Easy No Fuss Halloween Cupcakes-GF/CF

Peeps make the perfect Halloween cupcake toppers. A generous amount of frosting will keep your peeps standing upright. I made these for the first time last year with the ghosts after seeing some adorable ghost cupcakes made out of marshmallows covered in frosting. I even posted about them on my personal blog. Then I got a brilliant idea to just use peeps. No muss no fuss and they were thoroughly enjoyed.

When you pull the pumpkin peeps apart there is always a sticky edge. You can take care of this by pressing the exposed marshmallow in orange colored sugar crystals. You don’t have to do anything with the ghost peeps since they aren’t connected in the same way.

When I bought my peeps today I noticed that they also had “black” cats as well. If you have a few dozen cupcakes to make up for a Halloween party why not just top them with peeps and fun sprinkles? Even if you don’t have a party to make them for your children will no doubt love them as a special treat. They will enjoy helping you frost the cupcakes and decorating them with peeps and sprinkles.

Happy Halloween

Katrina

Technorati Tags: Halloween,cupcakes,Peeps,decoration

Betty Crocker Gluten Free Brownie mix

I have finally tracked it down. Betty Crocker's new Gluten Free Brownie mix. What I really wanted to know is what was in it. I wanted to know if it was dairy free as well as gluten free.

Here is the ingredient list: Sugar, Semi-sweet chocolate chips (sugar, chocoalte liquor, cocoa butter,soy lecithin, vanilla), cocoa processed with alkali, rice flour, potato starch, xanthan gum, salt. Contains Soy Ingredients.

My son has been asking me to make them since we put them into the shopping basket in the store. All that you add to this mix is margarine (butter if you can have it) and 2 eggs.

Upon getting home my son asked me to make then right away. He LOVES brownies. xoxoxoxox The mix is pretty straight forwar and you can make then in anything from an 8x8 to an 11x7 inch pan. Obviously the bigger then pan the thinner the brownies will be. I choose to put them in an 11x7 inch pan. You know to stretch them out a bit farther. The mix has mini chocolate chips in it so you have that extra bit of chocolaty goodness when you take a bite. Honestly I have had many good gluten free brownies. In some ways brownies are a bit more forgiving that some other baked goods are. I have to say that my son and I really liked these brownies. They hit our chocolate cravings right on the money! What I like about them is that this is a name brand and is fairly easy to get a hold of at a regular supermarket. The price was also resonable as well. I have purchased some gluten free mixes were more expensive and not neccessarily above an beyond in flavor. If you haven't tried it you should.

We also purchased the devil's food cake mix. I will be sure to let you know how that one is. Although you may have to wait a week or two. I am not one to have desserts around all the time. Plus with the boys going off to school next week, I will be left all alone with chocolate and that is never a good thing. Well, yes it is a good thing for my taste buds but not for my hips. ;)

They also make a yellow cake mix and chocolate chip cookie mix. One by one I will be trying all of them. I have not yet seen the yellow cake mix.

Vanilla Frosting mix

Makes a nice creamy frosting however, I have used it for so much more. Any time you have a recipe that calls for the item you are making to be coated in powdered sugar use this instead. It has vanilla in it and adds a bit of extra flavor. It is what I used for my marshmallows, used it in my peanut butter cups and I made some snow ball cookies coated in this. Quite tasty!!! MMmmmmmm Of course if you have powdered sugar and powdered vanilla you could put something similar together yourself. This contains powdered sugar, vanilla and sea salt.

My Gluten/Dairy Free Zebra Cake

First of all I feel I should acknowledge where I got the basic recipe that I modified to make this cake. http://amandainpitt.livejournal.com/6935.html I found this website while looking for a gluten free white cake recipe. It seemed to me that a Zebra cake is made from white cake with cocoa powder mixed into half the batter. I feel I have to add that while this cake turned out fine it did not work as a traditional Zebra cake with vertical stripes. The batter was still much to thick for that. However, I did layer it and ended up with horizontal stripes. This being my first attempt at a zebra cake I feel it was a fair attempt. My 6 and 4 year old boys really liked it. The flavoring was good. I am going to try to come up with a less thick cake recipe to try this again. For now this is what I came up with.

Here goes:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup Rice Flour (her recipe calls for white rice, I used brown rice since I had that on hand, you could also try sweet rice flour)

1/2 cup Sorghum Flour

2/3 cup Tapioca Flour

1/3 cup Potato Starch Flour

1 cup White Cane Sugar

2 teaspoons Baking Soda

1/2 teaspoon Salt

1 teaspoon Xanthan Gum

3/4 cup Shortening plus 4 tablespoons Water (she used softened butter or margarine)

3 eggs

1 1/2 teaspoons Vanilla

1/2 cup + 4 Tablespoons milk-any type (I used rice milk)

2 teaspoons oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 10 inch round pan or a 9 inch square pan. I also dusted my pan with rice flour to keep the cake from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Worked like a dream.

Combine the first 8 dry ingredients in a separate bowl.

Place shortening and water in a mixer bowl and beat until creamy. Add dry ingredient mix to shortening on lowest setting until combined. Your mixture will be crumbly, about 1 minute.

In small bowl, lightly whisk eggs and vanilla together. Add eggs to mixer and mix until smooth and thick, about 1 minute. Add milk and mix for 1 minute.

Now take half of your batter and pour into a separate bowl. Add to this:

1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 Tablespoons milk

What I did for layering my Zebra Cake. Since it wasn't runny enough to spread out, I decided to make several mounds of alternating chocolate and white cake mix. In the center I started with a tablespoon of white cake, then alternated between white cake and chocolate cake mix around it. Using a tablespoon at a time, layer white on top of chocolate and chocolate on top of white until you use all the batter.

Here is what mine looked like:

Ok, so I know this does not look pretty. I had already tried the traditional method for making a Zebra cake and my center mound just wasn't spreading out. What to do? So I decided to do six other mounds around it. The bottom layers alternating from white cake to chocolate. I also could have used a slightly bigger pan for this. My 10 inch spring form pan would have been better.
The batter was thick and I had a hard time spooning it on a tablespoon at a time. So this isn't going to be pretty from the top view. Maybe you will have better luck. In the end the layers did smooth out a bit so that they mounts would have made a fairly smooth top (If my pan had been bigger).

Bake at 350 for 40 to 45 minutes. Allow to cool in pan for about 10 minutes. Finish cooling on wire rack. Frost when cool (though this does not need frosting).

Here is how mine looked when cut into:

Gluten and Dairy Free Cheesecake

For Thanksgiving I made some cheesecake. It turned out so good. It is very easy to make. Thanks to the Gluten Free Gourmet for this one. Though she used real cream cheese in her recipe. This is my Dairy Free version of her Gluten Free recipe.

3 8oz packages of Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese (plain)

4 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon Vanilla

I recently found a new product that is a substitute for graham crackers. On the box they have a recipe for a cheesecake crust.

The recipe went something like this: crush crackers in food processor add 6 tablespoons of melted margarine and something like a 1/4 cup sugar (not exact on the sugar and I no long have the box). This recipe yields a very wet product. It is more the consistency of thick paste and you have to refrigerate it for an hour before pouring in your cheesecake mixture. I was a little worried about how it would turn out since it was so saturated with margarine. However, it yielded a very nice crust that didn't burn like other variations I have tried in the past. It really does a great job at passing for the real thing.

Directions for the cheesecake:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Prepare crust in a 10" spring form pan.

Soften the cream cheese and combine with eggs, sugar and vanilla. Use an electric mixer for this to get it nice and creamy. Once it is well blended, pour into prepared crust. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until set. Here is a key point I never knew until recently. Don't keep baking it until the center no longer giggles, you will over cook it and burn the crust and the top will crack. What I found is that it will look like the center isn't cooked. Unlike a cake it is ok that when giggled the center will move like set Jell-o. It will set as it cools.

When cool, refrigerate several hours before serving. I make mine the day before. Top as you would like. This cake serves 12.

Gluten/Dairy Free Cake and Frosting Mix at Costco

We found gluten and dairy free cake mix at Costco!!! For a really great price. The brand is Sof'ella Gourmet Natural Foods, Inc out of Los Angeles, Ca. Their website is http://www.sofellafoods.com/. In the package you get two cake mixes and two packets of frosting mix. We tried it out and made cupcakes for Halloween. I have not yet used the frosting mix, but the cake mix is very good. Moist and full of chocolate goodness. Yes I love chocolate and so does my oldest son. Seriously, I think that anyone would like this cake. Even if they are not on a gluten/dairy free diet. Here you see the finished cupcakes topped with white frosting, Halloween sprinkles and ghost peeps. For the record, my boys loved them too.

The mix calls for butter but I just used vegetable shortening (Crisco and added the amount of water the jar suggests). I have also found that when recipes call for butter I use either vegetable shortening or dairy free margarine. Be very careful with margarine and read the label carefully. Many brands still have milk proteins in them.