I’ve been trying to be more adventurist in my baking lately-trying not to be afraid to try new recipes out.
I read many, many different blogs a day. Most are gluten-free sites, and one of my favorites is gluten free girl-Shauna Ahern. I read her book Gluten Free Girl early on in my diagnosis. Her descriptions of food make your mouth water. I have had some failings in some her recipes-mainly, I believe, is that she bakes at sea level in the Seattle, Washington area, and me-well, I am on the top of a hill in Calgary. My neighbour did an altitude reading, and we are only 500 ft below the Rogers Pass. So, what I find in baking-is I have to adjust for the high altitude here.
So, I recently tried Shauna’s recipe for Rubelach Cookies. I of course, changed her original plan, but in the end-they worked out well.
Here is her recipe
½ pkg cream cheese
1 stick unsalted butter ( ½ cup)
1/3 cup brown rice flour
¼ cup potato starch
2/3 cup cornstarch
½ tsp sea salt
2 tsp xanthan gum
1 large egg
1 Tbsp water
Set the cream cheese and butter out on the counter about 10 minutes before you start working with them. Cut the cream cheese and butter into 4 equal pieces.
Put the brown rice flour, potato starch, cornstarch, salt, and xanthan gum into a food processor. Run the processor until the flours are well mixed.
Drop the 4 cream cheese pieces and the 4 butter pieces into the food processor. Pulse them 5-10 times, then turn on the processor full force. At first the flours will spin round and round –be patient-after a few minutes you will see the forces start to gather. Watch carefully. Stop the processor when the dough looks like giant curds-before it has formed into a ball.
Form the dough into 2 balls with your hands. Cover them in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 15 minutes.
Roll out the dough balls between 2 pieces of parchment paper. You want about a 10 inch circle at the end. Peel off the top of the parchment paper and spread you fillings onto the dough.
** Here is where I experimented. On one I spread raspberry jam and on the other I spread hazelnut crème puree(when I was in Paris, I discovered wonderful hazelnut crème in cans and tubes that- they use as a filling for crepes-yummy!)
*** In the instructions, Shauna says you have some options for rolling. You can roll up in a log (I did that with the raspberry jam ones)-and the other option is to cut the circle into wedges, and roll each wedge into a crescent.
Put the shaped dough back into refrigerator for 1 hour.
Whip the egg and water together to form an egg wash. Brush the log or triangles of dough with the egg wash.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for 25-30 minutes.
They were quite good! The batch size is quite small-one cookie tray is all it made.
