Today, I am king of the castle. I, the Almighty Greenling, stand triumphant, surveying the magnificence of my deeds. Not only have I crammed a kitchen floorful of groceries (the dairy and wheat items being, of course, property of my aunt) into a single fridge, not only have I made my inaugural pot of compost broth, I have, for the first time, succeeded at that strange arcane alchemic art that is gluten-free baking.
This recipe is tentative - in the great an honoured family tradition of making it up as you go along, much of this was improvisation and extrapolation. It was a study in educated guesses patched together with abstract hopes. But, miraculously enough, it worked.
So, if you have the will and the spirit, set your oven to 175 C and let the mayhem begin. To start off with, you'll need 100 grams of ground almonds - one and a quarter cups. Chuck that in a large bowl. Add three quarters of a cup of gluten-free flour, because I'm but a callow novice and have not yet ascended to mastery of making my own, not to mention that there just happened to be some kicking about the kitchen cupboards. Top that off with half a cup of light brown sugar - something caramel-coloured and sandy but not damply cohesive; demerara, turbinado, unrefined evaporated cane juice, those should all work a tread - don't pack it down, and break up any big clumps. over this, sprinkle two teaspoons of baking powder, and a pinch of salt. Finally, add in anywhere between one-half and two-thirds of a cup of dried blueberries, then grab yourself a big ol' lime, and zest it over the lot. Stir just a bit to coat the blueberries in the dry ingredients and get everything more or less distributed.
Now, the wet ingredients. Measure out one-quarter cup of light-tasting oil. I used peanut; rapeseed, sunflower, or safflower should work just fine - solid fats would probably be okay, if that's your kick. Add the oil in slowly, crumbling it into the dry ingredients just until you get a sandy texture. If you make a fist, the mixture should stick together in a reasonably solid clump, but should be delicate - crumbling at just the whisper of a touch.
Now, that lime. Roll it across your countertop to get the juices flowing. Measure out just over a third of a cup of soya milk, six tablespoons. Cut the lime in half, and wring the ever-loving mercy out of that little hespiridium. Crush its feeble carpels. Stir the juice into the soya milk and let that citric acid work its magic, then pour that thickened coagulated goodness slowly in with the rest of the ingredients until it comes together into a thick, sticky mess.
Now it's time for coconut. Toss shredded unsweetened coconut liberally into the batter - I used roughly one-third of a cup to take a respectably fluid mix into the murky no-man's-land between dough and batter, too wet to handle with dry hands, too thick to easily spread with a dry spoon. But this batter-dough may be unruly, its caprice is merely adaptability in disguise. It is thick enough to hold together as drop scones on a cookie sheet, yet malleable enough to be pressed and patted and smudged into two oiled-and-floured shallow circular cake pans, where it will hold its shape well enough to be scored into triangles before baking. Bake them for roughly twenty minutes, until the tops attain a warm golden cast and they resist a gentle poke. The toothpick test is also a good indicator.
Enjoy these lovelies with a cup of tea and a contented smile, in all their perfumed splendour and delicate tenderness. Bonus points if you can leave them alone long enough to not burn your tongue. ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment