Gluten-Free Oatmeal Cookie Bars

OATMEAL COOKIE BARS 

(Gluten-Free)

INGREDIENTS

  2 cups gluten-free flour mixture
  2 cups gluten- free rolled oats
  1 1/4 cup brown sugar
  ¾ teaspoon baking soda
  ½ teaspoon salt
  2 sticks salted butter, melted and slightly cooled (16 Tbsp)
  12 oz semisweet/milk chocolate chips
35 soft caramel candies
6 Tbsp milk


INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Sift the flour. Combine the flour, oats, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Melt the butter, let it cool, and pour into the mixing bowl with the dry ingredients. Stir until a soft dough forms. It should be crumbly. If your dough is too wet and heavy, add a little more flour until the dough is crumbly.
2. Grease* the bottom of a 9X13 baking dish. Press ¾ of the dough into a 9x13 baking dish. Put aside the remaining ¼ for topping. Bake for about 15-17 minutes. (Gluten-Free flours don't brown like wheat flour does.) 
3. While crust is baking, unwrap caramels and melt in the microwave with the cream. Microwave at 15 second intervals and stir until the mixture is smooth and pourable. (You also can do this step in a double-boiler.)
4. Spread the entire 12 oz bag chocolate chips (minus the few you ate :-) over the baked crust. (They will start to melt if you pour them over the hot crust and that is OK.) Pour the melted caramel over the chocolate chips. Crumble the remaining dough with our hands and cover the entire top of the cookie creating a top "crust" (Do not press this crust down). 
5. Bake for another 15-20 minutes, (Remember it won't turn brown like wheat flour does.) Let it sit and completely cool. It needs to be completely cooled off to be able to cut into bars. Eat! Yummy!

*Gluten-free baked goods tend to stick to the pan. We use a homemade "cake release" recipe to grease our pans. You mix together; 1 cup gluten-free flour mixture, 1 cup shortening, 3/4 vegetable oil. Mix together and store in an airtight container. Coat the bottom the sides with this release.

 Step 1: Gather all the ingredients

(forgot the salt in this picture)

Step 2: Add the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl. Be sure to sift flour first.

Step 3: Pour melted butter over dry ingredients and stir together.

Step 4: Grease the bottom of the pan with "cake release."* 

Press mixture into the bottom of the pan to make crust. Bake crust.

Step 5: Cover entire crust with chocolate chips

Step 6: Melt caramels and pour over top of chocolate chips

Step 7: Cover the entire top with crumbled dough as a top crust 

(Do not press it down)

Step 8: Let it completely cool before cutting. 

ENJOY!!

12 Days of Gluten-Free Dessrts

Welcome to the 12 Days of Gluten-Free Desserts

     Tomorrow December 9th, 2013 starts our First Annual 12 Days of Gluten-Free Desserts! My daughters and I are looking forward to baking and sharing with you 12 delicious gluten-free dessert recipes. When you bake these desserts and share them with your family and friends, they will never know that they are eating gluten-free! Our friends are always surprised, even though they know we ONLY bake gluten-free, that what they enjoying is actually gluten-free. THAT is what we like! We want ALL of our friends and family to enjoy our baked goods whether they are gluten-free or not.

MONDAY: December 9th

           Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Gluten-Free Biscuits

GLUTEN-FREE BISCUITS

Gluten-Free Formed Biscuits

     I admit I miss the ease of the pop-out of the can, pop into the oven biscuits. They are so convenient. But they are not gluten-free and they have all kinds of other ingredients in them.

     My husband is an excellent cook. I never liked biscuits and gravy until my husband made it homemade. Yeah, it is so much better than the stuff from the can. So since being gluten-free I couldn't use my pop-out of the can biscuits anymore. We needed to come up with a gluten-free biscuit recipe. Albeit it takes longer to make these, but it is worth the time to make it homemade and my daughter and I can eat them! 

     These can be made as a drop biscuit or a formed biscuit. I like mine to look like the regular biscuits and it makes a flatter surface for gravy. I use the English muffin rings I purchased online. They are very inexpensive and very helpful to make formed biscuits.

English Muffin Rings

     You can use this basic recipe and add cheese and garlic powder to it and spread melted butter with fresh garlic on top and you have gluten-free Red Lobster biscuits! ENJOY!!

Gluten-Free Biscuits

2 c. gluten-free flour 

2 c. corn starch*

2 tsp. baking powder

2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. salt

2 tsp xanthan gum

1 stick butter (chilled in freezer)

1 1/4 c milk

1 1/4 c water

1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar 

1 egg, beaten 

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Cover baking sheet with parchment paper to insure biscuits come off the sheet. Grease biscuits rings.

In a mixing bowl combine flours, baking powder, salt, baking powder and xanthan gum. (Gluten-Free flours do best when sifted.) Grate butter into the flour with a fine cheese grater. Mix the butter into the flour so not large ball of butter are left. 

Add apple cider vinegar with the milk before added the milk to the mix. Then add milk, water, and beaten egg to the flour mixture and mix.

Place enough batter in to fill the ring half way. Wet fingers with some water and lightly flatten the top of the batter to make a flat top which will create the formed biscuit. OR drop a large spoonful of dough on the parchment paper to make drop biscuits.

Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 mins until the biscuits don't look shiny anymore. They won't get that golden brown look like wheat biscuits do. Refer to the picture above to see the color of the finished biscuit.

*If you can do corn starch, you can substitute potato starch

Gluten-Free All Purpose Flour Mixture Recipe

It's all in the mixture!

     Successful gluten-free baking and cooking starts with the right flour mixture. Gluten-free flour is not the same as "flour." Most people think of "flour" as the all-purpose flour that you pick up at the grocery store. If a recipe calls for 1 cup of flour, you scoop usually scoop it out of the bag and then you have your flour for the recipe. Well gluten-free baking requires more than just "flour." 

     Have you heard gluten-free can be gritty or have no flavor or is plain "yucky?" That is usually because someone tried to bake with one gluten-free flour, usually just rice flour. Many companies are making gluten-free all-purpose flour and pre-mixes. These can be very expensive and have flours in it that you may not want. Some have bean flours in them, which upsets many people's stomachs. You can make your own and make it for a lot cheaper.

     To make a good tasting all-purpose gluten-free flour you need several different flours that you may not know even existed until you started your gluten-free journey. I am going to share with you the gluten-free flour mixture recipe that we successfully use to bake with everyday. When you make this mixture you can store it in an air-tight container in your cabinet. Since we used to use a lot of flour to run our bake shop, we purchased a food-grade 20-gallon storage bucket with a lid. You don't need such a big container. Something like the picture below will work fine. It doesn't need to be stored in the refrigerator.

      We use this flour mix 1:1 in any recipe we make; except for bread. 1:1 meaning if you have a well-loved regular wheat flour based recipe, you will replace this flour with the exact same amount of flour that the recipe calls for.This recipe is very simple.

Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour

    

Single recipe:

    

3- (24oz) bag Bob's Red Mill Brown Rice Flour

1- (24oz) bag Bob's Red Mill Potato Starch (NOT potato flour)

1/2-(20oz) bag Bob's Red Mill Tapioca Flour (NOT tapioca starch)

1 tbsp. xanthan gum

Double recipe:

6- (24oz) bags Bob's Red Mill Brown Rice flour

2-(24oz) bag Bob's Red Mill Potato Starch (NOT potato flour)

1-(20oz) bag Bob's Red Mill Tapioca Flour (NOT tapioca starch)

2 tbsp. Bob's Red Mill xanthan gum

  

Mix together in the container. Store in air-tight container. (We do store the extra xanthan gum in the fridge in a plastic ziploc bag.)

     We have always used Bob's Red Mill flours. I can not speak for other brands of these same flours. We know that these flours work and that no one has reactions to them, so we have always stuck with them. You can buy them at most local grocery stores these days. You can even order them online. If you plan on using this flour a lot, you can ask a local health food store to order you these flours in bulk. But for the average amount of cooking and baking, the single recipe is usually good enough. We have a family of 9, so we usually make the double recipe. 

     SOME recipes we bake, call for a little extra xanthan gum to make the baked goods not crumble. Since there is no gluten to hold things together, the xanthan gum is the binder. Some recipes need a little extra binder.

My favorite gluten-free restaurants

*Disclaimer*

This is based on my opinion and my own personal experiences. I am not being paid to share this.

     I have been on a gluten-free diet since January of 2007. When I started this diet no one had a clue what gluten was. It made going out to eat VERY difficult. I spent many hours explaining just how I needed my food to be prepared. One time I went to a restaurant and asked for no croutons and instructed that they make the Caesar salad in a clean, new bowl. When I got the salad it looked fine. I started eating it and got down to the bottom. EEK! There were croutons on the bottom on the salad. UGH. REALLY?? Since then I have always carried the enzymes called Gluten-Ease with me in my purse. It doesn't stop all the ill-effects I get from the cross contamination, but it does mitigate the effects. Once it pulled me out of a what looked like a "drunken" fog. I hadn't had a drink, but the gluten messed up my brain. I couldn't even remember what money was or how to drive. My sister-in-law was with me and drive us home. She said if I didn't know what was wrong with you, I would have thought you were totally wasted. Scary!

     From years of experimenting and either failing or succeeding, I have learned where I can and can not eat at. My all-time favorite sit-down restaurant is Outback Steakhouse. 

     Whenever I go out to dinner, we go to Outback. It is a running joke amongst my friends, "So... where are we going this time?" LOL! Everyone knows that it where I go out 99% of the time. I prefer Outback because I can order the Outback Special. It is $9.99 for a 6oz sirloin steak and two sides. I usually get a baked potato and a Caesar Salad, unless I am eating really healthy and than I get the steamed broccoli. I have ordered the Aussie Cheese Fries for years and never have reacted. Outback doesn't say they are gluten-free but from my experience I have always been ok. That is NOT to say they are "healthy" but they sure do taste good! 

     I am a hot-foods person. I feel much better when I eat a hot meal. Plus I have learned that I need to eat animal protein at every meal. I have tried so many different diets and have come to know what works for me. Outback provides an expensive, protein-based, healthier meal (especially if you get the salad and broccoli.) 

     The next best thing about Outback is it is the only restaurant that i have been to that has a gluten-free dessert that isn't just ice cream or fruit. The Chocolate Thunder From Down Under is a flour-less, gluten-free brownie with nuts. It has a huge scoop of ice cream, fresh whipped cream, and chocolate shavings on it. It is definitely too much to eat alone. So I only get it when I have people to share it with.

     Outback has a specific Gluten-Free menu if you ask for it. I get the same thing every time because I LOVE it. So my motto is, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"There are other gluten-free products they made

     Whenever you go out to eat, always make sure you inform the server that you have a gluten allergy. Restaurants are getting much better at knowing about gluten issues. Not all, but many. 

     I was told by our local Outback Manager that the Outback staff is trained on allergies and how to handle them. It doesn't guarantee anything, but it sure puts my mind more at east knowing everyone is trained about gluten-free procedures.

Gluten-Free Menu

Outback Steakhouse Website