Gluten-free pumpkin pancakes (vs. waffles)

Here are some pictures of my yummy brunch! I am going ice skating now at Lynah Rink and then am going to do leatherworking all day, so I don't have time to post the recipe yet, but check back later on tonight!!!

By the time I got home last night, I was absolutely exhausted and starving, so I inhaled some cold leftover gluten-free pizza and then practiced poi for a little while before going to bed...

I really really love breakfast. The morning is my favorite time of day, and I have a serious love for pancakes. Since I can't eat gluten, my pancake intake has significantly declined, and while I have tried the Bob's Red Mill gluten-free pancake mix, I wasn't too big of a fan of it (or any store-bought mixes in general).

Yesterday morning was the perfect morning for a gluten-free brunch. The one thing I really miss about living with a bunch of people is being able to cook for everyone. Now, I usually cook for myself, and always end up with so many leftovers (which is good because I like leftovers), but cooking with other people or for other people is definitely better than cooking and eating alone.

I decided to make pumpkin pancakes and waffles from the same batter to see which would work better (I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE pumpkin!), and in the end, the taste-test and touch-test concluded that the pancakes were the definite winner.

The pancakes and waffles were both really good, but were very dense, much more dense than the light fluffy pancakes being advertised on IHOP commercials (however, I do remember that when making pancakes with 'regular' wheat flour, I did have dense pancakes sometimes). I should have added more milk to the batter, but was interested in experimenting with it. The batter was too thick to cook correctly in the waffle iron (I used the electric waffle iron, but I do have a cast iron stove-top one that I will test out next time), and came out soft but dense, and without the nice crispy waffle exterior. The pancakes were soft but dense, but still really good. I topped the waffles and pancakes with maple syrup, plain yogurt, bananas, and my homemade gluten-free granola (see previous post).


Next time, I think I will definitely either cut back on the flour mixture, or add more milk to make the batter MUCH more thin. But, if you like a dense, hearty pancake, here you go (I used the most popular pumpkin pancake recipe on Allrecipes.com as a reference to make these pancakes):

Gluten-free pancakes #1


½ cup white rice flour
¼ cup potato starch flour
¼ cup tapioca starch flour
½ cup buckwheat flour
½ cup almond flour
1 ½ teaspoon xanthan gum
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon ginger
pinch nutmeg

1 ½ cups milk
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon molasses
2 tablespoons maple syrup


Combine dry ingredients in a medium-sized mixing bowl, and wet ingredients separately in another bowl. Add dry to wet, stir together until combined.

Get out your griddle and heat it over medium heat. When it is hot (do the water test- if you drip a droplet of water on the griddle, it should dance and sizzle), put some butter on there and then scoop some batter on (since the batter is really thick, you will need to spread it out a bit). Cook for a few mins on one side, then flip over and cook on the other side until done :)

Fresh, homemade mozzarella

Last night, I went to Laura's to milk Clover, and Laura asked me if I wanted to stay and make some mozzarella with her. Hope and I made mozzarella once this past semester with Laura and her friend, Dee, and I have been wanting to make it again, so of course I stayed. Mozzarella is probably the easiest cheese to make, and it is really fun because you get to pull it (to form the stretchy strands) and can mold it into any shape you like (the first time I made mozzarella, I attempted a mozzarella braid which came out really nice):

First of all, you need milk. We used fresh, raw milk from the cow, but if you don't have access to a cow (many people don't, I'd imagine!) then you can go to the store and buy milk there. Just make sure it isn't ultra-high pasteurized.

Other things you are going to need include:

*A large, heavy-bottomed pot which can hold however much milk you are going to use

*A thermometer for lower temps (you are going to need one that has a range of at least 50 degrees Fahrenheit to 115-ish degrees)

*Rennet tablets (www.cheesemaking.com/store/p/108-Tablet-Vegetable-Rennet-10-Tablets.html)

*Citric acid (available online or at a local co-op grocery store/health food store)

*Lipase (www.cheesemaking.com/store/p/132-Lipase-Powder-Italase-mild-2oz-.html)


To make the mozzarella, make sure all of your milk is still fresh (smell it!) and then dump it all into the large pot. Turn the stove on low and begin heating the milk, stirring as you go. If you stir the milk and have a thick enough pot, the milk should not burn to the bottom of the pan. Laura has gas burners which are really great for making cheese because you can really control the temperature with the turn of a knob.

While your milk is slowly heating on the stove, keep an eye on the temperature, and measure out 1 1/2 teaspoons citric acid for each gallon milk you have into a little bowl or cup, a tiny bit of lipase into another bowl or cup (we used about 3 gallons of milk and probably 1/8 teaspoon of lipase), and a rennet tablet (or part of a rennet tablet- we used 1/2 a tablet for 3 gallons of milk) into another bowl or cup. Add a little bit of fresh water to each bowl, just enough to dissolve the citric acid, rennet, and lipase. Set aside.

Once your milk has reached 55 degrees, you are ready to add the citric acid and the lipase. Add them and stir. Continue to slowly heat the milk, stirring as you go.

Once your milk has reached 88 degrees, you can add the rennet, stir once, and let the milk sit for a minute. Then, start to stir again. This is where the magic happens! You start stirring, and the mixture feels like milk, then all of a sudden, it changes to a yogurt consistency and really thickens up, and then separates into curds and whey! This part is really exciting, and make sure not to stir the milk too hard or fast because it will break up the curds, and you don't want that to happen.

Continue slowly stirring the curds until the temperature reaches about 110 degrees, and they are really sticking together and are soft and stretchy. At this point, you can turn off the stove and strain the curds from the whey and gather them into a ball in your hand, squeezing as much whey as you can out of the mozzarella. Place each ball into a separate bowl, and once you have gotten all of the curds out of the whey, turn the heat back on, and begin to heat the whey until its hot enough that you can just stand to stick your fingers in it without burning yourself.

Turn off the stove, move the pot of whey to a counter top or table, and put a few of the mozzarella balls into the whey to warm up. Fish them out of the whey and if they are soft and pliable enough, start to pull and stretch! This is the fun part of making mozzarella :) You have to keep dunking the mozzarella into the hot whey to keep it nice and soft, and at this point, you can add about a teaspoon of salt (we used Kosher sea salt) to each ball. Add the salt, making sure to sprinkle it out evenly over a large surface area of the mozzarella, fold the mozzarella so the salt is in the middle of the cheese, and then put the cheese back into the whey to warm up again before you continue to stretch it.

After you have stretched it for a little while, form the mozzarella into a ball and place in a bowl of cold water. Continue to stretch the other mozzarella balls until you are done!

If you just so happen to have pigs, you can feed them the whey (mozzarella-making produces a LOT of whey) because Laura says that they love it, or you can just dump it outside or down the drain.

Now, you have homemade mozzarella, and can store it in an airtight container in your fridge, or freeze it for a later date! Yummm!

When I got home last night, I used the homemade mozzarella to make some homemade pizza (with my own sauce and crust, of course). I had thrown together some sauce in a crock pot before I went to Laura's house (roasted peppers, mushrooms, onions, garlic, spices), and when I got home, I attempted a gluten-free pizza crust.

I used a mixture of brown rice flour, cornmeal, garbanzo bean four, and 'sweet' white sorghum flour, but wasn't very happy with the end result. The dough didn't rise, and wasn't extremely tasty, but it wasn't too bad though. I will *hopefully* come up with some DELICIOUS pizza dough soon!

..wow, looking back, I now realize that I forgot to add a binder to the pizza dough (xanthan gum or guar gum)... I must have been tired last night!