Gluten Free Chocolate Glazed Almond Cake with Raspberry Jam

Friday, December 27, 2013




I hope every single one of you had a lovely Christmas!

George and I spent our Christmas at our home in Zagreb. Everything was quiet and uneventful. It sounds like I am complaining but I actually am not. With all that's been going on around us lately, from extreme weather conditions to extreme financial measures devastating the livelihoods of so many people, I am more than grateful for my quiet and uneventful Christmas at home with my loving hubby!

This is going to be our last Christmas in Zagreb. We are getting posted to Athens in the summer for, let's hope, the next two years. It makes me sad thinking of all those that I will have to leave behind for yet another time in my life. I get teary and depressed but I shouldn't. This is what I signed up for when I married a diplomat and anyway the people and places I got to love here in Croatia are always going to be with me in my heart and my.....Facebook account ;) 



It is way too early to start stressing and worrying about our move to Athens and anyway I am not going to spoil Christmas with such thoughts. So I chose to spent most of Christmas day in the kitchen cooking, baking and listening to Christmas songs.

I baked the cake you see in the picture above. It is an almond cake filled with raspberry jam and covered with melted chocolate. It is an easy cake to make and if you have a stand mixer - any type of stand mixer will do - to beat up the egg-whites into a meringue you will make it in no time! There is only half cup of flour in this recipe and I chose to use a gluten free flour mix. I did not have time to experiment with different types of gluten free flours so I chose a ready made universal gluten free mix. I found this in my local super market. It is basically a mix of potato starch and rice flour and it turned out OK.

I have to say, George was pretty impressed with my cake decorating skills and I could not hide my grin when he said that. It seems all these cake decorating classes I took last Spring in Athens did not go to waste!

Enjoy your holidays and this cake!


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Gluten Free Chocolate Glazed Almond Cake with Raspberry Jam
Adapted from Coffee Cakes by Lou Seibert Pappas
Serves 10

Ingredients
225 gr almond paste
6 large eggs separate the yolks from the whites
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1/2 gluten free all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
2/3 cup raspberry jam
200 gr bitter sweet chocolate, chopped
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
A few pomegranate seeds

Procedure
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

Lightly butter and flour two 20 cm/ 8-inch round cake pans.

Put the almond paste in a large bowl and beat in the egg yolks, one at a time, with an electric mixer until smooth. Beat in 1/4 cup of the sugar then add the lemon juice and the jest.

Beat the egg whites until they start to form soft peaks. Use a stand mixer if you have one. If you don't beat them in a separate bowl using electric beaters. Gradually beat in the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar. Beat until stiff, glossy peaks form.

Fold 1/3 of the egg whites into the yolk mixture to lighten it and then gently fold in the rest of the egg-whites.

In another small bowl mix the flour and baking powder. Sprinkle the flour mix over the egg mixture and gently fold in.

Divide the batter between the two pans and smooth their tops. Bake for 30 minutes, until the cake is golden brown and a knife or toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Let them cool for 5 minutes in the pans and for 5 minutes and then take them out and let them cool completely onto wire racks.

Heat the raspberry jam in a small saucepan until it melts a little. Place one cake on a serving plate upside down (cut the cake horizontally with a long knife to make it flat if you need to) and spread over the cake and then top it with the other cake also upside down.

Melt the chocolate an the butter in a bain marie (double boiler) stirring all the time until the chocolate is melted and mixed with the butter. Spread the chocolate over to top and the side of the cake with a spatula. I found this video very helpful if you have never done it before. Sprinkle the pomegranate seeds over the top. Put the cake in the fridge for about an hour for the glaze to set and then serve.


I am adding this post to the following linky parties:
Chic on a Shoestring DecoratingWhipperberryThe Shabby Nest
Tickled Pink at 504 Main

Gluten Free Almond Cookies

Sunday, December 22, 2013




I got an early Christmas present this year! It's yet another cookbook but I am so excited about it!

It is the Ultimate Gluten Free Cookie Book by Roben Ryberg. A lovely little book full of - yes, you guessed it - gluten free recipes for cookies and bars. Roben Ryberg has a lot of experience with gluten free cooking and baking. She has written two more books all full of delicious gluten free recipes. In this one she concentrated on developing gluten free recipes for all the all-time classic and favourite cookies. They are easy to make and most importantly affordable; she only uses two different types of gluten free flours instead of a mix of many which can be very expensive and quite difficult to track down.

There are so many cookies in this book!!! Definitely more than 100... and I have decided to bake them all!

Yes, I made the decision the moment I opened the book and I realised that there were no pictures of the cookies! What a disappointment that was. Such a useful gluten free baking manual and it only has no more than 20 - let me be honest here - very ugly, poorly lit and unappetising pictures! I was seriously heartbroken.

I am a very visual person, I love looking at the pictures in cookbooks and magazines and blogs, analyse them and try to understand how the stylists and photographers went about creating all these delicious looking and inspiring images. I have no professional photography training, I learn as I go and looking at food pictures, trying to recreate them in my own way is a great source of inspiration and training. 

So I decided then and there that I was going to set myself a challenge: Bake all the recipes and photograph all the cookies in this book. By the time I finish with it I am going to be an expert at photographing cookies :)

I should have waited for the new year to set myself  a challenge. It is customary that way but I was never a person to follow custom very faithfully. I mean, I never start a diet on Monday, it's either Sunday or Tuesday; or even better, Thursday! So now I will start baking ten days before the end of the year and don't really think about New Year's Resolutions. And since its Christmas I might as well use the decorations to make a few festive cookie pictures.




So let's begin...

The first recipe in the book is Almond Flower Cookies. A classic very soft and moist cookie. If you like almonds you are going to love this one! It is made with brown rice flour and almond meal. Both are very easy to find either at your local organic foods store or online at Amazon or here.

I blanched and ground the almonds into almond flour by myself. It is dead easy and kinda fun especially when skinning the almonds. Just follow these simple steps:
  • Bring a small pot of water to a boil and place the raw almonds into the water.
  • Let them boil for exactly one minute. If you boil them for longer they will start to soften!!.
  • Drain the almonds immediately in a strainer and rinse them with cold water to cool them. Their skins are now loose and easy to peel away. You can squeeze them out quite easily. 
  • Resist the temptation to start an "almond launching war" between you and your husband or children :)
  • Let the almonds dry off completely. 
  • To grind them place about 1/2 a cup in an electric coffee grinder and pulse several times until a fine meal forms. 
  • Don't over-grind them because they will release their oils and turn into almond butter!!
  • Shift the ground almond meal and place any large particles of almonds into the coffee grinder and give it another go. 
Now let's get on with the recipe....



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Gluten Free Almond Cookies
Adapted from "The Ultimate Gluten Free Cookie Book" by Roben Ryberg
Makes about 25 cookies

Ingredients
65 gr oil
100 gr sugar
125 gr brown rice flour
60 gr almond meal
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
1 teaspoon almond extract
25 whole blanched almonds

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350F/180C.

Lightly oil a cookie sheet/tray. 

In a medium size bowl, combine the oil and sugar and beat well. Add the brown rice flour and beat some more. Scrape down the sides of the bowl at least once during mixing. 

Add the eggs, almond meal, baking soda, baking powder, salt xanthan gum and almond extract and mix well. 

Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of the dough (it is quite sticky don't worry) onto your prepared tray. Wet your fingertips and press the cookies to 0.5cm/0.25inch thickness. 

Place one whole almond at the centre of every cookie.

Bake the cookies for 8 - 10 minutes until there is the slightest hint of colour. Let them cool on a wire rack before serving them. 

Enjoy!

Frozen Nature

Monday, December 16, 2013



I woke up today and everything was white.


No snow. Just fog and frost.


I put put my camera around my neck; wore my gloves and earmuffs and went out into the white.





Melomakarona - Honey & Cinnamon X-mas Cookies from Greece

Saturday, December 14, 2013


Time flies so fast! 

Last time I checked in was just before the summer holidays and now.... now it is almost Christmas!!!

These few weeks before are always so busy for all of us. Rushing from work to the market to buy presents and then off to parties and family get-togethers. For those who have a bit more time to spend at home, it is spent mostly in the kitchen, preparing sweet and savoury delicacies to offer to their guests, friends and loved ones. 

I also find myself in the kitchen for most of the time during these days.....I am not complaining. It is the warmest, cosiest place in our apartment at the moment and it smells just heavenly. Cinnamon, honey, orange; warm soothing aromas that bring back beautiful childhood memories of  Christmas past...


I run into a friend the other day. She had an ingenious plan on how to get her young son to experience Christmas in a way that he will always associate with happy times spent with his loving mum and dad.... She decided to bake cookies every couple of days so that their home would always smell like sweet smell of Christmas. So simple, so incredibly and effortlessly effective.

I want to add to her collection by sharing with her and all of you my mom's recipe for Greek traditional Christmas cookies called "Melomakarona" - in English this would translate somewhere along the lines of "honey macaroons"; it sounds kinda funny so let's stick with the Greek name; it is not so difficult pronounce isn't it?. 

For me Melomakarona are the quintessential Christmas sweet treats. My mum used to bake them on the same day we decorated our Christmas tree. For me and my sister, it was, without a doubt, one of the happiest times of the year. After we had decorated our tree we helped her shape the cookies and then waited for them to cool down enough so we could dip them into the fragrant honey syrup. Our house was overflowing with the sweet smell of cinnamon, cloves, honey and orange. A smell that can transfer you back to Christmas time even if you find yourself baking them in the middle of an August heatwave.

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Melomakarona - or Cinnamon and Orange Cookies Dipped in Honey Syrup
50 - 60 cookies
Ingredients

  • 1 kg flour
  • 2 cups extra virgin olive oil
  • 200 gr sugar
  • 1 cup Cognac (or any other type of Brandy)
  • 2 tablespoons baking powder
  • 1 cup fresh orange juice
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 1 tablespoon baking soda
  • Zest of 2 - 3 oranges
  • For the Syrup
  • 2 cups honey (preferably flower honey)
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 2 cups water
  • 2 cinnamon sticks
  • 10 cloves
  • 1 big piece of orange peel
  • 1 big piece of lemon peel
  • For Decorating
  • 1 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 160C/320F.
  2. In a large bowl mix the sugar with the olive oil, the Cognac, the orange juice and the orange zest. Mix well using a whisk until the sugar is completely dissolved. 
  3. In another bowl, shift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, ground cinnamon and ground cloves. Mix them well. Gradually add the flour mix to the oil and sugar mix. Kneed softly. The dough has to be soft and oily. If you feel that it has become somewhat harder add some more orange juice or Cognac. 
  4. Shape the cookies using your hands. The dough should not stick to your hands because of the oil. If it sticks it means that you need to add a little more flour and olive oil. You can make the cookies round about 5 cm /2 in in diameter, or give them an oval shape and you can give them a design by pushing the back of a cheese grater onto them. 
  5. Lay the cookies on an oiled baking try and bake then for 20 - 30 minutes, depending on your oven. They should be golden but not brown. Leave them to cool down on the baking tray and start preparing the syrup. 
  6. Put a pot on medium heat and add the honey, sugar and water and let it come to boil. Add the orange and lemon peel, lower the heat and let it boil for 5 - 10 minutes. During boiling, foam is going to form on the surface of the syrup. Remove it with a spoon and then add the cinnamon sticks and the cloves. 
  7. When the cookies have cooled completely, submerge a handful at a time, into the hot syrup. Leave them in ONLY for a few seconds and then remove them. Let them drain from the excess syrup on a rack and then move them onto a plate. You can stack them one on top of the other and sprinkle the chopped walnut, sugar and cinnamon mix over them.

Enjoy!