Gluten Free Cup Cake at "My Sweetopia"

Gluten Free Cup Cake at "My Sweetopia"
The girls at "My Sweetopia" always like to make a special GF cupcake for Angus!

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Gluten Free Caramel Pear Upside Down Cake

As we're just about to have our old kitchen destroyed and our new one put in, I'm desperately trying to empty the pantry and use up all of our old bits of flour, etc so it's not such a big drama when we have to move out for a couple of weeks.  This morning I took out my Sally Wise "From my Kitchen to Yours" Cookbook, looked at the fruit bowl which had some pears which were pretty much on the edge of being chucked out, and found something to cook.  Caramel Pear Upside down cake.  This was a really easy recipe and was so yummy - we ate it hot (wish we had some vanilla ice-cream in the fridge!).  We turned and looked at each other after the first piece and eyed off the left overs.... and yes - ate it all in one sitting!  Sally has a blog which I'd recommend - she even has a recipe for home made gf pasta.  Check it out: sallywise.com.au

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Holidays are nearly over!

Time flies when you're having fun....catching up with family...having Christmas....and...trying to renovate your house! Fortunately we survived the holidays with minimal fuss and without the kids killing each other, helped along by some great food. Christmas was a success - my boys are at the age where they generally measure the success of the day by how full their stomachs are. Christmas Eve was just us, and I cooked a yummy turkey with cranberry and walnut stuffing, recipe courtesy of the Taste website - naturally I replaced the bread with gluten free day old bread. This was served with mini pavlova shells filled with cream, fresh berries and mango - yum! Christmas morning was Cranberry Spiced Muffins and fruit platter with home made passion fruit yoghurt, again both recipes from Taste. The muffins are sweet and moist, and work well replacing the normal flour with gluten free self raising flour. These were a welcome treat after all of the energy expended on present opening!

I had all of the family over for lunch and had the traditional prawns for entree, though the weather was really very pleasant for a Queensland summer's day! These were served with a pistachio tarator (no I didn't know what it was either - but look it up on taste.com.au because it was yummy - and a honey almond dipping sauce. Then I made beautiful chicken breasts stuffed with Brie, pistachios and cranberries for a main course. I learnt to make this at the James Street Cooking School and everyone always loves it. I served this with a mixed bean salad and warm potato salad with pancetta. Yum! Finally - the boys favorite desert - choc cherry tiramisu ice cream cake which was in a Super Food Ideas magazine a few years ago. It uses two 2 lite tubs of ice-cream and we end up eating it for days - but it's a big hit.

Other holiday gluten free favourites have included the wonderful mini mince pies from New Zealand company Jon-Jon - I think we bought out Coles and Woolies at Garden City! A beautiful Gluten-Free Ginger Bread house from the wonderful girls at "My Sweetopia" at South Bank. Fast food recipes from the December issue of Donna Hay magazine which were a hit - particularly the Parmesan lamb cutlets! Finally, a great new discovery, Tasmanian author Sally Wise has a gluten free cookbook called "From my Kitchen to Yours", which has a wonderful Jam Drops recipe in it - I can't keep up with the demand! I hope everyone else had as successful a gluten-free holiday time as we did!