Jens Gluten Free Blog

With both Easter and Passover approaching it’s helpful to find some recipes that are safely gluten-free while adding big taste to your holiday table. Over the coming weeks I will be sharing some of my favorites with you.

Looking for a gluten-free soup that is thick enough to be a meal? I just got this great recipe from a friend the other day. I made one quick adjustment – replaced the barley with millet – and voila! I had a great gluten-free soup that everyone loved.

With my son’s egg allergy and the lack of eggs in my house, Energ-E egg replacer is an essential ingredient. It holds most cakes and cookies together nicely. It doesn’t really work in quiches as well. It doesn’t give body to food the way eggs do, but it does serve as an excellent binding agent when eggs are not an option. When my daughter was diagnosed with celiac disease and I had to throw away so many basic ingredients that lined my pantry, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Ener-G egg rreplacer is gluten-free. To be frank, I don’t know what I would have done if it wasn’t!

Looking for a hot creamy soup to warm up those cool autumn nights? Soups are a great gluten-free alternative for lunches and even dinners.

You think staying gluten-free is tough? I was recently put on a diet that is actually more difficult than the celiac diet (can you believe that is possible?). Eventually I was diagnosed with a parasite, but before that helpful diagnosis was made, the doctor told me to stick with just plain bread and cooked vegetables (I think I would have preferred the celiac diet). Anyway, in my search for some good recipes for cooked veggies I found this great vegetable soup recipe.

What’s your easiest gluten-free dinner? For someone like myself, who has to make both gluten-free meals and regular meals, finding the one meal that will suit everyone’s needs can be challenging.

The black and white cookies from the bakery down the street still taunt me at night. In my dreams I’m nine and I’m licking off the white half of the cookie. I love the smooth texture and the hint of lemon that bursts onto my tongue as it plays with the icing. My brothers always loved the chocolate part. In fact I think it is fair to say that I was in the minority in preferring the white part – but the lucky minority. Because everybody else liked the chocolate part I got to trade my chocolate for their white. There was nothing like the feeling of scoring someone else’s white half!

I spent over an hour making caramel squares this weekend. I had found the recipe in a gluten-free cookbook and I was thrilled to see that it was an egg-free recipe. I made it my pet project for the morning and boasted to my kids that they would have the yummiest treat that afternoon. I really got their hopes up too. The only one I couldn’t convince was my husband who has heard me boast like this before and knew better…

I must admit we aren’t doing too badly in the virtual cupcake crawl (if you haven’t yet voted for our gluten-free chocolate/chocolate chip cupcakes, feel free to go on to www.gourmetgirlmagazine.com and vote your hearts out! The deadline is July 25.). We have about 2% of the votes which isn’t bad for a gluten-free recipe. The carrot cupcake is doing quite well (they currently have 12% of the vote) and it reminds me of a delicious gluten-free carrot muffin I made this weekend.