Xanthan Gum – My Excalibur

In my last post I briefly mentioned xanthan gum and I do mean briefly.  I totally did a disservice to both xanthan gum and you.  I really wanted to post more about it and its’ importance in baking, but my last post was well over 1,200 words.  Seriously, how long can I expect all of you to stick with me before you think, “Enough already Brenda, pleeeeease, just sign off!”  So I will now give xanthan gum the respect it deserves & you the reason it is key to baking gluten-free.

But first, a little background on my history with homemade baked goods.  My mother’s mother was an avid baker.  She baked bread weekly, as well either sugar or molasses cookies, the kind that you roll out and cut with a cookie cutter.  These were not your average cookies.  These cookies were literally 4” in diameter with scalloped edges and either a raisin or a red hot cinnamon candy in the center. (I actually know the dimension because I have Gram’s cookie cutter & I just measured it to be sure.)  When staying at grandmas, as long as we ate all of our supper, dessert was a dish of sauce (fresh cut up fruit) and 2 or 3 cookies. Gram’s  homemade bread and giant cookies are just two of my favorite memories of her.

While my grandma loved to bake, my mom had no passion for it.  She didn’t really believe in dessert.    In fact if we had cake when there wasn’t a birthday at the house we didn’t even frost it.  Frosting was for birthday cakes.  Good news was that there were nine of us in the house and mom always baked and frosted a birthday cake for each of us.  She would also occasionally make strawberry shortcake, pudding pies or chocolate chip pan cookies.  And then there was always that one special day in early December.   Her friend Elaine would come to our house and the two of them would spend the entire day making Christmas treats, cookies and candies.  When we arrived home from school, the house smelled phenomenal and every flat surface in our kitchen was covered with beautiful, delicious treats.  Between my grandma’s cookies and Mom and Elaine’s Christmas treats, I developed a love of delicious and pretty cookies.

Now my husband’s background with baked goods was quite different.  He grew up in a house with an always full cookie jar and daily dessert. He had and still has a terrible sweet tooth.  You should have seen his face the first time he was served cake without frosting, asking, “Did your mom forget to frost the cake?”  You really should have seen his face when I replied, “It’s nobody’s birthday, why would we frost the cake?”  I honestly didn’t know that people frosted a cake just because and he had no idea that cake could be served without frosting!   So, when we married I had to do some soul searching.  To bake or not to bake, that was the question!  Baking won out.  I enjoyed baking and I wanted my kids to have homemade cookies every week, besides I like cookies too.  I became an expert pie maker – single and double crusted.  I even won 2^nd place in a pie making contest at our church festival one year. We didn’t have daily dessert after our evening meal, but we always had a full cookie jar.  I was the woman that would bake and hand out freshly baked cookies to the plumber or electrician that happened to be working at our house that day.  That’s how much I enjoyed baking!  And Christmas cookies…man I could bake beautiful and delicious Christmas cookies.  Then we entered the world of gluten-free baking.

I hadn’t found Dr. Fenster’s book yet, so I was on my own. I tried all my old recipes replacing regular flour with rice flour.  That really doesn’t work.  Everything seemed kind of gritty.  Nothing seemed to hold together.  Cookies crumbled, cakes were flat, crumbly messes, bread a disaster.  I tried gluten-free mixes.  They weren’t very good and they were expensive, especially because it seemed we threw out more than we ate.  Not sure exactly when, but at some point I discovered that gluten is basically the “glue” that holds everything together when baking.  While this little nugget was helpful, they didn’t tell me what I needed to do in order to replace the gluten.   Then I found, “Gluten-Free 101: Easy, Basic Dishes Without Wheat” by Carol Fenster, Ph. D. https://www.amazon.com/Gluten-Free-101-Basic-Dishes-Without/dp/1889374083 which gave me the key to gluten­-free baking – Xanthan Gum!  What does it do?  It helps keep the baked goods from crumbling. (Seriously, that’s her explanation.)  It was this simple, yet profound statement that made my baking world open up again.  Still to this day, not everything I bake turns out well.  I bake cake and brownies from a mix, cookies from scratch, and a good pie still eludes me.  In fact I don’t have a large variety of items that I can bake, but I have a few items I’ve mastered and I occasionally try a new recipe.  Below I have one of my favorite, tried and true, recipes.  Thumbprint Cookies.  It’s a bit like a shortbread cookie, but the jam that I put on top sweetens it up just enough.  I’ve taken pictures so you can see how the dough should look, how large the cookie balls are, and the final result.

 

Below is my version of the recipe with the changes necessary for our food allergies.

Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Egg-Free Thumbprint Cookies

¼ cup packed brown sugar                 ¼ cup shortening

¼ cup Earth Balance Buttery Spread   ½ teaspoon vanilla

Ener-G Egg Replacer equivalent to one egg (instructions for use on back of box)

1 cup Carol’s Gluten-Free Sorghum Flour Blend (recipe in 2^nd post)

¾ cup crushed walnuts

Jelly

Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix brown sugar, shortening, buttery spread, vanilla and egg replacer.  Stir in flour until dough holds together, shape into 1” balls.  Roll each ball in walnuts.  Place about 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet (I use parchment paper on cookie sheets.).  Press thumb deeply in center of each.  Bake until light brown, about 10 minutes.  Immediately remove from cookie sheet, cool.  Fill thumbprints with jelly.  About 2 dozen (I make my cookies bigger than Betty does.)

Betty Crocker  recipe calls for rolling balls in egg white before rolling in nuts.  Not necessary, the nuts will stay on, but if you can use eggs it does give the cookie a bit of a shine.

Why do I us Earth Balance Buttery Spread for baking?  A few years back while at a Whole Foods in Chicago, I met a woman who delivered her gluten-free, vegan baked goods to the store weekly.  She had a table with samples.  I tried a cupcake and loved it!  She told me she only bakes with Earth Balance Buttery Spread and I was sold.  You can use another dairy-free butter if you have a favorite.  Word of Advice: Careful with any of these dairy-free spreads, they tend to be a little oily, so it’s better to go a little light on the “butter” than heavy.

I use Ener-G Egg Replacer.  There are quite a few different egg replacers out there, but I have pretty good luck with it and it’s easy to use.  Also easy to find in most Kroger, Meijer and health food stores.

I will also mention that when baking gluten-free, I prefer to use a glass mixing bowl.  It may all be in my head, but to me, the gluten-free flours have an almost “metallic” smell to them.  I felt as if when mixing the ingredients in a stainless steel bowl, whatever I was baking had a slight metallic taste to it.  While the glass mixing bowl doesn’t completely eliminate this for me, it does help.

 

I have to apologize for the amateur photos and I also have to admit I’m not much of a techy.  When I checked this post before publishing, the pics were right side up and now they aren’t right side up in the actual post and I can’t figure out how to flip them.  I may get one of the kids on that.

Thanks for stopping!

Brenda

Disclaimer:

These recipes and tips are not guaranteed to work or be safe for everyone. Allergies are extremely complicated and vary for each individual. It is still your responsibility to read labels to ensure your safety. I cannot be held liable for any ill effects from using my tips to avoid your allergies. (Sorry guys, I don’t foresee any problems, but Momma’s gotta cover her backside, ya know? Just read your labels!)