A couple of months ago I had the pleasure of meeting the talented Kirsten Gilmour, the owner of The Mountain Cafe in Aviemore and the author of The Mountain Cafe Cookbook, and her lovely publisher at Kitchen Press, Emily Dewhurst. Although Kirsten had generously brought along a veritable buffet of delicious baked sweet treats to her book signing, I couldn’t eat any of it because days before, I’d eaten a meal which included onion rings, had a horrible IBS reaction that evening, and then after some research that night I began the low FODMAP diet exclusion period the day after. However, I had a great chat with Kirsten and Emily about trying to live gluten-free and Emily very kindly emailed me a cracking recipe for gluten-free almond financiers the following day. She’s so nice!
Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2017Tag: #fodmapcakes
Lemon Tarts (makes and serves 4)
I recently made a double layer strawberry pavlova for my partner’s birthday and because you only use the whites of eggs to make pavlova meringue I was left with a bowlful of rich, golden yellow egg yolks. I’m sure you know by now that I hate throwing ingredients out if they can be put to good use so I used them to make a creamy, zesty filling for some lemon tarts.
These lemon tarts are really easy to make because their base is very similar to a cheesecake base in that it is simply made from crushed biscuits mixed with a little bit of butter and then left to set in small tart tins rather than messing about with having to make sweet shortcrust pastry cases. I made my base with gluten-free digestive biscuits, but you could use any type of biscuit really.
The lemon filling is really simple, requiring little more than adding your ingredients bit by bit into a saucepan and stirring. As long as you take your time and prepare your ingredients in advance it should turn out well. I used small tart tins that have a removable base so that the tarts would be easier to remove and I didn’t have to worry about trying to prise them out of the tins and potentially breaking the biscuit tart cases. However, you could just use a normal tart tray that’s got a small disc of greaseproof paper in it, if you prefer or you could easily just make one large tart.
I really liked these lemon tarts because the smooth, creamy, zesty filling was beautifully contrasted by the crisp, crunchy digestive biscuit base. Unlike shop-bought versions of lemon tarts, they’re not overly sweet or cloying and the beauty of making them yourself is that you could use different types of flavoured biscuit for the base, such as custard creams, bourbons, Oreos or even gingernuts. However you decide to make your own version, I’d say they’re a lovely addition to the end of a delicious meal this summer.
Ingredients for the biscuit base:
10 gluten-free digestive biscuits
50g butter (I used a non-dairy version)
Ingredients for the lemon filling:
The juice and finely grated zest of 3 lemons
45g cornflour
300ml cold water
6 egg yolks
220g white sugar
Method:
Melt the butter in a jug in the microwave.
Break the digestive biscuits into small crumbs (I used my food processor, but you could just use a strong food bag) and stir in the melted butter.
Divide the buttery biscuit crumb into the tart tins and press it down on the bottom and sides to form the tart bases.
Leave to cool and harden in the fridge while you make the lemon filling.
To make the filling:
Place the egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl and stir well.
In a saucepan, use a whisk to mix the lemon juice and zest with the cornflour to make a paste.
Add the cold water and stir well.
Place the pan over a medium heat and stir until the mixture gets hot and turns thick.
Continuing to stir the mixture all the while, quickly add the egg yolk and sugar mixture and stir well until the sugar is fully dissolved and the mixture has become thick again.
Leave to cool slightly and then pour the lemon mixture into each of the tart cases and leave to cool.
Remove from the tart tins and serve with a dusting of icing sugar and a dollop of cream (non-dairy if you’re FODMAP friendly like me.)
Whoopie Pies (makes 10)
A while ago I made chocolate bundt cakes to celebrate my 100th blog post and the sponge I made them with was so tasty that I wanted to try making other things with it. I’ve always loved whoopie pies, but sometimes shop-bought whoopie pies can be a bit too sickly because they have too much filling inside them and the quality of the buttercream icing often leaves a lot to be desired. The beauty of baking your own therefore, is that you can control the buttercream icing to baked sponge ratio to suit your own taste.
Although I used a proper whoopie pie tin it’s not completely necessary because you could just use a yorkshire pudding tin or something like it to bake your whoopie pies in. All you’re looking for is something that’ll control the spread of the sponge as it bakes and allow it to rise. In fact, if you don’t mind your whoopies looking a little odd you could even use a traditional fairycake shallow tin to bake them in.
I made my whoopie pies traditional chocolate ones, but you could omit the cocoa powder and make them with other flavours instead, such as vanilla (using 1 tsp vanilla extract), lemon (using the zest of 1 lemon) or bake them as a plain sponge but sandwich them with strawberry jam as well as buttercream icing.
I can highly recommend making the chocolate whoopie pies though because they result in two rich, moist chocolate sponges that are bonded together with a lightly whipped decadent cocoa buttercream, creating the perfect cake for one. One whoopie pie is a low FODMAP portion, but stopping at only eating one is a different matter entirely though.
Ingredients:
Method:
Preheat your oven to 180C/160C Fan/350F/Gas mark 4.
Lay out your whoopie pie tins and give them a light greasing before dusting them with flour.
Measure all of the wet ingredients into a mixing bowl.
Measure all of the dry ingredients into another bowl and give it a stir.
Add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix well.
Pour equal amounts of the cake mix into the whoopie pie tins.
Bake in the oven for around 10-12 mins. (They’re cooked if a skewer pushed into the middle of a couple of the cakes comes out entirely clean.)
Leave to cool on a cooling rack before taking the whoopie pies out of the tin.
Place your buttercream ingredients in a large mixing bowl and whisk together.
Once cool, sandwich the whoopie pies with the buttercream icing.
Citrus Cupcakes (makes 12)
Sometimes I bake cakes purely because a pretty cupcake case has caught my eye that begs to be filled with something delicious. This was the case (excuse the pun) when I saw some beautiful, bright, sunshine-coloured cupcake cases in Flying Tiger the other day. (I tried to find a link to their website so you could buy them yourself, but they don’t have them listed on their site unfortunately.)
Ordinarily I’m a real chocolate cake fan, loving the deep, moist fudginess that is inherent within all decent chocolate cakes, but I recognise that sometimes there’s nothing nicer than a light fruit-flavoured cake and these cupcake cases were ideal for making gluten-free citrus cupcakes in.
As the days are getting sunnier and warmer it’s nice to move away from the heavy puddings and crumbles of winter and embrace lighter flavours, such as those found in citrus fruits. Although I made my citrus cupcakes flavoured with lemon and orange you could choose to flavour them with lime or even grapefruit if you had a mind to. All you’re looking for are the strong oils in the fruit’s zest to impart a citrus note into the cake’s sponge.
These citrus cupcakes are light, but moist (even though they’re made with gluten-free flour) and keep for a good few days in an airtight tin. Although if your family’s anything like mine it’s highly unlikely that these delicious bakes will last that long. I might need to make another batch…
Ingredients:
Method:
Preheat your oven to 180C/160C Fan/350F/Gas mark 4.
Lay out your cupcake cases onto a flat baking tray.
Measure all of the wet ingredients into a mixing bowl.
Measure all of the dry ingredients into another bowl.
Add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix well.
Pour equal amounts of the cake mix into each of the cupcake cases, lay them on the baking trays and bake in the oven for around 25 mins. (They’re cooked if a skewer pushed into the middle of a couple of the cakes comes out entirely clean.)
Leave to cool on a cooling rack.
Make the buttercream icing by placing all of the buttercream ingredients into a jug and whisking until a smooth icing is produced.
Once the citrus cupcakes are cool, decorate them with the buttercream icing.
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