15 of Our Favorite Gluten Free Recipes

As many of you might know, Amber and I both have a restricted diet.  I must avoid gluten, at almost all costs, along with a few other items.  Amber has severe fructose malabsorption and so must avoid fructose in its many forms, including naturally occurring.  I won't get into the details here, but wheat does contain fructose as chains of fructans.  This means she and I both eat gluten free with some other modifications.

Today I'm going to let you in on our favorite gluten free recipes from our favorite gluten free resource, Gluten Free on a Shoestring.   (I'm not affiliated with GFOAS or the author, Nicole Hunn, in anyway.  We are just HUGE fans)

All of these recipes are ones we use regularly with great success.  I've linked the original blog recipe, but noted the modifications that we make to satisfy Amber's needs.  Of course, there are a bazillion other recipes by Nicole Hunn that we adore, but they are all from her cookbooks and I can't link to the individual recipes here! 

(I do not use any of her flour blends exactly as they all contain ingredients Amber cannot tolerate. This is a link to the flour blend I've tweaked. It is suitable for all the recipes and safe for Amber)

1. Cinnamon Doughnut Muffins - First off is Amber's all time favorite breakfast, and of course it was not actually published on the Gluten Free on a Shoestring blog, but in a magazine.  It's still Nicole Hunn's recipe :) I'm usually lazy and don't scald the milk, but just use the reduced amount.  We also replace the sugar with dextrose and sprinkle the muffins with a dextrose / cinnamon mixture instead of sugar.


2. Chocolate Breakfast Muffins -  This includes a huge no-no for Amber: brown sugar.   I replace it with either maple sugar or dextrose.  Most often it's dextrose.  I also replace the milk and apple cider vinegar with buttermilk. We use the peppermint flavoring too.
   
   
3. Soft Vanilla Swirl Bread - This bread is just absolutely a dream, but has way way too much sugar for Amber.  We did try it with all the sugar once. It was a nightmare.  I leave the 1/4 cup sugar in the batter to feed the yeast, but substitute the sugar in the filling with dextrose.  Just in case you are wondering, we also have to alter the bread flour to use our purpose flour blend base. 


4. Chocolate Chip Yogurt Gluten Free Quick Bread - Again, too much sugar.  We substitute it with dextrose and also use Enjoy Life Dark Chocolate Chips.  Yum!
   
   
5. Super Fluffy Gluten Free English Muffins - We like these just as much as the English Muffins in her bread book.  No substitutions either, except our changes to the base flour.
   
   

   Top: (Left) Chocolate Chip Yogurt Bread  (Center and Right) Soft Vanilla Swirl Bread in pan and with cream cheese.
   Bottom: (Left) Chocolate Breakfast muffins (Right) Biscuit Donuts

6. Cinnamon Swirl Gluten Free Quick Bread -  Same story - too much sugar.  It's all replaced with dextrose, including the powdered sugar. 
   
   
7. Easy Gluten Free Biscuit Donuts - Made with the biscuit dough from the Gluten Free on a Shoestring Bakes Bread book. We really do keep some in the freezer at all times. I make the dough and the donuts exactly as described - except I roll them in dextrose.
   


8. Classic Gluten Free Red Velvet Cake - Oh my goodness!  We used this for Amber's 13th birthday cake. It was wonderful.  Again, substituted dextrose for sugar, buttermilk for vinegar and milk.  I also used a Red Velvet emulsion instead of food coloring, most of which are just horrid for Amber.  We used a different icing that was basically the same thing but with dextrose instead of powdered sugar. 
   


9. Gluten Free Flour Tortillas from GFOAS Bakes Bread - No substitutions, but I must admit that my technique is horrid.  These are so hard for me.  I often resort to lesser quality store bought Tortillas that Amber mostly tolerates.  These are so much better when I can make it work.


10. Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Chip-Style Cookies -  Okay, so Amber really wanted chocolate chip cookies, which NEED brown sugar.  These glorious cookies from GFOAS do not, but they need other stuff Amber can't have.  I made quite a few modifications for Amber to have her cookies.  I found that substituting dextrose for all the sugar did not result in a usable cookie. Instead, I use about 1/8th cup sugar and 3/4 cup dextrose.  The molasses is also right out. Normally I'm lazy and sub a sprinkling of sugar with enough water to make the needed 1/2 tablespoon of molasses.  Other days I might break out the pure maple syrup.  We also use the Enjoy Life Dark Chocolate Chips.  The cookies do turn out delicious, just probably not as originally intended. Our favorite way to eat them is frozen.
    
    

    Top: (Left) Fresh pasta! (Right) How about in GF chicken noodle soup.
    Bottom: (Left) GF Tortillas made into chicken quidsadillas. (Right) Fresh macaroni 

    
    
11. Gluten Free Crackers: "Wheat" Thins Copycat - We seriously always have a batch of these ready for consumption in our house.  Wheat Thins were our go-to snack when gluten was allowed.  Now these are the favorite! I make them as directed - using the granulated sugar and not coconut palm sugar.  I tried using mixtures of sugar and dextrose.  I got softees and not crackers. 
    
    
12. Yeast Free Gluten Free Pizza (crust only) -  We use this for a fun dish called Hamburger Roll-up.  I think it originated in a Kraft recipe magazine.  At any rate, we have been so sad to not have refrigerated pizza dough for recipes.  This works perfectly and comes together quickly and simply.   I did have to substitute pure maple syrup for the honey (evil stuff... to Amber), and also reduce the water by 2 fluid ounces. 


13. Gluten Free Arancini (Rice Balls) - Amber LOVES Arancini.  It is a bit messy to make, and usually requires Amber's help because I'm uncoordinated. We use the hamburger option instead of mushroom because... well, even before the special diet none of us liked mushrooms.  We also use rosemary rice since it's what we keep in the house. 


14. Fresh Gluten Free Tortellini (pasta recipe only) - To be honest, we don't make Tortellini out of this pasta. We use this recipe for just about everything else though.  I make noodles for soup, pasta carbonara, toasted ravioli, and even fresh macaroni out of this pasta recipe.
    
    
15. Slow Cooker Gluten Free Macaroni and Cheese -  This one does not work with fresh macaroni.  Just in case you want to try it... don't waste the lovely fresh macaroni.  We skip the mustard powder in this recipe and use mild cheddar cheese instead of sharp. Otherwise, it's perfect. 

Top: Arancini. 
Bottom: (Left) Buttermilk biscuits. So flaky.  (Right) Red Velvet birthday cake!

These are just our top 15 recipes from Gluten Free on a Shoestring.  This doesn't even begin to touch all I've learned about overall gluten free cooking and adapting some of our favorite family recipes from reading her blog and books.