An old co-worker and her husband opened up their home to use during our week-long fake vacation, i.e. the week that Los Alamos was evacuated due to the Los Conchas fire. Thankfully we had a safe place to go with our cats, and everyone survived the ordeal and came out healthy and happy (which for the cats means back to their crazy selves).
The woman we were staying with had just received a new cookbook as a gift and all the items in the cookbook were gluten-free. I admittedly have absolutely no experience with gluten-free baking, but in anticipation of future bakery customers that need to eat gluten-free, I figured it was about time I learned a thing or two. A trip to Border's and I was in possession of the two cookbooks that have been produced by the owner of Babycakes Bakery in NYC, a gluten-free, vegan, kosher bakery that has received rave reviews. I also made a few trips to the Santa Fe co-op to pick up some ingredients, and I was ready to start baking!
**If you'd like recipes for any of the items you read about here, please email me or post a comment and I'll reply! Most of the recipes in this post and the next, more recent post, are pretty rigid followings of the Babycakes cookbook recipes.
My first two attempts were carrot cupcakes and vanilla icing. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of either (I forgot my fancy new iPhone could take pictures!), but that's okay...I wouldn't call either of the products pretty! The carrot cupcakes turned out okay, but Scott and I both agreed that there was a bit too much baking soda...there was an odd aftertaste, most likely due to the baking soda. When cooking at high altitude, I usually decrease the amount of baking soda, but I was hesitant to mess with proportions too much during my first gluten-free baking attempt. I would definitely decrease the amount of baking soda next time though. Overall, the cupcakes were still very moist and flavorful, and I would definitely make them again.
The vanilla icing, on the other hand, needs some more work! The use of coconut oil is very common in these cookbooks, and I had mistakenly bought unrefined coconut oil, which meant that the coconut flavor was still pretty strong. Tasty, but maybe a little overpowering for vanilla icing. Also, I had skipped over the part of the instructions where it says that the icing is best if made the night before. Whoops! I was making it about an hour before I was hoping to use it. Regardless, for some reason it never thickened...perhaps I added too much rice milk? It shouldn't really have mattered though; coconut oil is a solid below about 70 degrees, so it should have hardened back up once I put it in the fridge. Hopefully it'll turn out better on my second attempt! The flavor was still very good though (if a bit coconut-y), and I did end up using it to make Frozen Icing Chocolate Chip cookie sandwiches, which worked just fine!
The third thing I made during "Part 1" of Gluten-Free Baking Adventures was double chocolate chip cookies. Again, I mistakenly used unrefined coconut oil, so the cookies were a bit more coconut-y than normal double chocolate chip cookies, but overall the flavor as really good. Texture seemed a little off though. The first batch of cookies seemed extremely oily, so I added some more flour (almost unheard of when baking at altitude! Usually it's more liquid), which helped some. They still seemed a bit crumbly and weren't quite what I like in a cookie. Scott pointed out that they would make excellent ice cream cookie sandwiches though, which of course led to the 'Icing Cookie Sandwiches'!
Sorry, no pictures...they'll all be in the next post!
