Mom needs a gluten free, low sugar cookbook page

[Rivvin]

My mom is big into doing tea parties and stuff, and spend days at a time baking all sorts of desserts and foods using regular sugar, flour, etc.. very classical stuff.

However, she's all upset because myself, my brother, and my sister are all paleo/primal and therefore never eat anything she makes. All of us are going to be in town soon and she is freaking out that she is not going to have anything to make us that is sweet. I don't even eat that many "sweets" but this is her "thing" and it will make her happy to make all of her kids a cake.

She's old school and isn't interested in scouring the internet for recipes. Someone please help me out and show me some cookbooks that have some decent gluten free, low sugar recipes so my mom can stop worrying and love to learn the almond meal.

[duckmama]

Would she be willing to cook with coconut flour? If so, I recommend this book: Amazon.com: Cooking with Coconut Flour: A Delicious Low-Carb, Gluten-Free Alternative to Wheat (9780941599887): Bruce Fife: Books

It has low sugar alternatives although some of them require special ingredients. I sometimes just sub Splenda - I know it's not great for you, but I only bake occasionally for a special treat so I don't worry about it.

The thing about these coconut flour recipes is that they will taste like coconut, so if you don't like it, this won't work. I made a really good fruit cobbler at the end of summer using a recipe from this book and served it with sugar free ice cream. It was really tasty.

[jqbancroft]

What about Elana's cookbook?

[Rivvin]

What about Elana's cookbook?

Oh yeah, I forgot about that cookbook... I'll have to check it out and tell her to use honey instead of agave nectar (I don't understand why elana uses it so much, sheesh)

[Dr. Bork Bork]

Was just going to suggest Elana's book. Also this one:
Amazon.com: Simply Sugar and Gluten-Free: 180 Easy and Delicious Recipes You Can Make in 20 Minutes or Less (9781569758656): Amy Green: Books

[nicoleah]

I come from a family of bakers, too. I feel your pain.

I don't have any of the gluten free cookbooks so I can't recommend based on experience, but a quick "gluten free low sugar" search on Google listed a ton of books on Amazon. I have a great recipe for a Primal-friendly chocolate cake from joyfulabode.com (below) if you're interested and there's a current thread in the recipes forum about a pumpkin loaf that sounds good. Can't help you with cookie-type stuff, sorry.


Grain Free Gluten Free Chocolate Cake (I used almond butter instead of peanut butter!)

[EvansMom]

Okay here are my tips. You can make ANY recipie gluten-free by adding a combination of flours, that combine to make the total amount of flour required for the recipie. (i.e. if calls for 1/2 c. flour, use multiple types of g.f. flours totalling 1/2 cup). Note that sometimes the recipie will need LESS g.f. flour than for regular recipies. Add in slowly and check consistency of batter. You do NOT NEED xanthan gum or guar gum - these are toxic to the gut (essentially gluten mimic items). Use care not to over mix, it will become drier the more it is mixed typically.

The flour combos I like are Bob's Red Mill brand all-purpose g.f. flour mixture (a mixture of several types), garbanzo bean flour, tapioca flour, potato flour, & white rice flour. Garbanzo bean flour tastes STRONG if you taste the batter, but turns out almost tasteless when baked.

The key is MIXING several types of flours together. Otherwise, you get a product that can be very "off."

Now you can also do almond flour recipies, but I have mixed results with almond flour, and it is ALWAYS a dense and wet product that I bake when using it. I sure like them, but some don't as well.

Here is a recipie that I used real sugar for, but used the g.f. flour mixture and it was THE BEST cake I have ever eaten, hands down. And I know baking. This was DAMN good. Enough good that I would even eat g.f. flours to have some again at some point. The frosting was so so so so great. Loved it! And she might be more inclined to try and live g.f. if she tried a good recipie first? And I would just let her use real sugar at first, since honey is expensive and she would probably buy processed honey which has so much higher GI than raw anyways.

Dark Chocolate Double Layer Cake with Ganache Frosting (from Martha Stewart)
Ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pans
1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa (spooned and leveled), plus more for pans
2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled) *sub same amount of a mixture of g.f. flours, including some (but not too much) almond meal/flour*
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups packed light-brown sugar
2 large eggs plus 2 large egg yolks, room temperature
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup low-fat buttermilk

Directions
1.Preheat oven to 350. Butter two 8-inch round cake pans; dust with cocoa, tapping out excess. Line bottom of each pan with a round of parchment paper; set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside.

2.In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and yolks, one at a time, beating well after each addition; beat in chocolate and vanilla. With mixer on low, alternately add flour mixture in three parts and buttermilk in two, beginning and ending with flour mixture.

3.Divide batter between prepared pans; smooth tops. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of a cake comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Cool in pans 15 minutes; run a knife around edge of each pan, and invert cakes onto a wire rack to cool completely.

4.Set a rimmed baking sheet upside down on a work surface. Place one cake on sheet, and spread top with 1/3 of ganache. Place second cake on top, and spread remaining ganache over top and sides of cake. Using two wide metal spatulas, carefully transfer frosted cake to a serving platter.

[Owly]

Rebecca Reilly's Gluten-free Baking is a phenomenal cookbook for more conventional GF baking. Many of the recipes use alternative flours, though, so if you're very strict on the grain-free thing, it's not the best pick since it uses a lot of rice flour and such. However, I've had spectacular results with her recipes and you'd never guess they were gluten free. Sugar contents vary. Reilly studied at Cordon Bleu and Le Notre in Paris, and she's converted some classical fancy recipes to GF versions. When I was still more conventionally GF (as compared to primal), it was my number-one baking cookbook, hands down.

Elena has some great stuff on her site, and I'd guess her cookbook recipes are equally good. You might also look at some cookbooks targeted at the SCD community. They're not sugar-free, but they are lower in sugars and tend to use natural sugars such as honey, rather than refined. High on the almond flour, though, so if you're really avoiding the PUFAs from nuts, I'd use those ones sparingly.

[gojirama]

Alice Medrich's "Bittersweet" and Fran Bigelow's "Pure Chocolate" have lots of classic European recipes that are grain free or so little flour it's easy to sub almond meal. Most of them are lower sugar than American sweets too, with out having to sub or reduce.

[jqbancroft]

Oh yeah, I forgot about that cookbook... I'll have to check it out and tell her to use honey instead of agave nectar (I don't understand why elana uses it so much, sheesh)

She's recently started posting recipes using coconut sugar and stevia instead. Yay!