A couple of Gluten Free recipes

First up, Insanely Good Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins. This recipe is one I got from one of my favorite blogs, Gina's Skinny Taste. She does healthy low fat weight watcher's recipes. So far every thing I've tried has been good. Here is the link to the recipe for these muffins if you aren't gluten free: http://www.skinnytaste.com/2012/03/insanely-good-blueberry-oatmeal-muffins.html I made a few simple changes to make them Gluten free and they turned out so moist and good I can't even tell they are GF! That is always my goal make stuff we will all eat so I don't have to make two batches. So if it's bad, it's never made again. My changes are as follows: Oatmeal-use certified GF oats, instead of the 1/2 c. white whole wheat flour I subbed in: 1/2 c.GF Mix (Bette Hagman's mix- 6c. rice flour, 2c. potato starch flour (not potato flour), 1 c. tapioca starch) with 1/2 t. xantham gum and 2 T. ground flax seed meal. You could probably skip the flax, but I wanted the good fat and fiber from it. I would probably add the flax if I was using wheat flour too. I like adding flax to things.
That's it!

Sponge Cake- great base for strawberry shortcake
Adapted from my favorite cook book, The Joy of Cooking. I'm typing the recipe as it appears in the book, then adding my subs in at the end.
Economical, if you use the minimum number of eggs. Especially delightful, if you vary the flavors. (for gf I always use the 6 eggs, 5 if they are duck eggs).
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Grate then stir:
1 teaspoon lemon or orange rind into
1 cup sifted sugar
Beat until very light:
3-6 egg yolks
Beat in the sugar gradually. Beat in:
1/4 c. boiling water
When cool, beat in:
1 Tablespoon Lemon juice or 1 teaspoon vanilla (I often use both)
Sift before measuring:
1 cup cake flour
Resift with:
1 1/2 teaspoons double acting baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt.
Add the flour mix gradually to the yolk mixture. Stir the batter until blended
Whip until stiff but not dry:
3-6 egg whites.
Fold them lightly into the batter (this is easiest with a large wisk)
Bake the cake 20-45 min. in a well greased pan. I use a fluted torte pan, the recipe calls for a 9 inch tube pan, I've also used a springform pan.

Now my subs for the flour. I've used successfully both a mixture of (both betty hagman mixtures I got them out of the book Life Taste's Good Again) GF mix and Featherlight mix in equal quantities and just plain GF mix. Then to it I add 3/4 t. xantham gum and an extra 1/2 t. baking powder. That's it! Easy subs again, and it's super tasty.

The best Chocolate chip cookies ever!
I've been working on this recipe for a while now. It's pretty good. Good enough that last week I made it for Justen and a batch of Tollhouse for Garrison and I. I ended up eating Justen's cookies because they were better than mine. Half the trick is in the freezing of the dough. Although they do work when fresh baked, they just turn out so much chewier when baked half frozen.

3/4 c. butter (I have used a mix of butter and margerine but we all know butter tastes so much better.
1 1/4 c. packed brown sugar
1/4 c. white sugar
1 t. GF Vanilla
1/4 c. egg substitute or 1 large egg (done it both ways both work fine)
2 1/4 c. GF Mix (again Bette Hagman's recipe-see above recipe for proportions)
1 1/2 t. xantham gum
1 t. baking soda
1 t. baking powder
1 t. salt (scant)
8-12 oz. Chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375degrees F.
Prepare a greased baking sheet (I have forgotten to do this and it does work without just sometimes you mangle the cookies getting them off)
In a medium bowl, cream butter adn sugar. Gradually add egg adn vanulla while mixing. Sift together gluten free flour mix, baking soda, powder and salt. Stur into butter mix until blended. Then stir in chocolate chips.
Using a cookie scoop (looks like a tiny ice cream scoop) drop cookies 2 inches apart on prepared sheet. Then flatten slightly because they don't spread like gluten cookies. You will know if you forget to flatten them because you will have odd little dough cakes instead of flat, yummy, chewy cookies. Can do it with a teaspoon they just didn't turn out as thick and chewy.

Bake in preheated oven 6-8 min. or until just starting to brown. For chewier cookies, smack pan on counter when it comes out of the oven. Let cookies cool on the sheet for 2 min. until moving them to cooling racks.

Now the freezer part: I always make a huge batch and freeze so Justen can bake his own cookies whenever he wants. So I started scooping them out with the cookie baller thingy, really close together on a cookie sheet and then freezing. After a day I move them into a zip lock and he bakes as needed. As a side note, they are awesome frozen unbaked! To bake from frozen, put them on prepared sheet and let thaw about 20 min. (this time has been here in the winter so I'm sure it would be different if it were summer). You want them to be just thawed enough that you can smoosh them down a bit but they aren't all the way thawed. Then bake the 6-8 min (we prefer them slightly under done). They are awesome! We baked two batches side by side one night to see if the frozen ones really were better than the fresh ones, and for some reason they are.