gluten-free | Gladsome Lights

In this post I will share two recipes I’ve had waiting in my Recipes-to-Try folder, and recently did get around to. I loved them both.

I found Brazilian Cheese Bread here at The Traveler’s Lunchbox. The Portuguese name is Pão de Queijo. These little buns are said to be very popular with coffee for breakfast in Brazil. (The picture at left is not of these rolls. I was afraid that if I didn’t put a colorful picture there you might not keep reading. That picture is of the biscuits I tell about further down.)

There are many recipes for the cheese buns around, with different ingredients and techniques (This one at the San Francisco Examiner looks plausible), but I will tend to stick with the Lunchbox version, as mine came out so good. One thing non-traditional in that recipe is the use of butter rather than oil. And I do love butter. I did cut down on the salt in my recipe, by 50%.

They are quite unusual, in that they are made with tapioca starch rather than flour, and therefore are gluten-free, and chewy.

The first picture I took was of the sticky dough that one puts little globs of on parchment paper. This is the unappetizing stage. But just be patient.

The rolls puff up as they bake, and while mine did come out with some “horns” and such like, they were oh-so-tender and light, while at the same time moist and tasty. I noticed that the Examiner recipe does have you make balls of the dough, which would reduce the prickly nature of the crust somewhat. But my dough was not firm enough for that.

The thin crispy crust broke open to reveal an interior that was not doughy at all, but very cheesy, with a stretchy “crumb.” No need for extra butter or anything. One eater said they were “intense.”

We all noticed the likeness to mochi, the Japanese term for food that is chewy like this and often made with a highly-refined rice flour called mochiko. I think if you like mochi-anything, you would love these buns. I’ll tell you more about mochi in another post.

Mr. Glad doesn’t like mochi, and he didn’t like the Brazilian Cheese Breads. Too bad.

I put the leftovers in the freezer, even though the original recipes say to only bake as many as you need and to freeze the balls instead, etc. This morning we put them in the microwave for a few seconds and they came out quite delicious.

The other recipe I tried last week was Sweet Potato Biscuits. I would be happy to live off sweet potatoes, and because they are almost nutritious enough for that, I like to use them in as many ways as possible.

I was a bit skeptical about how flaky a biscuit could be with the addition of vegetables, but they passed that test. Buttermilk biscuits have been my standby, so these were sweet by comparison, but not overly so. They were enjoyed by all. [lost the recipe somehow while trying to edit it at a later date. Sorry.]

My dear husband goes to work very early in the morning, and doesn’t like to get up earlier still to fuss over cooking or eating breakfast. Nowadays I like to have some of these pancakes ready for him to easily heat and eat.

I found the original on a Zone Diet e-mail discussion list quite a while ago. A woman named Karen created and collected recipes that followed the principles of balancing protein, carbohydrates and fat at each meal or snack, and published them in a notebook called Karen’s Kitchen. Her original recipe doesn’t seem to be available online anymore.

I have adapted it and increased the quantities; I usually also double the recipe below, and freeze most of the results. I can never seem to make these pancakes come out very neat and uniform. The front of my griddle is too hot, the back is too cool, and the cakes want to get very brown from all the cheese in them. In this picture I had just put a little more butter on the griddle when I decided to take the picture; that is the butter pooling on my warped cast aluminum griddle on my not-level stove. Another thing that is not neat is my stovetop, as I somehow get little brown bits of pancake all over the place. I tried to crop them off so you wouldn’t see what a sloppy cook I am.

After years of making these, it only last night occurred to me to add some baking powder, to lighten them up. Karen’s recipe used only the whites of the eggs, and I’m sure the whole-egg version is heavier. As I made them successfully without baking powder for a long time, I put it down as optional, though I think it did help them to cook a little faster. I’m not sure if they were lighter in the end.

When I am frying these up, I find it really hard not to overindulge in testing and sampling them, I like them myself so much.

Power Pancakes

2 cups oat flour (this can be made by whirling uncooked oats in the blender.)
8 eggs or 16 egg whites
16 oz. low-fat cottage cheese
3 tablespoons sugar
4 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 tablespoon baking powder (optional)

Blend all ingredients except the oat flour in two or three batches in your blender or food processor; beat in flour until moistened. Cook on a greased griddle at a temperature a little lower than regular pancakes. They will be very brown.

When they are cool, I wrap them in waxed-paper packages of three pancakes, and freeze in a big ziplock bag. At night before bed, I set one package on the kitchen counter to defrost, and my husband heats them in the microwave in the morning and tops them with a little applesauce for a meal with serious staying-power.