Alright readers, y’all know I’m an avid baker and I share all of my successes with you, today? Well, today I’m sharing an absolute catastrophe with you, or two!

Yes, I had a major failure in the kitchen -don’t believe me?

My choir master, is both allergic to gluten and is a vegan, as are many of the choir members.  Not only that, but a lot of our customers at the bake sale were asking for allergen-friendly goods and I didn’t have many on hand (thanks to my friend Crystal for her foresight!) so, I undertook this as a personal challenge.

Surely people who are allergic to gluten and dairy, have yummy treats too, right? Right! So, I invested in a few cook books and some allergen-free ingredients, which, can I just add, can run pretty expensive (you need quite a few, even to make the most basic of recipes, and you need to go to Whole Foods and even walking through the door is expensive there) so, I chatted to my new friend Cara, over at Fork and Beans.

Cara started the Fork and Beans blog “to create a site where people with dietary restrictions will not only feel normal, but find that eating without certain ingredients can still be good.” I found her on Twitter and she has not only be keen to help me get my Vegan-bake on, but she was eager and very, very helpful.

And come on, in all honesty, Vegan or not, who wouldn’t want some of these?

If you want to try them, check out this blog post for Samoa Cupcakes!

We were both excited when I finally got the goods together and embarked on my first ever allergen-friendly baking frenzy.  I call it a frenzy, cause I didn’t just make one thing, no, no, not me.  I attempted three recipes – all from the same book, The Food Allergy Mama’s Baking Book: Great Dairy-, Egg-, and Nut-Free Treats for the Whole Family.

Ok, so, perhaps, in my haste, I neglected to double check that the book was *actually* gluten free, however, it was pretty much everything else free, so I decided to just use the recipes in the book, and substitute Gluten Free ingredients – that was bound to work, right? WRONG!

Alright, in theory, yes,  it would work, however, I underestimated how difficult it was to make Gluten Free goodies.  This went catastrophically wrong – twice!!!

Firstly, I did made Cinnamon Bread, this should be basic and simple, yeah?

Cinnamon Bread

Ingredients

1/4 cup dairy free shortening
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 Tbsps water
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsps ground cinnamon
3/4 tsps salt
1 cup soy or rice milk

Topping

2 tsps ground cinnamon
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tsps melted dairy free margarine

Next, I made some Raspberry Bars – these ended up not being G.F as I didn’t have any G.F oats, they were the best recipe of the three that I made, but the bars were crumbly, fell apart and had a poor consistency.  I’ve no idea why – maybe I needed more liquid?

Raspberry bars

Ingredients
Yield: 36 bars (I question that, unless you make tiny bars, like bite-bars)

1/2 cup dairy-free margarine, room temp
1 cup light brown sugar
1 1/2 cups gluten free all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups quick cooking oats GLUTEN FREE (Yes! There is a difference!)
1/4 cup water
2 cups raspberry or strawberry jam
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp grated lemon zest

In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy.  In a separate medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda and salt with a whisk.  Add the flour mixture to the margarine mixture, and combine until the mixture is crumbly, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.  Add the oats and water; mix with a rubber spatula until just combined.

Preheat oven to 350F, and spray a 13×9 baking dish with dairy-free baking spray.  combine the fruit jam with the lemon juice and zest in a small bowl and set aside.

Spread half of the batter into the prepared baking pan.  Spread the jam mixture on top of the batter base.  Add the remainder of the batter by sprinkling it evenly over the jam mixture.  Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until set.  Cool completely and cut into bars.

My third, and final disaster,  is a recipe, (whose name bothers me, but more on that in a moment!)

Emerald Isle Coffee Cake

Ingredients

1/2 cup dairy-free margarine
1 cup granulated sugar
2 tbsps water
1 cup dairy-free sour cream
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 recipe cinnamon filling (below)
Confectioners sugar for dusting

Combine the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the water, sour cream and vanilla.  Beat well.

Preheat oven to 350F and spray with a bundt pan with dairy-free baking spray.  In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt with a wire whisk.  Add the flour mixture to the margarine mixture and beat well.

Pour half the batter into the prepared pan, sprinkle the batter base with half the prepared recipe of cinnamon filling.  Add the remaining batter and top with the remaining cinnamon filling.  Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until an inserted cake tester comes out clean.  Cool completely, turn onto a serving plate, and dust with confectioners’ sugar.

Ok, I made two cakes, well, one was bread, the other was a cake.  Here are my notes about the two cake recipes, firstly, personally, there was way too much sugar in the cake ‘toppings’, it was insanely sweet – perhaps to compensate for the gritty, floury taste in the actual ‘bready’ part of the baked goods.  I think that was down to the *type* of gluten free flour I used.

Both cakes sank like stones – I’ve done a little research on Google, there are two issues commonly referred to when you search for it.  The first, is using too much liquid in the recipe.  But I used the exact amounts in the recipe, is the recipe wrong? I doubt it, the pictures in the book look pretty convincing.

Secondly, they say that opening the oven door and bringing the baked goods into cool air can cause it to sink.  This is a more difficult problem to fix, you have to open the door to test the baking items to make sure they are done.  I’m not sure how to get around this one!

The cinnamon cake crumbled into millions of pieces, the ‘Emerald Isle coffee cake’ had no coffee in it and nothing vaguely Irish in it so that’s most definitely a dumb name for this creation.

The raspberry bars tasted good, though, (in spite of the consistency being off) because I didn’t have any gluten free oats on hand, the dish was pointless for my initial goal, having known nothing about gluten, or whether oats were gluten free or friendly for celiacs, I didn’t know I had to buy a special kind of oats.

Baking for people with allergies, is a minefield, you can’t cross contaminate, you can’t use oats in case they have been grown in fields next to gluten and the damn things don’t even rise, instead they flop catastrophically.  It’s a challenge, one I’m intent on fighting until I find at least a couple of items that I can bake that are dairy and gluten free.  It’s frustrating, I’m used to things coming out of my oven delicious, heck, even perfect.

I rarely have issues with my baking, I never have anything fail – nevermind to this level of kitchen nightmares, however, I will not be defeated! In fact, I am doing more G.F baking this week for our Saturday choir rehearsal – fingers crossed I get something usable out of the next batch, because I can’t face a repeat of this…