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Recipe: Gluten-Free Spinach and Cheddar Quiche

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff Leave a Comment

When Paula Deen was making something similar to this quiche on TV recently, I was busy and not really paying much attention to the details of the recipe. I knew Paula’s crustless quiche called for one pack of frozen chopped spinach, four eggs, two cups of cheddar cheese and some amount of Parmesan cheese. That was all I caught regarding ingredients and measurements for Paula’s recipe so I made up the rest based on what I had in the fridge. I also made a gluten-free crust for the quiche using a crust recipe from Carol Fenster’s fabulous new cookbook “100 gluten-free Recipes” which I’ll be reviewing (and giving away a copy of) on this website soon. Though I’ve not made it before, I’ve heard good things about this gluten and dairy-free pie crust recipe.

Spinach and Cheddar Quiche

Ingredients:

  • 4 large eggs
  • 1 pk. frozen chopped spinach
  • 1 ¼ cup of shredded mild cheddar cheese
  • ¼ cup of shredded Parmesan cheese
  • ¼ skim milk
  • ¼ cup non fat plain Greek yogurt
  • 1 bunch of scallions
  • ¼ t. dry mustard
  • pinch of salt
  • gluten-free pie crust

Instructions:

  1. Saute finely chopped scallions in a tiny bit of regular olive oil
  2. Put onions aside and let cool.
  3. Whisk eggs in mixing bowl for several minutes.
  4. Add drained (& dried) spinach to the eggs and mix well.
  5. Add in the rest of the ingredients and mix well.
  6. Pour into quiche crust (or greased baking pan if not using crust, I like to use a spring form pan for a nice presentation)
  7. Bake in 400 degree oven on bottom rack in oven for 15 minutes.
  8. Move pan to middle rack and cover with foil (do not wrap foil tightly around pan edge) Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until knife inserted in center comes out clean.
  9. Let sit for at least five minutes before cutting to serve.

For the perfect weekend brunch, serve quiche with gluten-free bacon or sausage and fresh fruit. If you want to go all out, make some mini gluten-free muffins to accompany the meal. I like to make batches of those to keep in the freezer. To enjoy as them needed, I defrost them on the counter overnight and slowly reheat them in the toaster oven. For a variation on the quiche, you can add sauteed mushrooms (or your favorite veggies) and/or bacon to the filling. Using heavy cream instead of skim milk and yogurt offers a richer taste – as well as more fat and calories.

You can always make a crustless quiche, but that’s really egg or breakfast casserole – not quiche. Even a fly-by-the-seat-of-my pants cook like me knows that true quiche calls for a crust. Use any ready-made gluten-free crust if you don’t have the time (or desire) to make your own. The crust recipe from Carol’s Fenster’s book (that I modified to be a cornmeal crust) turned out fabulously in both taste and texture. Gluten-free Pantry pie crust mix makes a lovely quiche crust as long as you omit the sugar. I usually make my quiche crust using the plain pie crust recipe from the Pamela’s Products website, omitting the sugar.

Going out for brunch on the weekend used to be one of our favorite things to do with friends. Even with the amazing gluten-free dining options in our area, few places are knocking our socks off with their gluten-free brunch offerings. To me, brunch means French toast (or buttermilk pancakes), quiche, melt in your mouth biscuits and fresh, seasonal fruit. Of those things, only the fruit is naturally gluten-free. The other items are generally off limits to the gluten-free crowd in most areas.

At some finer hotels and high end places you can request special things like gluten-free scones or pancakes, but you are going to have to get dressed up, tip a valet parking attendant and fork over a lot of cash for the experience. Instead, we usually opt to stay in and make our own brunch. Sharing delicious gluten-free food with good friends makes for the perfect weekend meal at our house.

Review: Gluten-Free Coffee Cake

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff 5 Comments

For my gluten-free profile of Asheville, NC (summer 2010 issue of Delight gluten-free magazine), I was fortunate enough to visit the World’s Best Carrot Cake bakery just north of the city. The owners of the company are some of the nicest people around and the business is family owned and operated. I also profiled the fabulous carrot cakes in this article, in case you are not familiar with the North Carolina bakery’s wonderful gluten-free wares.

When I entered the recent gluten-free vendor fair in Atlanta recently, the very first table I noticed was that of The World’s Best Carrot Cake. The owner Avi and her husband Morgan were there so I went over to say hello. As I headed back to my own table, Leah McGrath (dietitian from Ingles) asked me if I’d tried the new coffee cake from the Asheville bakery. I had not so I did a 180 and grabbed a small sample cup of the cake. Even at room temperature, the coffee cake was absolutely divine! I dashed out to get some cash and returned to buy a whole Pecan Coffee Cake. I wasn’t sure how many they had and I didn’t want them to run out before I got a chance to return to the show floor.

For many reasons, I did not overload on carbs at this year’s event. Because my job involves getting so many products to review, I just don’t feel the need to taste every single gluten-free item out there these days. Everything I tried at the fair this year was very good or great, but I didn’t taste that much compared to every other year I’ve attended. In years past, I’ve not been able to eat much for a day (or two) after the show due to overdoing it at the event. This year, I was excited to have coffee cake for breakfast the next morning. Due to the way the cake is packaged, I loosely wrapped the whole thing in foil and heated it up in a 250 degree oven. It took about twenty minutes for it to get sufficiently warm.

As I opened up the foil that surrounded the cake, the aroma of homemade coffee cake wafted through the kitchen. It was stronger than the turkey bacon my husband was cooking and I could hardly wait to taste it. My husband had not tried the cake before so he had no predisposed notion about how it might be when heated up, but I was ready to taste some gluten-free greatness. One bite of the delicious coffee cake was all it took to take me back in time. When I was a child, something called coffee can bread (bread baked in a coffee can) was all the rage and some people also made “coffee can coffee cake”. Back in the day coffee cans were made of metal. There was not any plastic involved in the packaging so you could use the cans to bake in.

As I looked at the shape of the coffee cake with a nut crumble topping, I realized it looked like it had been baked in a coffee can. I’d made a vanilla glaze for the cake, but decided to taste the cake before putting any glaze on it and I’m so glad I did. Not that the glaze could have ruined the cake, but the cake was perfect just the way it was. It was rich, moist and decadent and best of all – it was light and fluffy! There is no way I can explain how incredible the coffee cake was, but anyone who used to eat sour cream coffee cake with gluten in it might want to try this incredible new offering from The World’s Best Carrot Cake bakery.

The bakery offers online ordering and Whole Foods should be picking up the new Pecan Coffee Cake soon. Whole Foods carries several of the World’s Best Carrot Cakes, including gluten and gluten-free versions. Because the bakery is not a dedicated gluten-free facility, they take every precaution you can think of (and some you never would) to keep the gluten-free items safe. Those precautions include using color coded scissors and box cutters to open the gluten-free ingredients and the boxes they come in. Everyone at the bakery takes the issue very seriously, to say the least. I’ve never seen so many non food items labeled gluten-free in my life!

It was so much fun to learn about the World’s Best Carrot Cake company and to get the know the people that created such a special place. After our behind the scenes tour of the bakery earlier this year, Avi was kind enough to give us some cupcakes to take to our hotel in Asheville. As we tasted both the regular and chocolate carrot cake cupcakes later that day, we debated over which flavor was the best and why. We finally decided that we could not decide. They were both phenomenal so it’s no wonder that the new Pecan Coffee Cake cake meets the high standard Avi has set for her products – regardless of ingredients.

*Special thanks to Avi for our chocolate carrot cake cupcakes.  They were fabulous – as always!

Review: Mellow Mushroom Gluten-Free Pizza

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff 4 Comments

There is quite a bit of competition for the gluten-free pizza business in the Atlanta area. The only pizza we’ve had here that could compete with the incredible options we had in NYC were the ones our pizza joint owner, Phil, made with the Domata Living Flour. The only reason that those crusts were made in the first place was because of a supply issue on the Domata crusts and it seems that the problem is ongoing. After finding out that the Domata crusts were still out of stock at our normal pizza place (Pepperoni’s) for the third week in a row, I decided to risk trying the gluten-free pie at Mellow Mushroom again.

Even though I didn’t care for the gluten-free pizza at the Mellow Mushroom in Conyer’s, I think that everyone deserves a second (and maybe a third) chance when it comes to trying to get it right for the gluten-free crowd. Let’s face it – we are difficult customers to prepare meals for. If the staff is trained properly on gluten-free service, they know that one slip-up such as a misplaced pizza cutter could make their gluten-free guests incredibly ill. No one gets into the gluten-free menu game to make people sick and many places really do care about getting it right. The truth is that quite a few of them simply just don’t get it.

In the case of the Mellow Mushroom location we visited last week, the staff not only “gets it” when it comes to safe gluten-free service, the staff members don’t understand why they’d have gluten-free pizza, but not offer gluten-free beer. They aren’t thrilled that only about half their gluten-free customers report that they actually like the gluten-free crust either. This news shocked me because I thought the people that didn’t like the crust offered there were in the minority. The two employees we spoke to admitted that if their choice is to offer something that the majority of their gluten-free guests don’t love, they would rather not offer a gluten-free crust at all. To be fair, these people have only compared the gluten-free crust (which they’d both tried themselves) to their gluten crust. Neither person mentioned having better gluten-free crusts elsewhere.

At this particular Mellow Mushroom location, the gluten-free crust has brought in a lot of new business which actually surprised the staff there. The gluten-free option has only been available for about a month and the number of gluten-free people coming in to order it has been much higher than they’d anticipated. It’s certainly true that everyone has different tastes when it comes to food of any kind. However, for a company like Mellow Mushroom, serving a product that doesn’t live up to its own high standards in terms of customer satisfaction seems a bit odd, to say the least. There is no way that the company would serve a gluten crust that only 50% of their customers loved.

As for the taste of the pizza during this visit, it was much better than the one we had in Conyer’s. Based on tips from others, I ordered the crust “extra crispy” and while it was not crispy at all, it was also not soggy so that was a huge plus. Also, I ordered the Greek salad and which came with feta cheese and it was delicious. At Conyer’s Mellow Mushroom, I was told the feta cheese was not gluten-free. In any case, during our second visit at what will remain an undisclosed Mellow Mushroom location, the Greek salad was delicious and is something I’d go back for and the pizza isn’t something I’d get again – unless they changed the crust.

Recipe: Gluten-Free Applesauce Cookies

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff 3 Comments

Fall has arrived rather quickly here in Central Ohio. We went from temperatures in the 90s last week to a high of 55 today. While that is wrong on so many levels, I welcome this cooler weather with open arms. I am done with my summer wardrobe & ready to move on to fall. If it could be fall year round, I would be just about as happy as a student seeing a substitute on test day.

When I was growing up my grandmother always used to make applesauce/spice cookies. They were some of my favorite cookies. The recipe originally came from Betty Crocker’s Cookbook, the 1969 edition. All I had to do was modify the recipe to make it gluten-free.

These cookies smell amazing while they are cooking. Using homemade applesauce really enhances the wonderful flavor of these cookies. The flavors are everything representative of the season. The recipe for the frosting that Betty Crocker suggests is not the one I use. I actually use the Cinnamon Icing that I use for my pumpkin cookies. They aren’t the prettiest cookies, but who cares when they taste so good?!? They don’t want to flatten out when they bake, so perhaps shaping them a little flatter before putting them in the oven will help in that regard.

Applesauce Cookies

**From The Betty Crocker Cookbook 1969 Edition

  • ½ cup softened butter or margarine
  • ¾ cup applesauce
  • 2 ¾ cup flour (I used gluten-free Pantry’s All-Purpose mix that includes guar gum, so didn’t add any xanthan gum; make sure to add this if you don’t have it in your mix already)
  • 1 1/2 tsp xanthan gum (use only if the flour mix you are using doesn’t contain xanthan or guar gums)
  • 1 ½ cups packed brown sugar
  • 1 cup chopped pecans (I used walnuts)
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • ¼ tsp ground cloves
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • ½ tsp baking soda
  • 2 eggs

Heat oven to 375. Mix butter and applesauce. Stir in remaining ingredients. Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls about 1 inch apart onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake until almost no indentation remains when touched – 8 to 10 minutes. Immediately remove from cookie sheet. Cool. Frost with Caramel Frosting if desired. About 6 dozen cookies – 70 calories each. (This made no where near 6 dozen, more like 2-3 dozen)

Caramel Frosting
**This is the recipe for frosting that Betty Crocker suggests; I did not use this one

  • ½ cup margarine or butter
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar
  • ¼ cup milk
  • 2 cups powdered sugar

Heat margarine in 1-quart saucepan until melted. Stir in brown sugar. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil and stir over low heat 2 minutes. Stir in milk. Heat to boiling; remove from heat. Cool to lukewarm. Gradually stir in powdered sugar. Place pan of frosting in bowl of cold water; beat until smooth and of spreading consistency. If frosting becomes too stiff, stir in additional milk, 1 tsp at a time. Frosts a 13 x 9 inch cake or fills and frost two 8 or 9 inch cake layers.

Cinnamon Frosting
**This is the icing/frosting that I use

  • 2 cups powdered sugar
  • 2 TBSP milk
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Mix all ingredients together until icing is the right consistency to ice cookies. You can half this recipe if you want less icing.

Enjoy!!

Review: Gluten-Free Dining at Disney World

Last Updated on by the Celiac-Disease.com Staff Leave a Comment

Walt Disney World has always been one of my most favorite places to go on vacation, even as an adult. Soon after our daughter was born in 1998, we moved to south Florida, and began to enjoy many yearly treks to the “most magical place on earth”. There’s little else that warms my heart more than a few days of throwing cares to the wind and just having fun with the family – especially when it involves Disney, and especially when it’s around the holidays.

One of the only stresses of visiting Walt Disney World for me, however, has been figuring out what to eat while I’m there. Our tradition became scheduling meals “around the world” for lunch and/or dinner each day in the World Showcase at Epcot. I became accustomed to just eating in spite of my issues (who can’t at a place like Disney?) and suffering the consequences, having not the slightest clue that gluten was the culprit.

Our last trip occurred before I had a firm diagnosis from my doctor. I had gone gluten-free to test the waters, so as we planned, I called Disney to inquire about my gluten-free options. They were extremely helpful, explaining that they would make a note of it on each of our reservations, but that I would obviously need to remind them at each location. I was skeptical, having encountered obstacles every single time I’d eaten out since going without gluten.

We arrived, checked into our favorite resort, and soon made our way to our first meal reservation at the Nine Dragons Restaurant at Epcot (China, in the World Showcase). As we were seated, I reminded the hostess that I needed to see a gluten-free menu, and she told me the chef would be with me shortly. I laughed. “The chef? Surely she’s mistaken!” She wasn’t, and so began a wonderful few days at Disney. In each location, the chef would eagerly visit our table, talk to me about what my needs were, and assure me that he would be preparing my food separately.  I was never once disappointed, nor did I get sick.

We ate not only in China but also in Japan, at Teppan Edo. We ate in Canada, at Le Cellier Steakhouse, and in France at Le Chef’s De France, and I even ordered a gluten-free pizza at one of the fast food locations (I did have to order that a little ahead of time). When we visited Magic Kingdom, I was able to get a gluten-free meal at Tony’s Town Square, and our last morning may have been the most glorious when we ate breakfast at Boma. (located in Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge) I figured this would prove to be much more difficult since Boma is a huge buffet – an incredible, very large one. I was assured, however, that I should not worry and that I would be well taken care of. Soon after arriving, the chef – as I’d come to expect – came to visit our table. She explained to me what areas of the buffet I would need to steer clear of, and what areas would be safe, then asked me to take a look and let her know what else I’d like. I told her I’d make do with what was on the buffet, and she wouldn’t hear of it. She offered to make pancakes, I agreed, and she brought me the biggest stack of pancakes I’d ever seen. They were fabulous.

In every single instance during our visit to Disney’s restaurants, the food prepared especially for me by the chef was delicious and gluten-free. I cannot begin to tell you what a difference it made for us to be able to go on vacation and not have to worry about my eating and subsequent illness.

If you’ve been considering a trip to Disney, but have been hesitant because you or your child have celiac, I highly recommend you give them a chance. You may have to eat a few more meals sitting down, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised – and maybe, just maybe, you’ll feel a little bit of that magic again like I did.

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**Visit Disney’s FAQ dining page for more details and contact information.

This article was contributed by Tami Nantz, who loves all things food. After finally being diagnosed with Celiac Disease in August 2010, she is having to learn to navigate the food world in a completely new way. She’s attempting to embrace the gluten-free lifestyle and all of its challenges and seeks to help educate others along the way.