Sweets!

In case you were ever tempted to feel sorry for us for not eating gluten - I can assure you we do eat sweets! Ha! Here's a few things we've made recently...

I noticed this recipe last week in a church cookbook by Aunt Karen gave me - it looked easy to make, had ingredients we had on hand, and didn't call for flour! Regular cornflakes are actually NOT gluten-free (no cereal is, unless it expressly says "Gluten-free" on the box) but we happened to have a box of gluten-free cornflakes. Warning: these are rich and a little goes a long way!

Cornflake Treats

1 c white karo syrup

1 c sugar

12 ounce jar crunchy peanut butter

6 c cornflakes

Mix syrup and sugar in pan. Melt sugar on low heat. Remove from heat and melt in peanut butter. Quickly stir in cornflakes. Drop onto wax paper.

Matt made a creme caramel, which is similar to flan. It was dee-lish. Light and not too rich and would be perfect with berries!

Creme Caramel

For the caramel:

1/2 cup sugar

2 T water

For the custard:

2 c milk

4 eggs

1/2 c sugar

1 t vanilla

1/4 t salt

Combine ingredients for the caramel over medium heat and cook until brown. Pour into 6 4-ounce ramekins. Cool completely.

Preheat oven to 325. Combine ingredients for the custard and blend. Fill ramekins and put in water bath in oven. Bake 30-40 min. until almost set. Allow them to cool, and then refrigerate until well chilled. Turn out onto plates before serving.

We had friends over for dinner last weekend who cannot eat dairy or soy. Making a gluten-free, dairy-free meal isn't too hard to do (since meat and vegetables are naturally gluten and dairy free), but dessert was another story! I came up with a solution - sorbet! We made strawberry, peach, raspberry sorbet in our ice-cream maker. It was really good!

We kind of made this up ourselves, but here is what we did:

2 c sugar

1/2 c water

2 1/2 quarts of whole fruit (we used strawberries, peaches, and raspberries)

2 limes

Dissolve sugar in water over low heat. Refrigerate until chilled. Puree fruit (we removed a lot of the seeds) and add juice from limes. Refrigerate until chilled. Combine simple syrup with fruit and poor into ice-cream maker and make according to directions.

Matt also tried making creme brulee this week for the first time. It turned out great! It tasted similar to the creme caramel, but was much richer.

Creme Brulee

1 c milk

1 c cream

1 t vanilla

1/2 c sugar

8 egg yolks

Preheat oven to 325. Combine milk, cream and vanilla and bring to a simmer. Combine sugar and yolks and whisk for 30 seconds. Pour the milk-cream mixture into the yolks slowly while whisking continuously. Pour into ramekins and bake in a covered water bath for 30 min. Cool, and top custard with sugar. Heat the sugar with a propane torch until it caramelizes.

Since he had so many egg whites left over after making creme brulee, Matt decided to make meringues! They looked better than they tasted - we're not sure why but they were incredibly sticky and chewy. It was raining the day we made them, so maybe that had something to do with it. So, I'll wait to share this recipe once we figure out how to make them correctly!