Gluten Free Pumpkin Cookies

This week I'm hosting a recipe sharing event called #pumpkinparty, where you can see all the recipes people have shared in this post.

For my first recipe, I wanted to share my gluten free pumpkin cookies with crystallized ginger. One thing I love about fall produce is the variety of fresh squash available in the stores. For this recipe I made my own pumpkin puree using a pie pumpkin, but you can use canned pumpkin puree for this recipe as well. Pie pumpkins are smaller than the kind you carve for jack-o-lanterns, and therefore have a smoother, sweeter texture when pureed. Here's an older post of mine detailing how to make pumpkin puree.

I also saw some crystallized ginger in the store, so I decided to use that in the recipe to give it a little bit of a kick.

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Bake Time: 18 minutes per sheet
Yields: about 32 cookies

Dry Ingredients
3/4 cup white rice flour
3/4 cup potato starch
1/2 cup tapioca starch
1/2 cup almond flour
1/2 tsp xantham gum
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp allspice

Wet Ingredients
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 tsp vanilla

Topping
1tbsp crystallized ginger, minced
Glaze (1 cup powdered sugar, 1 1/2 tbsp milk mixed together)

Steps
Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease cookie sheets, or line with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, mix the dry ingredients. In a separate medium bowl, blend the butter until fluffy. Mix in the sugar until well combined. To this whip in the egg with the pumpkin puree and the vanilla. It should produce a pumpkin slurry as pictured.

Fold the dry mix into the slurry by the half cup until a consistent cookie batter has been made. Scoop by the tablespoon onto the cookie sheets, and top each cookie with pieces of crystallized ginger. Bake for 18 minutes or until slightly brown around the edges.

Drizzle the glaze on top of each cookie, and enjoy!

Be sure to check everyone else's pumpkin recipes here!

Pumpkin Party Blog Hop!

I hope everyone is having a good weekend so far! Earlier this month, as mentioned in this post, I was inspired by others in the blogging community to host a pumpkin party this week. My hope is that this will be a wonderful opportunity for bloggers to share their favorite pumpkin recipes with each other through Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. I hope everyone enjoys the pumpkin party, running from today until the end of the month!

Please feel free to join! To do so:

• Add your recipe to the blog hop below.
• Please link back any pumpkin recipe to this post so all your readers can easily see everyone's pumpkin recipes!
• If you use twitter, feel free to share using the #pumpkinparty hash tag.

Thanks for joining, and feel free to share the event!

Cinnamon Coffee Cake

Hey everyone! I really love making gluten free cake from scratch, and being able to control the texture and taste of it. However, the convenience of cake mix can really make baking go by faster. For this coffee cake recipe, I've used Betty Crocker Gluten Free Cake Mix, and it makes it super easy! I hope you enjoy this quick and easy recipe for gluten free coffee cake!

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Baking Time: 35 minutes
Serves: 12-18

Ingredients
1 box Betty Crocker Gluten Free Cake Mix
2/3 cup water
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, room temperature
2 tsp vanilla
3 eggs

Filling
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup chopped walnut

Topping
1 cup almond flour
1 stick cold butter, cubed
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Steps


Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease a square 8x8 or 9x9 pan. In a medium bowl, mix the cake mix, water, butter, vanilla, and eggs. Pour half of the batter into the pan.

In a small bowl, mix the filling ingredients, and pour over top the batter in the pan. Cover with the remaining batter. In another bowl, mix the flour, sugar, and cinnamon. Work the butter with the flour mix until course and crumbly. Pour over top the batter, and place in the oven for 35 minutes, and remove once an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

I hope you enjoy!

Gluten Free Chocolate Truffle Pie

Hey everybody, I hope you're having a good beginning to the weekend! About two weeks ago I found a recipe for Paula Deen's Truffle Pie (original recipe here). After some experimentation, I modified the recipe by doing the following two things:

I made the recipe gluten free by using gluten free graham cracker crumbs. I recommend using kinnikinnick brand graham cracker crumbs. They have a comparable taste, as well as texture to traditional crumbs.

Instead of using cream for the bottom layer of the pie, I used 2% milk and reduced the ratio of liquid to chocolate. This produces a chocolate sauce in between the crust and filling.

I hope you enjoy!

Active Prep Time: 20 minutes
Inactive Prep Time: 8.5 hours
Serves: 8

Ingredients
Crust
1.5 cups gluten free graham cracker crumbs
.25 cup sugar
6 tbsp butter, melted

Chocolate Sauce
.5 cup and 1 tbsp 2% milk
6oz bittersweet chocolate

Chocolate Filling
6 oz bittersweet chocolate
1.5 cup heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla

Whipped cream for garnish

Steps
Crust: In a medium bowl, mix together the crust ingredients until well combined. Press the crust mix into a pie pan. Refrigerate the pan until the chocolate sauce is ready.

Chocolate Sauce: In a saucepan over low heat, melt the chocolate with the milk. Stir often in order to prevent the chocolate from scorching. Once the chocolate sauce has a consistent color and all the chocolate has melted, put aside off the heat for 3 minutes to cool. Pour into the crust and place into the freezer until the chocolate filling is ready.

Chocolate Filling: Over low heat, melt the chocolate with .5 cup of the cream. Stir constantly, and continue to melt until the chocolate is consistent and totally melted. (will look like the picture to the left) Pour the chocolate into a medium mixing bowl, and set aside for about 10 minutes or until room temperature. Add the vanilla and cup of cream, and whisk for about 3-4 minutes or until soft peaks form. Pour into the pan, and refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight.

Serve with either fresh or canned whipped cream, and enjoy! Thank you to Food Network and Paula Deen for the original recipe.

Gluten Free Caramel Apple Cupcakes

Hey everyone! I hope that you've had a good weekend (better than my concussion-filled one, at least...). All this month, EA Stewart (@TheSpicyRD) and a variety of other bloggers are hosting an apple event called #applelove. Search the #applelove hashtag on twitter to find all the amazing recipes collected so far. 

For this cupcake, I wanted to take the essence of a caramel apple and turn it into a cupcake. The cupcake is filled with walnuts and tons of apples, then topped with a caramel sauce (the recipe for that located here). I hope you enjoy this recipe!

Also, as a fun alternative, you can bake this as a cake (for about 35 minutes) and drench the top in the caramel sauce. Delicious! Be sure to check out the bloghop below for more apple recipes!

Yields: 3 dozen cupcakes

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Bake Time: 18 minutes for cupcakes

Ingredients

3 cups gluten free flour
1 1/4 tsp xantham gum
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
5 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup milk
1/4 c whipped cream
2 apples, thinly sliced and cubed
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Caramel Sauce

Steps
Preheat the oven to 350F. Line muffin tins with baking cups. In a medium bowl combine the flour, gum, powder, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

In a large bowl, whip the butter until fluffy. Beat in the sugar by the half cup. Once all the sugar is combined, blend the eggs into the butter, one at a time. Add the vanilla to the egg mixture.

Alternate adding the milk and dry ingredients into the egg mix, by about 1/2 or 1/4 cup at a time. Blend until the batter is completely smooth. Fold in the whipped cream until well mixed. Fold in the apples and the walnuts. Distribute these into the muffin tins, and bake in the oven for about 18 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Prepare the Caramel Sauce by following the Food Network recipe. To ice the cupcakes, here's a quick and easy tip. Either go to the store to buy a condiment bottle (normally only a few dollars), or clean out an empty ketchup or mustard bottle for reuse. Fill the bottle with the sauce, and use that to create the design of your choice, or give to your kids and let them have fun decorating.

I hope you enjoy this recipe, and be sure to check out #applelove on Twitter this month!

Gluten Free Chicken Pizza

Hey everyone! Its the first Wednesday of the month and time for another Gluten Free Rally post! Thank you to Karen of http://www.cookingglutenfree.com/ for hosting this month!

And if you couldn't tell by the delicious looking picture above, this month's theme is pizza. I feel like pizza is a comfort food right up there with pasta or hamburgers and fries. The starch from the crust, the grease from the cheese, and all the salty or sweet toppings is one of the best ways of sending yourself into a blissful food coma for a few hours.

Thankfully there is a zpizza near where I live, so as long as I take my supplements, I'm normally able to eat their gluten free pizza with relatively no problem. But there's nothing like the ability to make your own pizza exactly the way you want, which is why I was so excited for this month's theme.

Tip for this recipe: If you don't have time to cook the chicken, use pre-cooked or leftover chicken! It'll cut down the prep and cook time by about 2 hours

Our ratios this month are based off of Ruhlman's ratio of 5:3 flour:water weight ratio. He also recommends to add a small amount of oil to the recipe.

Thank you again to Karen for posting, please go here to view Karen's recipe, along with all the other participants' pizza recipes for the month!

Active Prep Time: 20 minutes
Inactive Prep Time: 1 hour for the pizza, 20 minutes for the chicken
Cook Time: 18 minutes for the pizza, 45-60 minutes for the chicken
Makes 1 Large Pizza

Ingredients
Crust
83g gluten free corn meal
83g almond flour
42g brown rice flour
125g white rice flour
125g potato starch
42g tapioca starch
1 tsp yeast
50g oil
210g warm water

Toppings
1 pineapple, cubed
2 chicken breasts
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup gluten free teriyaki sauce
1/2 yellow onion
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, grated
2 tbsp chopped cliantro

Steps


If you are baking the chicken from scratch, preheat the oven to 450F. Place the chicken into a rectangular baking pan, and salt and pepper the chicken. Place about 1/2 cup of the pineapple on top of the chicken, and then drizzle with olive oil. Cover and let sit for 20 minutes.

Remove the plastic wrap, and bake the chicken in the oven for about 45-60 minutes, or until it has reached 165F internally.


While the chicken bakes, combine dry ingredients for the crust. In a separate bowl, combine the water and yeast, and let sit for a couple minutes until the yeast activates. Mix the oil and yeast water with the dry ingredients until a dough forms. If the dough is too dry, add a little more water until the dough does not crack. Cover with a damp towel and let it rise for an hour.

Once risen, place a pizza stone or baking sheet into the hot oven. On parchment paper, roll out the pizza dough to the size of the stone or sheet you are baking it on. Carefully transfer the dough to the HOT pan or stone, and bake for 8-10 minutes.

While the pizza parbakes, caramelize the onions on a small pan over medium heat. This should only take about 4 minutes or so. While this caramelizes, shred the chicken into bite size pieces.

Top the pizza with your desired amounts of sauce, onions, garlic, chicken, pineapple, cheese, and cilantro. Bake for another 8-10 minutes until the cheese has melted.

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did!

Pumpkin Party 2011!

Hey everyone! I hope everyone is having a good weekend so far. Some how it is already October, the weather is getting colder, and pumpkins are popping up everywhere!

Last weekend a couple of friends and I went to Scion in Washington, DC for dinner. Several people grew excited when they told us that they're seasonal special is Pumpkin and Goat Cheese Ravioli (sounds awesome, right?). This got me thinking the past week of all the delicious things you could make using pumpkin.

This reminded me of the #pieparty that Shauna of Gluten-Free Girl held in June. There were so many creative pie recipes that the blogging community shared during that event that I wanted to hold a Pumpkin Party! 

As this is in a planning phase, I was wondering if anyone desires to participate in this virtual party? After talking to those interested so far, we'll post the pumpkin recipes from October 23-29th! What are your thoughts? Let me know if there's interest in my comments section or on twitter. Also, if you don't have a blog and would still love to participate, let me know, and I'll host you as a guest blogger for the #PumpkinParty

#PumpkinParty October 23-29th

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