Adventures in Gluten-free baking (and cooking)!!

A number of my family members have (in the last year or two) discovered that they have various "intolerances". NO I'm not talking about intolerances to stupid people, waiting in line, snow, calories and fungus-infested-unidentifiable fridge leftovers. I'm taking about gluten and dairy intolerance. I love baking so it has been entertaining to try various gluten-free recipes to feed to these family members. I find that many recipes are little disappointing and that it does take some time to find things that work. The hardest part is making things that don't taste "gluten-free (GF)". Many of the GF flours have strong tastes to them and they can alter the taste of a cookie quite dramatically.

My little sister who is Gluten and Dairy intolerant (also SEVERELY allergic to stupid people) is currently visiting from South Africa and spent a week with us. We tried several recipes while she was here and most cooking escapades started with me handing the sister several ingredients and saying, "Check can you eat these?" If she said "no" to any items I invariably handed her a different option and this continued until we had amassed enough "safe" ingredients with which to construct something edible!

I have a family "dateball" recipe that I often used to make when I was a student as a study snack. The original recipe calls for crushed marie biscuits but when my sister and I recently shopped for ingredients we couldn't find a suitable GF biscuit and the store we were at. It was late - the little Diva was getting cranky and so we settled on a box of GF brown rice crispies. The plan was to make these together after The Little Diva went to sleep.... buut thanks to teething she didn't go to bed until after her aunty. I ended up making these myself before bed because I needed to unwind. The resulting snacks were - if I may say so myself - freaking awesome!! I might even go so far as to say they were better than the originals.

Here is the recipe I used in its modified form:

Ingredients:
175g butter (I used Earth Balance buttery flavoured spread - you can get this at Metro, Superstore etc)
 200g palm sugar (Bulkbarn)
100g white sugar (you can use palm sugar here too I just didn't have enough! :))
250g dates finely chopped
1tsp vanilla essence
approximately 3 cups of brown rice crispies (Metro, Bulkbarn or Superstore)
Coconut

Method:
Melt the butter in a large pan on the stove (medium heat) and add the sugar. Stir until it has dissolved. Add the dates and cook until they feel soft.You should continue to stir the mix to keep it from burning (I like to up the heat a little if I'm actively stirring). I tend to cook the dates for 5 or so minutes after they soften because I like the date balls to be firmer. Remove the pot from the hot stove plate and stir in the vanilla essence and the rice crispies. Stir in enough of the rice so that the mixture isn't too sticky. You need to be able to roll it into balls. Be warned that the mixture is going to be VERY VERY hot. Using a spoon grab a nice heaped teaspoon and drop it into the coconut - dip it and then roll into a ball. I find that it's easier to do it this way until the mixture has cooled enough. Perhaps it is all on my head but the coconut seems to act as a bit of an insulator! When it is cooler you can go ahead and roll the balls before dropping them in the coconut. Leave them to cool and enjoy :)

There you have it - the first of hopefully many tried and tested GF recipes!