Delicacious | A Gluten-Free Blog
Gluten-free cooking, baking and living
I have not been blogging very judiciously since starting a new job and my toddler starting a new school. The poor girl has been sick for more than a week and now my poor husband has gotten the flu bug too. Oh flu bug shoo! Don’t you hate it when the flu bug passes from one family member to another? Time to dose up on Vitamin C.Continue Reading
First thought that comes to mind when someone mentions oatmeal muffins? Do the words dry, bland, gummy come into mind? Well I was not quite a fan of oatmeal muffins, but THIS oatmeal muffin is very different. For one, it does not use oats whole, but uses toasted ground oatmeal. It has a distinct taste of oats with a fragrance likened to popcorn. Intrigued?
I came across this article on my Cook’s Illustrated magazine on oatmeal muffin. Those of you who read Cook’s Illustrated will know that they spend extended time testing recipes and refining them. They suggested that toasting and grinding up the oatmeal allows it to absorb liquid quickly, while giving it flavour. Who would have thought of doing that?
Since I had an unopened packet of oats sitting around, I decided to give the recipe a try. Although muffins are typically fast to prepare, this one does take time. So if you are intending to make this muffin for breakfast, plan ahead! I didn’t and so my starving family had a late breakfast. Also, the original recipe calls for a streusel topping which I find sweet. I removed the streusel topping and added some raisins instead to sweeten up the muffin a little.
The resulting muffin was fragrant and moist. It went very well with jam and my family enjoyed it. This was baked in conjunction with Cook For Family‘s event which ends today.
My husband’s favourite foods are pizza and baguette. Yes, he will survive very well in both France and Italy. Whenever the question of “what shall we eat today?” surfaces, his answer will likely be pizza. Our family may well be eating pizza every other day, if he has his way around things. Fortunately, he doesn’t.
So, he has been on a “I want to eat pizza” mood for a couple of weeks, and since the family wasn’t quite well (the flu bug has been going around), he hadn’t had his pizza fix. He signed up for cook for family event, I suggested to him to kill two birds with one stone – have his pizza fix AND cook for the family. He gamely took up my suggestion and we had fun making pizza!
We modified a Jamie Oliver’s basic pizza dough recipe and had enough dough for four medium size pizzas. One of the pizzas was made with a tomato base and the other with a pesto base. We even had a splitza! Half ham, mushroom and peppers and the other butter chicken.
It was all hands on deck for pizza night! Yes, even my two year old toddler had fun adding ingredients to the pizza. Here in this picture, she is adding her favourite mushrooms to the pizza. I love this candid shot!
I made the above pizza with a pesto base, using a good ready-made pesto sauce. Spread the pesto as a base, heap on the ingredients to your liking, sprinkle with mozzarella and in the oven it goes!
And this picture brings me to the discovery of the day: Butter chicken pizza. Ok, I know what you must be thinking. This gooey mess of red? Are you kidding me? Well, we did go overboard with the butter chicken sauce, but trust me, this is the most delicious combination we have had on a pizza in a long while. Perhaps, it would have looked prettier if we had remembered to spread butter chicken sauce on the base, heap on chunky pieces of butter chicken with added onions and peppers and topped it with mozzarella cheese. But no, I forgot to spread the pizza base with sauce so I decided to drizzle it most liberally on the pizza. The result? This messy looking pizza that tasted every bit delicious.
So are you sold yet? What is butter chicken, some of you may ask. It’s this tasty chicken dish that is sold at most tandoori food stalls and it is a fantastic accompaniment to naan. I say, it is even better on pizza.
The next time you are wondering what to do for dinner, consider making pizza and having fun with your family! Pizza making is one of the the things that is sure to engage everyone, from the oldest to the youngest. No real recipe, just your favourite ingredients mixed and matched the way you like it. After all, dinner together as a family is supposed to be fun!
Two weeks ago, my mother went for a class to learn how to make steamed red bean buns. A few days later, she tried to replicate the recipe with not-so-successful results. The bread of the buns tasted weird, and the red bean filling was grainy. Needless to say, she was rather discouraged even though we tried to render support by eating a few of the buns.
So on Saturday, in preparation for Mother’s Day, I decided to make my version of steamed red bean buns. I combed through many variations of making red bean paste and pau dough, and came up with my own variation. It was a success! True, it was much work making the red bean paste from scratch and it required some forward planning, something that is not my forte. But the results were rewarding – especially when the red bean paste actually tastes like red bean, and not some sweetened mush that you buy in a packet.
My husband participated in the making of the buns too! His favourite activity? Making animal faces. He became very popular with my daughter after she saw this little piggy. His effort disappeared in a couple of minutes though, as my daughter declared that she was going to eat the piggy soon after she saw it.
So you’ve decided that you want to embark on the journey of making your very own steamed buns? Here are some photo tips.
So now you are ready to try to make your own steamed buns!
I baked blueberry muffins… again. Yes, my husband’s colleague asked him a couple of days back when he brought these to work, “You guys really like blueberries, don’t you?” Well, we do. Most importantly, my two year old loves them. They are healthy. They contain lots of antioxidants. Enough said.
Though no one really gets tired of blueberry muffins, I do try to modify them to make them more interesting. A couple of weeks ago, I tried some muffins that a friend made – they had streusel topping. She said it was an allrecipe.com recipe, so I decided to search for them and found them. Since the streusel topping did not sound too healthy, I decided to ease my conscience slightly by replacing part of the flour with wholewheat flour and cutting down on the sugar content.
The result was a lovely moist muffin, with delicious streusel topping. The amount of topping can be varied according to your preference. I was rather generous for this batch but don’t they appear beautiful? 🙂
| Serves | 15 muffins |
| Website | adapted from all recipes.com |
| Step 1 | |
| Preheat oven to 200°C. Line muffin trays with cups. | |
| Step 2 | |
| Sift flours, salt and baking powder together in a large bowl. Add sugar and stir to combine. | |
| Step 3 | |
| In a separate bowl, add vegetable oil, egg and milk. Whisk to combine. | |
| Step 4 | |
| Add Egg mixture to the dry ingredients. Mix till just combined. | |
| Step 5 | |
| Fold in blueberries. Fill muffin cups till 3/4 full. | |
| Step 6 | |
| Toss together ingredients for streusel topping. Combine them together with a fork. | |
| Step 7 | |
| Sprinkle topping on top of muffin batter. | |
| Step 8 | |
| Bake for 20 - 25 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. | |
Muffins are easy to make because they do not require a mixer, just gentle folding in by hand. It is really quick to prepare, as long as you have all your ingredients on hand. While most muffin recipes use all purpose flour, I prefer to use whole wheat flour because it’s healthier, contains more nutrients and flavour. Here, I share one of my favourite muffin recipes. It is simple and the ingredients can easily be replaced to give you a variety of muffin flavours. Should you find the flavour of whole wheat flour too strong, feel free to replace half of it with all purpose flour. Whole wheat flour can be obtained from most good supermarkets such as Cold Storage or NTUC Finest. Try this easy and healthy recipe and you would never need to buy muffins again!
Strawberry Muffins
Makes 12-15 muffins
Ingredients
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
4 oz unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 cup sour cream
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup chopped strawberries
Method:
Variations can be made by adding the following in place of strawberries
This simple raisin bread is made from the challah dough recipe that can be found here. The result is a soft and fragrant sweet breakfast or teatime bread. I especially enjoy it when it’s lightly toasted, with a little extra butter spread on top. The bread may look complex but I assure you that this dough is really quite easy to handle and shape.
Raisin Challah Loaf
Makes 1 Loaf
Adapted from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day
Ingredients:
1 pound of challah dough (recipe found here)
1/3 cup raisins
Butter for greasing cookie sheet
Egg wash (1 egg mixed with 1 tbsp water)
White sesame seeds
Method:
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