Great-fruit cupcakes

Last weekend I ventured into the realm of from-scratch GF baking. I set a lofty goal of making grapefruit cupcakes, which I had never made (or eaten) before. To complicate things, I couldn't find a recipe for GF grapefruit cupcakes, so I was left to adapt a normal recipe.

I ventured to an Asian store (the flours found there are supposed to be cheaper than they are in the healthfood section of grocery stores). A note about these flours: they're much finer than the ones in the grocery store, so you can't really use equal substitutions. I'll experiment with that later and let you know my thoughts. The superfine rice flour I bought was $1 per bag; the tapioca starch was $0.75. Score! Another side note: tapioca starch and tapioca flour are the same thing. (This is not true with potato starch/flour and corn starch/flour.)

I ventured to the grocery store in to buy the rest of the ingredients for my flour mixture (recipe to follow), as well as some other flours. Only when I got home did I realize that one flour recipe called for tapioca starch or corn starch, so I assumed that they were interchangeable. But my flour recipe called for both. I debated going back to get potato starch but decided that because they were interchangeable in one recipe, using only corn starch would probably suffice. So I added corn starch for both amounts. I'll eventually try to recreate the cupcakes with the proper starches in the flour and let you know if I notice a difference.
After I mixed up my flour, I moved on to mixing up the cupcakes. I mixed the dry ingredients and formed a well, to which I added the wet ingredients (minus the egg whites) and a few drops of red food coloring. I wanted my grapefruit cupcakes to look ruby-red.

The batter looked like pink bubble gum.

I was very surprised as I started mixing – this batter was like no batter I had ever seen before. It looked like I was mixing a large bowl of bubble gum. I'm assuming that the small amount of xanthan gum in the flour mixture is what caused the batter to gum-up. I'm also going to try baking these again without this recipe, just to see how they turn out.
I put the gummy-concoction into the cupcake papers in my pan, put it in the oven, and hoped that the cupcakes would turn out better than I was expecting.



I took then out of the oven and was impressed. They looked like cupcakes! The strange thing, though, was that seconds after I took them out of the oven, they started to shrink. The cupcake papers pulled away from the side and the tops sunk down instead of staying rounded. Strange.

Normal looking cupcakes.

Shriveled cupcakes.

I set them aside to cool and worked on the icing. I decided to go for cream cheese icing, but also add a little grapefruit flavor. I remembered the butter this time, but it still didn't turn out quite right. Next time I'm going to let the butter soften and use a sifter for the powdered sugar.

I nervously decided to try my creation. I love it when I surprise myself! They were GREAT! They didn't have a gummy or spongey texture at all, and they weren't dry or gritty! They were light and had a great citrusy flavor. I will be making these again. I brought them in for my coworkers and they gave the recipe rave reviews – even those who don't like grapefruit.

Cupcakes and crackers and bread, oh my!

I've recently tried a few GF products that I normally wouldn't have. I'm pleasantly surprised by some and not so pleasantly surprised by others. I didn't think it would be so difficult to find adequate substitutes!

The first thing I tried (and was extremely disappointed with) was bread. I stood in the GF section of my local supermarket. I poked every single type of bread. They were all hard - no give what so ever. So I settled on the least-hard-feeling loaf – a light brown rice bread. I was feeling optimistic – until I got home and made a sandwich.

It's difficult to come up with words to convey this bread, and my disappointment in it. Have you ever seen or felt the yellow insulation on ceiling tile panels? This bread reminded me of it. When I picked up a slice, it had an almost fiberglass insulation texture to it. And it was dry – very dry. My husband almost choked when a bite of it got stuck in his throat.
I had two pieces before I gave up. I slathered the remaining pieces in butter with garlic powder, oregano, thyme, and some salt/pepper before sticking it in the oven to dry the heck out of it. Somewhat surprisingly, it wasn't horrible after I did that. I took a bite out of my little garlic-bread-bricks before I made them into breadcrumbs.

I also decided to try an interesting sounding cupcake mix that I had found in the same local supermarket. GF cocoa cayenne cupcakes sounded like they would be right up my alley - you can't go wrong with a little bit of sweet and a little bit of heat.

Oh, how wrong my opinion was. I mixed the batter per the instructions on the back of the box. I thought the batter was a little odd – it was a bit gritty when I sampled it. They came out of the oven looking like any other chocolate cupcake. I decided to top them with cream cheese icing – that was a disaster. I learned to never forget the butter when making this icing. No matter how much powdered sugar I added to the cream cheese, it just wouldn't thicken up. In fact, it reminded me of the science experiment where you add cornstarch to water. The mixture appears solid when you pick it up or squeeze it, but liquid if you let it sit in the palm of your hand. I finally gave up on that and just dipped the top of the cupcakes into the goopy icing.

The flavor of the cupcake wasn't bad at all. It was nice and chocolatey on the front, and then there was a slight heat at the back of your throat. The problem with these cupcakes was the texture. It felt like I was eating a sponge – and a dry one at that. I plan to make them again, but to ignore the directions on the back of the box and instead add some applesauce to see if that keeps them a bit moister and less sponge-like.

I do actually have 1 good find. I had tried some almond/rice crackers that a coworker seems to like. I wasn't crazy about them - they reminded me of a tortilla chip when I bit into them but then a rice cake when I actually tasted it. These aren't necessarily qualities that I want my crackers to have.

Instead, I decided to try a different kind of GF crackers. I was surprisingly impressed. They have a cracker-like texture and no funny tastes. They were quite peppery, which I enjoyed. They also went very well with the chicken salad I made. I think they would go quite nicely with some cheese and a nice glass of red wine. The packaging inside wasn't great so a bunch of them were broken, but I can live with broken crackers as long as they are palatable.

I bought a new kind of bread tonight: light tapioca bread. It is far softer than the light brown rice bread I tried and I'm hoping that it lacks the insulation-like texture. I'll keep you posted on that. I have a feeling that I'll probably have far better luck by making my own, which I plan to do after I get a breadmaker.

I thought the same about cupcakes, so I've been attempting to make homemade GF cupcakes this evening. I will have to get used to cooking with alternative flours. They have textures and characteristics that I am not used to. I will give you an update on the cupcake outcome later, after I have frosted them and tried them. Just keep your fingers crossed that they turned out better than the last ones!

The beginning...

Like many, a new diet accompanied my new year. Only, mine wasn't a result of "I want to lose 5 pounds so I'm going to stick with a restrictive diet until I do." Instead, my new "diet" is the product of getting my Celiac panel blood test results. The tests confirmed what I (and my husband) already knew. Bread was not my friend. It hadn't been for quite some time - I had been showing symptoms for more than 1.5 years. But my love of all things glutenous (beer, pasta, cookies, bread, etc.) was worth it, or so I thought.

I didn't think that giving up gluten would be the end of the world. I've stood in front of my local grocery store's gluten free section in the health department. There seems to be a substitute for almost everything I loved. Unbeknownst to me at that time, the products are far inferior to their glutenous cousins.

After poking every single package of gluten free bread, I settled on the softest one I could find and unhappily tossed it into my cart. The light rice flour bread (which I will discuss shortly) felt like one of my normal loaves of bread, but after I had forgotten about it for a few weeks. It felt as light and fluffy as a rubber mallet.

After being just as unimpressed with a box of yummy-sounding cupcakes, I am now striving to find adequate replacements for the things I loved - only better because these products won't be accompanied by the pesky side effects.

So here I am. I am on a journey to make or find the tastiest gluten free products that I can.