You can search for a long time on the Internet but you could struggle to find a recipe for Gluten Free Dutch Apple Pie, believe me I have tried before and the search came up with a blank. There are many recipes for Dutch Apple Pie and many sites that specialise in Gluten Free recipes but none of them had Gluten Free Dutch Apple Pie details.
The reason is simple when you consider it, the basic ingredients of Dutch Apple Pie are already gluten free with the exception of the pie crust and it is there where we need to turn our attention.
The main ingredients for the apple pie are
- Your standard gluten free pie crust mix
- 5 or 6 cups of peeled and cored sliced cooking apples, not eating apples
- 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
- 0.25 cup of fine granulated sugar
- 0.25 cup of packed brown sugar
- 3 tablespoons of gluten free flour
- 0.25 teaspoon of nutmeg
The key ingredient to making this a Gluten Free Dutch Apple Pie and one that your family will want to eat is to use a gluten free pie mix. Often gluten free flours can be crumbly and dry. It is important that you use a flour mix that has been prepared for pie making. Your local supermarket or health store should have a selection of these. Remember this is a pie pastry not a cake mix.
Before you start you should preheat your oven to 375°F.
Whilst the oven is warming put the gluten free piecrust into a shaped pie plate. Then mix the fruit ingredients. Mix the sliced cooking apples with the lemon juice and add in the sugars, gluten free flour and spices (cinnamon and nutmeg).
Now pour the fruit mixture into the pie bowl and start to prepare the pie topping.
To finish off the pie and produce a serving that would make your grandmother proud you should use the following ingredients for the topping
- 0.75 cup of gluten free flour
- 0.25 cup of fine granulated sugar
- 0.25 cup of packed brown sugar
- 0.25 cup of butter or margarine depending on your preferences warmed to room temperature to help the mixing
In a separate bowl mix the topping ingredients until the mix has coarsely crumbled and then sprinkle this evenly over the apples in the other bowl..
Put the prepared pie into the oven and cook at 375°F for 50 minutes checking that it is turning a golden brown.
Then find some friendly family members and serve this Gluten Free Dutch Apple Pie to them, stand back and wait for the complements. Oh and by the way save some of the pie for yourself.
Gluten free desserts are plentiful. Some desserts, such as fruit, are naturally gluten free. Some are easy and simple to make – like Angel Delight. Other gluten free desserts are more complicated, like pies, cakes, trifles etc. But, just because you’re on a gluten-free diet, doesn’t mean you need to give up desserts, or spend hours in the kitchen making them!
Gluten is a protein present in many cereals, specifically in wheat, barley, oats and rye. I’ve outlined some practical tips and ideas for gluten free desserts – for yourself, for packed lunches, picnics and entertaining:
- Pancakes made with coconut milk and rice flour – accompanied by ice-cream, Nutella, or anything else you fancy!
- Rice-cakes with peanut butter
- Amaretti biscuits
- Angel Delight – a fast easy dessert which you can have in the cupboard. An instant dessert that can impress.
- Make waffles with a batter made with buckwheat flour and rice flour – select your favorite topping!
- Then there’s always fresh fruit – make it more appetizing by carving it into shapes, or cut into pieces and make a fruit salad – this could be accompanied by vanilla ice-cream or crème fraiche!
- Coconut macaroons are gluten-free. or make your own.
- Adapt your favorite trifle recipe by using some gluten free Madeira cake, or gluten-free biscuits and use all the other ingredients as they are to make a wonderful trifle. Once the cake/biscuit has been soaked in the brandy no one will know it’s a gluten free dessert!
- Bananas and custard. Custard is the easiest gluten-free dessert – either make your own, or by the instant version.
- Fill a meringue basket with fresh raspberries or strawberries and top with a spoonful of greek-style yogurt.
- Pan-fry canned or fresh pineapples slices with some butter and brown sugar and serve with ice cream…
- Fill the center of cored baking apples with mixed dried fruit, some butter and brown sugar. Microwave or bake till tender and serve with custard or ice cream.
- Make fruit kebabs and dip into chocolate sauce!
- Thick fruit milk shakes or smoothies
- Chocolate rice crispy or cornflakes cakes
- Home-made chocolate mousse.
- Roulades – chocolate or strawberry.
I hope the above provides you with inspiration for gluten free desserts, to be enjoyed by coeliacs and non-coeliacs alike!
The first surprise here is will the Gluten Free Chocolate cookies last until tomorrow, perhaps not. These yummy cookies will come straight from the kitchen with a soft runny centre if you eat them warm or, even better, a thick chocolate middle if you can wait long enough for them to cool and the children will leave them alone!
For an alternative if the chocolate is too much for all the family, try substituting milk or white chocolate in place of the plain chocolate or replace 25g (1oz) of the Gluten-Free Mix with 25g (1oz) cocoa to make double chocolate cookies!
The quoted measures below makes enough for 12 – 14 people, or one hungry child. It is not a hard recipe and from start to finish it should take you 15 minutes to prepare and then a cooking period of up to 15 minutes. Ample time to start again should anything go wrong.
The full ingredients for theis Gluten Free Chocolate Surprise are
- 250g (10oz) Gluten Free Cake Mix
- 12-14 squares plain chocolate
- 125g (5oz) caster sugar
- 1 medium egg yolk
- 125g (5oz) butter
To whip up this Gluten Free Chocolate culinary delight you should pre heat your oven to a temperature of 190ºC/375ºF/Gas Mark 5 and then follow the outline below
- Cream together the butter and the sugar and beat in the egg yolk ensuring that everything is well mixed.
- Once done carefully fold in the Gluten-Free Mix . Typically the mixture will be crumbly at this stage but that is no problem.
- Mix together to form a dough and knead thish for two to three of minutes until it is smooth on a surface lightly dusted with Mix.
- Gently Roll out the dough and cut out 12 circles with a cookie cutter and place these on a baking tray ready to go into the oven.
- Carefully insert a square of chocolate into the middle of each circular shape.
- Cut out another 12 rounds with the cookie cutter and use these to cover the chocolate, pressing the edges down lightly to seal it in.
- Bake all these in your pre-heated oven for 12-15 minutes until the dough is golden.
- Allow the cookies to cool slightly before transferring to a cooling rac, remember they are full of liquid chocolate.
- Sprinkle with icing sugar to serve
Then stand back before you get bowled over in the rush and covered in Gluten Free Chocolate.
If you are one of the many people in the world who like a drink with their meal or even go out at night for a drink and then finding gluten-free beer is very important for those with coeliac condition. There is no room for doubt over the gluten content, too much beer has an effect on most people producing headaches and upset stomachs and celiacs do not want to compound this by ingesting large amounts of gluten.
Although there are 1 in 500 people who are gluten intolerant there are few beers commercially available which are gluten-free. Breweries are commercial companies, targeting large market segments and catering for what they perceive as a small percentage of the population is not in their marketing plans. Having said this there is a growing awareness of the need for gluten-free beer and in 2006 in the UK CAMERA, the campaign for real ale, held its first international gluten-free beer Festival.
Many beer aficionados claim that beer can only be made with specific grains and unfortunately all of these contain gluten. Perhaps their expertise and advice is best placed to one side as we live in the real world and if you want a beer then you want a beer and shouldn’t let some pompous attitude stand in your way. This attitude can also cause problems as certain beers are claimed to be gluten-free because they have been filtered several times. Whilst filtration will remove many of the components which contain gluten this is not a 100% purification process and tiny amounts of gluten will remain to which you could be sensitive. The only solution is to take a beer which is guaranteed to be 100% gluten free.
Some people have overcome the problem by brewing their own gluten free beer. An important part of this process is to find gluten-free grains which are produced in a form for home brewing, this means that they are malted. This can be a problem as many grains are sold in the bird seed form which contain chemicals, and you need to contain a pure form, and information on malting grain is not commonly available.
Several smaller breweries have started to produce gluten-free beers, Green’s Discovery, Ramapo Valley Brewery, Bard’s Tale Beer, Fine Ale Club New France Beers, O’Brien Brewing, Hambleton Ales and in Italy Bi-Aglut to name some examples. Hopefully this represents really the beginning of a much larger number of breweries understanding the commercial opportunity in catering for people who need to maintain a gluten free diet.
Scoop – an internal memo from a chef to the kitchen staff about the gluten content of their meals.
Fried foods: i have been informed that some celiacs may be sensitive to foods that have been fried in the same deep fat that floured and breaded foods have been fried in. Many of our items are breaded using flour. For example, if french fries are cooked in the same shortening as breaded chicken, it is possible that minute particles of wheat flour may still be suspended in the oil and be deposited on the french fries. Unfortunately, this restaurant does not have a separate fryer for french fries. We use the same fryer for breaded foods. Therefore, we do not recommend eating fried items at this café.
Griddled foods food that is sauteed on the griddle (like breakfast potatoes) may pick up tiny grains of flour from pancakes that have been cooked on the same griddle. Please check with your doctor on this, as sensitivity varies from person to person. We can have griddled foods prepared singularly in a saute pan and get the same relative cooking effect. Please ask if concerned about crossover contamination.
Appetizers:
Fresh vegetable quesadillas – order them made with corn tortillas, without chipotle sauce. The fresh salsa is ok.
Salads:
A note on dressings: our mayonnaise contains “vinegar” as an ingredient but does not specify what type of vinegar it’s distilled from. Also, we use ketchup in some salad dressings (heinz and hunt’s) and mustard (french’s and grey poupon) which both contain “vinegar” on their labels, without further Specifying.
Lemon wedges and bottles of oil & vinegar are available, or you may bring your own dressing. This restaurant nonfat sweet & sour french dressing will be ok, as long as you can eat ketchup. Our other dressings may contain grain vinegar, soy sauce, worcestershire sauce and/or caramel coloring. Ranch dressing is very bad, it has hvp and yeast extract, so avoid this.
Cobb salad – ok (see note on bacon, in breakfast section) order without dressing
Zesty tostada chicken salad – ok, order without ranch dressing and without chipoltle sauce.
Chicken and fruit – ok, request broiled chicken
Salads are accompanied by a muffin or bread. You can order corn tortillas instead.
After you have been diagnosed with Coeliac condition you may wonder how you can eat gluten free and how much of a change to your normal habits this will be.
Gluten is a sticky protein that is found in a number of common grains such as wheat, oats, rye and barley and as such seems all pervasive appearing directly in many meals or indirectly by way of the sauce. Gluten appears in many food items and some places it occurs may surprise you.
Imagine trying to eat gluten free when you are not aware that if he coating on oven chips contains gluten! Beer is made from barley and hence is full of the substance and gluten free chicken or pork succumbs to the gluten invasion when coated in bread crumbs.
Notwithstanding the hidden nature of gluten it is possible to eat gluten free with just a small amount of care. The first thing you will need to do is to get into the habit of reading food labels. Many foods these days are labeled as “gluten-free” and this is a good start although you should note that the international standard for gluten-free products does not guarantee 100% abstinence of gluten. The standard is defined in the Codex Alimentarius and this defines a measure of less than and 200 ppm of gluten in the food product to be reviewed. Fortunately this is low enough to avoid creating problems for Celiacs unless they are hyper sensitive to gluten in which case they need to make special arrangements for their foodstuffs.
If we focus on what you can eat as gluten-free there are many alternative cereals and grains including rice, tapioca, sago, millet, maize, quinoa, buckwheat and sorghum. In addition the staples of the typical meal are gluten-free, that is to say milk, cheese, meat and common fruit and vegetables.
If you want to eat gluten-free cakes or bread then they will need to be made from a gluten-free flour such as corn, potato, rice, tapioca, maize, gram, sorghum, soya, chickpea and chestnut.
For a drink all fruit derivatives herbal and infusions will be gluten-free as is plain old tea and coffee with milk and sugar.
The list of foods to eat gluten-free is extensive and we could go on for many column inches although that will be subject to a separate article. From reading the list above you will come to realise that eating gluten-free is not such a variation from the normal and, with the exception of the substitution of some alternative grains and flours, these foodstuffs are those eaten by most people on the planet.
Often people confuse coeliac condition, a wheat intollerance with wheat allergy and they are really talking of two separate things as we will describe below.
People with coeliac condition need to maintain a gluten free diet, gluten is commonly found in wheat and hence they have an intollerance to gluten which is perceived as a wheat intollerance.
The intollerance relates to gluten, a component of wheat and also included in rye, oats and barley. Whilst diagnosis rates vary from country to country and even region to region they are typically in the region of 15% of the population. Sometimes wheat intollerance displays itself as an immediate reaction to gluten in the diet with vomiting and nausia coming on a matter of hours after ingesting gluten. At other times the wheat intollerance can be less dramatic and the coeliac will feel drowsy and have an upset stomach perhaps for 48 hours after ingesting gluten.
Wheat allergy is a different reaction entirely. An allergy to wheat is quite rare and produces a more immediate and a more dramatic reaction. This is typical of all immune system reactions and you would tend to see difficulty in breathing, coughing and violent vomiting.
Whilst therefore a wheat intollerance has a less dramatic impact on the person with coeliac condition they must maintain a gluten free diet if they are to thrive and lead a normal life. That is to say that their intollerance extends beyond wheat as it is caused by gluten.
People with a wheat allergy, having an auto-immune response must take great care in avoiding wheat in their diet. They should also ensure that they explain their condition to colleagues and have any medical treatment they require, which must be administered immediately, to hand. They should also carry a medical bracelet which would explain their condition should an attack be suddenly experienced.
The reaction to wheat often leads to a question of is it a wheat allergy or wheat intolerance, but as you can read the underlying causes and the medical reaction are different.
Read this internal memo recently from a restaurant and their recommendations for visiting Celiacs.
This list shows specifically what can be ordered from each menu category. If it’s not on this list, you may assume that it is made with wheat flour, caramel color, grain vinegar, or with a flavoring base that includes hvp or msg or both, and it is produced in a facility that manufactures items using wheat gluten.
Avoid all muffins, quick breads, dessert items, soups, sauces, salad dressings and marinades from mimi’s restaurants, as they are made in a facility that utilizes flour and wheat by-products. Food service manufacturers change their formulas quite frequently, so what has no hvp today might have it tomorrow.
Occasionally you’ll come across a new server who will be unfamiliar with our liberal substitution policy. Our managers are always present and always happy to help just ask for a manager if you don’t see one. We are always happy to make substitutions for anything. Most of our guests get “creative” and we’re very good at fulfilling special requests in the kitchen. Please direct your allergen requirements directly to a unit manager. Due to the large quantity of menu items at mimi’s, we want to ensure your saftey, while providing you with mimi’s own great tasting food and service.
You can order just a side order of anything we have in the restaurant. If you want just a piece of chicken or meat, or just a cup of yogurt and a wedge of fruit, or a little plain green salad please ask. It is something we do quite frequently.
It would also be a good idea to take a good look at your plate when it’s delivered to your table. Occasionally, during the hustle and bustle, it’s quite possible for a server to pick up the wrong plate by mistake; or for a chef to mis-read a hastily entered check.
Bon appetit! Please don’t hesitate to let us know how we can better serve you.
Please note that the companies we buy food products from do change formulas from time to time. If in doubt, please don’t eat it. If you’ve ordered the wrong thing by mistake, please don’t be embarrassed to send it back. We will never charge our guests for something they didn’t eat.
At least it shows they are aware and are trying to help.
It is possible to eat gluten free at Mcdonalds if you are careful about the types of food you choose and make sure that the Mcdonalds restaurant is following their laid down procedures. As with all things in life it is impossible to give a 100% guarantee and so you will need to exercise due diligence yourself but in general you can eat menu items which are gluten free.
The fries are cooked in a separate frier and are not coated with any substances containing gluten. Provided that you find the operators are taking care to avoid cross food contamination, for example with the buns, then you will find that they are gluten free and safe to eat. This previous statement of course excludes any concerns that people may have over the preservatives in McDonalds food and we are not making any comment on this.
Whilst, at first thought, the burger buns would not be gluten free at Mcdonalds this only applies to the bread of the bun and it is possible for you to eat the meat part of the burger served separately as this does not contain any gluten. This is a great way of allowing a child who needs to eat gluten free to participate in a happy meal or McDonalds birthday party with other children provided that the meat burger does not touch any bread products before or after cooking
The soda, typically Coke or orange fanta are also gluten free as is the milk.
Some obvious foodstuffs which are not gluten free are, as previously mentioned, the bread buns and the chicken nuggets where the coating contains gluten. The ice cream is gluten-free although you need to be careful that there aren’t any additional items inserted in this such as wafers or biscuit products.
For a coeliac, eating out carries risks of gluten contamination in any restaurant and McDonalds carries similar risks. McDonald’s is an international franchise and you need to be careful that you do not assume that every restaurant is run in exactly the same manner, your local McDonalds may be completely gluten-free for the items outlined above but a new franchise established in a small town may not give the same results. It is better to be safe and ask. And if the operator is doubtful ask to speak to the manager and if they do not give you confidence then leave the restaurant, the risks are not worth it.
Taken occasionally, or participating in the infrequent children’s party, you will find that you can eat gluten free at Mcdonalds and enjoy yourself in the same way that all non-coeliac customers do.
Scary food, blood red tomato soup with with witches fingers. Yes this is a Gluten Free Halloween treat for children and we will take a standard brand cream of tomato soup and decorate it to look like a spider web accompanied with witches fingers.
The Gluten Free Halloween recipe below will make 4 portions and from start to finish it should take you at most 30 minutes of cooking time, but do keep looking at the fingers to make sure that they do not burn. Before you start you should heat the oven up to 220°C , 425°F/Gas Mark 7
Our ingredients cover the soup and the fingers. For the soup you will need
- 150ml/ 1/4pt Carton single cream
- 2 Large cans cream of tomato soup
For the witches fingers you need to get
- 250g/ 9oz of suitable Bread Mix
- 1 x 5ml tsp Dried yeast
- 50g/ 2oz Ground rice
- 50g/ 2oz of grated mature Cheddar cheese
- 25g/ 1oz Pumpkin seeds for the witches hand warts
- 1 x 5ml tsp Mild paprika
- 175ml/ 6 fl oz Hand hot water
- 1 x 15ml tbsp Mild olive oil
- 25g/ 1oz pecan halves for the witches nails
First you need to prepare the gluten free whitches fingers.
- Combine the gluten free flour mix and ground rice in a medium size bowl. Also stir in the yeast, paprika, olive oil and half the cheese.
- Add the warm water to this mix and using a large fork stir the mix untilit has combined to a stiff batter.
- Spoon the mix into a squeezy tomato ketchup bottle with plastic lid or into a piping bag fitted with a plain nozzle to create a piping tool.
- Pipe the fresh mix out into finger lengths and sprinkle these with the remaining cheese. Push in pumpkin seed warts randomly over the fingers and position a pecan nail onto the end of each finger. Sprinkle all this with the remaining cheese.
- Cover the fingers with oiled cling film and leave to prove for about 40 minutes until slightly risen they are now ready for cooking.
- Remove the film and cook these gluten free fingers until golden.
Serving a Gluten Free Halloween meal is the important part to maintain the atmosphere, remember this is a haloween meal and should be scarey.
- Warm up the tinned soup and pour it into some haloween style bowls.
- Pierce the foil lid to make a smallpouring hole in the cream carton.
- Pour the cream into concentric rings on top of the soup to make a web pattern.
- Drag a knife from the centre of the ring out to the bowl edge at regular intervals to feather the rings to look like a spider web.
- Put a small gluten free biscuit at the center shaped like a spider
- Serve soup accompanied by the cooked witches’ fingers.
We hope that your Gluten Free Halloween meal went down well and no one got turned into a frog.