#makeshiftchef

[lovethechefswife-blog]

I call this dish, “Two Halves to One Whole” inspired by my love affair with Chef. Its a Gunpowder & Chocolate Tart (gf & df).

I am gluten free at home & began experimenting with various diets such as, sugar free, dairy free, biodynamic & vegetarian when I was having digestive & weight issues. Going gluten free & dairy free however has been exactly what my body responds well to. 

Here, I made the gluten free shortcut pastry from scratch. I don’t always get the pastry right. Its a mood thing. I only bake when I’m in the baking zone. I have to want to bake sweets to get it right.

As a whole, the gluten free flour doesn’t have much structure so i use an organic guar gum to thicken it up. There is no secret for me. I don’t tend to follow a recipe religiously. I use a recipe as a guide for types of ingredients & ratios, then I go ahead and make the version i want to make. Personally I think most of the extras added in are unnecessary. Salt, though, you always need a pinch of salt. LOL.

So pastry is simply what my mother taught me to do. Getting the flour (& in the gf case guar gum) kneaded with the butter to a crumbly consistency, then add liquid (milk or water), a touch of sugar and salt (more sugar if using water) & possibly an egg. 

The fun part is spreading it out on a clean bench showered with flour to rub the dough to get the stickiness out. I then wrap it and set it in the fridge for an hour or two. When im ready i simply roll it out with more flour and use a glass to cut the base of the little baking tins, then I cut long strips and mold the sides of the base.

The chocolate custard is basically the dairy free packet you get in the health food section of the supermarket. Yet with this one I added pure cocoa. It sets quite quickly. 

The gunpowder is sachets I bought in Japan last year of pure Matcha Tea powder. It gives the pastry a bitter twang and offsets the sweetness in the custard. i used a bit of icing sugar for decoration. 

I think the takeaways to this dish are I need to perfect my pastry & invest in the proper equipment to get it right. I think I’m going to need a larger kitchen though to store all these extra tools.

love

thechefswife

#glutenfree #sugarfree #dairyfree #biodynamic #vegetarian #gunpowder #bakingzone #makeshiftchef #throwittogether #matchatea #cocoa