My partner’s mother and sister both have gluten-allergies, so I’m always combing blogs, libraries, and bookstores online and off for the best gluten-free recipes to bake for them.
2022 was a less than stellar year for me learning how to bake gluten-free. A lot of recipes I found use gluten-free measure-for-measure flour (Amazon), which sometimes had dry, chalky results. I also made a sickly grayish purple lump of “bread.” The internet assured me the color was purely a cosmetic defect thanks to the psyllium husk powder, but unfortunately it was gummy, didn’t rise, and tasted sour.
Enter Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple by Aran Goyoaga (Amazon)! Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple is the best gluten-free baking cookbook I’ve come across. Goyoaga put a lot of love and attention to detail into developing, writing, and testing the recipes so you and I can have incredible, consistent results.
All the recipes are gluten-free and (bonus) some of them are also vegan or include instructions on what the baker could do to make it vegan. Weight measurements for ingredients are included. The ingredients themselves shouldn't be too hard to find, but if you're having difficulty and live in NYC there are plenty of specialty and international groceries you could go to.
Plus Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple showed me common ingredients and how they work together when combined, laying a solid foundation for my gluten-free baking education. I’m a step closer to developing my own gluten-free recipes.
I’ve tested the following six recipes (and counting) from Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple, one of which I’ve made twice. I usually halve the recipe (didn’t want to waste ingredients in case they didn’t turn out well), and I always weigh the ingredients.
What I baked (and learned!)
Oat milk and honey bread
Taste and texture was very close to gluten-full bread! In Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple, Goyoaga warns against cutting into any warm gluten-free bread because the steam needs to evaporate in order for the crumb to set. If you don’t exercise caution, the texture becomes gummy. I took the warning, and the texture wasn’t too gummy. It was expectedly gummy, but nothing inedible.
My partner thought the texture was nice and liked how the honey added a slight sweetness. We toasted slices and slathered them in salted butter. Definitely needs to be slightly warmed before making a sandwich.
Date-sweetened banana bread with chocolate and walnuts
My favorite recipe in Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple. ❤️ I skipped adding the chocolate because I’m not fond of it in my banana bread. Sweetened with a combination of plumped dates and maple syrup, it was plenty sweet (and I might even experiment with using fewer dates or less maple syrup) and had a lovely, light molasses-like note.
It’s possible I bought rancid sesame seeds from the grocery store (how can you tell if sesame seeds are rancid? They don’t always smell rancid, but will taste bitter) because I could taste their bitterness in the gluten-free banana bread. It’s likely that the chocolate chunks I was supposed to add would have balanced the bitter seeds out. I’ll try once more with better quality sesame seeds (still without chocolate) and if that doesn’t work, just tweak the recipe to allow for them to be omitted.
Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple‘s gluten-free banana bread took a lot longer to bake than the recipe said, maybe an hour longer, but when I was a baker one of the most important things I learned was that oven time isn’t a science. Oven time is intuitive and logical to a point. The last 20 or 25 minutes I placed it as close as I could to the top of the oven because I figured out that the aesthetic halved banana was making just the top of the gluten-free banana bread wet and the rest was done. Plus, I didn’t want to burn the done bottom or edges.
Fresh out of the oven, or toasted and covered in salted European butter, or even room temperature, this gluten-free banana bread tasted better than any banana bread I have ever made and will stay in my rotation. The date-sweetened banana bread (without chocolate) with sesame seeds is (I repeat) my favorite recipe in Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple. I’m thrilled it’s sharable too with all of my gluten-free people.
One-bowl apple, yogurt, and maple cake
I thought I brought home all Honeycrisp apples to put in the one-bowl apple, yogurt, and maple cake. When I tasted (always taste) a slice at home though, I figured out it was definitely NOT a Honeycrisp and was too mealy and slightly mushy. Three out of four of the apples I bought were like this, so I only had one apple on top aka was short one apple.
Even though I really long for that missing apple (in fact, I’ll experiment with adding an extra apple next time!), this was my second favorite recipe in the book. The main flour in this gluten-free apple, yogurt, and maple cake was brown rice flour, so the texture was like a less chewy version of butter mochi in the most amazing way. Another win for Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple.
Berry meringue roll
I’ve made the gluten-free berry meringue roll in Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple twice.
The recipe calls for a filling of crème fraîche or Aran Goyoaga’s whipped cashew-coconut cream (vegan!) which is included in the gluten-free cookbook. Because crème fraîche is expensive and less versatile in my home, so I substituted full-fat Greek yogurt thinned with a bit of whipped cream and sugar. Like I said earlier, keep the science parts of baking exact, but we should make food for our unique tastes, so I’m a proponent of logical, intuitive modifications.
Like adding double the amount of raspberries the recipe told me to add because I love fruit-heavy dessert. My partner loved this one. I’m excited to fill a meringue roll with tiny, juicy farmer’s market strawberries next summer.
Chewy bagels
My partner and I were visiting his family, and I wanted to bring his mother something homemade. She misses bread the most since more often than gluten-free bread in restaurants and stores is awful and gummy. The best bread for a NJ woman? Bagels.
A full recipe is supposed to give you eight standard-sized gluten-free bagels, but I made a half recipe and split the dough into five, so they were somewhere between mini and standard.
The instructions in Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple recommended an up-to-24-hour proofing in the refrigerator to help the gluten-free bagels develop flavor. I’m not sure if the flavor developed, but it made me feel like I was doing something right and that’s worth a lot.
I baked them a little too long so the everything bagel seasoning I put on them got a little bitter. There was something bitter about the bread itself, too. Nothing majorly off-putting, just something to be aware of. When I make them again, I’ll be on the lookout for that taste, hopefully pinpoint where it’s coming from (perhaps an ingredient past its prime?).
The texture of the gluten-free bagels was chewy as promised, and they tasted wonderful toasted and with cream cheese. My partner’s mother loved them.
Peanut butter banana cookies
The worst recipe I’ve made in Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple so far? The peanut butter banana cookies. Hard pass and a waste of time and ingredients. I won’t make these again unless a sugar craving hits and all I have are banana, peanut butter, and roasted peanuts. Because it tasted like peanut butter and banana and not in a good way, but at least it was chewy. I guess 😒.
Maybe my bananas were too ripe and watery, or maybe it was just too much banana, but I had to bake these for double the time stated in Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple.
Before baking, instructions in Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple tell you to let the batter sit for 15 minutes after combining everything to let it get thick. It did not get thick. I put it in the refrigerator. 30 minutes later, it was still not thick. Again, maybe it was the amount of banana or water content of them.
Things I've learned
- Always let gluten-free breads cool. This allows the moisture to evaporate and the crumb to set. Failing to do so will make the bread gummy.
- Weighing ingredients is extremely important in any baking, maybe especially with gluten-free baking. The $14 Etekcity food scale I’d had since 2018 broke a couple of months ago. I replaced it with this $25 colorful Escali Primo in tarragon green because it has a lifetime warranty, but also because it comes in different colors.
- Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple by Aran Goyoaga is 100% worth the money and space whether or not you have a gluten allergy, or friends or family that do. The recipes are downright delicious, and in a lot of cases more delicious than their gluten counterparts. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ all around.
- The techniques I’ve learned in Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple (psyllium husk powder is very important for gluten-free bread structure, xanthan gum can be hard to digest but helps with lamination, etc.) might help me figure out of how to make a gluten-free croissants-like pastry. I’ve made gluten-full croissants in the past, and they aren’t perfect, and yet here I am, thinking I can make a gluten-free version. 😅 Have any of you had any success developing a gluten-free croissant-like recipe?
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