Hey guys! What's happening? I have another entry, these are Vanilla Bean Madeleines. The great thing about these little sponges is that they are GF. I became very aware of GF in 2014 when it wasn't very common to have it as a lifestyle diet. My eldest brother had been so sick for 2 years and the doctors couldn't understand why.
He was living and working in New Plymouth at the time and every time he came home for a holiday he would always be so sick and have no energy. He would go to numerous GP appointments, doctor appointments and they still couldn't find a solution. Until he got so sick he couldn't work anymore. Dad went down and helped him pack up his house and brought it all back to the family home. Dad took him to our family doctor that we all would go see as kids. He ran a lot of test on him and he came back positive on Coeliac Disease.
None of the other doctors had bothered to take a test for coeliac disease because it wasn't very common in this time. Once he got the test back, it showed that my brother had no more immune system, his whole gut had been destroyed from the 2 years of eating gluten while he was unaware this was stripping his gut. He was told this in the morning and the doctor said what did you have for breakfast and he said wheatbix! This is literally 99% wheat breakfast. So any fruit or vegetables, fish or meat he was eating he wasn't getting the vital nutrients he needed from these products because his gut was destroyed.
It was all a learning curve for the whole family, we had to accommodate for someone who couldn't even get a crumb on gluten on his meals otherwise he will become very sick. He had to get a seperate toaster, frying pan, muffin tins to prevent any cross contamination. We began looking at the back of products to see if it contained wheat. Checking stabiliser 328, and stabiliser 114 to see if they were derived from wheat.
The more I did this the more I began to understand that the packaged food on the shelves wasn't just what it said it was. It is filled with thickeners, stabilisers, gums and so many more chemicals that clearly can't be good for you.
Our family is pretty healthy in general, we live a full life, and usually use mainly whole foods, bake our own bread, cakes and source our meat off the farm. But even after our brother being diagnosed with coeliac disease we restricted our packaging food to bare minimal and began to live a lifestyle like he had too. It got my interested in food and what really is in all the packaged food we call 'food'. Is it food?
This got me very interested in the food in supermarkets. I began thinking if you can buy the product in a packet at the store you can make it yourself, probably for a cheaper price, and better tasting and better for you. So I cut out the muesli bars I used to buy. I began experimenting with recipes for muesli bars. It was so much cheaper to make your own, that is something I noticed muesli bars and super expensive to buy for what they are (oats, chocolate, dried fruit) and usually the brought muesli bars and filled with lots of sugar. So they end up tasting like your eating a chocolate bar with oats as opposed to a muesli healthy bar.
Crackers, I began making my own, which was tastier and I could reduce the salt intake by a fair bit. The ones you buy in the packets have a tone of salt in them. Bread is probably the easiest to make of your own, you don't need a bread machine, just two sturdy hands that want to work out a bit.
Salad dressings is another one where they are filled with tones of thickeners and enzymes. You can easily make your own with regular ingredients you will have around your house. Pizza bases, make your own so easy to and they taste so much better. Having my brother diagnose to coeliac disease opened my eyes to how much our food is processed and how so many of us are lacking major nutrition because of the food we are eating.
A lot of making got tailored to gluten free once he was diagnosed so he didn't feel like he was missing out. At the beginning I thought it is so hard to make gluten free because gluten is the main binder and is what keeps everything together. But with lots of research and trail and error I found binders that work well that are gluten free.
These little madeleines are perfect little treat to have with your morning cup of tea/coffee.
Recipe:
Vanilla Bean Madeleines
Ingredients:
3 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 1/2 cups gluten free flour
1/2 Tablespoon baking powder
225g butter, melted
Glaze:
1/2 cup icing sugar
2 Tablespoons orange juice
Method:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
In a large bowl whisk together eggs and sugar until light and frothy.
Add milk and whisk till combined.
In a seperate bowl sift flour and baking powder.
Add the dry ingredients steadily to the egg mixture and mix well.
Drizzle the melted butter to the egg mixture and mix until you have a smooth batter.
Grease your madeleines tray, with butter to get into all the grooves and then a dusting on GF flour.
Transfer your batter to a piping bag (this will make it easier to distribute the batter more evenly and cleaner.
Pipe the batter so it is close to being levelled with the top of the tray. About 3/4 full.
Place in the oven and cook for 9-12 minutes. Or until the edges are nicely browned and the humps have set.
While the madeleines are cooking, whisk together icing sugar and orange juice to make the glaze.
When are finished cooking, remove them from the oven. Whack the tray against bench and the madeleines should pop out.
Transfer to a wire rack to cool, hump side up.
Once cooled dunk the patterned side into the glaze, transfer the madeleines onto another tray glaze side up.
Dust with icing sugar and sprinkle some orange zest on top of the madeleines.
Wooh la, gluten free goodness!
