Gluten Free Apple Berry Pie

Today I wanted to try again to make a pie. It’s not hard to make a pie when you can eat wheat—all you have to do is go to the store, buy a frozen pie crust, put in the filling, and bake. Viola! It’s a pie. Yum.

Not so when you can’t eat gluten. You have to try recipe after recipe, have them turn out crappy, and eat them anyway because the ingredients are so expensive you can’t afford to waste them.

So, after many pieless months, I tried again today. This pie turned out pretty good. The crust was flaky and brown, but it was a little too flaky. It fell apart. It tasted good, though. Next time I will use less Crisco, maybe ¼ cup, and roll it out thicker. Also, even though the filling was very tasty, I think it needed more tapioca starch, maybe another tablespoon or so.

Here is the recipe, feel free to tweak it, maybe it will work better for you if you do:

½ cup buckwheat flour

½ cup white rice flour

½ cup corn starch

½ cup tapioca starch

3 Tbls potato flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp xanthan gum

½ cup Crisco

¼ cup butter

Mix all the dry ingredients well in a bowl. Cut the Crisco and butter into little diced pieces. Using a pastry blender or your fingers, mix in the Crisco and butter until it resembles small peas. Add cold water, a little at a time, until the dough sticks together to form a ball. Divided the dough into tow pieces, one of them abut two thirds of the dough and the other one third of the dough. Shape into balls, and put in the freezer for 20 minutes.

Take the dough out of the freezer. Work the large ball into a flattened circle. Place the circle of dough onto some plastic wrap. Roll out to about ¼ inch thick, enough to fit into an 8 inch pie pan and overlap the sides. Carefully place the pie crust into the pie pan, and remove the plastic wrap. Push the dough to fit the pan, then trim off the excess from the sides. Pour in the filling.

Prepare the top crust the same way as the bottom. Place on top of the pie, trim off the excess. Use your fingers or a fork to press the two crusts edges together. Cut two or three slits in the top crust. Place on a cookie sheet. Bake in a 400 degree oven for one hour.

And, here is the filling recipe I used:

Apple Berry Pie:

5 apples, peeled and sliced

1 pear, peeled and sliced

½ cup fresh raspberries, washed

1 cup fresh strawberries, hulled, washed and cut in half

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

juice of ½ lime

¼ cup butter

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

2 Tbls tapioca starch

Place all ingredients in a large saucepan with a lid. Cook on medium heat for 25 minutes. Stir often to keep from burning or sticking to the pan.

The verdict: This is the best tasting pie I have made since I started eating gluten free. I happened to have some whipped cream in a can, so we had some of that on top. MMMMMMM, MMMMMM.

Gluten Free Cranberry Tangerine Muffins

One of the yahoo groups I am on is one where you can make a post telling what you have on hand, and other people can suggest recipes to make with it. One day last week someone posted that they had been given a bunch of oranges and wanted to know what she could do with them to use them up before they went bad. Someone then posted a recipe for a quick bread, where they put the whole orange, peel and all, into a food processor, chopped it up, and added it to the bread batter. MMMM, that sounded so good, except that 1. I can’t eat wheat flour, and 2. I am allergic to oranges. But, I CAN eat tangerines, and during the winter months I buy them by the bag.

So, this morning I decided to make an “Experimental Breakfast”. Here is the recipe for what I made:

¼ cup butter, melted

1 cup buckwheat flour

½ cup brown rice flour

½ cup tapioca flour

¼ cup confectioners sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon (more or less) Chinese Five Spice Powder (or cinnamon, if you prefer)

2/3 cup milk

½ tsp vanilla, orange, or lemon extract

1 egg, beaten

½ cup frozen cranberries

1 whole tangerine, peel and all

Melt the butter and set aside. Put the cranberries and the tangerine in a food processor and process until the tangerine peel is well chopped (I did cut out the stem end that was black). Mix all the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Make a well in the center, and pour in all the liquid ingredients. Stir quickly to combine, but don’t worry about if there are lumps. Fold in the fruit mixture. Spoon into muffin pans that have been sprayed with Pam, or line with paper baking cups. Bake at 400 degrees for 21 minutes.

This recipe made 12 muffins for me, this may vary depending on the size of your muffin tins.

I have to say, that I was a little leary of using the whole citrus peel, but by gosh these were delicious!

I have to give credit here to the cookbook that I used as a guide for making this, after getting the idea of it from the yahoo list. It is “Allergy-Free Cookbook” by Alice Sherwood.

I checked it out from the library and I am thinking about buying one. She has some really good recipes in there and shows adaptations for every one of them for nut free, dairy free, egg free, and gluten free versions. The pictures in it will make you drool!

The Wheels Are Rolling Tomorrow

The wheels will be rolling tomorrow morning on our travel trailer. We finished our commitment to our job at Granite Hill Camping Resort yesterday. There were times when it seemed like this day would never come. It has been a long, long season.

We spent most of today getting ready to go. We are taking a good bit of Pennsylvania with us, literally. Jim got two cases of Yuengling beer. I got three huge bags of Utz Tortilla Chips, they are the best! I also went back to Hacienda Shiloh and got some garlic and some of that good Autumn Rub that they sell there, and some other things. A trip to the Rose Garden Natural Foods store to stock up on buckwheat flour, rice flour, and rice pastas since I don’t know when I will find another source. What else? Hmmm…

I have a half dozen pints of green beans, some frozen cooked turnip greens,three bags of cooked mashed pumpkin, a gallon bag of chopped sweet red italian peppers, and some apple sausage in the freezer. Some acorn squashes, and a few apples, all came from Harbaugh’s Farm. There is a large jar of sweet pickled cauliflower, two jars of apple salsa, a jar of cherry butter, and several small packages of dried cranberries, dried pineapple, and roasted pumpkin seeds from the farm market across the road from the campground. It will take us a long time to clear Pennsylvania out of the pantry.

I would say that if any of you gets a chance to visit or workamp in the Gettysburg area, it will be a real treat. It is a rural area, with lots of agriculture, so there is an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables, with farm stands down almost every road during the summer and fall. We have certainly enjoyed our stay here.

But, as the song says, I can’t wait to get on the road again…

Buckwheat Pancakes

I was craving some pancakes the other day so I decided to see what I could mix up to satisfy that craving. This worked great. I think buckwheat is going to be one of my favorite flours, because everything I have made with it so far has tasted really good.

Buckwheat Pancakes

3/4 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 cup corn flour (use rice flour if you are corn free)
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup buttermilk powder
1 egg
1 cup(more or less) water
3 TBLS melted butter or margarine

Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl. Add egg and water and mix well. The batter should be pourable. Add the melted butter and stir in well. Pour onto a hot griddle and cook until bubbles appear. Flip over and cook on the other side.

Now if I just had some blueberries to go with this....