Gluten free pumpkin cupcakes with pumpkin frosting

It's that time of year again when we buy our pumpkins from the local store, spend an hour or so scraping away the inside and carving a face on it only to have to throw it all away a day later. How sad!

I can't say I am that fond of pumpkin. I always feel it is such a waste to throw the perfectly good flesh away but whenever I try to use it for some recipe or other it always comes out yuk! Pumpkin soup - not great (although the little snowballs liked it), roasted pumpkin - a sloppy mess ... so where am I going wrong?

I came to the conclusion that it is not me, it is the pumpkin's fault. I bought a can of pureed pumpkin just to prove to myself that it is the pumpkin and made a discovery. Pure pumpkin has a very specific taste - not one that I am keen on personally - but if you add lots (and I mean lots) of spices, especially cinnamon, it can be quite nice!

So yesterday, we were invited to a post Halloween party and I decided to make pumpkin cupcakes using the canned pumpkin. And as the cupcakes didn't use the whole can, I used the remaining pumpkin for the buttercream frosting. And they tasted GOOD. So good I might even have a go at pumpkin pie sometime (when I master gluten free pastry!). But I still need to figure out how to get the scooped remains from the Halloween pumpkin into a puree that I can cook with?

There's always next year ...

So here's the recipe for the pumpkin cupcakes with pumpkin buttercream:

Pumpkin cupcakes

Ingredients
280g self-raising flour/gluten free flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
110g margarine
200g caster sugar
5 tbsp brown soft sugar
2 eggs (room temperature)
180ml milk
250g pureed pumpkin (canned is fine)


Preheat the oven to 190°C / Gas 5. Place 24 paper cases in muffin tins.

Mix together the flour, spices, salt, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda and set aside.

Beat the butter, caster sugar and brown sugar with an electric mixer in a large bowl until light and fluffy.  

Add the eggs one at a time, allowing each one to blend into the butter mixture before adding the next. 

Remove the bowl from the mixer then stir in the milk and pumpkin puree and then stir in the flour mixture, mixing until just incorporated. 

Pour the cupcake mixture into the prepared muffin cases.

Bake in the preheated oven until golden and the tops spring back when lightly pressed, about 25 minutes. Cool in the tins for 5 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.

While the cupcakes are cooling, make the icing (see below) then when cool pipe the pumpkin buttercream onto each cupcake and decorate with sprinkles or jelly worms or other suitable toppings.

Pumpkin buttercream

Ingredients
90g unsalted butter
 100% pumpkin puree
900g icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg

Cream together the butter and the pumpkin puree in an electric mixer, until the butter is a light orange colour. The pumpkin won't totally combine at this stage so you won't be able to get a completely smooth mixture even after several minutes but don't worry about it, it will blend well once the icing sugar is added.

Beat in the vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Add the icing sugar and mix well until smooth. I always add the icing sugar and mix by hand first to avoid clouds of icing sugar billowing out and settling across my whole kitchen. Once the icing sugar has started mixing in to the point that it doesn't fly everywhere, I then finish it off with the beater on my trusty Kitchen Aid until it's smooth and blended evenly.

Little Love Cakes creates high quality and bespoke cakes for any celebration in the Twickenham/ Teddington/ Richmond area. Visit us on Facebook at littlelovecakeslondon.

Each cake is baked and decorated using high quality ingredients and is decorated with care and great attention to detail - we know it's the little things that make a cake special and unique. 

© 2014 Nicola Noble & Little Love Cakes: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look. 

Gluten-free cheesy scone topped cottage pie

I wanted to try making something different for dinner tonight, so I thought I would try topping beef mince/cottage pie with cheesy scones instead of mashed potato. It needed to be gluten-free so that I didn't have to make two versions and the end result turned out yummy.

I struggle using gluten-free flour for pastry-type things as the resulting "dough" can't be rolled out (it just doesn't form a cohesive dough) but I have previously discovered a recipe for scone pizza base that uses an egg which really seems to help.

The resulting cheesy scone topped cottage pie turned out really well and got the thumbs up from all of the Snowball family - and they are a hard bunch to please, especially Mr Snowball!

If you are interested, I made the beef mince base by adding onion, carrots, orange pepper (so the kids thought it was carrot!) and peas to the mince, together with a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce and a crumbled beef oxo cube.

The cheese scone topping would also work really well with a chicken base, with mushrooms etc. I think I will give this version a go sometime soon.

Gluten-free cheesy scone topping

Ingredients
225g gluten-free self raising flour
pinch salt
75g butter
160g grated mature Cheddar cheese

rice milk (about 2tbsp)
1 egg

Rub the butter into the gluten-free self raising flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the grated cheese and about two tablespoons of rice milk, then add the beaten egg and bring together into a dough-type ball.

Break off golf ball size pieces of the mixture, flatten slightly in your hand and place on top of your ready prepared beef mince.

Bake in a preheated oven (200⁰C/400⁰F/Fan 180⁰C/Gas Mark 6) for 20-25 minutes, or until golden on top.

© 2013 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.

Vanilla and chocolate biscuits

I found this simple recipe years ago (courtesy of Sainsbury's) and have made it a couple of times. I whipped up a batch this week when I ran out of after-school snacks for the kiddies: they didn't like the chocolate version which meant I had to eat them - what a shame!!  I made stars but the original recipe suggests hearts, and I thought I'd share as they will make lovely for Valentine's Day gifts.

Vanilla and Chocolate Love Heart Biscuits

Makes about 25 biscuits

Ingredients

110g butter, softened
55g golden caster sugar
few drops of good vanilla extract
175g plain flour
1-2 tbsp milk
2 tbsp cocoa powder

Turn the oven to 180°C, fan 160°C, gas mark 5. Cut two pieces of baking paper to fit two baking trays.

Beat together the softened butter and sugar until pale and creamy. Add the flour with the milk and using your hands or a spoon mix everything together to make a ball of dough.

Sprinkle a little flour onto the table. Split the dough in half and put one half on to the floured table. Add the cocoa powder to the bowl and using your hands knead the dough to mix in the cocoa powder.

Break the vanilla dough in half and roll out one piece until it is about 5mm thick. Using heart cutters, cut out heart biscuits. Using a very small heart cutter and cut small hearts out of the middle of each of the biscuits.

Break the chocolate dough in half, roll out and cut some small hearts to fit inside the big vanilla hearts – you will need to gently press the small heart into the big hearts to make sure that they stick together in the oven (this is really important so that they cook together). Carry on making the biscuits to any design you choose. Carefully use a palette knife or cake slice to help you move the biscuits to the tray.

Bake for 8 minutes until the biscuits are just golden and cooked – the time will vary depending on how big they are. Put the biscuits onto a cooling rack and leave to cool.

© 2013 Nicola Noble: The heart biscuits image courtesy of Sainsbury's. Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look. 

Carrot and date muffins - perfect for the school lunch box

School has started again and so has the struggle to find "acceptable" foods to put in Sophie's lunch box. My guidelines are four to five items of which one has to be fruit or veg and another yoghurt. 

I recently found a good book in our local FARA charity bookshop in Teddington called The Healthy Lunchbox which inspired me to try harder to fill her lunch with less shop bought items (not that she had that many) and more variety. There was also an article in the daily paper last week which commented that although school dinners have improved hugely (thanks mostly to Jamie Oliver's campaign), packed lunches were still full of fats and sugars and all sorts of undesirables. 

I don't blame the parents. I would say the biggest culprit for this is time: it is much easier to buy pre-packaged items designed specifically for the school lunch box than spend hours baking. I buy yoghurt covered strawberry bits, fruit strings and mini packets of biscuits because they are quick and easy to pop into the lunch box. But, if I was to look at the ingredients in detail, I know I wouldn't be overly happy with what I see.  

The newspaper article last week suggested including carrot muffins in the lunch box, so today when both children where at school/nursery I searched for a recipe for them. Most of the carrot muffins used wholemeal flour which I don't have, but I did have dates so I searched for carrot and date muffins and up popped a recipe from Simply Great Meals. I adapted it slightly (using fresh grated carrots) and as I ran out of milk, I used half a cup of natural yoghurt to make up the quantity. 

The resulting muffins are yummy, although they don't peel away from the cupcake case cleanly which is a shame (I hate leaving yummy cake crumbs attached the case!) I deliberately made them small (cupcake size rather than muffin size) for the lunch box. I will have wait and see what Sophie thinks when she gets home from school tonight; Justin has already given the thumbs up. I am also going to freeze some, as the recipe made about 40 cakes - perfect to last for a little while still.

Carrot and Date Muffins

Ingredients
250g grated carrot
3 cups self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp mixed spice (if you don't have this mix, cinnamon, ginger and a pinch of nutmeg)
1½ cups brown sugar
1 cup dates, pitted and chopped
100g butter, melted
1 egg, beaten
1½ cups milk
Icing sugar for dusting

Sift the self-raising flour, baking powder and mixed spice into a large bowl. Stir in the brown sugar, grated carrot and dates. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, add the melted butter, beaten egg and milk, stirring to combine thoroughly, then spoon the mixture into paper cases in a muffin tray and bake in a preheated oven at 190ºC/gas mark 5 for 25 minutes. Allow to cool on a wire rack.

© 2012 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.

Homemade Lemon Curd

 

One of the things I wanted to do with the children over the summer holidays was to make homemade lemon curd. I made this when I was a Girl Guide for my homemaker badge (many years ago) and I still remember how delicious it was.

I used a recipe on the BBC website from the Hairy Bikers but looking for the page again today I found another recipe, also from the Hairy Bikers that is much simpler and requires a lot less effort than the one I used!

The recipe I followed told me to stir for 10 minutes and whisk for 15 minutes, which meant staying whilst the lemon curd cooked - very satisfying to see it turn from sloppy to thick and shiny - but after two minutes stirring the kids went off to do something else! When I make it again I will definitely try the version I found today (which I have included below), allowing me to go off and do other things while it cooks (like make meringues from the left over egg white).

The finished product was as delicious as I hoped, deep yellow and thick and sharp in taste, and Sophie requested "homemade lemon curd on toast for lunch today, please" so a success with her too.

So for those interested in making your own lemon curd, here is the version I didn't do but will be making next time! Pretty similar in quantities of ingredients but a lot less physical input ...

Homemade Lemon Curd 

Ingredients
4 unwaxed lemons, zest and juice
200g/7oz unrefined caster sugar

100g/3½oz unsalted butter, cut into cubes
3 free-range eggs, plus 1 free-range egg yolk

To sterilise jars, wash the jars in very hot, soapy water or put through the hot cycle of a dishwasher. Place the jars onto a baking tray and slide into an oven set to 160C/325F/Gas 3 for 10-15 minutes.

Put the lemon zest and juice, the sugar and the butter into a heatproof bowl. Sit the bowl over a pan of gently simmering water, making sure the water is not touching the bottom of the bowl. Stir the mixture every now and again until all of the butter has melted.

Lightly whisk the eggs and egg yolk and stir them into the lemon mixture. Whisk until all of the ingredients are well combined, then leave to cook for 10-13 minutes, stirring every now and again, until the mixture is creamy and thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Remove the lemon curd from the heat and set aside to cool, stirring occasionally as it cools. Once cooled, spoon the lemon curd into sterilised jars and seal. Keep in the fridge until ready to use.

Recipe by the Hairy Bikers taken from the BBC Food website.

© 2012 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.

Banana and "honey" teabread

Mr Snowball has just started a new job, commuting into central London for the first time in about 10 years, so I thought I would make a gluten-free cake to cheer him up when he got home last night. I had a whole bunch of very ripe bananas sitting in my fruit bowl and normally I peel them and pop them in a bag in the freezer to use another time but found a Mary Berry recipe for banana and honey tea bread so used them "fresh".

I also realised I didn't have the thick honey the recipe calls for, and actually not even enough honey, so I used what I had and made up the quantity with golden syrup.

I'm not sure what difference the golden syrup made - perhaps it made it a bit sweeter than if it had been made entirely with honey, but the sweetness wasn't overpowering. The resulting teabread was delicious and almost half was consumed within five minutes of slicing the first slice ...

Banana and Honey Teabread

Ingredients
225g self-raising flour
¼ level tsp freshly grated nutmeg
100g margarine
225g bananas
100g caster sugar
grated rind of 1 lemon
2 large eggs
6 tbsp thick pale honey

For the topping
2 tbsp honey
nibbed sugar

Preheat the oven to 160C/Gas 4. Lightly grease and base line a 900g/2lb loaf tin with greased greaseproof paper.

Measure the flour and nutmeg into a large bowl and rub in the margarine using your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Peel and mash the bananas and stir into the flour mixture, along with the sugar, lemon rind, eggs and honey. Beat well until evenly mixed, then turn into the prepared tin and level the surface.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 1¼ hours or until a fine skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cover the teabread loosely with foil during the end of the cooking time if it is browning too much. Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes then turn out, peel off the parchment and finish cooling on a wire rack.

For the topping, gently warm the honey in a small pan, then brush over the top of the tea bread. Sprinkle with the nibbled sugar.

© 2012 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.

Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb

One of the few benefits of having a shady garden is that my rhubarb plant loves it and with all this rain we've had recently I was able to get some lovely fat, beautiful rosy stalks which I chopped and froze within minutes of plucking from the garden.

We went to someone's house for dinner on Saturday and I offered to take pudding so thought I would do a twist on my gluten-free crumble (see my previous blog here).

I put the frozen rhubarb in a saucepan with quite a lot of sugar and warmed it very gently until the rhubarb had softened but not disintegrated and then drained the lovely rhubarb juice off into a jug.

I baked the ginger gluten-free biscuits (ginger and rhubarb are just so good together) and crumbled them up once they were cool.

I mixed icing sugar and delicious pink rhubarb juice into some mascarpone which I then swirled through the chunks of cooked rhubarb, before topping with the biscuit crumble to create a rhubarb fool crumble. The resulting pudding was delicious.

Two things I would change for next time: I would try to get some glass sundae dishes so you could see the rosy pink rhubarb swirled with mascarpone under the crumble; and I would add more rhubarb juice to the mascarpone - I was worried about making it too runny but once the puddings had sat for a while it all thickened up a bit. Alternatively, I could have taken the rhubarb juice to pour over the top before eating!

Another recipe I tried some time ago using the rhubarb was apple rhubarb bread. I baked this using gluten free flour and the apple and rhubarb kept it moist. The original recipes calls for finely chopped rhubarb but I found that it became lost in the baked cake and next time I will keep bigger chunks so I can actually tell that there is rhubarb in the cake. 

Another recipe that may work well with rhubarb are quick and easy biscuits called diggles. I have made these several time with blackberries but I can see rhubarb working for a slightly more adult version.

I have put the recipes below. If you have your own rhubarb I hope you enjoy making some of these and if you don't have your own plant make sure you get hold of some rhubarb while it's in season.

Rhubarb fool crumble

Ingredients
rhubarb

ginger fairings (see here for the recipe)

mascarpone

icing sugar

juice from the stewed rhubarb

Gently stew the rhubarb until soft but still holding shape. Drain off the juice into a jug and keep to one side. Allow to cool. 

Mix a small amount of icing sugar with the mascarpone (to taste) and add some of the reserved rhubarb juice until it's the consistency of single cream.

Place some rhubarb into individual dishes and swirl the mascapone cream through. Crumble the ginger fairings over the top to finish and serve with a jug of the rhubarb juice.

Apple rhubarb bread

Ingredients
1.5 cups chopped rhubarb
1.5 cups chopped apples
1.5 cups brown sugar
0.5 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
3 cups flour
1 cup chopped nuts
3.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, combine brown sugar, eggs and vegetable oil. Stir in the rhubarb, apples and vanilla.

In a separate bowl sift together the baking powder, salt and flour. Add the wet mixture to the flour mixture and stir until just moistened.

Stir in the finely chopped nuts and pour into a greased baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees, for 50 – 60 minutes or until a toothpick comes clean.

Remove bread from pan, cool on a wire or wooden rack and wrap for storage.

Rhubarb diggles

Makes 12
Rhubarb (in small chunks)
1tbsp granulated sugar
85g butter or margarine
225g self-raising flour
85g caster sugar
1 medium egg, beaten

Lightly cook the rhubarb and stir in the sugar to coat the pieces. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/gas mark 6.

Rub butter into the flour in a bowl. Add caster sugar and make a well in the centre. Add the egg to the well. Mix until you have formed a dough.

Break off 12 pieces and shape into rough balls the size of a large walnut. Place on to silicone paper on a baking tray, leaving a good gap between them. Make a dent in the top with the end of a wooden spoon, then spoon in a couple of pieces of rhubarb.

Bake for approximately 12 minutes until just golden. Remove and cool.

NB. the original recipe uses blueberries but blackberries also work very well

© 2012 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.

At last - I've found a yummy gluten free crumble!

I don't know about you, but I have had real trouble making a nice gluten free crumble. I have tried many times to make a crumble topping using gluten free flour and all it ever does is go black and slightly burnt on top. I have doubled up on the amount of butter in an attempt to get it crumbly rather than floury; I have tried to cover it to stop it burning; I have added oats in an attempt to change the texture but none of these ever result in a crumble that even comes close to a golden, crumbly crumble using normal flour!

So in a moment of inspiration, I decided to try baking gluten free biscuits and then breaking these up on top of the filling and IT WORKED!!

My mum used to bake a biscuit called a ginger fairing (you can tell it's an old recipe as it's still in ounces!) and I have played with these recently using gluten free flour and they come out just as delicious. So for the apple crumble I was making, I substituted the ginger with cinnamon and added some oats for a slightly different texture, baked the biscuits then crumbled them on top of the apple filling and warmed them up again in the oven.

It was so delicious I made it again this weekend with a fresh from the garden rhubarb filling and this time I was a bit rougher with the baked biscuits and crumbled them much more so that there were no gaps across the top of the pudding. Sadly we ate them all before I could take a photograph!

Below is the recipe for the biscuits:

Ginger Fairings

Makes about 12 biscuits
4 oz butter
1 level tablespoon golden syrup
6 oz self-raising flour
pinch of bicarbonate of soda
1 level teaspoon ground ginger or cinnamon
3 oz caster sugar
2 tablespoons rolled oats (optional) 

Melt the syrup and butter over a low heat. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger/cinnamon together, add the sugar and mix into the melted butter. I also added the 2 tablespoons of rolled oats at this point.

Roll a rounded teaspoon of mixture into a ball in your hands. Place the balls fairly well apart on an ungreased baking tray. Bake on the centre shelf of a moderately hot oven (375°F, 190°C, gas mark 5) for 12 to 15 minutes or until cooked. Leave to cool slightly before removing them from the baking tray.

I know it is going to become a regular addition to our menu.

© 2012 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.