Pa's Pies and Preserves Plus: Pa’s Home Baked Gluten Free Biscuits

Some very munchy cookies for you today and gluten free as well Laughing out loud

With all the wholesome goodness I have been cooking and eating lately I really felt the need for just some tasty biscuits to go with my cup of tea and these fit the bill just right. Working with gluten free flour again and that means you really have to pack flavour in.
So that is what I have done and now I share my step by step recipe with you. It is very simple so please join me Winking smile

Blueberry Hearts – delicious gluten free cookies

Thank you for following me this far, won’t you join me for another baking adventure.

I call these biscuits Blueberry Hearts because, guess what, I use fresh blueberries and a heart shaped cookie cutter. The blueberries may come as a surprise but I often use fresh fruit in my biscuits/cookies with excellent results.

With the biscuit/cookie choice I come across a little challenge. I do have a lot of American readers I know, who I am sure excuse my eccentric English words and spelling. In the US though there is, as well as pounds and ounces, a measuring system of cups in cooking. I don’t know the correspondences for that, over the years I have gone metric and all my recipes are weighed in grams. My American friends please don’t feel slighted, I will endeavour to familiarise myself with, and translate measures into, all systems. This recipe though is still metric.

A word of caution before we start, as you can see in this picture some of the juicy goodness of the blueberries has run out during the baking, you will also see the gaps in the finished biscuits. This is not because of any problem cooking the berries. It is my mistake. When cutting the cookies I cut as if in pastry, as close together as possible. That is not the way. You will have to collect up and re-roll the dough several times anyway, so cut to include berries whole and not cut through them. That will give you much better results with less mess and your biscuits will not stick to the baking tray, always a bonus. This picture was not my tightest cut.

Ingredients

300g plain gluten free flour

1tsp baking powder

10g caraway seeds

2 tsp ground ginger

100g caster sugar

70g butter

30g sunflower oil

2 eggs

1tsp vanilla essence

Method

Sieve the flour, baking powder and ginger into a mixing bowl. Add the caraway seeds and mix well.

Into a separate jug put the softened butter, oil, sugar and vanilla essence. Beat well until creamed. Add the eggs one at a time beating into the mixture.

Add the wet mix to the dry mix and beat for 2 – 3 minutes by hand, or 1 minute with an electric mixer.

Cover the bowl and put in the fridge for 45 minutes for the dough to prove. This gluten free flour needs time to soak up the liquid.

Preheat the oven to 170⁰C conventional or 160⁰C fan oven.

    Take out the dough and gently mix in the blueberries. Take a lump of the dough and roll out to blueberry thickness on a dusted surface. Cut out the cookies with the cutter of your choice. Mine made 26 biscuits from these quantities.

Put on a lined, oiled tray and put into the oven for 30 minutes. I used the second shelf from the top. As all ovens vary, keep an eye on them after 20 minutes and take out when done. Move onto a wire grill to cool and try not to eat too many before they are ready.

Enjoy

I rolled the dough out on a flour dusted surface but did find the flour that stuck to the bottom of the biscuits came out after baking tasting a little powdery. The dough is quite sticky so use flour sparingly, if possible flip each biscuit on the way to the baking tray and brush off any excess flour. Alternately use icing sugar to dust the surface for an extra sweetness.

So now you have the secret to Pa’s Blueberry Hearts. These biscuits are delicious. Just crispy on the outside but with a soft heart. The blueberries give a burst of juicy sweetness amidst the piquant caraway seeds. These cookies are even quite healthy with a relatively low fat and sugar content, if you don’t eat too many at a time. Difficult because they are especially toothsome.

With this very simple recipe I made these with no more help than an electric mixer though of course there was plenty of help to eat them.

Wishing you blueberries, biscuits and a beautiful day

Love from Pa