gluten free baking

Kiffles, Classic Cookie for Christmas

Kiffles are a local favorite here in eastern PA when it comes to cookies, particularly Christmas cookies. The Kiffle Kitchen on Rt. 512 north of Bath, PA has made their reputation on their outstanding kiffles, now sold on line! I used to enjoy them but never took the time to make them in the past. Now that I can’t eat gluten anymore I thought, why not bake some gf kiffles? They are a sort of local Ukrainian specialty (Their origin is Austria-Hungary in eastern Europe) so finding them in a cookbook and also gf was a challenge. Luckily, early this year I purchased “Gluten-Free Baking Classics The Heirloom Collection” by Annalise G. Roberts. It was published in 2014 and I bought it brand spanking new – not one miss in anything I have baked from it so far. Page 170 had the answer to my search; Rugelach, Kiffles, and Kolaki.

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I got my courage up and made a batch of kiffles (the preferred local spelling) on Christmas Eve afternoon. I just did jam filled, apricot and raspberry. The cream cheese dough in formed into two discs and chilled before rolling out between wax paper sheets into an 8 inch square. I did find myself chilling the rolled out dough a bit to keep it from getting too soft as I filled and formed the kiffles. Not too cold but chilly. After rolling and a slight chill, cut each big square into 16 two inch squares and put a tsp. of best quality jam on each; fold together so the filling peeps out both ends and chill some more on the baking sheet. I brushed them with heavy cream and sprinkled a touch of granulated sugar on before they hit the 350 degree oven. The cute packets of dough and jam bake up lightly browned and delicate in about 15-20 minutes.  Success was felt when my mom ate a few that evening. Her smile told me how yummy they were.  I wish she was still around to share them with. This is my fourth Christmas without her….christmas baking 2015 025christmas baking 2015 026christmas baking 2015 027christmas baking 2015 028

A couple of years ago I made them with the nut and cinnamon filling that is very traditional around the Lehigh Valley. Delish! I also hear that some stores sell special kiffle filling meant just for these cookies. Gonna look for it; hopefully gluten free and therefore safe for me to enjoy.

If you use jam try to find jams made with regular sugar, not corn syrup or other such substitutions as the jam will then tend to bubble and run and you won’t get a good result.

So if you are gluten free and crave kiffles; this cookbook by Annalise Roberts is the place to find a workable recipe. She has never failed me yet with her desserts and I thank my lucky stars her cookbooks are on my shelf to guide me through holiday, parties and everyday meals. I don’t mean to sound like a salesperson for her but I can’t say enough great things about this new cookbook and her prior best seller Baking Classics – my copy of that is well worn and I couldn’t exist without it. This kiffle recipe is way too involved to type out for you and I think that if you are serious about baking gf you need to check it out and get your own copy, real soon!  Here are the ingredients for the dough and a brief directionns paragraph but this is a three page recipe in her book and if you want the entire directions you should support the author by buying her awesome cookbook called “The Heirloom Collection.

Cookie Dough:

1 cup King Arthur basic gf flour

2 Tbsp. sugar

1/2 Tsp. xanthan gum

1/2 Tsp. baking powder

1/4 Tsp salt

6 Tbsp. unsalted butter at room temp.

4 ounces full fat cream cheese

1 -3 Tsp rice flour for rolling it out.

1/2 cup apricot, raspberry and or cherry jam

Mix sugar and butter in stand mixer. Mix dry ingred. Add slowly. Form into 2 patties, wrap in plastic and chill 30-60 minutes. Roll out on lightly floured surface to 8 inch square; cut into 16 squares. Put rounded half teaspoon jam on center; fold up two sides and pinch. Place on parchment covered cookie sheet. Chill 15-20 minutes. Brush with optional egg wash or heavy cream and then bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes. For a longer recipe buy the book! I will say that you should avoid jams with corn syrup in them; they boil out of the cookies; use jam made with cane sugar.

Note: I did a search on line for a gluten free kiffle recipe and didn’t really find one; lots of other cookies but these are quite a specialty and not made by most home cooks except in areas where they are popular and what you can buy is definitely not gluten free. I am very happy with these utterly delicious cookies and can heartily recommend them to you for your gf holiday baking. Enjoy

Originally published in 2016; just added ingredient list and minor text changes done 12/2020, reprinted 12/21 with no changes.

Nut Tassie Cookies

Nut tassies are a local favorite around here in eastern Pennsylvania. They look like a tiny pecan pie, the size of one gigantic bite! Heavenly sweet and best made with pecans.  I have eaten them at many people’s homes. In all fairness I never made them when I could still eat regular gluten all-purpose white flour. Perhaps it is that I was able to just snag them off a cookie plate at someone’s holiday party.  Now, that sort of noshing is no long a possibility, and I was craving a nut tassie. Several years ago, I started looking for a recipe and eventually I found them on food.com; a classic tassie recipe complete with cream cheese dough for the pie crust and a filling almost identical to the traditional filling. And it was gluten free for folks like me…eureka!

Notes: Sometimes my family has a small pre-Christmas gathering and I whip up a batch of these tassies.   After chilling the dough some I make a dozen.  I will make the rest of them another day…reason being that gf cookies don’t keep as well as regular flour cookies so best not to bake the whole batch at once shot.  This way you have fresh cookies twice.  I keep the dough and filling in the fridge nice and cold and it will last up to a week or so.

Speaking of filling, I often don’t chop my nuts really fine; leave some in chunks to give a bigger texture which I prefer. The filing is so simple; chop the nuts, then dump these sugar and eggs in a mixing bowl, add the softened butter and the vanilla and nuts; stir and it is ready to spoon into the little crust cups you just formed.

They are easy to make and totally yummy to devour.  I find it takes me 2-3 bites to down one of these treats.  Happy baking folks!

Nut Tassies

Crust Ingredients

3 ounces cream cheese softened

1⁄2 cup butter, room temp.

1cup gluten-free flour – King Arthur Basic GF Flour or Bob’s Red Mill GF All-purpose flour

1⁄2 teaspoon xanthan gum

2 tablespoons sugar

Crust directions: using a whisk combine the GF flour, Xanthan Gum and 2 Tbsp. spoon sugar in a small bowl, Mix and set aside.  Using a mixer combine the cream cheese, butter and sugar until cream.  Then slowly add the GF flour mix you set aside, continue to mix until well blended. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Pecan Filling

  • 1 cup finely chopped pecans
  • 3⁄4 cup coconut palm sugar or brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 tablespoon softened butter
  • 1 lg. egg 

Directions – Using a mixer combine the pecans, brown sugar, vanilla, butter and egg until well blended

Assembly

  • Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
  • Separate the chilled pie crust into 24 equal amounts (spoon or roll into balls).
  • Press the separated crust into a mini muffin pan, making sure that you press it most or all the way up
  • Fill each crust with a heaping mound of the filling.
  • Bake for approximately 30 min or until the crust is lightly browned.
  • Let cool and remove your mini pies from the pan. Use a butter knife to remove without damaging them

Enjoy!

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Thumb Print Cookies 2.0 – Fabulous!

As children we each had our favorite cookies to make, this was traditionally my next older brothers’ to bake but once grown up I began to make them ‘cause they are addictively tasty.  I love making them with apricot jam, you can used chopped slivered almonds instead of chopped walnuts for that version.  But any good quality jam will work, pick what you like.  I am planning two flavors this time: homemade raspberry jam and some homemade apricot jam. Like getting two cookies out of one batch of dough.

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A few Christmases ago a dear friend gave me a new cookbook “Gluten-Free Christmas Cookies” by Ellen Brown.  I have tried several recipes, and all were fantastic including this one, I swapped the candied red and green cherries for jam, but you can go old school and use those freaky candied cherries. It is made with cornstarch and white rice flour; not a flour blend but you should be able to find rice flour in a gf flour department or in a Chinese grocery store. Every grocery store has cornstarch. I am actually going to swap out some of the white rice flour for brown rice flour to make the flavor even more similar to gluten based flour. I will let you know how that goes; baking it this coming week. Use the jam you like to put on your toast! That is better than using something you are not particularly fond of.

Jam Thumbprint Cookies

Ingredients:

1 ½ cup white rice flour (or a 50/50 blend of white rice and brown rice flours)

1 cup sifted confectioner’s sugar

½ cup cornstarch

1 tsp. xanthan gum

1 tsp. cream of tartar

Pinch of salt

2 sticks unsalted butter sliced into thin slices

1 lg egg

1 Tbsp. whole milk

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 cup finely chopped walnuts

½ cup jam; apricot, cherry, raspberry, peach, strawberry

INSTRUCTIONS: Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl food processor, steel blade, blend briefly.  Add butter to work bowl and process off and on until it resembles coarse meal.

Combine egg, milk and vanilla in a small bowl; whisk. Drizzle into the work bowl, pulse about 10-12 times until it forms a stiff dough.  If it doesn’t come together, add more milk a tsp. at a time. I added a tsp. more of milk to get the dough to form up.

Chill the dough for 15 to 20 minutes.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Put racks in the middle of the oven. Place chopped walnuts in a wide shallow bowl and roll 1 1/2 inch balls of dough.  Roll them in the chopped walnuts, place on a parchment paper lined baking sheet.  Press an indent in with a finger and fill with about ½ tsp. jam.  Bake 14-15 minutes, until just firm but not browned.  They will be very delicate to the touch.  Let cool 2-3 minutes on sheet before carefully moving them to a cooling rack using a metal pancake turner. I bumped a couple and they just fell apart on the sheet; very fragile while hot.  They will solidify once they cool.  I store mine in cookie tins or Tupperware containers.  They won’t last as long as wheat flour based cookies but they get snapped up fast so that shouldn’t be a problem.  I supposed you could freeze them for a week or two if necessary.

They are not too sweet and so delicate, great with a cup of tea or coffee.  As good, if not better, then when I made them with all purpose (wheat) flour years ago before I had to go gluten free.  Your family will be amazed that they are gf, no one you serve them to will ever guess.  Totally tasty and fun to make with your kids! Enjoy.

This is a reposting of the same recipe I posted back in 2016. Minor text changes.

Mexican Wedding Cookies – A Classic

These miniature snowball cookies were the foundation of the Christmas cookie baking season when I was a kid.  They were always made every year, sometimes a second batch had to be baked as we had eaten them all well before the big day!   Some people call them Russian Teacakes… For me it is not Christmas without these cookies so I was extremely pleased to find a great gf recipe. My sisters think they are better tasting than the old regular recipe!

They are easy to make with not too many ingredients.  Don’t make them too big or they become very fragile… stick with the size as given. Be careful lifting them off the pan as they are delicate until fully cooled. The texture and subtle flavor of this GF version is actually superior to the wheat flour recipe of my childhood. When you bite into one it shatters into a delicious mouthful of sweet cookie. They are delightful with a cup of tea or coffee.  My family clamors for a few to take home!

You can use pecans, but I rarely do; walnuts are somewhat cheaper, and I sort of prefer their flavor for this cookie. If you like them really sweet sprinkle on extra powdered sugar, less of it makes them perfect for those who are not used to too much sweetness. This recipe is from Annalise Roberts’ fabulous Gluten-Free Baking Classics with some minor changes by me. I have not tried them with any but this flour blend. I bet they might work with a measure for measure flour mix; just leave out the xanthan gum in that case.

Storage: they keep well; I put mine in an empty butter cookie tin with wax paper between the 2 layers; no more than 2 layers or they tend to break up easily. Or a cookie jar but do be careful about too many stacked on top of each other.  No one will ever know they are GF, and you will get complements on their flavor and texture.  Enjoy: they are rather addictive cookies!

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Mexican Wedding Cookies

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

6 tbsp. powdered (confectioners) sugar

2 tsp. vanilla extract

2 cups King Arther Basic GF blend flour – aka brown rice mix (recipe below)

1 tsp xanthan gum

1 cup walnuts or pecans chopped fine

Confectioner’s sugar for sprinkling

Directions: beat butter and powdered sugar in large bowl of stand mixer until light and creamy.  Add vanilla, beat in.  Add flour and gum, mix in until well blended, stir in walnuts until distributed.  Chill dough for an hour, more than 2 hours; dough gets too stiff.

Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Form dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in powdered sugar if you like.  Place on cookie sheet lightly sprayed with Pam (not the baker’s version that has flour).  Place about 1 ½ inches apart.  Bake 13 to 15 minutes until lightly browned on top and bottom.  Cool on pan for 5 min and then sprinkle with lots of powdered sugar before placing on wire rack to cool. I like to sift it onto the cookies so the coating is even.  You could put a sheet of wax paper under the wire rack to catch the excess sugar.  Store well wrapped: in airtight container, in fridge for a week or freezer for up to 30 days.  You could store unbaked dough in fridge for a few days.

Brown Rice Flour Mix base mix  (same as King Arthur’s Basic gf blend)
2 c brown rice flour

2/3 c potato starch *not potato flour

1/3 c tapioca flour

Note: First posted December 2014 on my blog.  Minor revisions have been made since then.

Delicious Nectarine Blueberry Pie

 This July post never got uploaded, when I discovered that, I decided to add it to my blog so it’s available next summer. The resulting pie was delicious down to the last slice.

This is so easy to make: slice and dump together the filling, crumb topping gets made in the mixer bowl you just used for bottom crust. You can store any leftover crumb mixture in a sealed container in the fridge; it keeps a few weeks.  This GF crumb topping is perfect for most any fruit pie.

I used a lot more nectarines than blueberries; the proportions are up to you. The nectarines don’t need to be peeled like peaches. I used coconut palm sugar in my crumbs; it does darken them but lowers the hypoglycemic level of the pie; good for those of us who are prediabetic or just avoiding white sugar. You can also replace some or all of the sugar in the filling with coconut palm sugar. I like to do 50/50 sugar and c coconut palm sugar.

You could make this pie with frozen fruit; just add at least 10-20 minutes of time to the bake time. Don’t defrost them fully; can defrost somewhat but not completely before putting it together to bake.

Bake and enjoy summer in a pie in just a few minutes of work.  Don’t eat it piping hot; it should be cooled to close to room temperature.  You could certainly serve this with vanilla ice cream. 

GF Nectarine and Blueberry Crumb Pie

Crust:

1 c plus 2 tbsp brown rice flour mix (King Arthur Basic GF blend or use the recipe at the bottom of recipe)

2 tbsp sweet rice flour

1 Tbps. granulated sugar

½ tsp xanthan gum

¼ tsp salt

6 Tbsp. cold butter cut into 6 chunks

1 lg egg

2 tsp fresh orange or lemon juice

Directions:

Spray 9 or 10 inch metal pie pan with cooking spray, dust with white rice flour. I confess I forget to do this more often than I remember…still works.

Mix dry ingredients in bowl of stand electric mixer.  Add butter and mix until crumbly and resembling coarse meal.  Add egg and juice.  Mix until it comes together into big chunks.  Shape into a ball with your hands. Put it on a crust sized piece of wax paper (14 x 14 inches more or less), flatten the crust ball some; put on top of it another piece of wax paper and chill it all in your fridge 15-20 minutes while you prepare the filling.

crust

Filling:

5 cups sliced fresh nectarines, unpeeled and cut in thick slices

1 cup fresh blueberries – rinse and place in medium bowl

Mix with:

½ cup sugar (or use coconut palm sugar for half of the sugar)

½ tsp. cinnamon

3 Tbsp. quick tapioca

Add and stir in

2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice

Let the filling stand while you prepare the crust, important for the tapioca so it does its job optimally.

Roll out pie crust in a pie bag or between the two sheets of wax paper, try to get the thickness even, no thick middle! Peel off one side of paper and place in pie pan, centered.  Remove other slice of wax paper.  Crimp edges all around.  Fill with fruit mixture.

Crumb topping

Put all four ingredients in the same mixing bowl you made the bottom crust in and mix well with mixer paddle until crumbs form.

¾ c brown rice flour mix

½ c sugar or a blend of coconut palm sugar and granulated sugar

½ tsp xanthan gum

1/3 c cold butter cut into six chunks

Directions:

Sprinkle the top of the pie with crumb mix; use as much as you like.  I like about a heaping cup and a half of the mixture.  Up to your personal taste… It sinks partially into the fruit mixture and adds lots of sweetness and eye appeal.

Bake in a preheated 400-degree oven for 45-50 minutes until bubbly and the crumb crust is light brown.  I put a piece of aluminum foil on top for the last ten minutes.  Cool at least 1 to 4 hours before serving at room temperature.  I think it is best served the same day you make it, or no more than 10 hours after baking for optimal flavor.  The crumbs will get soggy if too much time passes.

Note: if you find your bottom crust is not browning enough there are a couple of choices; you could bake it empty at 375 degrees for ten minutes before filling it with the fruit. Choice 2: I bake pies on a rack placed at the very bottom of my oven which gives me perfect pie crust; I don’t ever have pale pie crust.

The topping is extra brown due to coconut palm sugar instead of all granulated sugar.

Brown Rice Flour Mix
2 c brown rice flour (finely ground)

2/3 c potato starch – Not potato flour!

1/3 c tapioca flour