COCONUT JELLY

Coconut Jelly (gluten free)

Hello Kitty Coconut Jelly!

I have two plastic jelly molds I purchased to make kiddie jellies.  The huge Hello Kitty face mold above turned out really well and the facial features turned out quite well.

Miffy?

Sorry, I don't know the Hello Kitty characters too well.  The 4-character set produces smaller sized jellies and their features didn't turn out as distinct.  Each jelly is about 2 inches in length.  I used a thin rubber spatula to help ease out the jellies.

 Who's this bear?  Oh well, obviously I'm not learned about Hello Kitty characters.

While my daughters enjoyed the cute characters in coconut jelly form, I preferred the little cubes.  The coconut jelly is firm enough to eat with your fingers, just like the kind you get at DimSum restaurants.  

This version of the Coconut Jelly is not very sweet and isn't spongey like my previous recipe which incorporates whipped egg whites.  It's gluten free but not dairy free.  I suppose if you wanted to, you could replaced the cow's milk with more coconut milk or substitute almond milk or soy milk.  

COCONUT JELLY (Gluten Free)

1 cup (250 ml) water

5 oz (125 g) evaporated cane sugar

1 oz (25 g) gelatine

1 cup (250 ml) coconut milk (ensure you mix the contents in the can well before measuring)

1 cup (250 ml) 2% milk (you may substitute with soy, almond or more coconut milk)

• Boil water, add sugar and stir to dissolve. Cool slightly and add gelatine. Stir well to dissolve. Add coconut milk and 2% milk.
• Immediately pour mixture into plastic-lined pan or molds and chill until firm and set.
• Cut into cubes; serve cold

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COCONUT-VANILLA RICE PUDDING BRULEE

Coconut-Vanilla Rice Pudding...Brûlée

Any rice will do for your pudding.  I used Jasmine because that's what I had on hand.

This recipe for rice pudding just happens to be Gluten Free and Dairy Free.  I used canned coconut milk (Aroy-D Brand).  Make sure you stir up the coconut milk in the can before measuring out.  The recipe has so few ingredients and is super easy!  You can make these ahead, you can leave off the sugaring process entirely and just eat it plain.  You can also eat it cold or warm.  Just nuke individual servings in the microwave (make sure you cover the pudding in the microwave or it may explode like it did in my oven! eep! rice pudding explosion! don't say I didn't warn you!)

Sprinkle a layer of organic evaporated cane sugar over your rice pudding.  Make sure your container is oven-proof!

Ready your blow torch (you can do several at a time on the top rack of your oven and use the broiler)

Brûlée your sugar.

Check. Did you miss any spots? you can add some more sugar and torch those areas again...

 COCONUT-VANILLA RICE PUDDING BRULEE 

• 1/2 cup rice [I used Jasmine, but a short or medium grain will be creamier]
• 1/4 cup sugar [I used organic evaporated cane sugar.  If you like it sweet, use up to 1/2 cup sugar]
• 2 cups coconut milk 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract [I used vanilla bean paste]

1. In a large heavy saucepan, cover rice with water and bring to a boil [I used 1 1/2 cups of water]
2. Reduce and simmer on low heat, covered for 15 minutes.
3. Add sugar, coconut milk and vanilla extract.  Simmer over low heat for 15 minutes.
4. Stir until excess liquid has evaporated.  
5. Distribute the rice pudding in ovenproof individual ramekins.  [You can make these ahead up to this point and store covered in the refrigerator]
6. Sprinkle extra cane sugar [granulated will do] until you cover the entire surface of the pudding.
7. Either brûlée your pudding tops with a torch or broil in the oven until golden brown.
8. Serve immediately.

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Everyday Dessert

Ever since I learned how to cook this simple Chinese dessert...known as Tau Suan, I will make sure my better half gets to eat his favourite dessert whenever he is back home.

If you are living on the other side of the earth from this little red dot, Tau Suan is a warm, sweet dessert made with split, skinned mung beans. The mung beans is usually steamed still it is cooked before it is boiled in a pot of water. Not just plain water, but water that has been simmering away with a few bundles of pandan leaves or screw pine leaves. The soup is then sweetened with sugar and thickened with starch such as sweet potato flour or water chestnut flour. This dessert is always served with fried you tiao or fried dough fritters, a bowl of tau suan will never taste the same if there is no you tiao to go with it.

This cheap and simple dessert is easily available at most dessert stalls here...and if I am not wrong, there is at least one dessert stall in every single food centre or what we known as hawker centres. However, nowadays, it is not easy to find good tau suan. I either get a bowl of watery mung beans with a lot more water than mung beans, or the consistency of the dessert is so thick that it was no different from swallowing a bowl of gummy glue.

Although it is a simple dessert to prepare, it never occurred to me that I could actually make it at home...not until I first saw it at Esther's blog, Bits and Pieces of Life. She has followed the recipe from Makansutra, and thanks to Seetoh's video, I've since learned how to cook tua suan! I noted his unique way of stir frying the mung beans till it caramelised. This is definitely something different from the usual method of steaming the mung beans. By stir frying them, not only it shortens the preparation time; ensures the beans remain 'whole'; it also gives the dessert a nice golden hue. I have later tried another recipe using the steam method (just to compare), but the colour of the tau suan looks so pale and unappetising despite replacing white sugar with brown ones.

The other thing to note is the right type of starch to use as thickening agent. Water chestnut flour will give the best moulthfeel, without being too sticky, followed by sweet potato flour. Hope over to this interesting article to learn about the 'power' of the various thickening agents. For his recipe, Seetoh uses a combination of water chestnut and sweet potato flour. However, I used only sweet potato flour, yet I don't find the consistency or taste of the tau suan being compromised. My homemade tau suan tastes better than what I could get from most dessert stalls. Someday, when I find suitable recipes to use up water chestnut flour, I will certainly use it to thicken the dessert.

With the right knowledge of the ingredients, and following the recipe closely, anyone can make a nice bowl of tau suan. Do give this simple dessert a try, I am sure you won't regret it :)



Tau Suan with You Tiao

Ingredients:
(serves 4)

1.5 ltr water
2 ~ 3 bundles of pandan leaves
250g split mung beans
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
50g sweet potato flour (original recipe calls for 30g water chestnut flour and 20g sweet potato flour)
50ml water
2 ~ 3 tablespoons granulated sugar (adjust according to taste)
1 stick of you tiao

Method:

• Soak mung beans for about 5mins. Drain and set aside. 
• Wash pandan leaves and tie into bundles.
• Place water and pandan leaves in a pot. Leave to simmer for about 10mins.
• In the mean time, place mung beans in a frying pan. Add 3 tablespoons of sugar and stir fry continuously over low heat till the mung beans caramelised (about 8~10 mins).
• Discard the pandan leaves from the pot of water.
• Transfer mung beans into the pot of water. Bring it back to boil. Leave to boil for another 5~10 mins. Taste the beans for the prefered texture. Cook a couple of mins longer if prefer softer texture. Add in 2 ~ 3 tablespoons of sugar. Stir to dissolve the sugar.
• Dissolve sweet potato flour with 50ml of water. Stir in gradually. Turn off the heat once it comes to a boil. 
• Serve with you tiao or dough fritters

(note: in order to get a nice consistency, do follow the ingredient amount closely, especially amount of water, amount of water chestnut/sweet potato flour.)

Recipe source: adapted from Makansutra Cooking

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GF BANANA CHIFFON CAKE HEAVEN

GF Banana Chiffon Cake with Condensed Milk Drizzle and Organic Local Raspberries

Third time’s a charm with my GF  Chiffon experimenting!  The kids were happy to eat my failures because they were so tasty.  However, it was time for a flavour shift.  I had 2 spotting bananas on the counter and pureed them for the batter. 

The Condensed Milk Drizzle is my preference over an icing sugar drizzle.  It was way easier as I always have some in a container in the refrigerator.  The berries are a tiny tart and like jewels in the syrupy drizzle.

This chiffon is a winner and doesn’t taste GF.  See that crumb?  It was soft and moist but not gummy.  It hung upside down to cool and did not collapse.  It had good structure but was ever so slightly wobbly tender.

The following GF flour blend recipe is the one I have tripled and kept in an airtight container to be used in place of regular flour.  It has been truly amazing and I imagine you can adapt it, as I have seen numerous permutations on the net.  For cakes, you will find that using the Thai Rice Flour brands that I have pictured below are important for fine texture.  You will find the 3 Elephants Brand rice flours in Asian markets.  They are really cheap.  You can buy a whole bunch at once and  blend up your mix.  For the other starches, I believe brands are not as important. 

CAKEBRAIN'S FAVOURITE GF FLOUR BLEND RECIPE:

2 1/4 cups superfine Thai Rice Flour (Asian market)

1/4 cup potato starch

2/3 cup tapioca starch

3/4 cup sweet rice flour (Thai brands are best)

1/3 cup cornstarch

2 teaspoons xanthum gum

• In a large airtight container, combine the flours together well.  I use a large wire whisk to mix the flours thoroughly.  Be particularly vigilant about distributing the xanthum gum as it is a small quantity compared to the rest of the flours.


• Use this GF Flour Blend in place of regular cake flour or all-purpose flour.  


• You do not have to worry about sifting as it's not lumpy


• You do not have to worry about overbeating as there's no gluten to develop.

CAKEBRAIN'S GF BANANA CHIFFON CAKE RECIPE

(adapted from Cooks Illustrated)

1 ½ cups sugar
1 1/3 cups GF FLOUR BLEND (see above recipe), OR your favourite GF flour blend
1 ¼ tsp baking powder [I used Magic Brand]
¼ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
7 large eggs, 2 left whole, 5 separated (at room temperature) 

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
½ tsp cream of tartar 

2/3 cup water

1 cup very finely mashed ripe bananas (about 2 large or 3 medium) [make sure bananas are very ripe—with brown spots on the skin]

1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 325°F. Whisk sugar, gf flour, baking powder and soda and salt together in large bowl (at least 4-quart size). Whisk in two whole eggs, five egg yolks (reserve whites), water, oil and extracts until batter is smooth. Stir in pureed bananas.

2. Pour reserved egg whites into large bowl; beat at low speed with electric mixer until foamy, about 1 minute. Add cream of tartar, gradually increase speed to medium-high, then beat whites until very thick and stiff, just short of dry, 9 to 10 minutes with handheld mixer or 5 to 7 minutes in standing mixer. With large whisk, fold whites into batter, smearing any blobs of white that resist blending.

3. Pour batter into ungreased large tube pan ( 9 inch diameter, 16-cup capacity).

4. Bake cake on lower middle rack in oven until wire cake tester inserted in center comes out clean, 60-70 minutes. Immediately turn cake upside down to cool. If pan does not have prongs around rim for elevating cake, invert pan over bottle or funnel, inserted through tube. Let cake hang until completely cook, about 2 hours.

5. To unmold, turn pan upright. Run frosting spatula or thin knife around pan’s circumference between cake and pan wall, always pressing against the pan. Use cake tester to loosen cake from tube. For one-piece pan, bang it on counter several times, then invert over serving plate. For two-piece pan, grasp tube and lift cake out of pan. If glazing the cake, use a fork or a paring knife to gently scrap all the crust off the cake. Loosen cake from pan bottom with spatula or knife, then invert cake onto plate. (Can be wrapped in plastic and stored at room temperature 2 days or refrigerated 4 days.)

6.  Serve with a drizzle or condensed milk and fresh raspberries.

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BAAK TONG GOH FROM NEW TOWN BAKERY

Lookit those great bubbles!

New Town Bakery’s White Sugar Rice Steamed Rice Cake (baak tong goh) are good.  They don’t have that overly-yeasted/fermented taste.  They are soft and white and kids love them. 

Making these yourself is possible, but buying a few pieces is so much more convenient because there’s no long wait for the fermentation of the yeast and rice batter.  Besides, the best recipe I have calls for grinding your own raw rice in a blender and that is a noisy endeavour.  The versions made from rice flour don’t taste very good to me at all. 

There are other good versions of Baak Tong Goh in bakeries, but New Town’s is good PLUS you can buy those excellent Big Steamed Buns and little round sugar-crusted Apple Tarts while you’re there…which no one else has.

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GLUTEN FREE TASTY TEENY TINY CHOCOLATE LAYER CAKE

Yeehah!  Gluten Free Cake Ecstasy!

Lookit me ma, I CAN bake a really good Gluten Free cake that doesn’t even taste Gluten Free!

Tasty Teeny Tiny Chocolate Layer Cake:  gluten free and  nut free


…and I think I can make it food porn-worthy too!  macro lens here it is!


I haven’t been too excited about the prospects of having to go GF until very recently.  This amazing tiny chocolate layer cake has instilled me with enthusiasm that all things will not be so dire in the world of GF cake-baking.

This recipe makes a cake meant for one really hungry cake lover (GF or non-GF!) or can serve two good-sized portions. In my family though, my kiddies, who happen to be wheat-flour carb loving girlies, like to cut this into tiny little pieces and serve them on tiny little china plates and have a tiny little tea party.  Bebe exclaimed that on a scale of 10, this tiny cake was an 11!

You can bake this for someone special.  It’s bigger than a cupcake and makes that GF person in your life feel super special.  You MUST decorate with buttercream if you don’t have a dairy issue (which I don’t) because that puts it over the top.  If you need to do dairy-free, you could make a dairy free “buttercream” with veg shortening.  Adapt it to suit your needs and sub in ingredients so that you can meet your dietary restrictions.  It’s so good just the way I made it today. 

I decided to make the recipe for the actual cake layers dairy-free so I used coconut milk.  If you don’t have that, use regular milk or soy milk.  I used organic cane sugar and coconut sugar together as well as the Sweet Rice Flour Blend (from Simply…Gluten Free Desserts) that I premixed in a bin and have been testing in my own recipes.

Because this is considered “Small Batch Baking”, and though I have read you can use clean tomato sauce cans, I’m really into pans and bakeware.  I found the smallest straight-edged pans I could find and used them instead.  They are actually nonstick springform pans that would be perfect for small cheesecakes.  I like it that they can do double duty.  Just spray with Pam and line the bottom anyway (I always do just to make sure I don’t encounter problems).  I didn’t have any leakage issues but stuck a sheet pan on the bottom rack under the baking cakes just to make sure I wouldn’t have a mess.  They didn’t leak at all but you never know.  Better safe than sorry.  When I divided the batter between the two cake tins, I didn’t really accurately halve the batter.  One cake was bigger than the other.  Oh well.  You’ll do better. 

Because I was making a layer cake, I sliced off the pointed cake tops and ate those pieces with the kids.  They were tender, full of chocolatey flavour and tasted like real good ol’ Chocolate Cake!   Yay!  Not squidgy, not dense, not gelatinous or dry.  I ended up with 3 layers because of my lazy attitude about meting out equal portions between the cake pans, but if you weighed the batter out and you’re daring, you could try to split both of the baked cake layers and make 4 layers!



If you want to get nice even layers for your cake, use a long serrated bread knife. 

Use a Wilton 1M piping tip to swirl buttercream on each layer from the outside in.

Stack the layers and end with the buttercream swirl on the top as seen in the picture.





















If you would like the “Miette” cake decorating technique with the simple unadorned sides, you have to ensure your cake layers are clean of crumbs. You can brush those off with a pastry brush. I didn’t bother.



In order to get the delicate swirl on the top layer of buttercream, I used a small offset metal spatula and a turntable.  If you don’t have a turntable, you can perhaps place the cake on a square of parchment and use one hand to rotate the parchment while the other hand holds steady the spatula.  I tried that technique at first, but it wasn’t as smooth and easy as with a turntable.  Swirl the buttercream flat from the outside in.

Then decorate with a candied flower.

Today, I decided to pick some fresh flowers from my garden.  

It’s much nicer I think.  So pretty.  So simple.

The proportion of buttercream to cake was perfect.   This slice of cake was perfect for me.  I know.  It’s about the size of the dessert fork.  But that’s really all I need. 

Each of my girls had a slice about the same size.  They begged for more, but it was almost dinner time and I didn’t want them to ruin their appetite for the Japanese food we were going out to have later on.

I said they could have more for dessert. 

Here’s a measuring tape to let you see how tiny the tiny chocolate layer cake is.

Here’s my slice.  For sure, it makes you appreciate every bite all the more.

I think that this tiny layer cake would make a wonderful birthday cake.  Or it would be a great pick-me-up for someone down in the dumps (like I was about finding out about having to go GF).  I am so excited with my bin of GF flour, I’m going to experiment more with other things too.  There’s so much territory to cover!  Ah the possibilities!  I’ll be documenting my experiments with other GF flours…coconut flour soon.  It’s sittin’ in my cupboard ready for some action. 

CAKEBRAIN’S TEENY TINY GLUTEN FREE CHOCOLATE LAYER CAKE
Inspired by Debbie Maughan’s Small-Batch Baking for Chocolate Lovers and incorporating a GF flour blend from Simply…Gluten Free Desserts by Carol Kicinski.

• 1/4 cup coconut milk (So Delicious brand, from the refrigerated section in the supermarket at Whole Foods; not from a can.  Use regular milk if you want.)
• 1 whole free range egg, at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons Sweet Rice Flour Blend (or a commercial GF flour blend)
• 1/3 cup organic cane sugar
• 1 tablespoon coconut sugar (if you don’t have coconut sugar, just use more cane sugar)
• 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 3 tablespoons organic coconut oil (I purchased mine from Whole Foods.  If you don’t have this, you can sub in butter or shortening)

1. Preheat oven to 350degrees F.   Prepare cake pans by spraying with Pam and lining the bottoms with parchment paper rounds.
2. Combine the egg, coconut milk and vanilla in a small bowl and whisk together until mixed thoroughly.
3. In a deep bowl, sift in the GF flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  Add the coconut oil and combine until crumbly but incorporated.  If you have a hand-held mixer, you can use it to mix the ingredients better.  I don’t.  I used a wooden spoon.
4. Add the milk mixture into the bowl and with a hand-held mixer, beat all the ingredients until smooth.  Don’t worry about over-beating because there’s no gluten to worry about.  Because I don’t have a hand-held mixer, but a huge Kitchen Aid instead—which is too big to mix such a small amount of batter properly, I used my Braun hand-held immersion blender.  It did the job well.  Just pulse the hand blender until the batter is smooth and lighter in colour…about 30 seconds.  I think for small-batch GF baking, an immersion blender would in fact be quite a good substitute for hand-held mixer.  Remember to scrape down the bowl occasionally.
5. Divide the batter evenly between the 2 prepared pans. 
6. Bake until a toothpick tests done, approximately 20-25 minutes.
7. Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes.
8. Loosen the cake from the edges of the pan.  Remove from pans to cool completely on racks.  Because I used springform pans, this step was easy.
9. Using a serrated bread knife, split the cake layers and frost with buttercream.
10. Decorate with edible or sugar flowers.

More about → GLUTEN FREE TASTY TEENY TINY CHOCOLATE LAYER CAKE

GF EGGBALL WAFFLES! (GAI DAAN JAI)

The BEST Eggball Waffle recipe yet!  AND it’s Gluten Free!  Guten Tag!  Oh Joy!

As you may recall, I have been feeling a whole bunch of self-pity as I have recently learned that I may need to go Gluten Free for life.  I have had this food blog for approximately 4 years (my blog bday is my daughter’s bday!  July 27, 2007) and I have been blogging about my quest for the best darned cake recipes and best places to eat in Vancouver consistently without any heed to watching my intake of gluten.   Since my first posted recipes, which were really meant to be an online archive where recipes are devoid of the detritus of my stream-of-consciousness (a good thing probably because I know I'm verbose), I have received over 1,000,000 page loads on my blog.  Aiya! That's amazing to me.

I'd like to take a minute to thank all my faithful "followers" and readers right now.  I particularly wish I could take all my fellow food-bloggin' friends out for some good ol' Dim Sum (many dishes are GF! hee hee!) in Vancouver to thank them for their encouraging comments over the years; but I know that would seem awfully weird.  So I won't.   Unexpectedly, I have connected with so many fellow foodies who are just as passionate about cake, desserts, eating well and anything food related and have made some really good friends.  I really appreciate all your comments over the years.  It truly is the only reward for all the hard work I've put into trying to make my blog better.  It's not as if I've gotten paid anything for blogging! I haven't even garnered enough hits to get my first $100 cheque from Google Ads. That may have something to do with me shoving the ads way at the bottom where you can't see it! har har!  It was compromising the "look" of my blog!  My first statcounter, identified by "Cakelicks", located way at the bottom too, shows my pageloads are right now at over a million.  1,022,583 to be exact at the moment of this post. That's not too shabby.  I average about 1,000 page loads a day.  Even if I don't post anything new.     Thank you all for sticking with me this long! I won't let you down and will continue to strive for the best darned dessert recipes; even if some will be GF now!  I will continue to use wheat flours in baking at home because I will bake these for bdays and my kids sometimes.  No one in the family, including me, has Celiac (Coeliac) disease.


But I digress.  Again.  Hey, you're used to it now.

Anyhoo...sure, I’ve been trying to be carb-careful and have been also trying really hard to maintain a healthy balance by running and exercising too.  However, a drastic dietary change like going Gluten Free kind of hit me like the force of a dump truck. 

Well, the self-pity lasted a couple of days and then I started to do what I usually do when confronted with a problem.  I researched it.  

Then, I bought two new GF books on my Kindle…Artisanal Gluten Free Cooking and Simply…Gluten Free Desserts. My goal was to find a decent utilitarian flour blend recipe for my baked goods.  Though the Quinoa Chocolate Cake I made recently was tasty, it failed miserably for lightness.  It was squidgy.  Because nobody else wanted to eat it in my household, I was left picking at it for the next week.  I think as a result of this, I’ll have to start making Small Batch GF recipes.  The more I think about it, the more likely I’ll have to go in this direction if I don’t want to weigh 200 pounds by the end of the summer.  Gluten Free certainly does not mean fat or sugar free!  Rice flour is just as “fattening” as eating refined wheat flour.  In fact, I can kind of see the danger of GF recipe testing…thinking that it’s okay to eat it, you can easily overindulge.  So look forward to small batch (i.e. 2 small cupcakes) GF baking recipes in the future.  I’ll be working hard on developing that. 

Remember also, that I do not have Celiac disease.  I am just being cautious with my thyroid condition (Hashimoto's thyroiditis) and want to prevent further damage.  I have even cut out my fave cruciferous veggies (they're goitrogenic) and soy products (sob!) from my diet.   Ah woe is me!

I feel that this could very likely be like some sort of rebound love affair, where you get dumped by one boyfriend (gluten) and run to someone new (rice flour, sugar, trans fats, etc.)…someone just as bad for you!

Well, I’m going to attempt to do the moderation thing and see how far that’ll get me.  As well, I am going to try to refrain from buying too many GF books.  I find that some of them tend towards Celiac patients and [knock on wood] I don’t think I have to be so wary as to worry about things like wheat-contaminated oatmeal and such.  I love my steel-cut oats and I’m not giving that up if I can help it.  I don’t want to go all healthy on you or something! don’t worry!   If  it doesn’t taste as good or better than the REAL GLUTEN-FULL stuff, I’ll let you know.  I mean, it isn’t as if I haven’t had a lifetime of experiencing what the real good stuff should taste like.  Besides, Celiac patients are so smart about going GF that they’ll know how to adapt my recipes so that they’ll “feel safe”.  It's primarily about the brands you buy and being vigilant at reading labels and researching.

From Simply…Gluten Free Desserts, I found a fabulous GF Flour Blend that seems to work well for refined flour-type baked goods and desserts.  It employs ASIAN white rice flour and sweet rice flours (because of the extremely fine grind).  I had purchased brown rice flour from Whole Foods, but am reluctant to try that in the recipe first because it might taste too healthy and make me really unhappy about the prospects of ever finding excellent-tasting GF desserts.  So I chose this highly refined blend and followed her specific instruction to use the Asian flours.  Besides, they’re WAY cheaper!  Just get the Thai brands from an Asian supermarket.    I don’t think it wise to use the grittier “western” grinds of rice flour if you want to mimic the real thing.  The coarse texture, the fact that there’s sometimes that all-too-healthy rice bran in there.  Ick. 

Have you seen any of my cake recipes on this site ever posted with whole wheat or whole grain flours?  No.  So you probably won’t find the brown rice too often.  Maybe once in a while because I accidentally purchased 2 bags of it…but not after I betcha. 

So before you think this is going to be super easy, it has to be a little finicky first.  Buy a whole bunch of these flours (white rice flour, glutinous rice flour, potato starch, tapioca starch and xanthum gum) and then measure them out into a big air-tight container.  Label it as your Sweet Rice Flour Blend.  Use this in place of your all-purpose flour or cake and pastry flour for baking.  After all the buying and mixing, it gets pretty easy afterwards.

The very first thing I tested this Sweet Rice Flour Blend on was not one of the recipes from her book, but one that I recently made with AP Wheat flour.  I figured I have enough good recipes kicking around and a blend can only be rated good or excellent by me if it mimics the same texture and taste as the original.  So my Eggball Recipe passed with flying colours!  It seemed even better than the wheat flour recipe; mostly because I am aware that Chinese people do rely a lot on rice flours and various starches in their baking and desserts  (unless you're up in Northern China!) so most likely eggball vendors probably use recipes that incorporate rice flours too.

You must make up a batch of the flour blend before you proceed with the recipe.  Go buy her book like I did if you want the recipe or you can even buy her flour blend online.  She put some hard work into making the blend.

GLUTEN FREE EGGBALL WAFFLES
(highly modified and adapted from Christine’s Recipes and Simply…Gluten Free Recipes)

140 grams Sweet Rice Flour Blend (from Simply...Gluten Free Recipes)

7.5 grams baking powder [I used Magic Baking Powder, a Canadian brand]

1 tablespoon custard powder [I used Bird’s Custard Powder]

28 grams tapioca starch

2 eggs

140 grams white sugar

28 grams evaporated milk

140 ml still water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

28 grams grapeseed oil, for making the egg batter

extra grapeseed oil in a little custard cup and a small pastry brush to oil the waffle iron mould.

NOTES:  I highly recommend that you weigh all your ingredients as indicated above.   I used my Williams Sonoma Eggball Waffle Iron. Yes, all the brands I used are GF though they don’t advertise that they are. I did research that.  If you're Celiac and wary (don't blame you) do re-check for yourself.

1. Sift the Sweet Rice Flour blend, baking powder, custard powder and tapioca starch together in a small mixing bowl.
2. In a 4 cup measuring cup, combine the eggs, sugar, evaporated milk water, grapeseed oil and extract. Mix thoroughly until combined.
3. Add the sifted flour mixture into the measuring cup that has the egg mixture and whisk until there are no more lumps.
4. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest in the refrigerator for at least one hour.
5. Preheat your waffle iron on the stove.   Oil both sides with an oil-dipped pastry brush, place it on the smallest gas element on “medium” heat and wait 30 sec.  Then flip the iron to heat the other side and wait a further 20 sec.
6. Stir the batter well and pour the batter into the centre of one side of the waffle iron, being careful not to overfill.  Leave one row around the perimeter empty of batter.
7. Close the iron and quickly flip the iron. Then set your timer for 2 min and 20 seconds.  Ensure your flame is on Medium and no higher. 
8. After the timer buzzes, flip the iron again and place it back on the flame.  Time it for another 2 min and 20 seconds.
9. Hopefully your batch turned out golden brown like mine.  If not, you’ll have to adjust from 2 minutes to 2 1/2 minutes and monitor your flame for subsequent batches.  Carefully, using chopsticks or tongs, pull the eggball waffle from the iron and allow to cool on a wire rack. 
10. Fan the waffle to crisp it up and cool it down a bit. (Get the kiddies to do this while you make subsequent batches!]
11. Eat the waffle while warm.  If you leave it to sit for longer than an hour, it’ll get soggy just like eggballs you’d get in the street market. Stale eggballs are not good eggballs. Eat them fresh. Or keep the raw batter in the refrigerator if you think you can't eat all the cooked eggballs at once.
12. When making subsequent waffles after the first test batch, ensure that you preheat both sides of the iron (10 sec is okay because it’s already warmed up) and remember to re-oil each side too.

More about → GF EGGBALL WAFFLES! (GAI DAAN JAI)