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Blueberry Muffins

Last week the girls and I were at Costco and, as usual, we passed by their racks of enormous, delicious-looking muffins. I considered it for a second and decided to buy some. And since it’s a warehouse you have to buy two enormous packs of muffins, we chose apple streusel and chocolate chunk. Not that I could have any but it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that Travis and the girls could have muffins on Saturday morning for breakfast.

Sort of.

I sat the packs of muffins on the kitchen island which meant that anytime I did anything in the kitchen I had beautiful, gluten-full muffins staring me in the face. As the day wore on I began scowling at the muffins every time I walked by. I was starting to get the impression that I hadn’t bought those muffins for Travis and the girls at all. Apparently I’d purchased them because it was I that wanted muffins.

Dangit.

After considering and scowling at those muffins for an entire day and a half, I decided that I needed to make some sort of baked good. I checked my Pamela’s mix bag and I had barely over 1 cup of mix left. Drat! I could have made pancakes but I didn’t want pancakes, I wanted muffins! So I checked my bag of Cup 4 Cup, a gluten free flour that I haven’t talked about yet here at The Button Casa, and I had two full cups of flour. Surely I could make something with 2 cups, right? So I went through some recipes I had in a folder and I found a blueberry muffin recipe that had turned out great with regular flour and it required the 2 cups of flour that I happened to have on hand.

I think it was meant to be.

The really great thing is that while these were fabulous when I made them gluten free, my non-gluten free friends can make them too. Just use your favorite flour.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 3/4 cup white sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 cups Cup 4 Cup gluten free flour (or all purpose flour if you don’t want gluten free muffins)
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 1/2 cups blueberries

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease muffin cups or line with paper muffin liners.
  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Stir in the eggs one at a time, beating well with each addition, then stir in the vanilla. In a separate bowl, stir together 2 cups flour, baking powder, and salt.
  3. Stir the flour mixture into egg mixture alternately with milk. Fold in blueberries. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups. In a small bowl, mix together 2 tablespoons flour, brown sugar and cinnamon. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle topping over unbaked muffins.
  4. Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.

I highlighted step #3 because it’s important and I forgot to do it. The batter ended up climbing up my mixer attachment.

You can find Cup 4 Cup flour at Williams Sonoma exclusively. It’s a little pricey- $19.95 for 3 lbs.- but it’s by far the best flour I’ve worked with. I’ve used others to make things like pizza dough and it honestly felt like I was working with sand and the texture of the finished product tasted like a biscuit. When Travis tasted these muffins he said he couldn’t tell the difference between the ones I made and regular muffins…except these tasted better :) I think I’ll keep him around a while.

Mmmmm…..muffins.

If you click the link for the muffins you’ll notice that these are supposed to have streusel. Well, when I made them before I realized that the streusel recipe isn’t very good and since I was out of flour at this point anyway I just topped them with raw sugar.

And there you have it, gluten free blueberry muffins. Enjoy!

 

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Makin’ Biscuits

When I first realized that I was never going to be able to eat anything with gluten in it again I was sad. Really sad. I had a mental list ticking in my head of the things I would never be able to eat again…pizza, sub sandwiches, cake, waffle cones, biscotti, scones, muffins…you get the idea. It’s hard to believe it’s been about two years since I’ve had a waffle cone.

I love waffle cones.

I also love biscuits. I do live in the South after all.

I love biscuits with butter and honey, butter and jam, sausage gravy, just butter and if there’s another way to eat a biscuit then I probably love that too. Except red eye gravy. I’ve never tried it but it sounds disgusting.

So a few days ago I made gluten free biscuits using my favorite standby, Pamela’s.

Then I added shortening- you could also substitute the same amount of butter. I’ve tried it both ways and the ones with butter tasted buttery. Surprise!

Next I gave it a whirl in the food processor until it looked like this…

Then I added milk and gave it a whirl again. I love my food processor.

These are drop biscuits so I scooped them out and placed them on a cookie sheet that I’d sprayed with cooking spray.

Then I baked them for 14 minutes at 375, which gave me plenty of time to make some eggs to go with them.

I guess I’ll add eggs to the list of things I like to have with biscuits.

Here’s the recipe (it’s also on the back of the Pamela’s bag):

1 cup Pamela’s Mix

1/4 cup shortening (or butter)

1/3 cup plus 1 tbsp. milk

Then just follow the pictures.

The recipe as written makes 5-6 biscuits and since that’s  not enough for the biscuit lovers at The Button Casa, I doubled it and got 10 biscuits. They’re really quick and easy to make and are perfect for a nice weekend breakfast. Enjoy!

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Scones

I figure that if I’m going to have “Living Gluten Free” in my tagline I should actually post something about living gluten free. I’m not going to write out the “why” here, I’ve done that in another blog and you can find that post here.

When I first started eating gluten free I had no idea what I was doing. I loved to bake but after looking into how many different types of flours you need to blend to have a useable flour I got really overwhelmed. I figured I’d just live without baked goods forever. That was hard to think about considering that I love bread and baked things. I don’t have to have dessert all the  time but I do love pizza and bread and occasionally I really need a muffin or scone with coffee. I get a little pouty watching Travis have a scone and latte at Starbucks. I can have the latte and a raw granola bar which I don’t mind but I’d still like to have a baked good…biscotti, mmmmm. I haven’t had biscotti in about 2 years.

I decided pretty early on that baking from scratch wasn’t going to be something I was going to be able to do anymore (I’ve since changed my mind about that which I’ll write about later) since I’d tried some gluten free all purpose flour and it was like baking with sand. It made baking a chore although the things I made turned out okay. Then I decided I’d try some mixes. I hadn’t used mixes for anything except brownies in years so I wasn’t very optimistic that I’d like them. I’ve never been so happy to be wrong. I tried Pamela’s mixes first and I was so happy with the results. I’ve tried the vanilla and chocolate cake and her Baking and Pancake Mix. That’s what I’ll be highlighting today. I figured I’d start out with something easy and yummy.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Start with 2 1/4 cups of Pamela’s Baking and Pancake Mix. To that add 1 tsp. baking powder and 1/3 cup sugar then give it all a little stir. Just make sure that all the ingredients you use in your baking are also gluten free.

Next add 4 tablespoons of butter. The recipe says to cut the butter in using two knives. I’m much too lazy for that so I use a food processor. I cut the butter into smaller pieces first. Why? I either saw it on a cooking show or I dropped in the whole 4 tablespoons and it didn’t distribute evenly. I can’t remember which.

Then pulse several times to cut in the butter. It should look like this:

To that add 2/3 cup milk…

And a beaten egg…

Then give it a whirl until everything is combined. It should look like this:

And then we get to the fun part…chocolate chips! This recipe is on the back of the baking mix package and calls for a half cup of currants. I don’t ever have currants and usually us 1/2 cup of Craisins and 1/2 cup of chocolate chips. This morning though I was out of Craisins. Bummer. I’m using a whole cup of chocolate chips because I don’t want to bite into a scone that I’ve taken time to prepare and think, “Did I add chocolate chips to this?”. No, I’m going for seriously yummy chocolate here.

Add them to the bowl and give it 10-15 short pulses. I mean, really short pulses. You don’t want to have chocolate chip shavings in your scones.

If you’ve ever made scones before you’ll notice that this mixture is more wet than a traditional scone. These aren’t meant to be rolled out and cut but rather scooped and plopped (I believe those are the technical terms) onto a cookie sheet. It’s more like a drop biscuit. Have you ever had those? My Mom used to make them a lot. I love them. Anyway, my preferred method for getting these onto the cookie sheet is using a 1/4 cup measuring cup and a scraping spatula.

The directions say to, “Drop large, tall dollops of dough onto an ungreased baking sheet.” Make sure they’re spaced nicely because they’ll spread out a bit when they cook.

Then I like to add a sprinkle of raw sugar to the tops, just to make them pretty.

Bake for 15-17 minutes and you’ll have a bit of yumminess to enjoy with the coffee beverage of your choice.

Granted, these aren’t your traditional scones. They’re more moist, like a biscuit. I love that they’re easy to make though and they aren’t remotely grainy which can be a problem with baked gluten free items.

Here’s the recipe:

2-1/4 cups Pamela’s Baking ; Pancake Mix
1/3 cup  white sugar, Plus a little raw sugar for sprinkling on tops
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup chocolate chips
4 tbsp butter
1 large egg, beaten
2/3 cup milk

I really hope you enjoy these as much as I do.