I’m really looking forward to Thanksgiving. Although it’s not a holiday that I grew up celebrating, I enjoy the enforced time off work and the mandatory stuffing of one’s face with turkey, as a kind of pre-Christmas endurance test. It’s the kind of challenge I take on with relish.

This year we’ll be going entirely gluten-free and hosting my lovely mother and our great friend Alexis. As many awesome GF bloggers note, it’s very easy to control the potential dangers of getting glutenized when you are in your own home and making all the food (Vince is on turkey, potatoes and beans, I’m on everything else). I’m spending Christmas in Texas with Vince’s family this year, which will be a little more challenging as they haven’t had to deal with the gluten problem before (I wasn’t GF the last time we were there), but they are such wonderful people and have already asked lots of questions about what I can eat and what they can do to make the Christmas Day meal safe for me to eat. Aren’t I lucky?

In preparation for next week, however, I’m trying my hand at these gluten-free pumpkin scones as a possible breakfast treat and in order to make myself eligible to win Shauna and Daniel Ahern’s Thanksgiving prize fest, which includes a KitchenAid – something I desperately need but can’t really stump up the cash for. It would certainly save me a lot of armache when making goodies!

I did the first batch last week with my friend Hank (co-director of Coyote Love, my band) as he is on an even more restricted diet than me, and is a great cook. Also, he has a food processor and I don’t, so I went to his house to borrow it and make my life a little easier! He made his DELICIOUS vegan power bars and I had a go at the pumpkin scones. I forgot raisins, and I couldn’t find any xanthan gum in my local supermarket (and didn’t have time to go to Whole Foods), so after a little googling we substituted ground flax seeds as a binding agent.

First attempt ended up like this:

They were light and crumbly but a little…bland. You could really taste the delicate pumpkin flavour and the warmth of the cloves, cinnamon and garlic but I wanted something more in there. Hank suggested substituting part of the regular all-purpose GF flour with another kind, like almond, to give a denser and nuttier taste, and possibly some hemp oil as well. I didn’t end up getting any hemp oil as it’s a bit pricey and I’m a lot poor right now, but I may well try that in the future.

Round 2: I wanted to make them for my local buddhist district meeting last Friday, as it was the last discussion meeting of the year and we were having a little party afterwards. I found raisins and bought guar gum, as it’s WAY cheaper than xanthan gum and also acts as a binder, even if it’s a little different. I used 3/4 all-purpose flour and 1/4 almond flour to see what the result would be. However, this time I was making them at home, so I had to blend the butter and flours by hand. I think I was a little heavy-handed with the mixing as the mixture ended up being a little too moist, even before I added the wet ingredients. Before they went into the oven they looked like this:

And I was in such a hurry to get to my meeting that I forgot to take an after photo! However they went down a storm and everyone liked them. I thought they were a little too dense and the proportions of almond flour to regular wasn’t quite right. Also, to my extreme frustration, I realised that the raisins I’d bought were processed in a facility that processes wheat, so I couldn’t eat any of them. ARGH. I’d never thought to check the back of a packet of RAISINS for wheat before – I mean, seriously?! I find that it’s a major problem whenever I check Whole Foods own brand products – they clearly make a lot of their stuff in the same facility, I’ve made the mistake with their vanilla extract too in the past.

Anyway – round 3 was today. I had used up most of my all-purpose flour, and didn’t have enough left for the full recipe, so I ended up guessing what else to use and came up with this mixture:

150g all-purpose GF flour (Bob’s Red Mill)
40g sweet sorghum flour
30g almond flour
20g brown rice flour

I also bought some sultanas [golden raisins] that were good for me to eat and added those in. This time, the mixture was a little drier and easier to work with and I was really pleased with my hand mixing of the flours and butter. I used a much lighter touch when mixing with my hands and the mixture didn’t get too wet and dense, but did end up like coarse cornmeal as the recipe described. Success! I’m slowly learning how to make things by hand when a recipe calls for a food processor or stand mixer, and I see it as good arm exercise.

These scones came out fantastically – still quite crumbly, but with a great texture and tons of flavour:

I’m taking some over to my wonderful friend Joyce, who lives down the street and ate about half the scones I made for my buddhist meeting! The rest I’m saving for nibbling on after a massive Thanksgiving meal on Thursday.

This was a really fun challenge – for the first time since starting to make my own gluten-free baked items, I adjusted a recipe and came up with something that I really liked. I’ll be more open to some adventures in the kitchen again soon!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!