Baking up a Gluten Free Storm!

Many heart felt birthday wishes being sent to my dear Gustav today. I'm sad that I'm not able to be there with him today, but I know that his mommy and daddy are doing a great job of celebrating with him. His loving mommy made him a rocket cake yesterday, and I hear it was a HUGE hit today at his birthday lunch with the Hausgemeinshaft! Happy Birthday! I can't wait until you are home in the states again!

Tonight was supposed to involve the landlord coming over to move out the electric stove from my kitchen (several burners don't work on it) and my parents helping me move in a gas range that I purchased at the school auction a couple of weekends ago.

When I called to remind the landlord of his plans for this evening, he told me I just needed to leave his stove outside his garage and then he would take care of it. I guess he forgot about the fact that he said he'd move it for me. When I then called my father to remind him of our conversation about him helping me (to be fair, it did occur last week) he sounded really frustrated and I decided to ditch the idea of moving any stoves tonight. He'd been painting and hanging wallpaper all day (which wasn't going well, I take it) and in addition to all that, it snowed several inches yesterday and it might be a bit dangerous to move anything right now. Instead I think we'll postpone the entire thing until Saturday afternoon.

Instead, I came home and decided to try out one of the gluten free cookie recipes I posted last week. I mixed up the flour mixture in a big ice-cream tubby and labeled everything so that I can easily tell which tubby holds which flour mix. Then I made the dough for the Wedding Cookies (also called Russian Teacakes in our family). Instead of the sunflower seeds, I used walnuts this time. While those were chilling in the refrigerator, I also made some Gluten Free chex-type mix. I used rice cereal, spanish peanuts, and some Glutino breadsticks I had (these are good, but not at all what I was envisioning when I bought them--no substance at all to them, so will stand in for the pretzels that chex mix normally has). I also made some chocolate chip muffins from a Gluten-Free Pantry mix that I found at Walmart the other day. I've looked at WalMart before for GF items, but always came up empty handed. This time I found brownie mix and muffin mix from Gluten-Free Pantry in the same area that the other muffin mix/cake mixes are located. I also found Midel and Pamela's Pantry cookies in the cookie section. Now if they'd only expand into having all the flours I need, as well as pastas.

So far I've taste tested the muffins and the cookies. Both are ok, and actually if I didn't know they were Gluten Free I'd probably think they were fairly average examples of what other people bake. I'm used to my baked good being much better than other people (I know, I'm not sounding very modest...just trying to convey why I'm a little frustrated.) I'm still struggling with the textures of things though--the mouth feel isn't quite right. Doughs are more grainy, not as smooth as I would like. I'm not sure whether I just haven't found the right flour combinations yet, or whether this is something I'm going to have to learn to live with. Time will tell, I guess...

Somewhat related to all the baking mentioned above is an amazing flourless cake recipe that I stumbled across several weeks ago. I was shopping at Sam's for catering supplies for last weekend, and was able to sample this cake. I'm going to make some for myself soon, although maybe I'll have to invite some people over to enjoy it with me since I probably shouldn't eat an entire cake by myself! :) Anyone want to join me?

Milk Chocolate Flourless Cake
(6 servings)

4 oz. Hershey's milk Chocolate Kisses, unwrapped (I think I may try chocolate chips to substitute if I don't have the kisses on hand)
1 stick butter
3/4 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1/2 cup cocoa, plus additional for dusting

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and butter sides of 8 inch round baking pan. Line bottom with a round of wax paper and butter the paper.

Combine butter and kisses in a microwavable bowl, and heat on medium/high 40-50 seconds. Stir until smooth. If needed, heat again for 20 seconds or until mixture is smooth when stirred.

Whisk in the sugar until combined. Mixture will not be smooth.

Add eggs one at a time and stir until smooth. Add the cocoa slowly and mix until blended. pour batter into pan and place in the middle of oven for 25 minutes or until top has formed a thin crust.

Cool for 5 minutes and invert onto a serving plate. Dust cake with additional cocoa.