Gluten Free, Dairy Free "Clean" Granola Bars

This recipe is an amendment to my original Fat Free Granola bars. It is Gluten Free, Dairy Free and Egg Free. And I am just starting on my clean eating journey so I believe it can be considered clean with a few adjustments.

So here's the recipe, enjoy!

Gluten, Dairy and Egg Free Granola Bars

3 cups of rolled oats*
1/2 cup gluten free flour
1 cup ground flax seed
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup of honey (may need 1/4 cup more if it does not blend evenly)
3 to 6 tbsp of almond milk

Here you can add nuts, coconut, sesame or sunflower seeds and dark chocolate chips.

Spread onto a greased or parchment covered cookies sheet and pressed down into pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 mins until the edges start to get brown. Let cool completely and cut into long rectangles or squares.

*make sure they are certified gluten free

Gluten Free Graham Crackers

Can't make gluten free cheesecake or nanimo bars or smores without graham crackers. It's far more economical to make them than buy them at $6 a box, yikes!

1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
4 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp honey
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup of milk (low fat okay, non fat not okay)
1 1/2 cup all purpose Gluten free flour (I use Bob's Red Mill)
3/4 tsp xanthan gum
1/3 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder

Cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add honey, vanilla and milk, mixing after each addition. Add flour, Xanthan gum, salt, baking soda, baking powder until well combined.

Refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight. Roll out between two pieces of plastic wrap (may need to separate into two batches). Rechill in fridge for another 20 to 30 minutes. Cut into squares, and poke tops with a fork. Place on baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 10 minutes, until the crackers are crisp. They puff up a bit but don't spread out too much. All them to cool completely before handling.

Cheesecake!

(Anything this good deserves an exclamation point)





I made a batch of gluten free mini cheesecakes for Christmas. It all started with the graham crackers. I had to make gluten free graham crackers, which didn't turn out too bad but sadly I did not get a picture of them. I borrowed a food processor from a friend (yay for communal sharing) and made the crackers into crumbs. I will post the graham cracker recipe after this post.

Cheesecake


3 cups of graham cracker crumbs
2 tbsp of soft butter

Mix in a large bowl. Line mini cupcake pans with paper liners, not using the liners will result in the cakes sticking to the sides. Spoon a bit of graham crumbs into the bottoms and press down to make it flat.



In a mixing bowl, soften;

two 250gr packages of plain cream cheese

Add:

1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix and then add:

2 eggs

Mix until smooth. This is when I divided the mixture into three separate bowls and added food colouring. Spoon into lined cupcake pan. These do not expand much so no need to worry about them overflowing while baking.

Bake in a 350F oven for 20 minutes, for mini cakes, 40 minutes for a whole pie-sized cheesecake.



Refrigerated for minimum 3 hours before serving. You can add a berry sauce on top before serving or keep them plain like I do for easy entertaining.

First Loaf of Gluten-Free Bread

Last weekend was Thanksgiving and I was desperate to still have turkey with homemade stuffing. As convenient as buying bread off the shelf is right now, paying $6 a loaf for gluten free bread is not my idea of a good buy so I decided to finally take a crack at making my own gluten free loaf.



It worked! There was this amazing freshly baked smell, something I had been missing and it actually seemed a bit easier to make than regular bread, just with a few extra ingredients. The stuffing turned out wonderfully and we had our regular Thanksgiving dinner. I used cornstarch in the gravy instead of flour. The only thing missing was a apple dessert of some sort. We opted for ice cream because I just didn't have time that weekend for dessert making.