Fabulous Food on a Friday

Cinnamon, Blueberry and Polenta Loaf
From "The Low GI Family Cookbook"

gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian

Serves 12

Canola cooking spray
1 cup (120g) maize flour
4 tsp gluten-free baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 cups (260g) fine polenta
1/2 cup (100g) firmly packed brown sugar
1 1/4 cup (310mL) soy milk
150g milk-free margarine melted and cooled
1 egg
2 egg whites
200g blueberries (fresh, or thawed frozen)

Preheat oven to 180oC. Spraty a 10 by 21 cm loaf pan with canola oil to lightly grease and line the base and sides with non-stick baking paper

Sift the maize flour, baking powder and cinnamon in a large bowl. Stir in the polenta and suga and make a well in the centre

Whisk together the soy milk, margarine, egg and eggg whites. Stir in the blueberries. Add to the dry ingredients and stir with a large metal spoon until just combined,

Spoon the mixture into a prepared pan and bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Stand in pan for 5 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool. Serve cut into slices.

Variations

Can also be cooked in 1/3 cup capacity muffin tins (reduce cooking time to 25 minutes at 200oC) or mini hole muffin tins (cooking time 15 minutes at 200oC)

Can be frozen by wrapping individual slices/muffins in plastic wrap and sealing in an airtight container

Can also be served toasted (with honey....)

This would be good after school or as a lunch box filler (or even a morning tea with friends with some food intolerences/allergies...)

This is easy to make (15 minutes preparation) with a "helper" and most of the ingredients can be easily bought from the supermarket - although I used wholemeal spelt flour instead of the maize flour. You could also probably replace the 2 egg whites with 1 egg. (My "helper" actually added the two extra egg yolks with only minor side effects)

I road tested this on 3 primary aged school boys - they all easily ate their serve!

Fabulous Foodie Friday

Cath asked me to post the recipe for the panforte that I made at Christmas time. The book that the recipe is from is English, so I had to modify some of the ingredients. My comments/hints are in italics.

Ingredients:
edible rice paper (I just used the sort for rice paper rolls you can get from the Supermarket)
60g walnuts
115g blanched almonds (I just used plain, unpeeled, unblanched almonds!)
105g hazelnuts
45g chopped dried figs
150g glace mixed peel (I bought plain mixed peel rather than glace)
50g dried apricots
2 tbspns grated orange peel
2 tbspns cocoa powder'
60g plain flour
1 tspn ground cinnamon
1/2 cup (175g) honey
60g castor sugar

1 tbspn plain flour (extra)
1/4 tspn ground cinnamon (extra)

1. Preheat oven to 180oC (350oC). Line the base of a 22cm round springform tin with the rice paper (you shouldn't need to trim it). Place the walnuts and almonds on a small tray and bake for around 8 mins or until fragrant. Transfer to a plate to cool, then repeat with the hazelnuts. When cool, tip the hazelnuts onto a clean tea towel and rub vigourously to remove all the loose skin. [I bought preroasted hazelnuts so could skip that step] Roughly chop all the nuts
2. Combine the nuts, dried figs, mixed peel. apricots and orange peel in a bowl. Sift in the cocoa, flour, spices and 1/4 teaspoon of white pepper and stir to combine, the make a well in the centre.
3.Combine the sugar and honey in a pan and stir over low heat without boiling until the sugar has dissolved (I did this step in a Pyrex jug in the microwave - less washing up as that can go in the dishwasher, you just need to use < 100%)
4. Pour the honey miture onto the dry ingredients, stirring until well combined. Transfer to the prepared springfrom tin and press in firmly. Smooth the surface with a wetted hand. Use a small seive to dust the surface with the combined extra flour and cinnamon. Bake for 35 minutes, then cool completely in the tin. Serve in thin wedges.

This makes a large panforte - I easily cut it into 16 pieces for my work colleagues. It is dairy and egg free if you have to cook for people with allergies as well.

Cath also asked for the recipe for the shortbread stars. I used the recipe from taste, but refrigerated rolled and cut it out rather than making a round shortbread. This is a very fine shortbread (uses icing sugar and cornflour), rather than a crisp one. The lemon and lime shortbread variation is also v. good.

Belated Christmas Cooking

I joined in the making of edible Christmas trees fun and made Christmas trees out of shortbread stars. The ones that were straight looked OK, but there were far more that looked slightly lopsided (and yes, I did study engineering!) My two tips for decorating are: use a spacer biscuit between the larger ones (this means you have to make a lot of little biscuits) and secondly, decorate with caucaus THEN stack.

I also made about four panfortes (not all at once) which is a (marginally) healthier Christmas baking option (no butter and only uses a little honey and flour to glue the spice, cocoa dried fruit and nuts together.) Fortunately with cellophane and fancy ribbon you can make any present look good!