Apple Pies

...are so yummy!  I have always enjoyed working with a flour dough to make pies crusts for scrumptious pies.  In late summer, my one and only apple tree produces apples that only taste good after the apples have been cooked. Every summer, I use the best of the apples that drop to the ground to make apple pies.

This summer I tried a couple of gluten free dough recipes. This one was my favorite since it was the easiest to work with in forming a pie shell. It's the gluten free Land O'Lakes pie shell recipe. I just double the recipe.

This pie was given the thumbs up by husband and son.

Nectarine Tart

I found this recipe in a non gluten-free cookbook. I just substituted the 1/4 cup flour with my rice flour blend to make it gluten free. I substituted peaches for nectarines in my last cake -still very yummy!

Tart
90 grams butter (3/4 of a stick of butter)
1/2  superfine sugar (or regular sugar)
2 eggs
1 cup almond meal
1/4 flour or gluten free flour blend
1/2 tsp baking powder, but I used 1 tsp with the GF blend.

2-3 nectarines (or peaches or apricots) slice.

Oven 320 degree Fahrenheit 

Mix butter and sugar.
Add eggs and blend well.
Add almond meal, GF flour, and baking powder, and mix well.
Spread into 9x9 pan. Top with fruit slices.

Bake 40 mins. to 1 hour or until tester comes out clean.
Cool in refrigerator for a couple of hours.
Serve with cooled orange syrup.


Orange syrup
1/2 cup orange juice
1/8 cup orange liqueur
1/4 cup superfine sugar

Boil for 15-25 minutes then cool.
Pour just a little bit of the cold syrup over slice of cake.

Yummy Brownies

These are easy to make gluten-free brownies.

Ingredients
 6 tbps. butter
 8 oz. semisweet chocolate
 3/4 cup sugar
 2 large eggs at room temperature
 1 tbps. cocoa powder
 3 tbps. corn starch
 1 cup chopped nuts


Preheat oven 350, grease 8" square pan, bake for ~ 30 minutes.

1. Melt butter and chocolate in microwave.
2. Put chocolate mixture into mixer and add sugar, mix well.
    Add eggs one at a time.
3. Sift together cocoa powder and corn starch, then add to mixture.
    Beat well so that batter is smooth, about 2 minutes.
4. Mix in nuts and then pour into greased pan.

Enjoy!
 

Gluten Free Apple Cake

This cake is yummy and pretty!

I have lots of apples from my apple tree this year. I made two apple pies with some of the apples, and I gave away a couple of bags full of apples. Well, I wanted to make an apple cake this weekend, but I had a difficult time finding a gluten free apple cake recipe from other folks' blogs that looked good enough to try. I tried one cake that had buckwheat and brown rice, but that wasn't very good-nor did it look anything like the posted picture. I then saw this gal's post: http://coryographies.blogspot.com/2012/12/recipe-gluten-free-apple-almond-cake.html. I thought could this be true; it looks too prefect. So, I tried her recipe.

Ingredients:
3 chopped apples (I used 4 apples since my apples were small-medium)
Juice of 1 lemon
300g golden caster sugar
8 eggs
325g ground almonds
sliced almonds for top

Directions:
In a pan, cook apples with lemon juice and a bit of the sugar.  Mash them when they are soft enough, but leave them a bit lumpy for texture.

In another bowl mix the eggs, and then add the ground almonds, rest of the sugar and lemon juice, and the apple mash.

Grease a spring form pan and pour in the mixture, sprinkling the sliced almonds on top.

Bake 350 degree oven for 40-60 minutes or until done. At 30 minutes cover top of cake with foil.

Yes, it looks just like the gal's cake. Yes, the cake is easy to make and delicious! 

The Naked Peach Cheesecake Tart

Every morning for the past couple of weeks, I have been making peach and banana smoothies for breakfast. My peach tree provided me with lots of yummy peaches, but most of the peaches were not fully grown. This was all due to the fact that the weight of the peaches caused one of the main branches to bend low and crack. I had forgotten to prop up a piece of wood to support the branch. So, I had to remove all the peaches from the tree to prevent the branch from further splitting. I had two large buckets full of peaches. Well, I tried a couple of peach tart recipes, and this was my favorite, Peach Amaretto Cheesecake Tart.

The recipe can be found here: http://bakingamoment.com/peach-amaretto-tart/
I removed the peach skin since someone in my family doesn't like eating the skins. The peaches look naked and not as attractive without their skins, but the tart is still very scrumptious. In fact, the tart was so delicious that I made a second one that same day since this one got devoured.

Apricot Tart

Due to the high temperatures last week, the fruit on my apricot tree ripen very quickly. I have given some of the fruit to my one neighbor since she loves apricots.

My fruit bin in the refrigerator holds some of the fruits that I picked so that the squirrels and birds don't get to all of the fruit. I'm leaving the fruit on the top of the tree for the birds to enjoy. One year I canned apricots, but I prefer just storing the fruit cold and then eating the apricots out of the bin or using them in tarts and cakes. I tried this yummy tart recipe the other day:http://simplygluten-free.com/blog/2009/07/gluten-free-apricot-almond-tart.html

It's very easy to make and tasty.

Macarons and the Learning Curve

Yes, as in French Macarons. I made a batch of chocolate and a batch of vanilla, two different recipes. The chocolate recipe turned out to be the best recipe to follow since no liquid food color or liquid vanilla was added.

There is a fine line in folding the meringue into the dry ingredients. If macaronage isn't done correctly the macarons don't have the right consistency. Not enough mixing results in the outer surface not having that smooth even look, which is the result above with my chocolate batch. Over mixing makes the meringue mixture too wet with a baked result of hollowness and cracking. Under baking will cause hollowness too since the inside doesn't get a chance to fully cook. Even though the outside of my vanilla batch is brown, the inside was under cooked and hallow. I macaronage the vanilla batch to what looked like the right texture, but with the liquid vanilla added that made for more moisture in the batter. Lowering the oven temperature and longer baking time most likely was what I should have done with the vanilla batch.

Rapping of the tray on the counter before cooking is a must to dislodge any air bubbles that could rise up to cause cracking of the shell.

I made one more batch of the chocolate since I felt that I had the hang of the macaronage technique. The top has that smoothness and the bottom has the classic feet. Looks good!

Since I'm not a fan of the buttercream bases, I filled all batches with mascarpone that had been mixed with 1/4 cup of powdered sugar and 2 tbls of Hershey's 100% cacao since.