Gluten-free Pumpkin Bread

Well hello again!
Guess what…it’s fall!! This means, of course, that all things pumpkin are now a huge fad.
In that spirit, we bought a pumpkin! Since they don’t have what one of my friends called “tinned pumpkin” over here, we cut it, seeded it, roasted it, and mashed it ourselves in order to make this pumpkin bread!!
The recipe is from Bethany’s Grandmother. It makes 2 small-ish loaves.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 Cups (10.65 oz) sugar (or 11 oz brown sugar)
2 1/2 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour (13.35 oz)
1 1/4 teaspoons ground flax seed
3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
3/8 cups milk
1 1/4 cup oil or applesauce
1 1/2 cup pureed pumpkin
3 eggs
optional: about 1/2 to 1 cup chocolate chips
Directions:
Sift together all dry ingredients except for the sugar.
Beat the eggs, then add sugar, pumpkin, milk, and oil or applesauce.
Add the flour mixture slowly, and beat until just smooth.
Pour into two greased loaf pans and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit (about 176 Celsius) for about 1 hour.
Allow to sit in the loaf pans for 5 or 10 minutes before turning out onto cooling racks. Enjoy!!

For the pumpkin puree—we just baked them til they were done, but here is how to do it properly:
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Lightly oil a baking sheet. Halve a sugar pumpkin and scoop out the seeds. Place the pumpkin halves cut side down your baking sheet and roast the pumpkin until it is completely tender inside, about 45 to 50 minutes. Scrape the pumpkin flesh off the skin with a large spoon (metal is great here, because of the sharper edges) and puree in a blender or food processor until smooth.(We obviously didn’t have a food processor. I mostly just used my hands, and squished the juice out afterward because ours was quite juicy. The texture was a bit…different, but it was still good. ) Let cool and use as needed.
1 15-ounce can of pumpkin puree holds about 1 3/4 cups of puree.

Gluten-free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hello from Northern Ireland!

Perks of having a friend on my hall who is gluten-free...I learn how to bake so many gluten-free things!

Here's a gluten-free chocolate chip cookie recipe that we tried back at the beginning of the semester:

From this site.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter, slightly softened
2 cups brown sugar (we used white sugar+honey, as we didn’t have brown sugar or molasses)
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2-3 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Mix butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla.
3. Mix flour, salt, soda, and baking powder in a separate bowl.
4. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix thoroughly.
5. Stir in chips.
6. Drop by the tablespoon onto the baking sheet.
7. Bake at 350F for 10-15 minutes. These cookies will have to be a little darker than golden brown so that they will set and hold together. Let cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before removing. Cool completely on a wire rack.

I think we drank about one and a half liters of milk when we made these cookies… Enjoy!