Baking experiment: gluten-free flours

About halfway through my baking and pastries class we had to come up with an experiment where we'd take a regular recipe and change something about it to see what the results were. One person made sorbet with Splenda instead of sugar. One person tried making cheesecake with mascarpone instead of cream cheese. I decided to take a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe and replace the AP flour with gluten-free flours. Some people in my family have some degrees of intolerance to wheat products, myself included, but usually the reaction is fairly mild. I did some research on recipes for Celiacs and how people have been experimenting with mixtures of different flours and binding agents. I believe the normal recipe called for 2 1/2 cups AP flour, so I replaced it with an equal amount of a mixture of 3 different gluten-free flours. I think I chose rice, potato, and tapioca flours. I also used xanthum gum for binding the dough together. I could have gone even further and tried to track down gluten-free baking soda or chocolate morsels or vanilla extract, but I didn't want to overburden my school's stock room manager as he tried to look for the items I needed.

The day I got to make my cookies I followed standard procedure for making creamed butter drop cookies. When it came time to add the flours I noticed right off that they were much finer than regular AP flour, and no matter what air movement occurred it would stir up the flour into a small cloud. It was a bit of a challenge trying to incorporate the flours. The appearance of the dough was of something lighter in color and even grainier than the regular cookie dough. I over baked the cookies a little. Overall the flavors were not hindered, and they tasted as good as the regular recipe cookies. The main difference was the texture was more sandy instead of soft and chewy. I did take some pictures of the cookies I made, but it was blurry and didn't show anything different apart from a normal chocolate chip cookie. I remember my teacher was interested in knowing what my results were because she was unfamiliar with gluten-free cooking, and she was glad that my results were edible.

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The tiny tart is happy to see you

For one day in class we made a bunch of tarts. We made various sizes of shells and filled them with custards and cremes and fruits. I made a large 9 inch tart but it didn't hold up well on my way back to my dorm. But the small ones were OK.


This is a tartlette with lemon curd and some fruit, brushed with a little apricot glaze. Something you might see in a fine bakery store front, but with better arranged fruits.

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Rolled up cake

This is a jelly roll made with a sheet of spongecake and raspberry preserves. I was sick for the class where we made these but my teacher let me make it up. Despite not having much supervision I did a pretty good job. If I had the time I would have made a white glaze for this. Much better than any other rolled cakes at supermarkets.

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Linzertorte?

Some sort of torte. All I remember is, it had lots of raspberry preserves and it got me into drinking coffee again. As long as I had this linzertorte I ate a wedge in the morning with a cup of coffee before class. I would definitely make it again if I could gather my recipes. Or something resembling it.

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Baking cakes

Continuing with baking and cakes, here's something that's supposed to be a black forest cake. We made devil's food cake from scratch, which turned out very moist and dense. We trimmed rounds and made a filling with dark tart cherries. I didn't care much for the filling myself. The cake was iced with some sort of whipped topping, I think we might have stabilized it with gelatin. It was iced rather awkwardly, but decorating and icing wasn't a very big issue in this class.

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More baking

We started doing cakes early on in class. Here's a pineapple upside down cake.


I didn't think to take a picture until after I took a sliver out of it. Despite the fact that my teacher pretty much made the sauce for the bottom of the cake it still broke. But overall I was fine with the taste of the cake. Too bad we couldn't use anymore pineapple rounds to fill out the bottom.

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Baking continued

I don't quite remember the exact sequence of our lessons, but I do remember early on we made plain pound cake.


Here's a slice drowned in strawberries and whipped cream, which I bought at a store to accompany my pound cake after I brought it home with me. The pound cakes took upward of an hour to finish baking, so it was one of our first challenges of time keeping. There was only one large oven we could use and we had to be careful about opening it all the time. My pound cake came out fine. There was at least one person who burned their pound cake into a brick red clump.

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The beginning of baking and pastry arts

Like I said, not very many pictures from my first couple of classes at school. I remember though, all the dishes I did well, those I liked, those I didn't do so well with. I had the most fun working with beef and fish. Shellfish weren't that great. Chicken was always pretty easy, although for one of my exams I accidentally undercooked my chicken. So, for my third quarter I had baking and pastry arts. We made a lot of stuff in this class. I remember always asking my non-culinary friends if they wanted anything I made but they usually declined. I'm not sure why, I was very good at baking. For our first class we made blueberry muffins.


I think my teacher would agree with me when I say I had the most attractive muffins in the class. They came out clean, with good color, and I had even forgotten to add melted butter. After putting the batter into the muffin pan I remembered and spooned a little butter into each muffin, and stirred. Other students either over-mixed their batter, added too much flour, over-mixed the berries (resulting in greenish muffins), or over-baked them. I'm happy to say I was able to strike a balance, and that day I especially learned the significance of knowing when to stop mixing batter.

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The earliest picture I have

I told you they wouldn't always be photogenic. This was made in my second cooking class. I called it Food Production, they called it American Cuisine. This was a plate of black bass fillets, pan seared, with rice pilaf, asparagus, and carrots.

My very first cooking class at IIAC involved fundamentals like knife cuts, simple cooking techniques, sanitation. Food Production kicked things into high gear. Our goals every day were to make up 2 or 3 plates of food that were balanced appropriately around whatever proteins we worked with. We progressed from chicken to fish to beef, pork, lamb, shellfish. Each plate had to have portions of vegetable and starch side dishes of our choosing. It was a challenge to prepare for each class and pretty much everything we did was new to me. I spent many nights awake thinking about the next class, plotting my course of action, making alternate plans in case we didn't have certain products. It forced me to think outside my comfort zone of Midwest cuisine, such as fried potatoes or plain green beans. It was a struggle, and sometimes it got the best of me, but I cooked pretty well. And I ate very well.

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A precursor to pictures

Despite the fact that I had my own camera to take pictures at my leisure I actually didn't take all that many pictures of my work at school. Why? It didn't always occur to me to take my camera to school. If I brought some of my work back home it wasn't very photogenic, and I'd end up eating it quickly anyway. Many of my pictures were taken during my baking and pastry class, since the things we made held up well in travel, and we made large quantities of almost everything we learned. I also enjoyed that class the most, as I have an affinity and skill for baking that most people lack. I'll post pictures in a time-line as chronologically accurate as I can figure.

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The journey to school

I'll begin this blog by explaining why and how I came to the decision to go to culinary school. I had been interested in making cooking my profession since high school. I took cooking classes and went to a vocational school for culinary classes during my senior year. Toward the end of my high school career a man from an art school in Chicago came in to class and cooked with us and shilled for his employer. I filled out the information card he gave me and turned it in without much thought. A couple months later after I graduated I got a call from an admissions rep from that same school. She told me all about the school and what I could achieve there and she sent me more information. I was hooked, but I couldn't afford to get to school at the time, so I put that idea aside.

About a year and a half later I was convinced to look into going to school again. But where to go? What should my major be? At that time I remembered the school in Chicago. I emailed them asking for more information. I also emailed another culinary school, just for a comparison and to see if they were any better. The first school, the Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago, called me back within a couple days. The other school, Kendall College, didn't respond to my request until 2 months later. Within a month I applied and was accepted into IIAC.

Before my journey to the expensive private school in the big city I acquired a few items I thought would be handy for the road ahead. A camera, to record visually my work, my friends, my inspirations. A jump drive, to take my pictures and documents anywhere with me, without overburdening my email in-boxes. And the strength to go out on my own, to tackle these new challenges and grow as an individual. I was painfully shy and quiet before I left home. Now, I'm still a little shy and quiet, but I know I don't have to be afraid of the world around me.

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