Gluten-free, Egg-free and Dairy-free Date Loaf

The weather is hot in Brisbane today but, when it cooled a little this afternoon, I managed to make this date loaf without wilting too much:

Ingredients

115 g chopped dates

150 g dairy-free margarine (I used Nuttelex – for non-dairy-free you could use butter)

115 g brown sugar

290 ml water

225 g gluten-free self-raising flour

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons No Egg egg replacer (or use EnerG). If you can eat eggs use 2 eggs and reduce the water volume to 250 ml

60 g chopped walnuts (optional)

Method

1. Place the dates, margarine, brown sugar and water into a medium sized saucepan and place over medium heat. Once it has come to the boil, remove from the heat and allow to cool.

2. Combine the flour, cinnamon, egg replacer and walnuts in a bowl.

3. Add the cooled date mixture to the dry ingredients.

4. Place into a greased loaf tin. For this amount of mixture I used a 21 x 11 cm loaf pan and a 14 x 7 cm mini-loaf pan.

5. Bake at 170 C fan-forced (190 C/375 F conventional oven) until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. For the small tin it took 20 minutes and the larger pan took approximately 35 minutes.

Gluten-free, Egg-free and Dairy-free Coffee Cake

This recipe was given to me by a friend about 23 years ago and I’ve made the usual adjustments to make it friendly for our diet. I did not have enough dairy-free margarine to make this today, so I made it with a dairy-containing margarine, but I see no reason why it would not work with dairy-free margarine and rice milk as substitutes. Here’s the recipe:
Ingredients

125  g margarine (use a dairy-free margarine for dairy-free or use butter if you prefer)

170 g brown sugar (1 metric cup)

2 teaspoons instant coffee (I used de-caffeinated instant coffee)

1 tablespoon hot water

2 tablespoons cold water

1 teaspoon cinnamon

300g gluten-free self raising flour

2 teaspoons Orgran No Egg egg replacer (or use EnerG) – if you can eat eggs use 2 eggs and omit the cold water

125 ml milk (use rice milk for dairy-free)

Method

1. Dissolve the instant coffee in the hot water, add the cold water and set aside to cool.

2. Cream the margarine and brown sugar together.

3. Add the coffee mixture and mix well.

4. Sift the flour, cinnamon and No Egg powder together.

5. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the creamed mix and mix until incorporated, then 1/2 of the milk, then 1/3 of the flour, then the rest of the milk and finally the rest of the flour.

6. Pour into a greased and lined 20 cm cake tin.

7. Bake at 160 C fan-forced (180 C/350 F conventional oven) for approximately 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

8. Ice with coffee frosting and decorate with walnuts if desired.

Coffee icing: Mix 1/2 a teaspoon of instant coffee with 1 tablespoon of hot water and allow to cool. Cream 60 g of margarine or butter until soft and add the coffee mix and add 140 g of gluten-free icing mixture* and mix well.

*You need to be sure that the icing mixture does not contain wheat starch, or use pure icing sugar. At the time of writing the CSR icing mixture is sold with a ‘gluten-free’ label.