Original Plum Torte made Gluten-Free
I enjoy reading Melissa Clark’s column in the New York Times each Wednesday. She ‘s witty, inventive, curious and she knows her way around a recipe. I mention her because it was just about this time last September when she wrote about a much beloved plum cake made popular by Marian Burros back in the 1980′s. It jumped out at me and I realized that I hadn’t had that cake in more years than I could remember. I searched for the original recipe in my files and there it was – yellowed and somewhat tattered. I took it out and put it in my folder of foods that I someday want to convert to gluten-free.
I’m happy report one year later that I’ve finally gotten around making the infamous New York Times Original Plum Torte with gluten-free flours. This past week when I started seeing piles of the small Italian “prune” plums specified in the original version (and when my power came back on after Hurricane Irene), Clark’s column roared back into my mind. I bought a big basket of ripe plums at a local green market and set to work.
I used my brown rice flour mix, a small amount of xanthan gum, and a 1/4 teaspoon extra baking powder to get it rise well. I also added some vanilla extract to hide the lack of wheat and hopefully, make it even more delicious. The recipe converted so beautifully you might have thought it was always gluten-free. I’m really glad I made it and so were my friends; I didn’t have a lot left over, so I’ll have bake it one more time (oh, darn) in order to test how long it will last in the freezer. But that’s OK, because we’re all looking forward to eating it again (and yes, I’ll hide some in the freezer this time). Are you wondering how long it would last in your house? Try it and see!
Original Plum Torte (from the New York Times) made Gluten-Free
Original Plum Torte made Gluten-Free
8 servings
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup brown rice flour mix*
1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
Pinch of salt
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
24 halves pitted Italian “prune” plums (or small purple plums)
Cinnamon sugar for topping (see cooks note below)
1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Position rack in lower third of oven. Grease a 9-inch spring form pan with cooking spray.
2. Cream the sugar and butter in large bowl of electric mixer. Add the brown rice flour mix, baking powder, xanthan gum, salt, eggs and vanilla extract and beat well, about 2 minutes at medium speed.
3. Spoon the batter into prepared springform pan. Place the plum halves skin side up on top of the batter. Sprinkle lightly with cinnamon sugar.
4. Bake about 55 minutes until golden brown and toothpick comes out clean from the center. Remove and cool on rack. Serve room temperature or chilled. Store torte covered tightly with plastic wrap in refrigerator.
*Find my Brown Rice Flour Mix in the Guide to Flour Mix section of this blog.
Cooks note: To make Cinnamon sugar combine 1 – 2 tablespoons granulated sugar and 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.
David Eyre’s Pancake made Gluten-Free
Reading though the The Essential New York Times Cookbook is like going back through the years in a time machine. I imagine it’s the same way for many faithful New York Times readers. Lovingly edited by Amanda Hesser, it’s packed with recipes that bring back memories. But there are so many, you can easily miss old favorites as your work your way through the pages. And that’s what happened to me. It wasn’t until Hesser resurrected David Eyre’s Pancake on her blog, food52, that I actually took notice and realized how much I missed it. It’s part pancake, part crepe, tender, poufy and delicious. I had a hand written copy of it in my recipe box from decades ago. How many years had it been since I last made it? I knew it had to be at least eight or nine because that’s how long it’s been since I’ve been eating gluten-free. I was suddenly craving it again.
Lucky me: David Eyre’s pancake has few ingredients and is incredibly simply to make. I converted it to gluten-free by using my all purpose brown rice flour mix. It didn’t need the xanthan gum; I had tested to see if it was better with it, but it wasn’t. The original recipe warns against over-mixing, but you don’t have to worry about that with gluten-free flour. I also added a quarter teaspoon pure vanilla extract to mask the lack of wheat and reduced the butter to three tablespoons from four (because after making it several times, I found that I could get away with less).
The recipe calls for a squeeze of fresh lemon over the top of the pancake once you take it out of the oven. But sous chef boy (my 17 year old son, Bradford) didn’t like the lemon. I did. So you choose. Oh yes, and one more thing. The original recipe says it serves 2 to 4. I think they were joking and that it should really read: Serves 2 normal people, 4 very small people who don’t like to eat, or 1 sous chef boy.
David Eyre's Pancake made Gluten-Free
David Eyre’s Pancake made Gluten-Free
(adapted from the original as it appears on food52)
2 large eggs
1/3 cup Brown Rice Flour Mix*
1/2 cup whole milk
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
generous pinch nutmeg
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar
Juice of half a lemon (optional depending on your sous chef)
- Preheat oven to 425ºF and position rack in center of oven.
- Lightly whisk eggs in a medium sized mixing bowl. Add brown rice flour mix, milk, vanilla, and nutmeg; mix until well blended.
- Melt the butter in a 12-inch skillet with an oven-proof handle over medium high heat. When butter is very hot, but not brown, add pancake batter. Bake in the oven for 18 to 20 minutes until the pancake has puffed up, the edges are billowing and it is golden brown.
- Remove skillet from of the oven and sprinkle the pancake with the sugar. Return it to the oven for 1 to 2 minutes more. Sprinkle with the lemon juice and serve with jam or preserves.
*Find my Brown Rice Flour Mix in the Guide to Flour Mix section of this blog.
What I’m Talking About: When a Child Goes Back to College
There is one less person around my table- for now. Yesterday, after several days of pre drop-off weepiness, I drove my oldest son Alex to LaGuardia Airport in New York City so he could head back to his junior year at Vanderbilt University. It was wonderful having him back in the kitchen this summer. He cooks. He cleans up. And the best part is he’ll sit and have long, leisurely conversations about politics, economics and the state of the world. I love these talks. It’s the kind of talk you don’t get to have with your child when you’re texting back and forth or when you have that occasional (hopefully weekly) phone conversation.
I know I’m lucky that he is fully functioning and able to go off into the world without me holding his hand or without his needing me to manage the minutiae of his life. It is what I wanted when I was raising him and what I want now. A friend whose fourth child was born with Rett syndrome once spoke of how now, at 18 years of age, her daughter wouldn’t be able to go off to college like her other three (unafflicted) children had done. So I’m not really complaining, just whining a bit. And I’m doing it today because I didn’t get that much of a chance yesterday— because of that trip to the airport.
So here’s what I’m talking about: Yesterday morning I was driving (in the rain) toward the airport and I was about a mile from the George Washington Bridge (in rush hour traffic) when all of a sudden the sunroof in my Volvo opened up half way. I looked over to Alex in the passenger seat next to me. He looked particularly shocked because he had been trying to handwrite a last minute thank you note (a note that he should have written three days ago, but I digress) and hadn’t been paying attention to anything else going on around him. He pressed the button to close the sunroof, but it wouldn’t close. I pressed the button. Nothing. Did I mention it was raining? I tried to manually close it. Alex (my rugby playing son whose been known to bench press 300 pounds) tried to manually close it. Bradford, my 17 year old son and sous chef (who I had brought along to comfort me on the way home) started barking at us to stop messing around and just close the damn sunroof. So he tried to close it and it actually moved forward two inches – but then it suddenly started moving again and opened all the way. We were totally exposed. My Volvo was really a Poltergeist car.
By then I was on the Harlem River Drive in rush hour traffic. And did I mention it was raining? We took the Volvo dealer’s card out of the glove compartment and I asked Bradford to call and ask to speak with the service department while Alex tried to close the sunroof. The very nice woman who tried to help told him to tell me to pull over and try turning off the car. But I was on the Harlem River Drive- and there is no place to pull over on the Harlem River Drive. And really, only an idiot would purposely stop their car in the middle of the road (because that is the only place to stop on the Harlem River Drive) in rush hour traffic.
So we continued on to the airport where I kissed Alex good bye and gave him a big hug (but not before he actually spent two of the longest minutes of my life finishing that thank you note while I was parked in front of the American Airlines “departures” door where there are HUGE signs about not standing, much less parking). He looked sorry for me. He told me he loved me and wished me good luck for the ride home.
On the way back when sous chef-boy and I were stuck in traffic on the Major Deegan Expressway and we were sick of getting wet, we tried the Volvo dealer again. And just then the interior overhead lights started flashing on and off. I was in a Poltergeist car that was also a clown car. This time we asked specifically to speak with the service manager. He clearly felt bad for me but could only offer that if I was somehow able to pull over and park (on the Major Deegan- you’re kidding right??), and was somehow able to get the sunroof to close, then maybe I could pull the fuse in the fuse panel (what fuse panel? which fuse?) to disable the sunroof. I’m not making this up. That’s what he said. So we got wet.
By the time we got back on the GW Bridge we were laughing. What else could we do? And then that annoying lady in the GPS system spoke up about bearing left ahead. We looked at the control box and saw that it indicated our car was swimming in the middle of the Hudson River in circles. My Poltergeist clown car was swimming round and round in circles in the Hudson River. I looked over at Bradford and he was cracking up.
“Is it too early for happy hour?” I asked, shaking my head.
”Mom,” he said very kindly, “it’s happy hour somewhere!”
And that’s what I’m talking about at my table.
Gluten-free Zucchini Bread
Ok! Time to get back to that pile of zucchini in my kitchen.
What next? Figured I’d fine-tune the gluten-free zucchini bread recipe I’ve tinkering with. When I first started out on this zucchini bread adventure, I didn’t have a wheat-based recipe I loved. I only had recipes I thought were fine. But fine doesn’t cut it when I’m converting. It has to be really good. And great is better.
So I looked around. I asked friends for their favorites and checked out recipes from wheat bakers I admire. I also like to research recipes in really old cookbooks because it lets me see what they looked like in their more original form (a few of my favorite older cookbooks are from the early 1900′s). I think this allows me to better understand how a recipe has been adapted, updated, improved or ruined by modern day cooks. In most cases, “ruined” takes the form of complicating a recipe with unnecessary flourishes. Flourishes make it more difficult to convert to gluten-free because there are either too many ingredients to consider or too many complicated techniques to follow, or both. For me, less is more; flourishes can come later.
The recipes I found varied in terms of sugar and spice. Some had so much sugar they looked like they really should be called “cake”, not bread. Some were loaded with add-ins like coconut, raisins and nuts. Some had absolutely no spice and relied on just the zucchini and sugar for flavor. And some had so much cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger or allspice, that they seemed more like a gingersnap or a pumpkin pie.
After looking at a couple of dozen recipes for zucchini bread, I realized that I could start with one of my own gluten-free muffin recipes as a foundation. I took a middle ground on the spice and add-ins. I made my first breads with a 1/2 cup of walnuts and only a touch of cinnamon. But every taste-tester thought they needed more spice (I wonder why there were so many zucchini bread recipes without any spice). I added more spice. And then there was the request for a touch of cinnamon sugar on top. I made a few other refinements, as well. And here they are- my little gluten-free zucchini breads. Fragrant, light textured, a bit green. Delicious. Try the recipe and let me know what you do to make it your own!
Gluten-free Zucchini Bread
Food Philosopher’s®Gluten-Free
ZUCCHINI BREAD
Makes three 3 x 5 inch loaves
2 cups Brown Rice Flour Mix*
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon, or to taste
1 1/3 to 1 1/2 cups shredded zucchini
1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup canola oil
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Cinnamon sugar (optional, see instructions in cooks note)
- Preheat oven to 350ºF. Position rack in center of oven. Grease three 5 x 3-inch loaf pans with cooking spray.
- Put shredded zucchini in a small bowl and pat dry with paper towels.
- Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, xanthan gum, salt, and nutmeg in large mixing bowl. Add zucchini and nuts; stir to coat evenly.
- Combine milk and oil in small bowl. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Add liquids to zucchini nut mixture and stir until just blended.
- Fill loaf pans with batter. Sprinkle top with cinnamon sugar, if desired. Bake 35-40 minutes until light golden and toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 8 minutes on a rack and then remove from pan. Cool completely before serving or wrapping for storage.
*Find my Brown Rice Flour Mix in the recipe section of this blog.
Cooks Note:
Store bread covered tightly with plastic wrap in refrigerator for up to five days. Can be covered with plastic wrap and then with foil and stored in freezer for up to six weeks. Best when eaten within four days of baking.
To make cinnamon sugar, combine 2 tablespoons sugar with 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.
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Welcome to My Gluten-Free Table. It will give you a taste of life in and around my kitchen. I’ll be serving up delicious recipes, commentary, and classic tales of baking and cooking in a home where food is excitement and eating is a celebration.
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