Gluten Free Shortbread

Although shortbread is available all year round, there is something about Christmas and those buttery sweet treats that goes so beautifully together.  Well, in fact, in Scotland it would be rude not to serve up a plate of shortbread at some point around Christmas and New Year!

Move over macaroons I say, because the humble shortbread is not only so much easier to make, but that buttery, soft, melt-in-the-mouth texture, combined with the nostalgia of home baked shortbread having adorned grandmas bikkie tin for years, makes these simple pleasures a beautiful gift for loved ones.

And for those of us avoiding gluten, the shortbread lends itself beautifully to a gluten free version due to the inherent crumbly and 'short' texture.  I don't find all that much of a difference between a wheat and gluten free version, which is a nice change!!

So whilst you can simply press the mix into a slice tin and run a knife through it straight after baking to make into fingers, this year I chose to make them extra Christmassy by pressing the mix out into Christmas shapes and making a hole in the top with a straw to create an ornament effect!    

Either way, get yourself some butter, GF flour and sugar and get cooking!

Gluten Free Shortbread (recipe sourced from 'Wheat & Gluten Free', Jody Vassallo

Gluten free shortbread

Ingredients

250g butter (softened if using conventional method)
125g pure icing sugar
375g gluten free plain flour
milk and sugar (if desired) for brushing over the biscuits

Royal icing ingredients

165g pure icing sugar, sieved
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1 egg white

Method - Conventional

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius.  Line two trays with baking paper.
2. Beat the butter and icing sugar until light and creamy.  Add the flour and stir until the mixture forms a soft dough.
3. Gently knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for 5 minutes.  Roll the dough between 2 sheets of baking paper until 1 cm thick. Using your preferred cookie cutters, cut out shapes and place on prepared trays.
4. Lightly brush the top of the shortbread with the milk and sprinkle with the sugar. (I didn't sprinkle with sugar as I iced mine with royal icing instead)
5. Bake for 15 minutes or until crisp and lightly golden.  Cool slightly on the trays, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Decorate with prepared royal icing if desired.
7. For royal icing, place sugar and cream of tartar in a medium bowl.  Gradually add egg white, whisking with an electric mixer until the mixture forms a thick white paste.  Spoon icing into a piping bag and decorate as desired.

Method - Thermomix

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius.  Line two trays with baking paper.
2. Place butter and sugar in TM bowl and whip on speed 7 for 30-40 seconds, or until lighter in colour.
3. Add flour and mix on speed 3 for 30 seconds.  Mixture will be quite crumbly but after some kneading and rolling out it will come together.
4. Follow steps 3-6 as above.
5. For royal icing, place all ingredients in clean and dry TM bowl.  Mix on speed 2 for 5 seconds to combine then whip on speed 9 for 30 seconds.  Add butterfly to bowl and whisk on speed 4 for another 30 seconds.  Spoon icing into a piping bag and decorate as desired.

Apricot and Coconut animals dipped in dark chocolate

Nawwww, now these are just toooooo cute! Hehehe I certainly can't take credit for how adorable these little guys are - the silicone mould can take the bow for that one!  But I felt the need to maximise the potential and whip up something beneficial for the kids.  

I'm sure we all remember eating those apricot and coconut snack bars/slices, touted as healthy and our well meaning parents smiled satisfactorily as we gobbled them down.  Problem is, the sugar and additives in these snacks actually outweigh any benefits from the apricot and coconut, and even these have the sulphur dioxide preservative added which, I don't know about you but I don't fancy my boys consuming this chemical!

Here's a leading brands ingredient list for Apricot and coconut bars.  What do you think?

Sugar, Coconut (42%), Dried Apricots (14%), Maltodextrin (From Wheat), Invert Syrup, Cocoa Butter, Acidity Regulator (330), Natural Colour (160c), Preservatives (202, 220, 224), Wheaten Cornflour (Gluten).

Ok.  Point made I think!

Utilising juicing pulp - Ricotta Cakes (gluten free, nut free)

And so it is that I am a huge convert to juicing, if you haven't already noticed on Mellymaks Facebook page!
Earlier this year my hubby and I completed a 3 day detox, created by the team at Food Matters.  It wasn't so much a detox for us but a door which we opened to find the wonderful world of juicing, among other things (such as how much nicer activated nuts are, how little hunger you feel when you actually feed your body with a barrage of nutrients, the deliciousness of chia puddings etc!!).

So back to juicing..... although I had tried it here and there in the past, and actually had a juicer in the cupboard gathering dust (as many of us do!!!) I hadn't felt the benefits of vegetable juice before, and the few commercial varieties that I had tried in the past definitely gave the idea of vegetable juice a bad name for me (think that terrible V8 juice in a can!!).

But a green juice was part of the detox and so we set about buying all the ingredients we needed - cucumber, parsley, lemon, apple, celery, kale and ginger.

Carrot loaded mini carrot cakes with a spiced honey butter! Gluten, Nut, and can be dairy and egg free.

Gee, it really has been a while between posts hasn't it?  I have to admit, having Mellymaks Facebook page has made me a little more lazy about blogging because it is so easy to type up a quick recipe with a photo and, click, its out there!
But here we are, back together again, having a good ol' chat at the kitchen bench.  With maybe a cuppa between us, or if its late enough in the day, maybe even a glass of wine!  Why not?

'What have you been up to?'
'Ah not much.  You know, nothing exciting enough to mention but enough to feel like I am run off my feet!'.
'Yep.  I hear ya!  Where does the time go?'

Creamy chocolate moussy pudding! (Gluten & Egg Free)

Yes, by the title of this post you can see that I had trouble defining exactly what this chocolate creation actually is!  I don't think you would be wrong to say it is a custard, a pudding or a mousse, as it has elements of each of these in one.

Breakfast Balls

Breakfast Balls

Some of the most common things I hear about breakfast are 'I don't have time', 'I don't feel like eating first thing in the morning', 'I'm bored of traditional breakfast foods', and 'an hour or so after brekky I am searching for food again'.
Do any of those sound familiar to you?  Sometimes kids can also be difficult customers when it comes to getting a good breakfast into them before school, and plenty of studies have shown a reduction in concentration with a nutrient poor/missed breakfast.

Raspberry cheesecake ice cream sandwich (with gluten free coconut and almond biscuits)

Hmmm I'm starting to notice a trend with my blog. Ice cream, ice cream, and ice cream!!!  Do you think I like it much?!

Well hopefully you do too. I know these pics would be enough to get me craving ice cream, even on the coldest of days!

Last night I realised I had no cream but in the fridge was a block of cream cheese and some organic yogurt so immediately cheesecake flavoured ice cream came to mind, of course!

So I used my original ice cream recipe but substituted the cream for the cream cheese and yogurt, and when it was almost finished churning, I threw in a couple of handfuls of frozen organic raspberries. Whilst it didn't churn as thick as with the cream, it hasn't frozen icy at all and is actually a lighter, slightly more acidic flavour.  Quite refreshing really.

But what puts it into a league of its own is teaming it up with these little biscuits that quite seriously take seconds to whiz together, thanks, of course to the Thermomix! The recipe is based on the 40 second biscuit recipe found in the EDC Thermomix cookbook but I have made a few changes. Of course any of your favourite bikkies would work just as well - ginger, choc chip, even filling a brandy snap with the ice cream would make an impressive dessert for even the most discerning guest!