 dish. You’re going to want a spatula to get it all out, because it’s a sticky, gooey mess.

Now, get your hands very wet, and press the dough downward into the dish and smooth it out. As soon as the dough starts sticking to your fingers, go put them under the faucet again. I just leave the faucet running on very low, as I usually need to re-wet two or three times before the loaf is in place.

See? Nice and pretty.

Place a wet paper towel over the top, and set the dish aside in a dark, moderately warm location for about an hour so it can rise. I usually put it in the laundry room with the door closed (but not while the machines are running, because the vibrations will cause the bubbles to pop, instead of filling up our dough with fluffiness.)

See? Nice and tall. Now pop it in a 375 degree oven for one hour…

And you will have bread! You’ll know it’s done when the top is hard and the sides have pulled away from the dish.

Turn it out onto a wire rack, and let it cool completely before slicing. Doesn’t that look delicious? It’s a little smaller than a typical bread loaf, but about the same size as a store-bought gluten-free loaf. You can always make two sandwiches, if you need to.

Happy Eating!

GFCF (and Soy-free and Egg-free too!) Sandwich Bread

1 packet of Fleischmann’s active dry yeast
1 TBS sugar
1 1/3 cups water

2 1/2 cups Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose GF Flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp xanthan gum
4 TBS potato starch

1 1/2 TBS oil
1 tsp Bragg apple cider vinegar

Lamb! If that gives you an initial shudder, just remember: a baby lamb is no cuter than a baby cow, and we cook those little guys up all the time, right? Right. I get this stuff frozen at my normal grocery store, and I bet yours has it too. You just have to ask someone who works in the meat department, because it’s not going to be on some big obvious display. In an ideal homage to Greek food, it would actually be a lamb roast rather than ground lamb, but the important thing is the flavor.

Season it with 1/2 teaspoon of paprika, and 1/2 teaspoon of oregano.

Also add in 1 Tablespoon of dried, minced onion (or onion powder, whatever you have.)

Mash it all together so the seasonings are evenly distributed. Really stab at it; cooking is a great way to let your aggression out.

Okay, while that browns, we’re going to prepare the tzatziki, that yummy cucumber yogurt sauce that is a necessity for Greek food. Start by peeling one whole cucumber. You could use a peeler, but I find that with such a thick skin, it’s pretty easy to just cut it in half and then slice downward around the edges with a sharp knife.

Then we want to cut the seeds out. First quarter your long pieces…

And again, slice vertically to neatly remove the core of seeds all at once. (Don’t go thinking I do this one-handed though, I just paused mid-cut to take a photo. You do have to brace the top with your fingers for this to work right.)

Throw away the seeds and peel, and dice up everything you have left.

Now, you could just blend this into a pre-made casein-free yogurt and call it a day. But for us, that doesn’t work. I personally think soy yogurt is the most disgusting thing on the planet–I seriously can’t even stand to smell it in the kitchen. I don’t know what it is, but my tastebuds completely reject all soy “dairy” products on a very intense level. And while the flavor of the cucumber might not clash too badly with the mild flavor of coconut milk yogurt, the GFCF Boy is severely allergic to coconut, so that option is out for us too. But if it works for you, go for it!

Instead, I just make a modified version of my Ranch dressing. You can’t see it, but underneath the cucumber is 1/4 cup of Bob’s Red Mill finely ground almond meal. Then on top we add 1/2 Tablespoon of canola oil…

1/2 Tablespoon of potato starch, 1/2 teaspoon of salt…

And 1/4 cup of water. (This is less water than the dressing recipe uses, because the cucumber is going to add a ton of liquid to the mix.) You should also add in 1/4 tsp of garlic powder for a more authentic flavor–we’ve recently discovered that one of the GFCF Boy’s other longstanding, hard-to-pin-down allergies is garlic, so we’re avoiding it for now, but please don’t skimp on flavor just on my account.

Blend thoroughly, and pour into a small saucepan.

Cook over low heat for a few minutes until it has thickened to the right consistency, stirring frequently. As with the Ranch dressing, this is not a perfectly smooth dip, there is a little bit of graininess to the texture. But the flavor is great, and when it’s all mixed up with the other ingredients in the wrap it shouldn’t be an issue.

Oh yeah, did you forget we were making wraps, here? Your meat should be about done by now, and man, does it smell good. Just like Tino’s! (But I wouldn’t say that where he can hear you.)

I have tried and tried, but so far all of my GF pita experiments have been whopping failures. I’ve basically given up at this point, especially because these Food For Life brown rice tortillas are awesome. Even the GFCF Husband raved about how good they were. It’s not a thick doughy pita, it’s true, but for a GF bread product, it’s a darn good substitute.

One other tip, if you’re not using all the tortillas at once, don’t try to separate them in the package while they’re still frozen, you’ll just break them. Microwave the whole stack (outside of the plastic bag, of course) for about 15 seconds until you can peel off the number you need, and then refreeze the rest. It won’t hurt ‘em.

Add in some diced tomato and greens and you’re ready to go! Strictly speaking, romaine lettuce is the most authentic, but I just use the same baby greens I make salads out of. And if you have any tzatziki left over, it makes a great dip for chips or carrot sticks, or even a sandwich spread.

Happy Eating!

Greek Wraps with Cucumber Tzatziki

1 lb. ground lamb
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp oregano
1 TBS dried minced onion (or onion powder)

1 cucumber, peeled and seeded
1/4 cup Bob’s Red Mill almond meal
1/2 TBS canola oil
1/2 TBS potato starch
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup water
1/4 tsp garlic powder (optional)

tomatoes
lettuce
Food For Life brown rice tortillas

Okay, confession time: as I am about to present it to you, this recipe is not actually kid-friendly. But, just leave out the spicier seasonings, and you will have something that should more rightly be called candied walnuts–and those are ridiculously kid-friendly, just as the new name implies. They’re just like… well, candy. But I’m still showing you the spices part of the recipe, because they are so amazingly tasty to the adult palette. Make half the batch for the kids and half for the grownups, if you want. I originally got this recipe from a friend this last Christmas, who told me his wife makes them every year. I am not one for standing on tradition, so I threw the “holiday” designation out the window and have made them 3 or 4 times since then. They are that good.

First, preheat the oven to 325, and put a pot of water on the stove. While that works itself up to boiling temperature, mix 1/2 cup of sugar and 2 1/2 Tablespoons of canola oil in a large bowl.

Stir well, until it looks like fluffy snow. Or at least what I imagine snow would look like, since I live in Texas and we don’t have that crazy Yankee stuff down here.

When the water has a good rolling boil going, pour in 1 pound of shelled walnuts and blanch them for one minute. Why not just say “boil” them? Well (it has been explained to me,) boiling implies cooking until something is done, whereas blanching implies only a brief boiling, often only meant to clean the food rather than cooking it. And you’ll soon see that’s what we’re doing here, as your water turns into a nasty mud of walnutty stuff.

Drain the walnuts. They should come out clean, but if you feel you must rinse them, make sure you only use very hot water, because we want them to stay nice and hot when we dump them into the bowl of sugar.

Mix them gently until all the nuts are nice and coated, and there are no large clumps of sugar left. Then let them sit there in the bowl for about ten minutes. As they cool, the sugar will sort of gelatinize in place.

While you’re waiting, you can get your bowl of spices ready. If you’re making this with some-but-not-all of the spices, you’ll just be a little faster than the rest of us. If you’re making this with no extra spices at all, well… go watch TV for a few minutes, I guess. Or pop your head out of the kitchen and make sure none of the kids are maiming each other, that’s always a good idea too.

I use McCormick spices whenever possible, because while not all of their spices are gluten-free, most are, and they have a company policy of always clearly labelling the jar if any wheat flours are included. (But that still means you should always double-check your jars!)

Clockwise from the top, that’s 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp white pepper, 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, 1 1/4 tsp cumin, 1/4 tsp ground cloves, 1/2 tsp ground ginger, and 1/2 tsp chili powder. The cumin is the bulk of the content, obviously, so if you’re eliminating that one you might want to ease up a bit on whatever you do keep, since you’re going to end up with a pretty different balance of flavors.

Mix everything together thoroughly. Feel free to draw little patterns in your spices if you’ve got extra time. I won’t tell if you won’t.

Set your bowl of spices aside for now (or turn off the TV, or come back from threatening your children with indentured servitude,) and dump the sugary walnuts onto a foil-lined baking sheet. Man, I sure use the word “dump” a lot in my cooking. A relationship counselor would probably say that indicates something about my subconcious feelings towards it, and suggest I use less judgmental language.

Spread it all out into a single layer. This is important to keep the little buggers from sticking to each other.

You’re going to bake them in the 325-degree oven for a total of 30 minutes, but you’ve got to stir and flip them frequently so you don’t end up with a single carmelized sheet of nuts. I usually cook them for 10 minutes, stir; 10 minutes, stir; 5 minutes, stir; and then a final 5 minutes.

Looking good!

Now, don’t try this if you buy a thinner brand of foil that tears easily, or you will end up with a huge mess. But one way or another, move the nuts into the bowl of spices you prepared earlier.

You want to do this while the nuts are still hot, so the spices will bond to them better. Keep tossing them gently until they’re evenly coated and there’s no residual powder at the bottom of the bowl.

Then lay them out on a fresh piece of foil to cool completely. Even if you’re making these without the spices, you’re still going to want to use a clean sheet of foil, because the old one is going to be all crusty and sticky with sugar. When they’re cool, just store them in an airtight container and they’ll keep indefinitely–or until you discover someone’s gone and eaten them all.

Happy Eating!

Spiced Walnuts

1 lb. walnuts (about 4 cups)
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 TBS canola oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp white pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 1/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ginger powder
1/2 tsp chili powder

I make this in pretty small batches, but you can double it for a more reasonable quantity. Start with 1/4 cup of finely ground almond meal. You could use cashews or sunflower seeds if you prefer, but then you’d have to grind them yourself in a food processor. I already have this stuff on hand, so that’s what I use.

Then, 1/2 Tablespoon of potato starch. I don’t recommend substituting corn starch here, because it just doesn’t get as smooth, and this recipe needs all the smoothness it can get. Actually, I often end up using potato starch in my recipes that call for corn starch for this very reason. It’s one of the few specialty ingredients that costs about the same as its mainstream counterpart, so why not?

If you want, you can blend it a little at this point, just to see if you can get that almond meal any smoother. I can’t really decide if it helps or not, since I’m usually not the one eating it. Then add 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Please note that this photo is not incredibly washed-out, it is actually an artistic statement on the blinding simplicity of our most fundamental seasoning. I did it on purpose, I swear.

Then 1/2 Tablespoon of canola oil…

And about 1/2 cup of water. I tend to leave it a little on the short side, because you can always add more later if it’s too thick, but you don’t want to have to cook it for too long trying to thicken a mixture that’s too thin.

And 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder.

And blend away!  (Man, my kids and I could spend all day watching videos on that site. Brutal destruction of objects never gets old.) You could also do this in a food processor, it’s your choice. Blend for at least a few minutes on the highest speed, in order to get it as smooth as possible.

Pour the resulting mixture into a small pan, and cook over low heat while stirring constantly.

Okay, not quite constantly, you can take a few seconds to add in the seasonings. This is 1/4 teaspoon of parsley.

1/4 teaspoon of dried chives…

And just a pinch of dill. Or a couple of shakes, or whatever. A really tiny amount.

It will look like too much seasoning at first, because everything will be floating on the top. But don’t worry, as the sauce thickens the little green flecks will settle into the middle and bottom of it too, and have a more balanced appearance. And speaking of thickening, it should be starting to do that already, so make sure you keep stirring. Burning the bottom of this is the last thing you want to do.

Once it’s nice and thick like Ranch dressing ought to be, pour it into a container of your choice and chill it in the fridge. This little plastic tub actually came from a specialty food store in my neighborhood, and I tricked my kid and just kept refilling it after I figured out how to make this stuff myself–at a much cheaper price, I might add. You know how much that original container cost me? $9.00. … Nine. Dollars. I had no choice but to learn how to make it myself, after I ran out of arms and legs.

Happy Eating!

GFCF Ranch Dressing

1/4 cup Bob’s Red Mill Almond Meal
1/2 TBS potato starch
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 TBS canola oil
1/2 cup water
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp parsley flakes
1/4 tsp dried chives
pinch dried dill

This is the very first GFCF thing I ever learned how to make. It was, in fact, the success of this waffle (wherein success is determined only by the whims of a picky toddler) that gave me the strength to believe I could really do the diet at all. This was, believe it or not, substitute waffle recipe number five. The first four were received… poorly. Those of you with autistic children will understand what I’m talking about.

The point is, these waffles are sentimental to me, in an odd way. So forgive me if the recipe seems unimpressive: it is, in fact, just the suggested pancake recipe from the back of the Bob’s Red Mill Biscuit and Baking Mix bag. (Note that it is NOT the official pancake mix bag that Bob’s Red Mill also sells. It’s the pancake recipe from the biscuit mix.)

Check out my one-handed egg-cracking skills, eh? I once knew a guy who worked in the kitchen when he was in the army, and he could crack four eggs simultaneously, two in each hand. They’d race to see if they could crack a hundred eggs in 30 seconds. True story.

Because I do everything in bulk, I’m tripling the recipe from the bag. So that’s 3 eggs in the bowl, plus 6 Tablespoons of sugar…

…3/4 cup of canola oil…

…and 4 1/2 cups of the baking mix, all stirred together.

Now, here comes the hard part. You’ve got to keep breaking up that mixture until it’s got a tiny, mealy texture. Use a knife in a cross-cutting motion, as if you were slicing meat. Your great-grandmother would recognize what you’re doing: back in the day many baking recipes called for “cutting in the butter.” Except my great-grandmother would probably be appalled at the lack of real butter in all of these recipes. At the very least she’d probably insist that I ought to churn my own partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil to build up character.

Your arms will get tired, but every minute you work now is at least two minutes you save later. Gluten-free flours tend to clump more than regular flour, and once you start mixing in the water it’s almost impossible to get those lumps out.

When you get down to the smallest bits you can squash them against the back of the fork, like this. Man, look at that texture. That’s what I’m talking about!

Now add 6 cups of water, and stir for half an hour.

Just kidding, you can get out your trusty hand mixer for this part. But don’t tell my great-grandmother.

Now here’s one of the major reasons I think this waffle recipe was the one that finally won the GFCFBoy over: I added a bunch of yellow food coloring so they would have that same unnatural hue as Eggo waffles. Since then I’ve been slowly scaling back the amount with each batch, so they’re not nearly as Technicolor as they used to be, and soon they’ll be dye-free.

If you haven’t already figured it out, gluten-free batters are much thicker than traditional flour batters. Don’t be alarmed if you’re used to seeing a different consistency in your mixing bowls. This was one way in which my complete ignorance of cooking was a benefit to me when I first started out: I had no idea this wasn’t what normal pancake batter looked like, because I’d never made pancakes before. What can I say, I had other priorities.

Spray your waffle iron with canola cooking spray, and glop some on. How much will depend on the size of your waffle iron, but I do find that what looks like “the right amount” is usually too little. And if you don’t fill the crevices completely with batter, the waffles won’t cook right because of the pocket of air between the batter and the heating element.

Use the back of a spoon to push the batter outward into the corners. This will help it spread out evenly when you close the waffle iron, and also give you a better idea of whether you have the right amount of batter in there or not.

Sometimes I still guess wrong though.

Gluten-free batters in general take longer to cook, and I find that I have to let them stay in there for a good 10-12 minutes. But that may also be because I have cheap waffle irons that don’t get very hot. This is why I use two of them at once, otherwise I’d be making waffles all night long.

When they’re done the surface of the waffle will be completely dry. Pry them out with a fork, re-spray the waffle iron with cooking spray, and you’re ready for round two.

Sadly, you can’t stack these while they cool like you can with the chicken nuggets. They steam themselves and get all soggy. So they’re kind of a space hog while they’re cooling. 28 waffles out of this batch, not bad. In my house, that’ll last… about a week and a half. See why I make a triple batch?

To store them, I roll them up in layers with plastic wrap so they don’t freeze together. Just lay down a pair, flip them over, stack on another two, roll again…

Then put each bundle of eight an airtight bag. If you have lots of freezer space, you can actually ”flash freeze” them, which means you let them freeze for a half-hour or so while they’re all laid out separately, and then you can just toss them together without the plastic wrap and they won’t stick. But I can’t do that, because I have no freezer space.

Seriously, I have none.

Happy Eating!

Bob’s Red Mill Baking Mix waffles (triple batch)

3 eggs
6 TBS sugar
3/4 cup oil
4 1/2 cups baking mix

NOTE: for an oven-baked version, see here.

There is a secret to making great chicken nuggets. This secret has nothing to do with the ingredients, and everything to do with the cooking process. This is great news, because it means that you can still make scrumptious chicken nuggets like the one above, using subpar ingredients — excuse me, ah, I mean GFCF ingredients. I have such a love-hate relationship with my cooking these days. Let’s get started before I offend anything else in my pantry.

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Secret number one: marinate your meat! There are millions of recipes out there that advocate the “wash and dredge” method of breading meat, and it’s a complete travesty. If you soak those little buggers for even 45 minutes, they will come out so much more moist and delicious. (And they don’t have to be little, you could make these large chicken tenders or even whole breasts if you’d like. But I’m cooking for kids here, and they like their food bite-sized.) My bag above contains 10 cut up chicken tenders, 1 beaten egg, and 1/2 cup of rice milk, and it’s been sitting in the fridge for a little over an hour. Not because that’s the perfect amount of time, mind you, but because I live in a madhouse and sometimes I get distracted. We don’t do a lot of “perfect” around here.

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Secret number two: the oil has to be just right. If it’s not hot enough, the insides of the nuggets will be dry and stringy before the outside manages to get golden-brown. Too hot, and it will splatter violently and you’ll spend the rest of the day covered in bandages. You’ll know it’s right when it’s “swimming” — not smoking, and definitely not boiling. The oil will just be kind of swirling around on its own, and you’ll see the movement across the surface if you get down real close like this and check it out at eye-level. So put about 1/2 cup of canola oil in the pan, just enough to cover the bottom, and let it start heating up over medium-low heat.

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Meanwhile, it’s time to mix up the breading. I use 1/2 cup Rice Chex, 1/2 cup instant potato flakes, 1/4 cup white rice flour, 1/4 cup tortilla crumbs, and 1/2 tsp. salt. These tortilla crumbs are basically just corn meal with a teensy bit of lime and garlic flavor added, plain cornmeal will work fine. Be aware that not all potato flakes are GFCF, so check your brands, and most also contain sulfites. If that’s a concern for you, you can just substitute more Rice Chex, or you could use one of my favorite ingredients which is almond meal. Sometimes I replace half the tortilla crumbs with almond meal, just to mix it up a bit. I’d probably bread everything in nothing but almond meal, if the stuff weren’t so darn expensive. [As always, any brand name ingredients I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas--always double-check the ingredient lists.]

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Just toss it all in a bag…

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And crush it up. Make sure to get those Rice Chex nice and pulverized.

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Then toss in the chicken. But don’t pour the whole thing in, you only want the meat. You can sit there and move each piece into the bag with your tongs if you like, but if you want to know the truth, I just do it with my hand. A few slimy fistfuls and you’re done. Still only takes a quarter of the time even when you count washing your hands afterward. But I understand not everyone is as cavalier about this sort of thing as I am, so take your time if you must.

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Mix it up real good. Every time I do this, I can’t help but hear the old Shake-n-Bake ads: “And AHH hey-ulped!” Maybe the little girl only had a Southern accent in the commercials for the South. Or maybe it’s all in my head.

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Make sure you pinch apart any chicken pieces that are sticking to each other so they can get breaded on all sides. Another important thing to remember is that, sadly, not all chicken is gluten-free. Many times you will see things like “up to 10% solution” or “with broth” on the package, and chicken broth is quite often made with gluten as a thickener. You can verify with the manufacturer that the broth they use is gluten-free, but the safer thing to do is just buy organic/unprocessed chicken to begin with.

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Prepare a landing pad. It’s important to do this before you start frying, because those little bite-size pieces cook fast.

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Is your oil swimming? Then it’s time to fry! Notice how there’s a little bubbling action right around the nugget, but it is not splattering onto the stovetop or burning anyone’s delicate hands. My hands aren’t delicate (see earlier comment about shoving them into a bag of raw chicken,) but I hear some people like to take care of their skin.

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Keep dropping them carefully in until the pan is full but not crowded. Again, you can add them with tongs if you feel it’s necessary, but we’re all about quick and easy here at the GFCF Lady’s house.

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After just a few minutes the bottoms should be a lovely golden brown color. (Please note this is the one step you absolutely must not do with your hands…)

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This one’s not done yet, so don’t be afraid to just put it back down for another second while you flip some others over. In an ideal world I would have the organization skills to flip them in the same order I added them to the pan, but then again, in my ideal world I would never have had to learn how to make my own chicken nuggets to begin with. When life gives you lemons, you make GFCF chicken nuggets. Or something.

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Look at that beauty! Who wouldn’t want to just pop that in your mouth right then and there? Don’t do it, though. It’s still extremely hot.

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Then just move on to the next batch. You’ll have some extra bread bits floating around, which is no big deal. But you may want to pull out the big pieces just to keep everything nice and tidy.

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Like so. And these little crispy bits cool very quickly, so you could just snack on them while you keep cooking. You know, if you wanted to.

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I like to be economical with my kitchen space, so I just add another layer of paper towels and stack the next batch right on top of the first one.

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And so on. Think of it like a chicken nugget condominium. Did you know you can grow potatoes stacked vertically like this too? Horizontal is so last season.

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I’d love to show you some artsy photo of these nuggets next to a sculpted dollop of ketchup, but that would be a lie.  The whole point is to make them in bulk ahead of time, and these nuggets are going in the freezer, plain and simple.  You do want to make sure they’re completely cool before you seal them up. If you trap all that steam, it will just turn to ice inside the bag. I just reheat them in the microwave, but you could do a few minutes in the oven instead if you want to make them super crispy again.

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Happy eating!

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GFCF Lady’s Chicken Nuggets

10 chicken tenders (about 2-3 lbs,) cut up
1/2 cup rice milk
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup Rice Chex
1/2 cup GFCF potato flakes
1/4 cup white rice flour
1/4 cup tortilla crumbs (or cornmeal)
1/2 tsp salt