Cute Easter Bunny cookie tutorial

This delightful Easter bunny tutorial is a quick and easy solution when you've loads of cookies to do and hate doing faces! - it's great to do with kids too. Click on the photos to enlarge and print

New Goodbye Gluten recipe book available at Kiwicakes

Don’t forego your favourite foods. Goodbye Gluten is a mouth-watering collection of gourmet and everyday gluten-free recipes that you will want to share with family and friends. This fabulous new boo is available from Kiwicakes here 

90 easy-to-follow gluten-free recipes

Tested to perfection

Fail-safe, four-ingredient flour mix

Everyday favourites

Traditional Christmas recipes

Children’s birthday party ideas

About the book

Food brings people together but, in the case of those with coeliac disease, it can set people apart. Goodbye Gluten bridges the gap with tasty, regular food that can be enjoyed by everybody. 

The secret of its success lies in the flour mix around which the recipes are based. Commercial gluten-free flours can vary greatly, yielding different results. Made from inexpensive, easy-to-source ingredients, the flour mix recipe used in Goodbye Gluten will work successfully every time when used for the recipes in this book. 

All 90 recipes have been tested multiple times for taste and consistency, with author Sally Holland mastering favourites that are notoriously difficult to perfect without wheat flour, including shortbread, sponge cake and pastry. 

Christmas and children’s birthday parties – occasions that can be challenging when you have a coeliac at the table - are given their own dedicated chapters. 

Goodbye Gluten is a must-have for anyone wanting to exclude gluten from their diet, be it for medical reasons or by choice.

About the author

When other little girls were playing with dolls, Sally Holland’s favourite toy when she was a child was a cake mixer. It was certainly a sign of things to come!

A self-confessed ‘foodie’, Sally launched her career in the food industry working in theWoman’s Weekly Test Kitchen in the 1970s, alongside the magazine’s iconic food editor Tui Flower. 

Thirty years later, having raised a family and retained her passion for cooking, Sally had to radically adapt her culinary skills when her husband was diagnosed with coeliac disease. Taking up the challenge, she drew on her home science background to create delicious gluten-free dishes that they could share with family and friends. 

Wanting to impart the knowledge she had gained to help others faced with the same dietary dilemma, she put her recipes into a cookbook that would provide a palatable path in saying: ‘Goodbye to Gluten’.

The gluten-free flour mix in Goodbye Gluten is the key to successful, consistent results every time. Not all gluten-free flours are the same. One brand can have a different mix of flours from another or, if two brands have the same flours, they can be in differing proportions. This flour mix, made from four inexpensive and easy-to-source ingredients, has been specially devised for the recipes in Goodbye Gluten.

Gluten Free Flour Mix

This is easy to mix up and is best stored in an airtight container in the pantry. I have used white rice flour and cornflour from maize not wheat. Xanthan gum is made from corn sugar and is used as a gluten substitute to give elasticity in gluten free baking. Tapioca flour is also known as arrowroot.

2 cups rice flour
1 cup tapioca flour
1 cup cornflour
2 tbsp xanthan gum

Sift all ingredients in to a large mixing bowl.

Using a wire whisk, slowly stir until well blended. Transfer to an airtight container.

Makes 4 cups.

Measurements

1 tsp = 5 ml
1 tbsp = 15 ml
1 cup = 250 ml
1 large egg = a number 7 egg

Oven temperates

Every recipe in this book has been tested using a fan-forced oven.

If you wish to use the conventional function on your oven, then you can either increase the temperature by 10°–20° C or cook for a little longer.

Oven temperatures and cooking times are a guide only as ovens are so variable.

As the name suggests, this is a dense fudgy cake with a lovely rich chocolate flavour. For the ultimate indulgence serve it warm without the icing, but dusted with icing sugar, adding a chocolate or berry sauce and thick cream on the side

Chocolate Mud Cake

SERVES 10

200 g dark chocolate
250 g butter
1 tbsp instant coffee granules
100 ml milk
1 ²/₃  cups gluten free flour mix
1½ tsp baking powder, gluten free
1 tsp baking soda
½ cup cocoa, gluten free
½ tsp salt
1 cup sugar
4 large eggs
1½ tsp vanilla extract
¾ cup sour cream

Chocolate Icing
50 g butter, melted
1 cup icing sugar, gluten free
3 tbsp cocoa

Preheat oven to 160° C.
Prepare a 23 cm cake tin by lining the base with baking paper.

Place the chocolate, butter, coffee and milk in to a microwave-proof bowl and heat until the chocolate and butter are melted.

Mix well and set aside to cool.

Sift the flour mix, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa and salt in to a large mixing bowl.

Mix in the sugar.

Whisk the eggs, vanilla and sour cream together in a bowl. Add the cooled chocolate mixture and whisk to combine. Add to the dry ingredients and whisk to form a smooth batter.

Pour in to prepared tin.

Bake for about 65 minutes until a skewer comes out clean or the top of the cake springs back when pressed with a finger.

Allow to cool in the tin for about 10 minutes before turning out on to a wire rack to cool completely.

Spread with chocolate icing.

Chocolate Icing

Place all ingredients in a bowl. Beat in enough hot water to make a smooth creamy icing.

It took me a few attempts to get these right but the end result is fabulous, almost better than regular melting moments. You can vary the flavour of the icing as you wish. Passionfruit is lovely too, or even use a good raspberry jam as the filling. For passionfruit icing substitute two passionfruit for the lemon zest and juice.

Melting Moments

MAKES ABOUT 18

250g butter, softened 

½ cup icing sugar, gluten free 

½ tsp vanilla extract 

1 cup gluten free flour mix 

1 cup cornflour, from maize

Lemon Butter Icing 

1 cup icing sugar, gluten free 

2 tbsp melted butter 

grated rind of 1 lemon 

lemon juice to mix

Preheat oven to 170° C. 

Cream butter, icing sugar and vanilla until pale and creamy. 

Sift the flour mix and cornflour together and work in to the creamed mixture with a wooden spoon. This will take a while but keep mixing and a stiff dough will form. 

Roll mixture in to small balls. Place on baking trays lined with baking paper. Press lightly with a fork which has been dipped in gluten free flour. 

Bake for 15 minutes until the biscuits are just beginning to colour around the edges. Transfer to a wire rack. 

When cold sandwich two biscuits together with lemon butter icing. 

Lemon butter icing 

Place all ingredients in to a small bowl and beat together using as much lemon juice as needed to form a smooth creamy icing.

Do you struggle with Tappits & Clickstix lettering in icing or gumpaste?

If you do struggle, then this tutorial is for you. Tappits and Clikstix are quick and easy to use, when you know how. Click on the photos to blow them up, you can print off for easy reference.