Coconut Cream Pudding

This pudding is delicious by itself for a snack, with coconut, strawberries, or blueberries added, or combined with cubed, leftover vanilla cake and strawberries to make a scrumptious trifle(see "Another Successful Birthday Cake" for gluten-free, egg-free, dairy free recipe)

1 -14 oz can minus 1/4 cup coconut milk; @ 1 3/4 cups)
The 1/4 cup remaining can be refrigerated and used for smoothies, white sauce, etc.
1/4 cup cream of coconut(opt)
1/4 cup water
3 Tablespoons cornstarch + enough water to form a medium- thick paste.
(opt) drop molasses to add dimension

In small container(2 cup or so), combine cornstarch and enough water to form a paste. In saucepan over medium-high heat, heat coconut milk, cream of coconut, and water, stirring. When hot(before simmering), pour most of the liquid into the cornstarch mixture, stirring. Return to saucepan over medium-low heat, letting bubble and thicken 1-2 minutes. Cool in fridge, it will thicken more. Or enjoy warm.

For chocolate pudding, add 1/2 - 3/4 T. mini chocolate chips per 1 cup hot pudding. Stir until melted. Or, if pudding is cool, heat chocolate chips in microwave(try 30 seconds) until beginning to soften, then stir in. I use Enjoy Life Chocolate chips which are free of dairy.

(opt)You can omit the cream of coconut and add some sugar to taste instead. If you want a creamier pudding, you can add a little coconut cream(I keep small cubes of this on hand in the freezer- I'd add maybe 1-2 ice tray cubes). Note: coconut cream is not at all the same thing as cream of coconut.

For a thicker pudding, use more cornstarch. Try 4 T.

Strawberry Rhubarb Non-Dairy Shake

This creamy dessert is delicious and has a beautiful pink color. My husband who generally doesn't like rhubarb, loves this treat! It's healthy, too. The coconut milk makes it taste like it's a shake made with dairy ice cream- it's rich and flavorful. I don't follow any one recipe when I make this. I just got the idea of a rhubarb shake from a rhubarb sorbet recipe I saw(Alice Sherwood's "Allergy Cookbook.") Generally, I combine chopped, cooked and sweetened rhubarb(frozen), strawberries, coconut milk, and ice and/or water. Peaches are also good. I have used strawberry-rhubarb sauce from my freezer that I made with cinnamon and lemon juice. This is delicious to use with the coconut milk and ice. Here's a basic recipe I put together with estimations:

1 can coconut milk
2 cups cooked, sweetened to taste, and frozen rhubarb(meaning 2 cups after it is cooked down)
-while cooking, you can add 1-2 tsp. cinnamon, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, and sugar to taste
1 pint strawberries, frozen
1 qt. home bottled peaches, or frozen peaches, opt.
ice and water to desired thickness and taste

Experiment with different amounts and components. Each time I have made this, I've had people wowed and very satisfied. In the rhubarb sorbet recipe I saw from Alice Sherwood's book(Allergy-Free Cookbook), she said that people who don't like rhubarb love her sorbet! Same goes with this "shake."

Coconut Cream Popsicles

I have posted coconut ice cream recipes previously. Here is a variation that's really good: freeze coconut "ice cream" into popsicles! Make the ice cream according to the previous post, dish it into popsicle molds, and freeze. I don't have popsicle molds right now, so I used little plastic cups, partially froze the mixture, then pulled out the cups and placed plastic toddler spoons inside, filled the cracks carefully with a slight amount of water, and refroze the dessert.

You can make these extra-special by swirling in a fruit puree- it makes beautiful, delicious popsicles! I pureed some plums and sweetened the puree with sugar. I also added 1 T. orange juice concentrate to the batch of puree that I made(about 1 quart yield). It made a beautiful deep reddish-purple sauce. The extra sauce can be frozen in freezer bags or containers for future use(for small amounts, you can use baby food jars). I poured the coconut "ice cream" mixture into plastic cups, then swirled in the plum puree. These are delightful and refreshing! I don't care to buy another popsicle from the store again! : )

Coconut "Ice Cream"

My girls are loving their first experience with ice cream. Last summer I made fruit sorbets for my daughter. She loved "pink sorbet," made from strawberries. This summer I have experimented with "coconut ice cream." I think it's technically a sorbet. But I call it ice cream because it is so much like the vanilla ice cream I know.

Here are a few variations. The girls love it with Enjoy Life chocolate chips(non-dairy) and cookie crumbs(gluten-free sugar cookies) or fruit crisp crumbles(oats, oat flour, brown sugar and oil) that are stored in the freezer. Blueberries are another favorite with this dish.

Variation #1:

1 can coconut milk
1/2 cup coconut cream
2 trays ice cubes
1/2 tsp. vanilla

Blend in VitaMix. Or if using blender, add ice cubes one at a time. I haven't tried this in a regular blender. If it's too thick for your blender, you can omit ice(and add some water in its place unless you want really creamy ice cream) and then place in freezer 3-4 hours until edges firm; break up crystals with fork, refreeze again until firm. If you're freezing a liquid instead of using a high-powered blender and ice, you can dissolve the sugar and liquid together in a saucepan before freezing. I've seen recipes with instructions to dissolve sugar, and figure it helps with smoothness.

This has a delicious balance of flavor. It is a bit runny, though, with the method I've tried in the VitaMix. I might try 2 1/2 ice cube trays(though that might dilute it too much). Or I might try the method leaving out ice and simply freezing, stirring, freezing. As is, we dish it up immediately as soft-serve, store the remaining in the freezer, and the remaining is thick enough for latter use. (It does require some thaw time before enjoying again- in refrigerator or very low power in microwave). Or, we spoon it into popsicle molds(or use plastic cups and anything you can find for handles- plastic spoons, popsicle sticks if you have them). Either way my kids love this stuff!

Variation #2:

This is for those who desire more of a coconut ice milk treat- less sweet. Follow directions above, but omit coconut cream.

Lemony marshmallow topping or filling

My sister developed this recipe to make a cake filling for a lemon wedding cake. She then used it as a topping(instead of frosting) for a gluten-free cake she made for my daughters and I to try. It's delicious! And a very nice change from buttercream frosting.

First, have cake baked and cool.

Prepare lemon sauce:

Heat 1/2 cup water, 1/4 cup lemon juice, and 1/8 tsp. salt in saucepan on stove, just before simmering. In separate bowl, add just enough water to 1 Tablespoon cornstarch to form a paste. Pour heated water/lemon mixture into cornstarch paste, stirring. Transfer back to saucepan, stirring on medium heat, about 1 minute, until mixture is transparent. Cool while making marshmallow topping.

Prepare marshmallow mixture:

Combine 1 c sugar, 1 Tablespoon gelatin(unflavored), and 1/2 c. water in saucepan. Heat and stir just until sugar is dissolved. Stire in 1/2 tsp. vanilla. Cool about 5 min. Transfer to electronic mixer-beat high speed 10 minutes.

When marshmallow mixture is ready(when mixture falls from beaters it keeps a soft shape on the mixture below), gently fold in the lemon sauce. If using lemony-marshmallow as filling, pipe buttercream frosting(can be non-dairy) around edges of single layer cake. Fill in with marshmallow mixture. Then stack next layer of cake on top. If using as a topping, see if the mixture is set up enough to stay on cake.

You may want to wait awhile for mixture to set up before "frosting" the cake. If you wait too long, it will become too thick, however. For me, I waited probably an hour, and mixture was set up enough that there were chunks in the "frosting" when I spread it on the cake. These lumps did come out, though, with enough spreading. Some of the mixture slumped at the bottom, but I scraped it off and smoothed it over. This is still an experimental recipe, but turned out looking really good on the cake, and was refreshing and delicious!

Another successful birthday cake!

For the three years that my family has needed allergy-friendly birthday cakes, we have tried a few different things. The first birthday cake I made without wheat, dairy, eggs, or nuts was grainy and dry. My daughter's second birthday cake was made of rice crispies and marshmallows. Since then, we have had kabocha squash cupcakes with cooked coconut frosting(those were delicious!), offered homemade cupcakes or something yummy for the children to have while my husband had a mini birthday cake baked from a mix in the microwave, and even had a cookie for a birthday cake(my daughter requested a sugar cookie rather than a cake).

For my husband's recent birthday, we had our first "traditional" birthday cake(as in white, yellow, or chocolate, full size) to be shared with the whole family, since my attempt 3 years ago for my daughter's first birthday. It was a vanilla cake from the magazine "Living Without," which has select recipes online. It's a good cake! Funny, the kids we made it for didn't really go for it, they were most interested in the frosting(homemade marshmallow with lemon sauce whipped in) and in the ice cream made just for them! I'll post the non-dairy ice cream recipe.

The cake was very sturdy(not crumbly, held together well), had a great texture(not grainy and not starchy/powdery!), and no off-flavor. It was a lot like a vanilla pound cake. It was more dense than the traditional white cake, like a pound cake would be. Probably because I didn't use eggs. That's okay, I'd much rather have a slightly dense cake than a grainy or starchy or off-taste cake. The flavor was basic. But plenty good with a raspberry sauce I served. The cake together consisted of the vanilla cake recipe linked below, with raspberry sauce and lemon marshmallow frosting.

Here's a link to the recipe for the cake. The recipe includes eggs, but has a substitution for eggs written below the recipe. http://www.livingwithout.com/recipes/aprmay09-vanilla-cake.html
There are variations I'd like to try: coconut cake and lemon cake.

For the frosting, follow the "buttercream" frosting recipe with the cake(use non-dairy margarine), or try the lemon-marshmallow topping I served. Our family is delighted with this new topping. My sister created this as a filling for a wedding cake she recently made, and found that it works well for a frosting. This delicious lemony-marshallow topping is created by mixing a batch of basic marshmallows(easy to make) with lemon sauce. See my post "Lemony-Marshmallow Topping."

For the filling, puree some fruit(we used raspberries with some strawberries), sweeten if desired, and thicken. I use Instant Clear-Jel(which is modified food starch). I have to admit that I haven't verified for certain that this isn't derived from barley or wheat. My understanding, when I researched it, is that it's derived from corn. But I am not confident in this enough to warrant it for your use if you cannot have gluten. Check on this. If you cannot have instant clear-jel, you can use cornstarch to thicken. Or arrowroot if you cannot have corn, etc...

This was a great birthday cake! To decorate it, I simply used strawberries and blueberries, placed in a flower design on top of the marshmallow topping. My sister previously made a cake with this marshmallow topping and simply placed pansies from her garden on top. It was beautifully simple. She used pureed stawberries for her filling. The cake was gluten-free lemon, which had a delicious flavor. There are lots of possibilities for delicious, enjoyable, and allergy-friendly birthday cakes!

How to Replace Wheat Flour in Baking

There are all kinds of possibilities for replacing wheat flour in baking. There are several types of nutritious grains, seed flours, flour made of coconut, sweet potato, even grapes...endless options that are healthy!

If you are starting out learning how to replace wheat flour, here is what I recommend:

As a rule of thumb, no single flour will adequately replace wheat flour. Combinations of flours work well together.

If you can have oats, use them! Regular or quick oats can easily be ground into flour in your blender. This flour is economical, very nutritious, and has a mildly sweet flavor and gummy texture that complements rice flour very well. Rice flour by itself is grainy and bland, and also dry. Oat flour by itself produces heavy, dense, and gummy products, in general. Together, these flours have traits that work together very well.

When I adapt a recipe using wheat flour, I almost always bake with either a nearly half and half ratio of brown rice flour and oat flour, or a combination of brown rice flour, oat flour, and bean flour(usually lentils ground in my blender). With these flours, I do add tapioca starch and xanthan gum as part of the measured amount of flour. Since tapioca starch and xanthan gum have sticky properties, and oats have gummy properties, I include the measure of tapioca starch and xanthan gum in my measure of oat flour, so that the full cup of rice flour can offset with its grainy properties. 1 Tablespoon tapioca starch/flour per cup of gluten-free flour is a widely used rule of thumb. A common rule of thumb for xanthan gum is 1/2 tsp per cup of gluten-free flour for cakes, cookies, and muffins, and quick breads, and 1 tsp per cup flour for yeast breads. In general, then, if a recipe calls for 2 cups wheat flour, I measure 1 cup of brown rice flour, and then measure 2 T. tapioca starch and 1 tsp. xanthan gum in a 1 cup measure, then fill the rest the way with oat flour. Actually, since oats do have some gluten and they do have properties more similar to wheat than non-gluten flours, I do sometimes add just 1 T. tapioca starch and 1/2 tsp xanthan gum to a recipe with 2 cups flour. I'm experimenting with this. UPDATE from Nov 2010: check out my homemade baking mixes post- this simplifies things!

Xanthan gum helps the product to be much less crumbly, have an overall better texture, and have longer shelf/freezer life. Tapioca also improves texture, helps lighten the product, and makes a nice springy crust.

When using bean flour in a recipe, I don't quite use the 1/3 ratio. What I do is add cornstarch, potato starch, or tapioca to the measure of bean flour that I use. So, in a recipe calling for 3 cups wheat flour, I would add 1 cup brown rice flour, 1 cup oat flour, and then fill up a 1 cup measure with first tapioca starch(maybe 2 T.), then some potato starch or cornstarch(maybe 2 T.), then 1 tsp. xanthan gum, then the rest the way with bean flour. Or, I may use 1 1/2 cup. brown rice flour, 1 cup oat flour with the tapioca/xanthan gum rule of thumbs included in the measure, and then 1/2 cup bean flour.

I find that when I experiment with different ratios of flour in muffins or fruit/vegetable puree cookies(banana, pumpkin, etc), these products are pretty flexible. I end up with different results, but most my experiments are satisfying. I don't mind ending up with a muffin a bit on the dense side, as long as it has a good flavor, texture, and tastes wholesome! When I adapt a recipe, I record the changes I make, make note that I'd like it to be less dense next time, and decide what to tweak in the recipe to try to achieve an even better product. I have a notebook dedicated to recording my adaptations and results. I'm much more laid back about experimenting with food than I used to be, since I've discovered that most any "flop" you may have can be converted into something good. And I'm learning which types of products have more experimenting leeway(like muffins), and which products have less leeway(like yeast bread).

Because I use whole-grain oat flour, brown rice flour, often bean flour, and then just a little bit of starch when I bake wheat-free, the baked products that result are very wholesome and satisfying. These combinations of flour work very well for muffins, waffles, fruit cookies(banana, pumpkin, zucchini, etc), and quick breads(banana, zucchini, etc). Fruit crisp, oatmeal cookies, and oat pie crust work well with oat flour replacing all of the wheat flour in the recipe.

Oat flour, brown or white rice flour, and many assortments of bean flour are available at many stores. If the grocery stores you shop at don't have them, Whole Foods Market carries them. These can all be produced at home, however, at a much better price! Oat flour is easily made from grinding rolled oats(quick or regular) in a blender. Lentils also grind in a blender. Depending on how good your blender is, lentil flour may be a little course in texture, but still okay. A VitaMix machine works great! If you're serious about wholesome nutrition, a VitaMix machine really can pay off in initial cost. Especially for a family with allergies or food sensitivities. I use mine for grinding batches of flax seed(egg substitution), prunes or other fruit/vegetable purees(egg or dairy substitution or use in cooking), sunflower seed butter, lentils, hummus, countless whole fruit smoothies and whole fruit/vegetable juice, etc... I use my VitaMix nearly every day, and often a couple times in a day!

If you get a special container designed for grinding, you can use a VitaMix to grind rice and other grains into flour. You may want to look into buying a grain mill if you don't own one. Initial cost is high, but it could really pay off in nutrition and overall savings. Price ranges are broad, mine was $150, as it was used, but has worked great. I grind large batches of brown rice and oat groats into flour, and then store the flour in gallon-size freezer bags or in various containers in the freezer. Last year I used 50 lb brown rice, between baking and serving cooked, which I believe I paid about . 50/lb for. One year's worth of rice flour, then was only about $25! Brown rice has gone up in price, but still can be a lot cheaper to buy than to purchase already made brown rice flour. Oats are very economical. I can get a 25 lb bag regularly for .39/lb. Even if you find a sale on a 42 oz. container at $2.00(last year they went on sale for $1.00 at Smith's, but that was last year), that is still only about .75/lb.

I have tried a few different gluten-free flour combinations, and also a couple purchased gluten-free flour mixes. The most basic combinations tend to be rice flour and starch such as tapioca and potato starch. By itself, this combination of flour is bland. Also, tapioca and potato starch have 0 grams protein, no fiber, and a lot of carbohydrates. With these mixes, other ingredients in the recipe are important for flavor and nutrition. I have made a yummy chocolate cake from a gluten-free mix, using yogurt instead of milk and flaxseed instead of egg.

There are several things you can do to boost the nutrition value of a gluten-free product, including adding flaxseed meal or baking with fruit or vegetable purees. Most notably, Carol Fenster and Bette Hagman, among other gluten-free experts, have found that bean flour such as garbanzo bean flour, or garfava bean flour or sorghum, really can improve the basic gluten-free mix of rice and starches. These bean flours add a mild flavor, improve texture, and definitely boost nutrition of the flour mix. I am pretty satisfied with a yeast bread recipe that calls for a few kinds of bean flour. It's actually my favorite yeast gluten-free bread that I've baked. It's called Flax Seed Four-Flour Bean Bread, by Bette Hagman. It uses a mix you can make at home: 3 cups Garfava Bean Flour, 1 cup Sorghum Flour, 4 cups Tapioca Flour, 4 cups Cornstarch. I'll post the recipe. UPDATE from Nov 2010: I have a new favorite bread recipe, see my post "Really Good Yeast Bread!"

If you cannot have oats, I recommend looking for flour mix recipes or products that have bean flour in them. Carol Fenster and Bette Hagman have recipe books that you could check out at your local library. They have several basic flour mixes that you can make at home and store in bags, for easy use in recipes. Several gluten-free bloggers post these flour mix recipes as well. In my post, "Flours to replace wheat," I have posted a garbanzo-bean flour mix that I have liked.

I often bake with lentil flour. Actually, I rarely bake with any other kind of bean. This is because I can make my own lentil flour at home in my VitaMix(or blender), for a much better price than purchased bean flours. I hesitate to make bean flour at home other than lentil or split-pea, because other beans are supposed to be soaked before cooking. I hear you can bake with home-ground beans such as pinto, etc., but the flavor is stronger, can be bitter, when compared to purchased bean flours that have been processed. Molasses can help, I hear, if you make and use your own bean flour. I just go with home-ground lentils. They're really nutritious, too!

UPDATE from Nov 2010: I like to bake with white bean flour as well as lentils. I've seen several places where people bake with bean flour other than lentils. The white beans I grind in my grain mill. They can be ground in the VitaMix as well, or even in a cereal grinder that I tried at my Mom's. The white beans haven't been too strong in flavor. I do add a little molasses when I bake with white beans(@1/2 tsp. blackstrap for most baked goods), but if you don't have any, I would try without.

The Living Without magazine has a page called Living Without Pantry Substitution Solutions. It is available online at livingwithout.com, and has four different gluten-free flour mixes. It adds direction as to which type to use for which purpose. It has a basic mix, a high-protein mix, high-fiber blend, and a self-rising flour mix.

For exploring baking with alternative flours not mentioned on this post(amaranth, teff, coconut, cabernet, etc), see my post "Flours to Replace Wheat." There are a couple of books I recommend that give the properties and best uses of several different flours, as well as ratio amounts of how much of a particular flour to use in a recipe. Livingwithout.com has a few different articles that help one to be familiar with a wide array of flours available to replace wheat. Search under "past articles."

Tip:

If you are not used to whole-grain products but you want the nutrition benefits of them, try baking with a combination of white rice flour and oats to begin with(together with any tapioca/cornstarch you might include). Then, replace half of the white rice flour with brown rice flour. Bake this way for a while. Finally, replace all of the white rice flour with brown rice flour. The brown rice flour is so much more nutritious, and has a nicer, nutty flavor. The only time I would use white rice flour, now, is for delicate, fluffier items such as a white cake. In yeast bread I might use part white rice and part brown rice flour.

In cooking rice for serving at a meal, your family can get used to brown rice. I used to only cook white rice for my family. We enjoyed it. I started cooking half brown and half white together, and we got used to that. Then we only had brown rice, and we got used to that. I ran out recently, and have gone back to cooking white rice, until I buy more brown(I'm searching for the best price out there on a large amount). I do not enjoy white rice anymore! My husband says he wants the brown back, he likes the brown as much as the white now, and he likes the nutrition benefits of the brown so much more. If you do not like brown rice right now, you can definitely gradually get used to it. You may find that you prefer it over the white rice! note- my kids still do seem to prefer white rice : ) but they eat the brown as I serve it : )