As I continue my
journey to mastering gluten-free cooking, I decided to venture into the world
of baked goods. Specifically, I was trying to learn how to cook muffins, banana
bread, and other quick goodies that I can grab to eat on the go. Since they are
fairly expensive, hard to find in stores, and not very tasty, I thought – why
not just bake some from scratch?
Well let me tell
you… baking is MUCH tougher than cooking. I thought my recipes have gone fairly
well over the past few weeks. I have made stirfrys (and lots of them, now that
I have found these delicious rice noodles), pastas, burgers (homemade patties with gluten-free buns), chili, and much more. I was on a roll… or so I thought until I made
these muffins.
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| Photographed on March 4/17 |
Since breakfast
has always been a struggle for me, I decided my first 'on the go' food I would
make would be muffins. After researching a few recipes, I decided to follow the
recipe posted on Cooking Classy, a
blog I follow. Specifically, this was a recipe to make 12 gluten-free banana
chocolate chips muffins, which would last me weeks (I would freeze them of
course) and use up the bananas I already have that were going bad. The only
ingredients I really had to buy for this recipe was the gluten-free flour blend
(Red Mill – Walmart – approx. 5$) and some Xanthan gum. The rest I already had,
which made this an affordable go-to breakfast idea, especially with my busy
schedule.
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| Photographed on March 3/17 |
All was going
well… I was followed the recipe very diligently and timed the baking time to
the exact minute. However, when I took them out of the oven I was shocked –
they were extremely flat… and extremely burnt. They also crumbled apart as I
tried to eat it, because it was very dry. This was somewhat expected, since I
was cooking without gluten – the ingredient that allows food to stick and
‘fluff’ up. However, I did not expect them to be as flat, dense, and dry as
they were.
This experience
taught me two things – 1) never expected your life to be as perfect and easy as
Pinterest and blogs make it seem… and 2) mistakes do, and WILL happen. Needless
to say, it’s back to the drawing board for me. I plan to do some more research,
to see what adjustments I can make to this recipe, in order to perfect (or at
least tackle) the art of muffin-making. If all goes well, my next challenge is
to make these cereal bars and banana bread I also found on Pinterest, another
great breakfast food that I can bring on the go. Wish me luck!
