When I
think of Christmas as a child, there is one distinct memory that comes to mind
– my mum in the kitchen baking traditional Italian Christmas biscuits. She
would prepare these for days, first making the filling and then making the
little pastry cases to wrap around the fruit mince and sprinkling them with
bright and colourful hundreds and thousands. The house would be filled with
beautiful Christmas aromas… cinnamon, cloves and orange. And we would know mum
was starting her Christmas baking. These Italian Christmas biscuits,
traditional to mums hometown of Calabria, known as ‘San Martini’ are made with
figs, almonds and walnuts. Sultanas are also used but I preferred when mum made
them without.
With
Christmas definitely in the air, I too wanted to get started on my gluten free
Christmas baking. But I didn’t want to just make a gluten free version of these
Italian biscuits. I wanted to encapsulate the aromas of Christmas and my
childhood memories into one gluten free cake!
So I
started to pick mums brain and ask her how her biscuits were made. All of mum’s
traditional recipes are handwritten in Italian and are usually missing
measurements. You know, add a pinch of this and a pinch of that. Add liquid
ingredients until the mixture feels right. What is right?? This kind of
measuring drives me mad, as I like to follow a recipe that I know is going to
work. But back in mums day nobody had measuring spoons or cups so baking was
done all by eye. I guess I have to give them credit for that!
Once I
sorted out the basic idea of these Italian Christmas biscuits, I investigated
possible solutions of putting them into some sort of cake or loaf. With Michael
Buble’s Christmas carols playing in the background I began testing and
experimenting. The result was this extremely fragrant gluten free and dairy
free Italian Christmas Loaf. I even managed to impress both mum and dad, as
they said it had the same flavours as the original biscuits!
{Gluten
Free Recipe} Italian Christmas Loaf
Gluten Free, Dairy Free
Gluten Free, Dairy Free
200g figs,
chopped
1 teaspoon
instant coffee
1
tablespoon cocoa
1/2 cup
sugar
1 cup
boiling water
Zest of 1
orange (approx 1 tablespoon)
Juice of
1/2 orange (approx 2 tablespoons)
100g
almonds, roughly chopped
100g
walnuts, roughly chopped
2 teaspoons
ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon
ground cloves
150g gluten
free flour, sifted
50g
buckwheat flour, sifted
2 teaspoons
baking powder
1 egg,
whisked
1. Mix
coffee, cocoa and 1/4 cup sugar (the rest will be used later) in a bowl and add
boiling water. Stir until dissolved.
2. Place
chopped figs in a medium bowl and pour coffee mixture over the top. Add orange
zest and juice and stir well making sure figs are completely covered with
liquid.
3. Soak
figs for 1-2 hours
4. Pre-heat
oven to 160 degrees and grease a 25cm loaf tin.
5. In the
meantime mix together almonds, walnuts, ground cinnamon, ground cloves and the
remaining 1/4 cup sugar. Add both flours and baking powder and mix well.
6. Once
figs have soaked add beaten egg and mix.
7. Make a
well in the dry ingredients and add wet ingredients. Mix thoroughly and evenly
to remove all white flour patches. Mixture will be thick and sticky.
8. Pour
mixture into greased loaf tin. Place in the middle rack of your oven for 1hr or
until a skewer comes out clean.
9. Allow to
sit before turning out onto a wire cooling rack. Dust with gluten free icing
sugar to decorate if desired.
This loaf
will last fresh 2-3 days covered tightly with cling wrap. Store in fridge and
remove about 20 minutes before serving.
After a few
days if the loaf becomes dry, slice and heat under the grill for a couple of
minutes on each side. This will bring it back to life and be as delicious and
moist as it was when first baked. Be careful when turning or removing from the
grill. As this does not have bread like texture it will become too soft to
remove with your hands and you may burn yourself. Use a flat spatula instead.
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Sounds delicious! Would it work to use an extra 50g of gf flour instead of the buckwheat flour? And is it plain gf flour please? Thank you!
ReplyDeleteYes, I believe using 200g of gluten free flour would work as well. And yes it is plain flour we used in this recipe. Would love to hear how it turns out :)
ReplyDelete