gluten freedom

Baking is sometimes a challenge in itself. One of the main reasons I love it though, is because of my slightly obsessive nature. It's one of the few times I can appreciate little room for creativity and a respect for authority (such as following a recipe from dear ol' Ms. Martha Stewart). I'd consider myself slightly practiced in vegan baking, but gluten-free? Not so much. Baking a diary/nut/soy/gluten free dessert? I was up for the challenge.

I went straight to my old faithful tried and true vegan blondie recipe. I figured if anything, how bad could an experiemental blondie be? Still has plenty of chocolate and sugar, can't be so bad! Two ingredients that needed subsitutions were the yogurt and flour. To my surprise, a few exellent alternatives to soy yogurt exist; a coconut and rice derived yogurt. I went for the rice yogurt, thinking the coconut would be a bit too sweet. Subsituting flour seemed easy once I hit the grocery store.

There are a ton of flour options; chickpea, brown rice, quinoa, potato, and the list goes on and on.
When using gluten free flours, usually a scant amount of xanthan gum is added to the flour to allow the ingredients to bind together.
After much delberation over the $12.99 bag of Bob's Red Mill, I decided binding wasn't so important to me after all.


The end result was a melt in your mouth, no need to chew blondie! No binding agent gave me the wrong texture, but I didn't care. Chocolate is good anyway, especially when consumed in excess and shared with good friends.