Dairy free cheesy biscuits

This recipe is:

• Gluten free
• Dairy free
• Egg free
• Yeast free

I'm really getting into this gluten free baking malarkey, but sometimes all those cakes just get tiresome (OK, they don't, I'm just trying to come up with a way to introduce this savoury baking outing ;-)

So I went and made these 'cheesy' dairy free biscuits for munching while lunching, or having with a bit of chee.., er ham?

Gluten free, dairy free cheesy sunflower biscuit recipe

50g dairy free margarine
50g sunflower seeds
200g gram flour
200g rice flour
2 tbsp fake parmesan (parmezano)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp olive oil
160 ml water

Pre-heat your oven to 180C.

Toast the sunflower seeds on a dry pan until golden brown. Sift the dry ingredients together then make a well in the centre and add the olive oil. Rub into the gluten free flour mix with your fingertips. Then add the margarine and do the same.

Stir the water into the mix until combined then get your hands in there and bring it together into a ball of dough. Flour a surface with rice flour and roll the dough out to about 5mm thick. Stamp out biscuits with a biscuit cutter, recombining the dough and re-rolling until the dough is all biscuitified.

Place your biscuits on a lightly greased baking tray and bake for 25-30 mins, or until those cheesy, non-cheesy dairy free gluten free flavour full biccies are done to perfection. Cool on a rack.

Gluten free chocolate beetroot muffins

This recipe is:

• Gluten free
• Dairy free
• Egg free
• Yeast free

Beetroot?!!! Let me explain. The problem with gluten free muffins, I often find, is that they are dry. Not usually when fresh out of the oven, but often the next day, and almost always on day 2.

When considering this dessicated dilemma, I remembered seeing some TV program or other where they added beetroot for moisture - to a gluten free muffin in fact. So I've bodged together a muffin recipe involving chocolate and beetroot to see how it goes.

They are literally in the oven now, so don't go following the recipe until I've let you know they worked ;) (OK, they worked, although I've made an adjustment to the sugar - no-one wants a savoury chocolate muffin, even if it is gluten free.)

Gluten free chocolate and beetroot muffin recipe

250g plain gluten free flour
100 g caster sugar
1 egg (or egg replacer for egg free)
200ml milk (or soya milk for dairy free)
80g margarine, melted
2 medium sized cooked beetroots (beets), grated
2 tbsp cocoa
50g chocolate chips, preferably from the Oban Chocolate Company ;)

Preheat the oven to 200C (400F, gas 6) and lightly grease 12 muffin tins with margarine.

Sift all the dry ingredients into a bowl (not the chips). Mix together the wet ingredients and mix into the dry powder until evenly distributed, but don't overmix, adding the chips at the end of the mixing.

Spoon the muffin mix into your muffin tin and pop into the oven. Hold your breath to see whether you like beetroot in your gluten free chocolate muffins or not.

Sweet potato muffin recipe

This recipe is:

• Gluten free
• Dairy free
• Egg free
• Yeast free

As well as being gluten free, these muffins are egg free and dairy free too. In a recent bid for weight gain, I've been baking up a storm, and this is the first of the gluten free baking posts.

These sweet potato muffins are adapted from a potato muffin recipe in Friendly Food, the bible of all things non-allergenic. I wanted to make a savoury gluten free muffin, plus I had no white potatoes in the cupboard!

So here's how...

Gluten free, egg free, dairy free sweet potato muffin recipe

This is a doubled amount and will make about 20 large muffins - you can halve it if you want, but only reduce the gluten free baking powder to 2 tsp.

230 g cooked, mashed sweet potato
125g dairy-free, gluten free margarine
3 spring onions (scallions), very finely chopped
20g pine nuts
20g pumpkin seeds
2 tbsps 'fake' parmesan like dairy free gluten free parmezano (this is optional, it's just that when I put onion in a muffin, I kind of feel compelled to put cheese in there too, which is tricky when you're dairy free ;-)
550g gluten free flour - you can use a store-bought mix, or these proportions, as I did: 90g gram flour, 90g soya flour, 150g potato flour, 100g tapioca starch (or arrowroot), 120g cornflour (cornstarch). You can also make this soya free by using rice flour instead.
3 tsp gluten free baking powder
400ml water
1/2 tsp salt

When you've cooked the sweet potato (about 6-7 minutes boiling of diced), lay it out on a plate so it can steam while it cools and lose a bit of its moisture. Then mash it with a fork.

Mix the margarine, cooled mashed sweet potato, onions and salt in a bowl then stir in the sifted dry ingredients adding water as you go until all the water is added. Your mix should be thick but quite wet.

Fill around 18-20 muffin tin holes about 2/3 full and sprinkle the pine nuts and pumpkin seeds over the top.

Bake for 15 minutes in a 190C oven - or until a skewer comes out clean when pushed into the centre of a muffin. Remove and leave to cool for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

Try and wait longer than 5 minutes before stuffing a tasty gluten free egg free sweet potato muffin in your face ;)

Let me know how you get on, and any alternative ingredients you try with these babies.