Breads Here Revisited Part 3: Microwave Breads

Now, I know, some of these are cakes, but I make most of these without the sugar, with a little salt and they make the best quick breads. There are a lot of “mug cakes”, which I do have recipes for as well, but I think of the difference thus: A mug cake is eaten from the mug, whereas the bread is removed from the baking vessel. Now I know that seems a trifle pedantic, but what makes these work so well as bread is that they can be sliced. So, let’s think of them as breads and see what we can see, shall we, dear reader?

Microwave Amaranth Flour Bread
Microwave Banana Flour Cake
Microwave Buckwheat and Rice Flour Cake
Microwave Buckwheat Cake
Microwave English Muffin
Microwave Flax Muffin
Microwave Quinoa Flour Cake
Microwave Rice Flour Cake
Microwave Sorghum Flour Bread

You could be a pain and question whether these are breads and you can feel free to do so. I’m calling them breads and phooey from me to you! What I love about these is that they take very little in the way of specialised ingredients, the ground flaxseed might not be so common, ground chia works too, but other than that it’s pretty basic. The recipes themselves feature numerous options, covering so many diets. The only catch is the egg is necessary for the texture and rise, the original recipe used banana if I’m not mistaken, but it was more of a cake, there are cakes in these too, but for this post I’ll focus on the bread. And, yes, this started as a single recipe that I adapted from another. It uses a total of eight (We’ll count flaxseed as a flour, shush) different flours. I’ve found success with so many, barring ground almonds, too fatty I think, so I can only imagine any free from flour would work here. This recipe is great for using up the dregs of flour as it uses so little. You can easily mix and match as needed. When made using only a single flour it really highlights the unique taste and texture of that flour. I usually make these in a jug ad they just pop right out so there isn’t much clean up.

To talk at length about such mundane things is a gift, dear reader. What you have here is the closest thing to a free-from sandwich bread, no crust sadly, but you can’t have everything, without using gums or added starches. They come out springy, light, different flours yield slightly varying results, but it’s pretty consistent across the board. The reason they come out so light is because of the egg swelling, reacting to the baking powder too I assume, and setting before it can fall. The flax and flour help to stabilise. There isn’t an eggy taste as you’d imagine as the egg is well cooked through when the bread is ready. This is great for making a quick meal, spread on the nut butters and jams or slather sauce and spiced meat and eat it open-faced. It’s filling, again varying on the flour used, and you’ll find you don’t need a whole lot to make it a meal. They’re best eaten on the day, but you could probably freeze them.

So, there you have it. I would have scoffed at a microwave bread if I hadn’t scarfed so many in my time. Many a time I forgot to leave out something for tea and found myself hungry and in no mood to get cooking. A quick mix up in a jug and there it is: Bread! I like recipes like these, they’re almost foolproof and if you find yourself with a free-from flour that’s lacking in uses you can try something like these and you’ll be almost guaranteed success. I primarily make them with rice flour as it’s the cheapest and least versatile flour in my cupboard. I have found sorghum delicious and wonderfully light. Quinoa works best for a cake and banana flour is slightly revolting if I’m honest.

You’ll notice that the breads I use often are pretty easy to prepare, that’s hardly surprising. I’ve lost count of how many loaves I’ve made over the years. The ease of making them has helped me stick to my diet. The variety has kept me from getting bored and fed up. I hope you’ll find something to interest you in this series, dear reader. There are other breads on the site and maybe they’ll suit you better. The reason I started this series was to showcase a few recipes and to encourage people to look at the recipe page, there are so many recipes that are sadly under-loved. Perhaps if this is popular enough there’ll be another series of posts using those recipes. I’ll see you again next time, dear reader.

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Coconut Flour Butternut Squash Muffin Tops

Letting it chill will make it easier to handle. Sorry about the mess, BNS Pasta Sauce was getting ready for freezing.

Adapted from: Pumpkin Spice Muffin Mounds

The dough is similar to my Coconut Flour Cookies, sticky at first, but after resting it’ll firm up fine and you can just pop it out of a measuring cup without any fuss or mess. I ditched the honey in favour of Maple Syrup as I find honey burns too easily for me and makes everything too dark. I also subbed  BNS for pumpkin because I have no hope of finding a pumpkin here unless it’s Halloween and even then they’re not quite at a level of quality for eating. I actually had two BNS for this and thought I’d have too much, nope, I actually had to defrost some of my frozen squash and use that instead. I think they must’ve been thick skinned as I usually have enough in one.

Now I should say that anything I say now is in no way a reflection of the original recipe’s quality or taste, this is just personal taste. Honestly, I just can’t get into coconut flour. I mostly used this recipe to use it up. It worked well and  the muffin tops were tasty, but I just don’t like the texture of coconut flour. It may be a brand issue, but it’s happened twice already. Like I say taste-wise they’re really great, there’s a lot going on, but they weren’t too sweet nor was I overpowered by the pumpkin spice. I guess coconut flour and me just don’t mix. Still it’s a really great recipe, even with me tweaking it a lot and it would make a great frozen breakfast as it should freeze fine, just defrost it well before eating. Check out the original too and find which version suits you best.

You could double or triple this if you wanted, I just happened to have three store-bought eggs that needed to be used up.

Ingredients

3 Large Eggs
100g Butternut Squash Purée
60g Coconut Flour
50ml Maple Syrup
2 Tbsp Coconut Oil, Cold and Chopped
1 Tbsp Pumpkin Spice
1/2 Tsp Vanilla Extract
1/4 Tsp Baking Soda

Makes 6 Muffin Tops or 22 1 Tbsp Cookies.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 175c (Fan) and line a tray with greaseproof paper.

2. Using an electric mixer beat together the Eggs, Butternut Squash Puree, Maple Syrup and Vanilla Extract until well combined.

3. Beat in Coconut Flour, Baking Soda, Pumpkin Spice until well combined. Finally beat in Coconut Oil until thoroughly blended in. Scrape dough into centre of the bowl and let chill in the fridge for 5 minutes.

4. Scoop 1/4 Cup’s worth of dough and roll into a ball, press down onto the prepared tray and repeat for all dough. Bake for 15-20 minutes of until dark golden in colour and firm to the touch. Let cool on tray for 10 minutes and then remove to wire-rack to cool completely.

Butternut Squash Bread

The texture is similar to a banana bread. Soft, but not soggy.

Halved from Here

I’ll be honest I really, really don’t like soft bread. I spent a long time stuck eating squishy flax bread when I had nothing else and once I had a chance to break away I never looked back. So I’m biased against this bread, but it’s not that bad. It’s soft, but not gooey. It’s a free from kitchen sink job and tweaking it too much would probably trash it. I’ve had better, but something that uses all the flours that usually combine with things I don’t/can’t eat and leaves them to themselves is okay by me.

It’s slightly crunchy outside and soft inside.

Whether it’s all it’s claimed to be health-wise is hard to say, but with all that’s in it and all that’s left out you could do a lot worse. If you’d rather a firmer loaf with a similar taste try my Pumpkin Spiced Buckwheat Bread. That’s it for me….just kidding, tomorrow, after a three year break, it’s Cheesecake in Buckwheat Pastry time!

Ingredients

Wet:

120g Butternut/Sweet Potato Squash Purée
42g Butter/Coconut Oil, Soft
40ml Maple Syrup
1 Large Egg
1/2 Tsp Vanilla Extract

Dry:

33g Brown Rice Flour
25g Ground Flaxseed
13g Coconut Flour
1 Tsp Baking Powder
1/2 Tsp Pumpkin Spice

Makes one small flat loaf.
Can be frozen.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180c (No Fan). Grease and line a 6×3 inch loaf pan.

3. In a large bowl mix together, using an electric mixer, the Wet Ingredients. Add Dry Ingredients and mix until combined. Batter will be thick, slightly dry and lumpy. Don’t add Water.

4. Scoop batter into prepared tin, smoothing down with a wet spoon, and bake for 35-45 minutes, turning halfway if needed, until golden brown and a skewer comes out clean.

5. Cool in tin for 5 minutes, then remove from tin, remove greaseproof paper and let cool completely on a wire rack.

Slurry Curry

2017 Update: Due to a problem with Photobucket, see here, there will be a lot of recipes without photos. I will be slowly redoing the recipe pages, as best I can, but many other posts will be impossible to replace. I’m doing this in my own time, while continuing to update the blog with new recipes and posts. If you’d like to donate, any amount appreciated, you can do so here. The site will always be free, the recipes will never be locked behind a paywall, but this is a lot of additional work. I’m not demanding or begging, just putting it there so if you feel like repaying my hard work you have that option. I don’t make any money from the site, all that I do here is to help others, I couldn’t charge for that.

Yeah, it’s been a good two years, but I know it when I see it.

A basic curry I use for experimenting with different thickeners. You’ll notice I like to try different things with recipes and this one was born exclusively for the purpose of testing thickeners. The name comes from the slurry you make with cornstarch and water which funnily I never use, but the rhyming name was too much to resist.

Ingredients

1 Chicken Breasts
160ml Chicken Stock (1/2 Stock Cube)
1 Tsp Curry Powder
1/8 Tsp Black Pepper
1/2 Yellow Onion, Chopped Fine
2 Cloves Garlic, Minced
1/2 Tbsp Fresh Ginger, Grated
1 Tbsp Olive Oil

For Thickening

1 Tbsp Coconut Flour and 30ml Water 1 Tbsp Rice Flour and 30ml Water 1 Tbsp Buckwheat Flour and 30ml Water 1/2 Tbsp Whole Chia Seeds (No Need for Water)
1 Tbsp Chestnut Flour and 30ml Water

Optional: 1/8 Tsp Ground Long Pepper, 1/8 Tsp White Pepper

Method

1. Heat Olive Oil in a pot and when melted add Onion, Ginger and Garlic, mix and cover. Let cook for 5-10 minutes, on a medium heat, or until soft.

2. Add Curry Powder and stir together, then add Chicken, stir and cook for 5 minutes.

3. Add Stock and stir, bring to boil and then reduce to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes.

4. Mix Flour of choice and Water to form a paste and add to pot, mix until dissolved and then cook for a further 10 minutes.

Variations:

Rooibos/Wild Rooibos Curry: Steep two Teabags in 150ml of Hot Water while preparing everything else. Dissolve 1/2 Stock Cube in 10ml of Hot Water and add to Rooibos. Add the same time as you would stock.

Microwave English Muffin

2017 Update: Due to a problem with Photobucket, see here, there will be a lot of recipes without photos. I will be slowly redoing the recipe pages, as best I can, but many other posts will be impossible to replace. I’m doing this in my own time, while continuing to update the blog with new recipes and posts. If you’d like to donate, any amount appreciated, you can do so here. The site will always be free, the recipes will never be locked behind a paywall, but this is a lot of additional work. I’m not demanding or begging, just putting it there so if you feel like repaying my hard work you have that option. I don’t make any money from the site, all that I do here is to help others, I couldn’t charge for that.

Original here.

Ingredients

10g Ground Almonds
14g Coconut Flour
1 Tsp Olive Oil
1 Large Egg
1/4 Tsp GF Baking Powder
Salt to Taste
2-3 Tbsp Water

Method

1. Put everything into a bowl.

2. Whisk together until smooth and creamy.

3. Grease microwave safe bowl with Butter.

4. Cook on full heat for 2 minutes.

5. Place plate on top of the bowl and turn out. Serve hot or cold.

Hemp Coconut Crumble

2017 Update: Due to a problem with Photobucket, see here, there will be a lot of recipes without photos. I will be slowly redoing the recipe pages, as best I can, but many other posts will be impossible to replace. I’m doing this in my own time, while continuing to update the blog with new recipes and posts. If you’d like to donate, any amount appreciated, you can do so here. The site will always be free, the recipes will never be locked behind a paywall, but this is a lot of additional work. I’m not demanding or begging, just putting it there so if you feel like repaying my hard work you have that option. I don’t make any money from the site, all that I do here is to help others, I couldn’t charge for that.

 

Tweaked from: Here

Ingredients

Filling

100g Berries e.g. Strawberries, Raspberries, Blueberries etc.
25g Sugar
50ml Water

Topping

12g Ground Almonds
17g Coconut Four
17g Shelled Hemp Seed
1 Tbsp Cold Butter, Chopped

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 170c (No Fan).

2. Place the Berries, Sugar and Water in a pot and cook on a medium heat until soft and the juices have run out of the berries, make sure there’s plenty of liquid as the topping will absorb it as it cooks. Add compote to oven proof dish and set aside.

3. In a bowl mix together the Ground Almonds, Coconut Four, Hemp Seed, Butter and work together with fingers until it resembles breadcrumbs,

4. Sprinkle Crumb Mixture over the Compote and cook for 10-15 minutes until the top is golden brown.

Fluffy Nut Butter Bread

Tweaked from: Here

Ingredients

75g Peanut Butter (Cashew for a plain loaf)
1 Large Egg, Separated
1/2 Tbsp Honey
10ml Lemon Juice
15ml Milk
10g Coconut Flour
1/4 Tsp Baking Powder
Pinch Salt

Makes one small loaf. Can be frozen.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 150c (Fan) and place a bowl of Hot Water in the bottom of the oven.

2. Grease and line a 6×3 inch loaf pan.

3. In a bowl mix together the Egg Yolk and Peanut Butter, then beat in the Milk, Lemon Juice and Honey. A thick clingy Paste should form, if too dry add more Milk. Finally beat in the Coconut Flour and Baking Powder. It’s okay if it’s dry at this point as the Egg Whites will form a batter.

4. Beat the Egg White until stiff peaks form. Beat this into the mixture, making sure everything is incorporated, but also making sure not to over beat. A thick Batter should be the end result.

5. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 30 minutes, without turning, and then cool in tin for 20 minutes, then remove and let cool completely on a wire rack.

Flaxseed Crackers

Tweaked from: Here

Ingredients

17g Ground Flaxseed and 3 Tbsp Warm Water
60g Ground Flax
1 Tbsp Coconut Flour
Spices/Herbs if Desired
Olive Oil
Water
Salt and Pepper to Taste.

Method

Dough:

1. In a small bowl mix together Flax and Warm Water. It should be thick and gelatinous.

2. Add Flax Egg to a large bowl and add the remaining Flax and the Coconut Flour. Stir together with a metal spoon until combined.

3. When all the Flax Egg has been mixed through Flax and Coconut Flour start adding water a sprinkle at a time and knead until a firm and elastic dough is formed.

4. Divide the Dough into 3 parts and roll out between two sheets of greaseproof paper as thin as possible.

Baking:

1. Preheat the oven to 200c (Fan)

2. Place one Flax Tortilla on a chopping board and brush with oil until covered. Cut into segments and place on tray. Repeat for all Tortillas.

3. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until solid, turn half way.

4. Remove from tray and let cool.

Coconut Flour Flatbread Cheese Sandwich

From: Here

Ingredients

1 Large Egg
1 Tbsp Coconut Flour
1/8 Tsp Baking Soda
1/8 Tsp Baking Powder
2 Tbsp Milk
Pinch of Sea Salt
Butter for Frying
Grated Cheese for Filling.

Method

1. Add everything to a bowl and beat with a fork until smooth. There should be no lumps.

2. Add some Butter to a pan and melt, then add the Batter in two circles and cook on medium until bubbles start to appear on the top and the bottom has browned.

3. Flip over the flatbread and then top one of the slices with Grated Cheese and cook until the bottoms are done. When done place one flatbread on top of the other and heat on until the cheese has melted then serve.

Coconut Flour Banana Bread

Adapted from: Here

Ingredients

Wet

125g Natural Peanut Butter/Almond Butter
1 Medium Egg
1 Medium Banana, Mashed
1 Tbsp Honey
1/2 Tbsp Butter/Coconut Oil, Melted
1 Tsp Lemon Juice
1/4 Tsp Vanilla Extract

Dry

1 Tbsp Coconut Flour
1/4 Tsp Cinnamon
1/4 Tsp Baking Soda

Can be frozen.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 175c (No Fan). Grease and line the bottom of a baking tin.

2. Mix together all the dry ingredients and set aside.

3. Add all the wet ingredients to a bowl and beat together, using an electric mixer, until smooth. Then add the dry and beat until mixed completely. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 30 minutes, turning halfway if necessary, or until a knife comes out clean. Loaf should be golden brown and firm.

4. Let cool in the tin for 15 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.