Gluten-Free Pumpkin Bars Recipe--a Harvest-Time Special

Ingredients:
¾ cup sugar
1 egg
½ cup pumpkin
½ cup vegetable oil
1/6 cup water
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup flour (I used super fluffy GF flour mix—see recipe in the margin)
¼ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon each: ground cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon

Gluten-Free Bar Directions:
Beat egg and add other wet ingredients and mix well. Add dry ingredients. Bake at 350 F in a glass 9” x 13” pan about 15-20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Bars will be slightly browned, very thin, and moist. Let cool before frosting. (I use Betty Crocker's gluten-free vanilla frosting. It says "gluten-free" on the back of the package.)

Special Tip:

I have made these with canned pumpkin, and they turned out just fine. But honestly, the very best ones we've ever made, were made with our own home-grown pumpkins (not the jack-o-lantern kind, but the sweeter garden pumpkins). To make your own pumpkin mush, just cut the pumpkins in half, clean out all the stringy stuff and seeds, and bake upside down (skin up) in a casserole dish or on a cookie sheet. You'll know they're done baking when they turn soft, just like with any other baked squash. You scrape out their meat, drain off some of the moisture, make sure you get all the stringy-strings out of the pulp, and measure it out.

Want Some Gluten-Free Lunchbox Ideas for Back-to-School? Here You Go:

I'm just going to list all kinds of goodies I put in my kiddo's lunchbox. Read labels on everything, because, for example, Yoplait yogurts say "gluten-free" on some of the labels, but not all. Some contain glutens. So be careful. Read labels every time!

I'm not suggesting you put all of these foods in your child's lunchbox at once, but here are some great GF treats for lunchboxes:

Glutino breadsticks
home-made muffins
Yoplait yogurts or Go-Gurts
Del Monte fruit cups/jello fruit cups
plain Jell-o cups
pudding cups
carrot sticks
celery sticks
peanut butter celery sticks
a can of Easy Cheese (but the bacon one has gluten)
Fritos
Lays Stax
cottage cheese
cheese sticks
Old Wisconsin beef sticks
Old Wisconsin summer sausage
Hormel Canadian bacon
Hormel pepperoni slices
K-Toos (Oreo-style cookies)
boiled eggs
deviled eggs
egg salad with crackers to spread it on
Cheetos
Juicy-Juice
Shasta sodas
raisins
yogurt-covered raisins
home-made trail mix
EnviroKids rice "granola" bars
bag of GF cereal
Fruity Pebble/Cocoa Pebble Treats
Popcorn
Popcorn balls made with Kraft marshmellows
Kraft colored mini-marshmellows
PB&J made on Glutino crackers
Jell-o Knox blocks
apple slices
Glutino pretzels or EnerG pretzels

I hope this helps!

Super-Fluffy Gluten-Free Flour Recipe

Image: iClipart

When I first started baking things GF, I thought, "Mix flours? What the heck are they talking about? That's crazy talk!" Then I tried making my first batch of GF sugar cookies with only rice flour. Pretty much, what I ended up with, was some sugar cookies that looked like crackers and tasted like Chinese fortune cookies. Bleck!

So after six years of baking GF, I've finally discovered a mixture that seems to work well. It keeps most things fluffy without having them fall apart. Here's what I call my Super-Fluffy Gluten-Free Flour Mix:

Super Fluffy Gluten-Free Flour Mixture:
2 cups tapioca starch
2 cups cornstarch
2 cups rice flour
2 Tbs. potato flour (NOT potato starch--that's different)

I keep a tub of it on my kitchen counter, and I dip into it for many of my recipes. It makes things fluffy! YAY!

Gluten-Free Peach Cobbler--a Summer Dessert Delight

Here's my recipe for a yummy guten-free peach cobbler. I took a few pictures and posted them as well.

Crust Ingredients:

• 1 cup Jules GF All-Purpose Flour (or rice flour will work okay in a pinch)
• ½ cup potato starch
• ½ cup tapioca flour
• ¼ tsp. salt
• 6 tbsp. cold butter, cut into tiny pieces
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tbsp. apple cider vinegar

• 2 ½ tbsp. ice water (no more—to maintain crumbly texture)

Cobbler Filling Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup white granulated sugar
• 2 tbsp. cornstarch
• ¼ tsp. cinnamon
• tiny dash of allspice
• 6 cups peaches, peeled, pitted, sliced, and diced up small (I used eight store-bought peaches, which are rather large)
• 1 heaping tbsp. frozen concentrated lemonade

Instructions for Crust:

Prepare the pie crust first, as follows: combine flours and salt in a stand mixer. Cut in butter with a pastry blender (I just used my stand mixer’s whisk attachment) until mixture is crumbly like coarse ground meal. Add egg and vinegar and blend. Add ice water, a little at a time. You may not need all 2 ½ tbsp. of water. Just watch to make sure it’s a crumbly mixture that almost holds together. That’s what you want, is a sort of crumbly, almost pie crust. Wrap your crumbly crust mixture in plastic wrap and keep it chilled in the refrigerator until later.

Instructions for Cobbler:

Combine all filling ingredients in a sauce pan. Cook on medium heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens to about the consistency of gravy. (It takes me about 15 minutes, but different stoves will have different cook times.) Generously butter the sides and bottom of a 9x11 inch casserole dish. Pour hot peach mixture into prepared casserole dish. Sprinkle crumbly pie crust over the top. Bake at 375 F for 30-35 minutes, or until golden brown on top.

Serves Approx. 8 People