Gluten Free Roll Kuchen

My Mennonite roots are coming out here.  Hot summer day + roll kuchen + watermelon = bliss.  Diagnose a few family members with celiac disease and the roll kuchen days were over.  Oh how we mourned that loss.  But for those of you following along, you know that I refuse to be told I can't have something.  If someone else has done it, then I'll find out and try it myself.

The final push to find a recipe (and try it) came when I spent a weekend in Steinbach for a family reunion and (unfortunately) ended up sitting beside the big bowl of roll kuchen (NOT gluten free).  Enough! I said.  I'm having roll kuchen when I get home.

Brazilian Cheese Bread

Josh and his friends ate out at a Brazilian Steak House a while back and he came home raving about these little cheese biscuits they served.  "The waitress said they were made from tapioca starch so they'd be gluten free!"  I love how he's always thinking of me and what I could eat, even when I'm not with him.  Fast forward a few weeks and I stumbled across this recipe in a gluten free exchange group I'm in on Facebook.  Reading through the recipe I realized this is a NATURALLY gluten free recipe.  They haven't switched to tapioca starch to appease the celiacs out there.  While I know I'm capable of making delicious converted GF food, when a recipe is naturally GF I get excited.

Gluten Free Oatmeal Cinnamon Raisin Bread

Once I felt that I had succeeded with sandwich bread I had to keep the ball rolling.  Actually, this one came about because of my Mother's craving.  She was missing cinnamon raisin bread terribly.  The story goes like this...

We were doing our monthly Costco trip together and I was bragging about my success with sandwich bread.  (My mom is a celiac also, so I have to share my successes with her.)  She confessed her craving for cinnamon raisin bread, and I began to wonder if such a recipe could be found on the Baking Beauties website.  Technology is wonderful, and smartphones are so handy... within minutes we had our answer.  YES!   A quick call home to confirm if we had raisins and we rushed home to try it out.  

Gluten Free Sandwich Bread

I was so nervous to try baking gluten free bread.  Every blog I read warned me that it was tricky and finicky and took many many tries.  Talk about discouraging!  I buy both Udi's and Kinnickinnick's sandwich bread and both are good, but I wanted warm, fresh out of the oven, homemade bread!  After I succeeded with the garlic parmesan pull-apart bread I mustered up the courage to try a real loaf.  I searched and searched until I found a recipe that sounded reasonable, had yummy looking pictures to prove it, and didn't use a flour mix.  If bread was as finicky as everyone said, why on earth would I use an AP mix?!  

Gluten Free Garlic Parmesan Pull Apart Bread

I seem to fallen off of the face of the blogging world.  I apologize!  Life has been... busy.  But I haven't stopped baking!  I still insist that eating gluten free should be equally delicious as otherwise.  And as such, I have a list of recipes that I need to get up here for you.  Be patient with me!  I know some of you have been requesting a few of them, and I promise to get them up sooner rather than later.

Gluten Free Cheese Biscuits

Gluten free dough does not handle the same way as regular dough.  It is a reality of learning to cook gluten free, but it does not mean that taste needs to be compromised.  But it is for this reason that drop biscuits work better than rolled biscuits.  This recipe is my best success thus far with gluten free rolled biscuits.  It comes from the blog of Celiac Teen.  The millet flour seems to be the key here, it behaves so nicely in those recipes that are particularly difficult to convert.

Gluten Free Waffles & Vanilla Custard

I didn't get a crepe maker for Christmas (which ended up being okay - I learned the frying pan method), but I DID get a waffle maker.  You just can't make those delicious little squares on your own.  These turned out so crisp and wonderful,  I could have eaten them all day!  This recipe comes from Food.com, and I will be making them again!  The vanilla custard recipe comes from my family, and is a long standing tradition to eat with waffles.  Dip them in custard, or layer the waffles up with custard, jam, fresh fruit, whipped cream, whatever you desire!

Banana Bread/Muffins

This recipe credit goes to my mother.  Our church had a breakfast potluck last week and she quickly whipped these up that morning.  GF muffins are better fresh anyways.  OH MY GOODNESS!  These muffins were so moist and fluffy and delicious.  I wish you could have seen the excitement on my face when she came in with those muffins.  For everyone who is celiac or gluten intolerant, you know what I am talking about.  You arrive at a breakfast potluck, take one look at the spread and "I guess I'll have the fruit."  I love fruit, but that is NOT a sufficient breakfast on its own.  So next time you are attending a breakfast potluck (or you just want some delicious muffins), whip up a batch of these.