There is a recipe on the back of every can of pumpkin puree for pie.  The best one is libby’s.  If you want a good pumpkin pie (or custard) use that one.  It can’t be improved.

But that’s boring after a while.

Today I opened a can of off brand pumpkin to make a custard for a party and noticed it called for a half cup of brown sugar instead of 1 cup of white.  That got me thinking about viable variations on that theme and I came up with this.  I also have a party tomorrow and my best ginger snaps need three days to cure so I don’t have time for them.
This is a custard.  I haven’t worked out a good GF pie crust yet.  I bake it like any custard.  350 in a flan or casserole pan set in a larger pan with an inch of water in it.  This protects the delicate custard from over cooking on the outer part while the center cooks.

1 can pumpkin purée  (2 cups if you are making it yourself)

3 eggs

2/3 cup coconut milk or 1 can evaporated milk. I used coconut this time.

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup molasses
1 teaspoon cinnimon

1 rounded teaspoon ginger powder

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon salt

1 -2 teaspoons vanilla extract

I used 1 tablespoon of sesamee oil to add some richness.  If you use evaporated cow milk this isn’t necessary.

1 teaspoon vinegar.  Every recipe for ginger cookies or bread has this. I have no idea why, but it is so consistent I included it too.

Mix it all up in a bowl with a whisk or electric mixer.  Make sure the eggs are well blended.

Bake at 350 for quite a while.  Place in a casserole or flan dish. Put that in a cake pan with an inch of hot water in the bottom.  Bake for 45 minutes or more.  The center should be set but not too firm.  Give the pan a little jiggle and see if there is anything that could be called a slosh.  If so, give it another 15 minutes and check again.  I strongly recommend getting a copy of The Joy Of Cooking and reading the section called “About Custard.”

Serve with whipped cream or cool whip.  I have to admit this isn’t the most attractive color.

These actually are not popovers.  They have a French name I cannot find.  Popovers are a pastry made with egg and milk and flour in a thin batter.  They puff up when baked forming a hollow inside that can be filled with all sorts of yummy goodness, savory or sweet.  Éclairs are a type of popover.

This recipe involves boiling water and thus is a very different type of pastry.  But Americans are not usually familiar with the finer points of French cooking.  I am no exception.  It was my mother who told me about the French version.

Anyway, they turn out similar. I find this recipe more reliable than the regular American popover, which is very fussy about the baking pan and ingredients and will fail about 2 times out of 3.  I have only had these fail once out of dozens of attempts.  They are a favorite for weekend mornings at my house.

Ingredients:

1 cup water

1/2 cup fat

1/3 cup rice flour, white or whole grain

1/3 cup starchy flour like potato starch, corn starch, sweet sorghum flour, tapioca

1/3 cup  protein flour like oat, garbanzo/fava, other bean flours, or more rice flour.  (I have made these with just oat and rice with good results)

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 large eggs

Pre-heat oven to 450.  Really, that hot.

Put the water and fat into a pan and boil the water.  The type of fat depends a little on the eventual use for these.  If savory, rendered chicken or goose fat works well. If sweet, butter, lard(bacon grease), or shortening.  I have never used an oil and don’t recommend it.  But if you do, please let me know how they turn out.

While the water is heating, place the dry  ingredients into a medium sized bowl and mix a little.

When the water is boiling and all the fat is melted, add it all at once to the flour and immediately stir until it forms a ball that comes away from the sides of the bowl. I like a wooden spoon for this step. If there isn’t enough rice flour, or of the water isn’t boiling this will never happen.  I have corrected too cool water by putting the whole mess in the microwave for a minute and stirring again.

Let the dough cool slightly before adding eggs.

Get out your electric hand mixer. I suppose it might be possible to do this by hand but I never tried.  You could use an electric stand mixer too.

Add the first egg to the hot dough and mix until you can’t see streaks of yellow yolk.  Add the next egg and repeat for each egg. It really does make a big difference to add them one at a time. I crack them into a cup and then check for shells before I put them in.

At this point your batter might be lumpy or smooth, thick or thin.  Don’t worry too much about that.  If you got the dough ball they will still rise.

Place into muffin cups.  Silicone works well, or greased metal muffin cups.  If you have a popover pan give that a try.  They do stick to metal a lot so I like silicone, either in the form of individual ‘papers’ that go in a regular pan or a whole silicone pan. A silicone pan is floppy and has to sit on a cookie tray.  Fill the cups about half full, maybe 2/3.  This is way less picky than in regular popovers.
Makes about 12 – 14.

Place into hot oven. make sure they have enough room.  You don’t want your pan to block circulation in there.

Cook for 20 minutes at 450 then turn it down to 350 and cook for another 20 minutes.  You don’t have to peak after the first 20 to make sure they popped, but I always do.

When they are done take them out of the oven.  What happens next depends a bit on your pan.  If silicone, turn out immediately. Just flip it over and they will all fall out.

If a metal pan, wait about 1 minute, then try to turn them out.  They might just fall, but you might have to work at it a bit.  Run a butter knife around the edges of stubborn ones.  If they cool too long they will stick like cement. It helps to grease the top of the pan as well as the insides of the cups.

As with most gluten free things, these are best when very fresh, but my son likes them even after 12 hours.

I usually serve them with butter and honey or jam for breakfast.  Or honey butter.  They would be good filled with whipped cream, or chicken, egg or salmon salad.  Or custard.  You could serve them as a dinner roll, or along side a stew.  You could make tiny ones and stuff them for appetizers. (adjust cooking times)

Adapted from The Gluten Free Gourmet, revised.

When I have a failure of a crisp it is always that the proportion of fat to flour was off.  This one is no exception.  Best to follow a recipe all the time in my experience.  Though, my mother can do it by feel and guesswork.

The next time I make this I plan to substitute some part of the flour for GF oatmeal.  I like an oatmealy crisp.  The original recipe, which I followed faithfully the first time through, called for a GF cereal.  I didn’t like that texture at all.  The cereal got very tough from getting moistened then baked dry again.

Pre-heat oven to 350

Filling

1/4 Butter (for the pan later)

1.5 cups sugar

1-2 tbsp tapioca flour

4 cups fresh rhubarb or 1 16 oz package frozen

(I have to confess I didn’t measure my rhubarb. I used a 9x 13 inch pan and cut up enough for a medium sized bowl.)

Chop the rhubarb to your preference. I like it fairly finely chopped so the sugar is distributed evenly.  Add the sugar and flour and let sit while you make the topping.  The rhubarb will give a lot of liquid that dissolves the sugar. Butter comes later.

Topping:

3.5 cups GF mix (garbanzo/fava +tapioca, a protein and a starch)

1 cup brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter (2 sticks)

Spice it up. I added a dash of five spice powder this time. I have also used cinnamon, clove and nutmeg, alone or together.  You might also like cardamom. Spice can go in the topping, or the filling, or both.

Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly.  Add the butter, cold.  I found if I chop the butter the next step is easier.

Using a pastry cutter, two table knives or your hands, cut the butter and flour mix together until the lumps are the size of small peas.  This is never a uniform process.  GF flours are more forgiving of over mixing than wheat flour is.

Spread a generous layer of butter over the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch pan.  I used about 1/4  cup.

Pour the rhubarb mixture in the pan. It should be quite soupy now.  Shake the pan a little to get the actual rhubarb distributed evenly, or use the back of a spoon.

Use both hands to sprinkle the topping over the fruit.  Like this:  Scoop up topping so both hands are full, cupped together.  Place your hands over the middle of the pan and pull them apart to the ends of the pan while wiggling your fingers.  Repeat until the topping is all in the pan and distributed as evenly as you can.  There should be no fruit showing through the topping. But it’s not the end of the world if it is.

Bake 1 hr at 350.

Like all crispy GF things the topping improves with time, reaching its peak at three days.  Unfortunately the fruit does not act the same way.  I mean to try freezing this recipe, baked, to see if I can overcome this problem.  I fear refrigeration would allow moisture into the topping, but I haven’t tried that either.

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Followup

That went poorly.   The crisp collapsed and was gummy.  I have a few ideas about the cause.

Previously I have made this with apples.  Rhubarb is much wetter.

Previously, my GF mix included corn starch as well as tapioca and garbanzo/fava flour.  This time I was out of corn starch and used the tapioca as though it were just a starch.  It is in fact much glue-ier than corn starch.  Add that to the tapioca in the filling and what I got is a lot like chewing gum.

This is adapted from a recipe half the size.  The original called for a 9 x 9 inch pan.  I doubled the ingredients but I may have mis read or missed one altogether.

Rhubarb season is all but over but I hope I get another shot at this while it is fresh in my mind.  Meanwhile, feel free to try this, as written with apples or another fruit drier than rhubarb.  Maybe you should use cornstarch too.

It does have good flavor, so I will be eating it.  I won’t be bringing it to parties. 🙂

Peanut butter cookies-For Erin

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup brown sugar if you use crunchy.  if you use creamy you will need to add more until it is cookie dough consistency.  About 1/2 cup, but peanut butters vary a lot.

1.5 tsp baking soda

1 large egg  (about 1 to 1.5 oz)

Maybe salt if your peanut butter isn’t salted. 1 tsp.

Stir with wooden spoon until it comes away from the sides of the bowel. If it is sticky add more sugar.

Roll into golf ball sized balls and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Squash with a fork. I like to go two directions so there is a nice pattern. They will not get much flatter than you make them at this time.

Bake at 375 for 11 – 13 minutes.  They are forgiving on the time.  Let cool slightly on the sheet. Remove to a rack to cool completely.  Store somewhere safe.  My kid eats these up in a hurry.