Gluten Free Coffee Cake with Maple Frosting

Gluten Free Coffee Cake with Maple Frosting

So what do you get when you take the Gluten Free Homemakers Basic Muffin Recipe and combine it with Silvana's sticky cinnamon pancake recipe and put it in a 9x9 inch square cake pan?  A wonderful coffee cake that is almost identical to my favorite coffee cake I can't have anymore, the Krusteaz coffee cake mix from the box.

The kids and I had decided to make muffins and we normally use the gluten free homemaker's basic muffin recipe and make chocolate chip muffins but this day I was craving a Cinnabon or something like that.  On thanksgiving we had really enjoyed the gluten free sticky cinnamon swirl pancakes with maple frosting shared by Silvana Nardone... So... I decided to put those recipes together and we got this yummy scrumptious coffee cake!  So now I'm calling it....

Candace's Gluten Free Dairy Free Coffee Cake with Maple Frosting

2 cups gluten free flour (I use Silvana's Blend from her book, it already has the xanthan gum added)

if you are using a different gluten free baking mix just add 1 tsp xanthan gum

1 Tablespoon baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup oil

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

3/4 cups milk

8 tablespoons softened(1 stick) butter (I use best life or vegan buttery sticks to make it dairy free)

1 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon cinnamon

Line a 9x9 in cake pan with parchment paper (or you can lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray) and preheat the oven to 375.

In a medium size bowl, combine the dry ingredients.  In a seperate bowk, mix the wet ingredients and then add to the flour mixture and stir til combined.

In a small mixing bowl, combine 8 tablespoons of butter softened to room temp, sugar and cinnamon and mix together. (if butter is out of fridge just nuke it for a several seconds to slightly soften but do not melt).

Pour half of your coffee cake batter into you cake pan and spread around.

Drop spoonfuls of the brown sugar mixture over the top and spread around, reserving some for the topping.

Plop the remaining cake batter over the cinnamon sugar and spread around.  Take a knife and swirl it through the entire thing a few times and the smooth out the batter so it is evenly distributed in the cake pan.  

Top with the remaining cinnamon sugar mixture.

Bake for 35-40 minutes until toothpick comes out clean.

For the Maple Frosting combine 1 cup confectioners' sugar, 3 tablespoons maple syrup and 1 tablespoon water and mix together.  Drizzle over the top of your coffee cake and you would never know you were eating something gluten and dairy free!

Silvana's Banana Bread

Mom's Banana Bread

Cooking for Isaiah - Silvana Nardone

Banana bread is just awesome!  And I hadn't had banana bread since going gluten free and I missed it!  I made my favorite banana bread recipe for my husband recently and it was torture not to eat it!  So when I saw the gluten free dairy free banana bread recipe in Silvana Nardone's cookbook  we had to try it!  And man, my husband had a bite, got a goofy smile on his face and said "THIS is GLUTEN FREE???"  it was so good, it did not last nearly long enough and I'm hankering to make this again SOON!  This cookbook has not steered me wrong yet!

And we thought we couldn't make good banana bread without gluten or butter....

Gluten Free Blueberry Lemon Muffins with Coconut Streusel

Wow, my kitchen smells glorious right now!  I want to capture this aroma and bottle it or put it into a candle so my kitchen can smell like this all the time!  Something's in the oven...

Gluten Free Blueberry Lemon Muffins with Coconut Streusel

I was inspired to make these because we had a big box of blueberries in the fridge and 3 of my husbands favorite things are blueberries, lemons, and coconut so I wanted to put it all together.  I found a basic Gluten Free Muffin Recipe over at Gluten Free Homemaker that you can see here.  It's a great basic muffin recipe with options so you can play with it to make any kind of muffins you want.  I pretty much followed her recipe except I didn't add xanthan gum because I already have xanthan gum in my Silvana's all purpose gluten free flour blend that I made a big container of. For my version on the  basic recipe I left out the xanthan gum and used 1/2 cup sugar, about 1-2 Tbls lemon juice, lemon zest of 1 lemon, and 1 cup blueberries.  The coconut streusel topping is as follows:

3/4 cup coconut flakes

1/2 cup all purpose GF flour

1/4 cup sugar (50/50 brown sugar and granulated sugar)

1/4 tsp baking powder

2 Tbsp Bestlife buttery baking sticks

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and cut together using a fork or your hands till you get a crumbly mixture, mine had quite a few clumps, it wasn't as crumbly as a typical crumb topping. Drop the clumpy, crumbly coconut mixture over the tops of the muffins before baking, then bake as directed in the Basic Gluten Free Muffin Recipe.

I am really happy with the height these muffins have, must be from the amount of baking powder! I've never used that much baking powder in a recipe before, but it's awesome, these muffins don't have the typical flat tops that most gluten free baked goods have.  Now...time for the taste test...

OH MY!!!!  I have been searching and baking my way to find the perfect muffin recipe for years, long before going gluten free.  I am in heaven.  These are by far the best muffins I have EVER made, and they are gluten free and dairy free!  MMMMMMmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!! Is all I can say right now! Go get some blueberries, a lemon and some coconut flakes quick and get baking right now! I can't believe how good these are!  I'm sure non-gluten free bakers could make this same recipe just using regular flour in place of gf flour and leaving out the xanthan gum!  The crispy coconut topping really sent these lemon blueberry muffins over the edge. Now I just need to have some will power to not eat anymore till hubs and daughter get home! I made the muffins for them! lol!

ps- and the verdict from my husband is...they are REALLY good...although he says he can still tell they are gluten free.  He thinks I just haven't had gluten for a long enough period of time I maybe don't remember how much better everything is with it.  He definitely thought these muffins were really good, but just said the texture was different than regular muffins, the texture was nice though, more like angel food cake.

Silvana's All Purpose Gluten Free Flour Blend can be found on page 15 of Cooking for Isaiah

Gluten Free Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Classic Chocolate Chunk Cookies

only gluten free and dairy free!

So we've been having more fun with our Cooking For Isaiah Gluten Free & Dairy Free cookbook! We had friends over for a BBQ and I made these Chocolate Chunk Cookies and our guests said they never would have guessed they weren't made like any other cookies if we hadn't told them.  I was really happy because I have missed eating a homemade chocolate chip cookie for a long time.  I've tried the Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookie mix at the store and it was okay, but in my opinion it was expensive, didn't yield very  many cookies and they were pretty gritty.  These cookies were just like your traditional chocolate chip cookies, crisp on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside.  I REALLY enjoyed these.  I used Silvana's Gluten Free Flour Blend from the Book and used Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chunks I found at Super Target, I think it was the store brand called Marketplace or something like that, I checked the ingredients and no dairy.  I also have started using The Best Life buttery baking sticks by Bob Greene as a airy free butter substitute.  I was previously using Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks, but since we moved I haven't figured out where to buy them and then my husband went to Walmart the other day and found The Best Life Diet buttery baking sticks and they were basically the same thing as the Earth Balance ones...but cheaper!  In the Chocolate Chunk recipe in the book, she calls for vegetable shortening, but I just used the buttery baking sticks and I think it didn't make a difference.  They were good!

 

Cooking For Isaiah 

Gluten Free & Dairy Free

 

Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Frosting

Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Frosting

Gluten Free & Dairy Free

 Now that we are getting a little more settled in our new home, I FINALLY rounded up what I needed to make my gluten free flour blend, a combination of white rice flour, potato starch, tapioca flour, salt and xanthan gum.  I made Silvana's Flour Blend from my new book Cooking For Isaiah which has amazing looking recipes that are all gluten free and dairy free.  These cupcakes were the first recipe we decided to try out.  I was really really impressed and so was J.  She keeps referring to them as the best cupcakes ever in the whole wide world!  These are so tasty with the strawberry puree in the cupcake batter and the strawberry puree in the frosting!  I was also really impressed with the texture, these cupcakes were soft, moist and had just the right amount of density, I was relieved they were not dry, gritty nor crumbly like other gluten free baked goods we have tried.  I don't think ANYONE would guess these were gluten free and dairy free cupcakes. The plan was to make these and freeze them individually so we could take one out for an occasional treat, but these were so good that did not happen.  They quickly disappeared and I have absolutely NO IDEA who is mostly responsible for that....hmmm....not one clue! I SWEAR! 

 

Cooking For Isaiah Gluten Free & Dairy Free Recipes

I'm happy with this cookbook so far! It's my first time using a gluten free cookbook and using a gluten free flour blend.  There are some other books out there that I'm interested in getting, but I picked up this one on Amazon because, for someone who likes to bake, it looked really good and because of the donuts! I can't wait to try making the donuts! And I even lucked out and found a mini donut pan at good will the other day for $2!  

a couple other books on my wishlish I would love to try are

Artisnal Gluten Free Cookbook

Flying Apron

Also, another great gluten free cooking resource is The Gluten Free Cooking School.  There is a gluten free flour blend recipe with accompanying recipes, and a good sandwich bread recipe that my mom has been making and I'm planning to try that out this week!