Hallowe'en!

On the off chance your children have yet to remind you, tomorrow is Hallowe'en! If they would like to learn more about the history of Hallowe'en, send them over to our sister Blog, The Diary of Dorothy Whiskers.

Here at The Recipe Resource we have been busy preparing some old favourites with a Hallowe'en twist, and inventing some new ones!

If your little ones are at nursery tomorrow, I posted a lunch box suggestion last year which popped up on Social Media.

You can adjust this to suit your child's diet, so use houmous/sweet potato puree/nut butter on the pumpkin and this could be a roll (just made pumpkin rolls with the Juvela Harvest White Mix here in silicone pumpkin moulds) or savoury cookies. Similarly alter the filling for the celery and se red pepper if strawberries are not tolerated, raisins instead of the olive.... be inventive!

Today I made the chocolate muffins from here which would not work so well for egg allergy sufferers as you are substituting 3 eggs. However, I have used cornbread with cocoa powder which always achieves excellent results. Then I popped them into Hallowe'en cupcake cases from ASDA and iced them with the Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge icing which is, surprisingly free from most things! lastly the ASDA graveyard decoration kit was also free from all we were avoiding but would not suit everyone.

The Krispy Cakes are Little O's (but could have been any cereal) with melted safe chocolate and a little golden syrup mixed with them and left to set, with Haribo Mini Halloween Jellies on top.

There are plenty of Hallowe'en treats available for children with allergies, although most reach for Haribo, but with a bit of imagination and a few cutters, stamps and accessories you can achieve a great deal!

I've just finished decorating, and we're all set!

Blueberry Muffins - Gluten Free

For a change - and in response to my gluten free son's pleadings I made "proper" Blueberry Muffins with buttermilk... but just substituted wheat flour for Dove's Farm Gluten Free flour.

They were very successful - the only problem was that the twins were not a little frustrated that they could not try them, click here for this is a safe recipe for them!

Makes 6-8 large muffins, or 9-10 cupcake sized muffins.

Ingredients

• 175g/6oz plain flour (I used Dove's Farm)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 175g/6oz golden caster sugar
• 175ml/6 fl oz buttermilk
• 1 medium egg or egg replacer equivalent
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 40g/1 1/2 oz melted freefrom spread/fat of your choice
• 150g/5 oz fresh blueberries
• 
  

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4
• Line a muffin tray (see above) with paper cases
• Sift the flour into a bowl, add the baking powder (or use self raising) and sugar
• In another bowl, beat the egg into the buttermilk, or add the egg replacer mix slowly to the buttermilk and beat in
• Add vanilla extract to the "wet" bowl and pour into the dry ingredients.
• Add the melted butter and mix with a fork - or slowly in a mixer.
• Lastly gently stir in the Blueberries

Tip - toss these gently in a little flour before adding to stop them sinking in the muffins when cooking.

• Spoon into the muffin cases and bake for about 20 minutes until springy in the centre.

Leave in the trays for 5 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

Vegan Date Muffins - MEWS free!

My wonderful sister in law sent me the inspiration for these muffins, and since I am stuck in waiting for a washing machine engineer who cannot tell the time I decided to get backing.

I'm a bit of a novice baking egg free still, and I suspect my efforts are nothing like as good as hers, but this is her adapted recipe from Gwyneth Paltrow's "It's All Good" Recipe Book. 

Ingredients

• 2 cups Gluten free flour of your choice
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
• a pinch of sea salt
• 2 overripe bananas (great raising agent!)
• 1/2 cup virgin olive oil
• 2/3 cup maple syrup
• 2/3 cup almond milk or your choice of substitute
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup pitted dates or dried fruit of your choice
• walnuts/seeds/your choice or nothing to sprinkle on the surface before baking

Variation - You could combine a mixture of flours, and also replace a scoop with protein powder. My sister splits the 2 cups of flour into four quarter cups of brown rice flour, millet, quinoa, and buckwheat.

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180C 400F
• Combine all dry ingredients in bowl 1
• Combine all other wet ingredients in bowl 2.
• Thoroughly combine the contents of both bowls and spoon into (about 16) papercases.

Tip - toss the dried fruit in a spoonful of flour first, this prevents them sinking to the bottom of the muffins when cooking.

My efforts were good, but didn't rise quite as well. I suspect my mixture was a little dry - it needs to be a soft, dropping consistency. These are delicious though, and I can think of plenty of variations! Great for packed lunches too!

Afternoon Tea

An old one but a good one... these Banana Muffins are a firm favourite of ours!

Dairy free, Gluten free, Soya Free

Fabulous Chocolate Muffins

This is NOT a sponsored post. 

One of my older children has recently been placed on a gluten free diet, however it was his birthday this week and I wanted to find a cake recipe which would suit everyone. I often use the Glebe Farm chocolate cake mix which works really well as cupcakes, but decided to give this a try for a change. It does contain soya lecithin which can be a problem for a minority of people, since it's the purified oil and contains no protein it is safe for most.

 

I often find these mixes, and all my own freeform attempts at cakes work best in small sizes, rather than one large cake, so we often make muffins or cupcakes for birthdays instead of one birthday cake.

Delicious Chocolate Coconut Muffins

I have been experimenting with muffins and cupcakes lately, because I have had limited success with anything which doesn't contain banana of late, unless it's quite small it either goes dry or doesn't rise properly. So you can imagine the excitement when I found this recipe - which not only WORKS but as it only has 1 egg it is pretty easy to substitute to make it MEWS free.

Ingredients

• 5oz / 150g Self Raising Dove's Farm Gluten free flour
• 4oz / 100g caster sugar
• 4oz / 200g of either broken up free from chocolate (small pieces can be achieved in a food processor of chopped) or free from chocolate drops/buttons of your choice.
• 2fl oz / 50mls sunflower oil (NOT olive, hemp or heavier oils)
• 4fl oz / 100mls milk substitute of your choice
• 1 egg
• 2oz / 50g desiccated coconut
• optional vanilla essence

Method

• If, like me, you have a Kenwood Chef or a KitchenAid you can quite successfully chuck it all in and whizz it up. Otherwise you need to put flour, sugar, chocolate into the bowl. Mix well and make a well in the centre.
• Pour in the oil and milk into a bowl/jug and break the egg in. (ALTERNATIVELY ADD THE EGG REPLACER IN WITH THE DRY INGREDIENTS.)
•  Beat with a fork and pour into the well you made in the first bowl.
• Mix everything together and stir in the coconut.
• Spoon into cupcake cases, or larger muffin cases. 
• Cupcake cases will bake in 15 mins, the muffins take a little longer. Bake at 180C until golden on top.

Chocolate and Pear Muffins!

Sound different? Unusual? They are delicious!

We were a little tired of the delicious Banana Muffins...

and I had rather too many squashy conference pears in my fridge... so decided to get inventive.

I peeled and cored four small pears. Chopped and microwaved them until cooked. Then substituted the bananas in this recipe for pears, and substituted 1 oz of the flour for 2 oz cocoa powder. (Pear is a little wetter than banana so needed more dry ingredients.)

I have also substituted apple and blackberries in the same way before, but strained the excess juice out first and added an ounce of oats to soak up the moisture. Not all of you can have oats I know (and I don't know if gluten free oats would work as well) but worth a try if you can!

Bake as before, and Voila!

Bran and Raisin Muffins

Makes 20 cup cake size mini muffins or approx 12 larger ones.

Free from Wheat (gluten free if using rice bran), Dairy, Soya and can be egg free if you use egg replacer or try omitting the egg which does work although not as well.

Ingredients

• 120 mls pineapple juice / orange juice / juice and smoothie mix (I did the latter)
• 60mls Molasses or treacle, or I used Golden Syrup and it worked just as well
• 150g Oat bran (or rice bran for gluten free)
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 75g raisins
• 1 egg
• 120mls Oatly cream (or for gluten free use rice cream or soya cream if allowed)
• 60mls vegetable oil
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 115g rice flour/blended plain gluten free flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 shredded carrot or shredded apple (optional) or drained stewed apple (again, optional)

Method

• If you have an electric mixer you can mix all the ingredients at once in this recipe. Otherwise mix all the wet ingredients plus bran, cream/yoghurt, and raisins and leave for 10 mins 
• Combine with all the all the dry ingredients. 
• Combine and mix in the carrot last.
• Line a muffin/fairy cake tin and spoon out the mixture. 
• Bake at 200C for about 10 mins or until firm.

Easy Oatmeal Muffins

Serves - 12 muffins 

Free from - Wheat, dairy, egg, soya, nut, peanut

Contains - Gluten* (use oats listed in Coeliac UK* directory for reduced risk of contamination from other grains) 

*Coeliac UK: www.coeliac.org.uk 

Ingredients

• 480g (1lb) oat flour 
• 150g (5oz) white or dark brown sugar 
• 1tsp bicarbonate of soda 
• 125ml (4 fl oz) oil 
• 300ml (10fl oz) apple juice or water 
• 50g (2oz) rolled oats 

Method

• Preheat oven to 180ºC/350ºF/Gas mark 4 
• Combine all ingredients, except rolled oats, and mix with electric mixer for 30-60 seconds. Add the rolled oats to the dough and mix. 
• Place dough mixture in a greased/non-stick muffin tray. Use margarine to grease 
• Bake for 25-30 minutes 
• Cool before removing muffins from tray 

Tip 

• Adding 100g (4oz) of raisins makes delicious oat raisin muffins 
• If you find it difficult to find the oat flour, you can place rolled oats in a food processor to make it. Process each 100g (4oz) of oats for 30-60 seconds to make the flour. 
• Adding water instead of apple juice makes muffins that are slightly less sweet 
• For higher calorie muffins, double the amount of oil