Grahams Plain & Fancy

I like to replicate the foods I once loved and can no longer have. It makes me feel like I haven’t given up so much after all. Like living without a few basic ingredients has barely changed my life. Like I’m not deprived.

People who must avoid critical ingredients like wheat, gluten, eggs, and dairy for example, are going to have to sit one out now and then. Probably pretty frequently. When the family makes an outing to the ice cream parlor on a hot summer night, we may opt for sorbet or italian ice and not the rich, smooth, delightful Strawberry Bon Bon we love so much. When our kids share pizza after a baseball game and all the other parents are bringing that piece of crispy, cheesy delight to their lips we’re going to wish we could have just one little bite. We’re going to happily munch salads and dry grilled fish when we dine out. We’re going to live the simple life.

One thing we are going to be is healthy and happy. Healthier than in that past life when we ate foods that didn’t like us very much. And, happy because we got to go to the ice cream parlor with our families and watch our sons and daughters celebrate their vicotories and losses.

That being said I’m cooking and baking myself to a place where I don’t feel the slightest bit deprived. I’m going to have pizza and ice cream sandwiches. And, I’m going to eat graham crackers, plain and enrobed in dark chocolate. Pies with graham cracker crusts, S’mores, and ice box cakes like Mom used to make.

Grahams Plain & Fancy

This is an adaptation of Rebecca Reilly’s gluten-free recipe that appears on Living Without.

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 1/4 cups sorghum

1/2 cup almond flour

1/2 cup tapioca

1/4 cup coconut flour

1/2 teaspoon xanthan

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

7 tablespoons Earth Balance (cold from the fridge)

2 tablespoons honey*

2 tablespoons molasses*

3 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon coconut milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

5 ounces Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Place the dry ingredients—sugar, flours, xanthan, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon—in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until they are all whisked together.

Add the Earth Balance to the mixture by cutting the tablespoons in half and dotting them evenly over the dry mixture. Pulse about a dozen times until the Earth Balance is mixed in.

Add the wet ingredients—honey, molasses, coconut milk, and vanilla—and blend in until a dough ball is formed. Open the top of the food processor and make sure the ingredients are thoroughly mixed. If they are not, use a spatula to move the dough around and blend another 30-60 seconds.

Remove the dough to a plastic wrap lined dish. Place another layer of plastic wrap on top and push the dough ball down forming a disk about ½ inch thick. Place in the refrigerator for 30 to 60 minutes.

Divide the dough. Place one half back in the fridge and the other between two sheets of parchment. With a rolling pin roll the dough until it’s 1/8” thick. Lift off the top sheet of parchment. Using a cookie cutter—I used a round one—cut out the crackers. Alternatively you can cut these in two-inch squares with a pizza cutter. I found the cookie cutter to be easier.

Remove the extra dough from around the cut crackers and return it to the refrigerator with the other half of the disk you returned there earlier.

With a large fork poke three sets of holes in the middle of each cracker. When you’re done piercing all the crackers, gently move the parchment onto a cookie sheet and bake for 15-18 minutes until the grahams are just golden brown. Remove from the oven and let them cool a few minutes before placing the crackers on a cooling rack.

Repeat with the remaining cold dough until all cookies have been cut and baked.

Those are the plain grahams. Now for the fancy ones.

Half a bag of Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips made enough coating for about 1/3 of the cookies. If you want to do more I suggest you work in batches. Also, keep a damp paper towel handy to wipe off your hands because they will get chocolaty!

Place the chocolate chips in a microwaveable bowl. Heat at 30-second intervals, stirring in between each, until they are melted. Line a dish with parchment – this is going into the freezer when you’re done.

Gently dip the flat end (the one without the fork marks) of one of the graham crackers into the chocolate. Pull it straight up and out of the melted chocolate using a fork underneath for assistance if needed. The fork can also be used to gently smooth the chocolate but don’t overwork the coating – I just swiped it once with the edge. Place the cracker chocolate side up on the parchment. Continue with the remaining crackers until all the chocolate is used.

At this point—while the chocolate is still unset—you can sprinkle the cookie with finely chopped nuts, coconut, or a sprinkling of coarse salt. Or, even better, toast your favorite gluten-free, vegan marshmallow and make yourself S’mores.

Place the dish in the freezer for about 20 minutes or until the chocolate is set. These are best eaten within 24 hours or frozen for future eating!

*Molasses is quite rich and its flavor is dominant so you can adjust it downward (and the honey upward) if you’d like. And, for those of you who are vegan omit the honey entirely and increase the molasses by one tablespoon or add 3 tablespoons of sugar.

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Sticky Cinnamon Rolls

Updated

This is a bit of a cheater recipe—it’s last month’s Cinnamon Cream Scones recipe reinvented as Sticky Cinnamon Rolls.

Work has been so all-consuming I haven’t had a chance to bake or even cook as much as I’d like. I had a break this morning and decided to make scones. They’re easy and they’re good. And, I craved something carbolicious. (I have GF treats from the health food store in the cupboard but, hmm, let’s just say homemade is better.)

While measuring the dry ingredients my mind started wandering. And, the idea of cinnamon rolls kind of crept in. I’ve never made them and haven’t eaten one in years. They just popped into my head and once there that was it. I knew the dough for the scones was pliable and thought, “Let’s do this.”

I adjusted the recipe slightly - omitting the sweet white rice and replacing it with the same amount of tapioca flour. I thought it might make a softer dough that would be more like a cinnamon roll. Not too bad.

So here you go — it’s a cheater recipe that really doesn’t have much of a recipe at all. (And, it may require some future tweaking or fiddling but if I do that I’ll keep you posted.)

Sticky Cinnamon Rolls

(The italicized notes reflect updates to the recipe. Read the Update below for more details.)

1 recipe Cinnamon Cream Scones - omitting Sweet Rice Flour and subbing in Tapioca Flour (See the new flour blend below.)

Filling

4 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 tablespoons Earth Balance

handful chopped walnuts

handful Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips

Glaze

4 or 5 tablespoons confectioners sugar

1 tablespoon (more or less) coconut or other non-dairy milk

A few drops of vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Prepare the Cinnamon Cream Scones according to the recipe. (Replacing the flours in the original recipe with the new flour blend noted below + 1 tablespoon baking powder.) Place the dough in the refrigerator while you prepare the filling.

Mix the sugars and cinnamon together in a small bowl. Cut the Earth Balance in until it is thoroughly incorporated into the sugar cinnamon mixture. Stir in the walnuts and chocolate chips.

Dust a pastry mat with sorghum or rice flour and turn the dough out onto it. Pat it down shaping it into a thick rectangle. Sprinkle a little more flour over the dough and start to roll it out with a rolling pin making sure that it doesn’t stick to the mat. (I have an ancient Tupperware pastry mat that’s excellent for this.) You want to roll out the dough into a rectangle that’s about 6 or 7 inches wide and 12 inches long. The final product will be about 1/4 inch or more in thickness.

Spread the cinnamon sugar mixture over the dough keeping it about 1/4 inch from the edge. You’re going to start carefully rolling the long edge until it becomes a long roll. Using a very sharp knife cut the roll into about 12 one-inch slices. I put each slice in a muffin pan that had liners in it. They fit perfectly. Alternatively arrange them side-by-side in a rectangular baking pan - sides touching.

Pop them in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Mine took the full 25 minutes - they were bubbling slightly when I took them out.

Prepare the glaze by mixing the confectioners sugar, coconut milk, and vanilla together. Adjust to the desired consistency (mine was pretty thick) by adding more milk or sugar as needed.

Drizzle the glaze over still warm muffins and serve slightly warm or at room temperature.

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Update on Dec 31, 2009 by Nancy Kohler

As promised I worked a bit on this recipe and the result is MUCH better. They’re cooling now on my counter but I just had to eat one steaming hot from the oven.

Here’s what I did:

Make the Cinnamon Cream Scones recipe using this flour blend: 1 cup sorghum, 3/4 cup tapioca, 1/2 cup brown rice (or Authentic Foods Multi-Blend Flour) and all the other ingredients listed. Add 1 tablespoon baking powder to the dry ingredients.

Follow the directions above for the filling (or be creative and make your own filling) and forming of the cinnamon rolls. I used a piece of parchment on the bottom and top of the dough for rolling. The dough was a bit less firm this time so I refrigerated it for 15 minutes or so and then worked quickly. The bottom layer of parchment helped to start the rolling process.

After the Cinnamon Rolls were slightly cooled I drizzled them with a glaze made from about 3 or 4 tablespoons of confectioners sugar, 1 tablespoon coconut milk and a few drops of vanilla.

We had them for breakfast (I’m the only GF eater here) and everyone loved them. So happy!