Life After Wheat Flour

[FoxersArtist]

As some of my previous posts have indicated, I have been fairly entertained by the idea of making gluten free foods of all different kinds. Eating new foods that I never thought to try before has been an adventure I am happy to have found, and obviously, feeling better is a big part of that.

Recently I had been having a lot of stress in my life and my anxiety triggered a pretty big episode of Colitis which is finally disappearing. Unlike some people who get colitis, mine never seems to be diet related unless I had a psychotic break and started gobbling down lumps of wheat flour dough which would be sure to give me a reaction. But because I don't really have a death wish, I know that in fact my colitis occurs when I have forgotten that little paper baggy to breath into when life gets rough.

So today I decided to reward myself (for making it through the chaos alive) by baking some cookies. Anyone who knows me knows that I can't follow a recipe to save my life. I would rather just throw a bunch of stuff in a bowl and hope it turns out to be edible. One of my first childhood experiences in the kitchen (when my mom was distracted enough not to pay me any mind) started out as an ellaborate plan to make a pear pie. I had never had a pear pie before (and there is likely a reason for this) but thought surely that if I could think it up, it could be done (a downfall that still plauges me to this day.) The results of my amazing recipe yeilded a pile of soggy pre made pie crust containing a messy mixture of canned pears (complete with their syrup) mixed with some fruit juice and a bunch of sugar, salt, baking soda, honey, and who knows what else. Despite the mounds of other ingredients I added, (which needless to say, added an "interesting" flavor to the "pie") the experiment did not thicken in the oven and I ended up with soggy pear pie stew. Truth be told I had no concept of how to bake a pie - crust or contents. My mission to create the worlds greatest dessert was a total flop and despite the lesson I had learned about how NOT to bake a pie, the fire in my mothers eyes when she saw what I had been up to was absolutely not worth a minute of it - knowledge, lesson learned, or otherwise. In a fit of rage my mother declaired that I was no longer allowed to experiment with anything in HER kitchen with HER food. She told me I could experiment with food when I paid the bills. I was crushed but tried to understand that we were not the wealthiest people on earth and wasting ingredients meant throwing away money.

I think that experience really stalled my desire to bake for many years until I was sure that my parents were more financially secure which did not occur until midway through my teenage-dom. This was probably the best thing anyway, since by this time I had a bit more knowledge about what was edible and what might taste good mixed together. I DID NOT attempt to recreate my pear pie, thank goodness. When my first long term relationship came into the picture, I really wanted to impress him with my cooking skills so the experimentations picked up full swing. To date I am proud to say that my biggest failure was when I attempted to make what I call "Gormet Cement Macaroni & Cheese Block." This dish was so thick and sticky that I was not able to scoop it out of the pot. No matter, I just took the hefty cheese blob to the table and hoped we could scoop some onto our plates. No go. So we tried to eat it out of the pot and after breaking a sweat to scoop a small blob of the strachy stuff into my mouth I remarked that I may have invented the worlds greatest super glue. No joke when I say that this starchy cheese brick could have held up a double-wide trailor. Just a word to the wise: never add that much flour to homemade macaroni and cheese. (See, that flour was always holding me up. I should have gotten rid of it sooner!) I think we ended up eating highly processed TV dinners that night instead.

So where was I going with this? Ah, yes! Today's experiment. I really wanted to make cookies but I was really not in the mood to make tree bark cookies (buckwheat), so I thought I would try mixing a variety of other flours to see what I could come up with. Gluten Free Pantry sells the most delicious chocolate chip cookie on earth, which has a main ingredient of tapioca flour. Forgive me for saying so, but I cannot help but think about pudding every time I hear the word "tapioca" and it blows my mind to think that you might be able to make a cookie out of it. This is likely an amazement that will never fade from my mind, and though I feared making a baked chocolate chip mush pudding (which would be entirely too similar to my pear pie) I decided to give it a go anyway.

Before continuing let me just say - gluten free batters and doughs seem to suck up 2 times as much flour as something with all purpose flour in it. Is this just me? It makes me wonder if perhaps without gluten, there is a tiny real-life vortex in my mixing bowl, sucking up the butter, eggs, and (more horrifying than anything else) the brown sugar. 1 cup tapioca flour, 1 cup rice flour, a sprinkle of xanthan gum, some more rice, more tapioca, more rice. The dough was so tacky that it wanted to fight me for the spoon and I began to wonder if this stuff had been plotting with the garbanzo bread mix in my pantry. I have never questioned the loyalty of sweet sorghum flour so I added a bit of that to the mix to stir things up a bit. Still super tacky but not as stubborn. I had reached a point where if I added any more flour I would have to dump the entire contents of the sugar canister into my batter to even out the taste, so I decided to give up, wondering if this would be one of my great failures. I could just picture the cookies melting to liquid and sizzling in the oven but what the heck? I scooped up two big blobs of chocolate chip glue and instantly recalled a college art project that involved mixing a giant vat of stucco. It wasn't until this time that I truely questioned whether or not I wanted to put this concoction in my body. In fact, I think the only redeeming factor involved was this mix also reminded me of a thicker blueberry muffin mix - and those are not only edible but very tasty too!

So how did my little experiment turn out? See for yourself!

http://i197.photobucket.com/albums/aa154/F...y/GFCookies.webp

When I first peeking into the oven before they were done, I was watching the batter melt the way my pale skinned husband does pulling weeds in the yard on a hot summers day - complete with crispy burnt edges! But a few minutes later when the timer went off I was pleasantly surprised! The cookies kind of resembled tiny little barbie sized pop up tents and I quickly feared that I had gone overboard with the baking soda. To my relief the cookies instantly deflated once exposed to the cooler air and a friend reassured me over the phone that her sugar free cookies do the same thing.

I have to say that they weren't *quite* as good as those Gluten Free Pantry cookies, but then, I do not claim to be an expert either, and afterall, there was no recipe involved here. Like most cookies with rice flour in them, they sort of revert back to their doughy state once you take a bite (brings a whole new meaning to the phrase, melts in your mouth not in your hand) but wowee, it tasted like a cookie! There was much rejoicing to be done but only one delimma that always seems to be a problem for me. I didn't write anything down so how will I make them again next time? I am quite sure at this point that God is a merciful ruler and has spared me the self esteme blow of frequently creating a baking disaster, but I have no idea HOW this happens. With the way things are thrown together randomly, I'm not sure I will ever be able to accept my baking as a talent! Nevertheless, my husband always tells me that he thinks I could support us by selling my cooking skills. I didn't have the heart to tell him that others may have more developed taste buds than him.

-Anna

[YoloGx]

I like your story, very creative, and no doubt very true. I experiment too. I look at other recipes to get an idea of what to do. Then write down the ingredients and amounts as I go. It really helps to learn what does what as said. You can tinker with the recipe then. There are a number of places on the internet that have good gluten free recipes, especially cookies. One is Gluten Free Recipe Exchange--or G.I.G. at gluten.net/recipes

Bea

[ShayFL]

In my house, the saying goes....."If Mom makes something super yummy, you had better savor every bite because she will never be able to make it the same again."

Great write. I am like you. Just mix it all together and see what happens.

[RiceGuy]

Great story! Cooking skills aside, you could certainly earn a living as a writer.

While I don't exactly throw things together, I seldom measure either, except for baking powder, xanthan, and Stevia. Once in awhile I get out the measuring cup just to see how accurately I'm eyeballing it, and so far so good. But I usually measure the large amounts of flour, like if I'm making a big loaf or something, mostly so I know the total volume. I don't follow recipes either, but I think that also came with practice. I almost always try to change things each time, just to see how it will turn out. It's a sort of fun with food that I enjoy enough to risk those rare times when something doesn't particularly turn out right. But I'm sure not being picky helps.

As for buckwheat flour, it is one of my favorites, and it makes great cookies IMO. At least the kind I've been making, including cinnamon raisin. But I have found once again that Bob's is unfortunately not good. Thus far Arrowhead Mills is the best one I've found. Makes yummy muffins and sweetbreads too

[spunky]

The cookies look great!

And, I agree, the writing style is wonderful!!!