101 gluten free breakfasts | buckwheat banana scones (egg-less) with cinnamon chocolate chips

When bananas get overripe you bake banana bread and when you want something gluten free you bake a round loaf for buckwheat banana scones. Scones are similar to quick bread, a little dense and dry than a bread and a little moist than a biscuit. I have loads of buckwheat that needs to be used up soon so baking this buckwheat banana scones was an effort to do just that. The scones were a good idea because I have just too many little jars of home made fruit preserves that I keep making now and then. We liked these scones with pomegranate and rhododendron jelly but orange marmalade, plum jam, strawberry jam or mulberry jam will be as good.

It has been long time since I baked something for week day breakfasts, all baking I did for the recipe trials of the products I develop and that kind of work almost killed my desire to bake anymore for the two of us. And when I decided to bake this loaf for the scones I was reminded of the cinnamon chocolate chips Deeba had gifted me long time back. These were lying unused since I was not baking for ourselves at all, a little because of all the travel I did and also because I was just too busy with work. The cinnamon chocolate chips are a burst of flavours on the palate, I had never imagined these will be so good, even for someone who is not too fond of chocolate.

The rich cinnamon chocolate chips added a beautiful depth of flavours to the scones,  I added some flax seeds to make the scones softer as buckwheat tends to get a little dry when baked. Baking with buckwheat flour gives better results when banana and flax seeds are used if not eggs.

ingredients 
(for 8 medium sized scones)

buckwheat flour 220 gm (I ground buckwheat groats in mixie)
baking soda 1/2 tsp
butter 60 gm
banana 140 gm (2 medium bananas)
flax seeds powder 40 gm
chocolate chips 50 gm
mixed nuts chopped 50 gm ( I used almonds and walnuts)
salt 2 gm

procedure 

Mix baking soda with buckwheat flour and sieve a few times to mix well. Add cubes of cold butter and rub to make it look like breadcrumbs. Or run through a food processor to get this.

Now mash the bananas and mix with flax seeds meal. Add this to the flour mix and add the chopped nuts and chocolate chips. Take care if the chocolate chips are kept at room temperature in Indian summers, it may disintegrate in the dough, so refrigerate for better result.

Mix to make a tacky dough, the dough is very soft and sticks to fingers.

Prepare a baking tray lined with baking sheet. Make a loose ball of the whole dough and slap it on the baking tray. Flatten with your fingers to make a 2 cm thick round shape. Usually scones are cut into wedges at this time but since this dough is too sticky, we will do it after the baking is done.

Bake this round disc at 180C in preheated oven for 40 minutes. Check with a skewer and bake a little more if required. The surface gets a few pinkish brown patches this way, if you brown it a bit more it gets a little dry after baking. Buckwheat flour behaves a lot differently than regular flour.

Let the disc cool in the baking tray, it might break if you try to transfer on a wire rack while still hot.

Cut into wedges when cool and store refrigerated. Reheat and serve with honey or fruit preserves. The scones are not sweet even though there is banana in it, the flax seeds and buckwheat almost absorb all the sweetness of bananas. I would still recommend not using any sugar in the recipe, you can always slap on as much fruit preserve or honey as you want.

It makes a filling breakfast with milk or juice if you wish. I rarely eat sweet kind of breakfast and I did not eat these too. I am more into 'idli steamed in my bowl' these days, I need my kick of spices and salt to start the day. The same buckwheat is being used to make my idli too, it takes just 2 minutes to steam in the microwave when I have the batter ready. Will share that too soon.

But these scones and any such muffins/breakfast cakes or quick breads make my mornings more organised as I don't have to worry about making a separate breakfast for the husband. He loves anything that is slathered with honey or fruit preserves.

These scones are perfect with a cup of tea or coffee as well. Served with either clotted cream or fruit preserve it could be a mini meal or snack any time of the day.

I am planning to bake savoury scones with buckwheat. I have some nice herbs growing in the garden and some yellow cherry tomatoes too. It would be great if I could use some of these to bake some nice scones or muffins using these.

Till then bake some buckwheat banana scones.

I have been getting queries about where to get buckwheat in India. My first choice is Down to Earth for whole buckwheat and buckwheat flour but you do get buckwheat in khari baoli market (old Delhi) too and some grocery stores stock too. Although the availability of buckwheat is better during Navratri days as this is a fasting food.

This buckwheat banana scones recipe is also a fasting compatible recipe and can be consumed during navratri fasting. I have always considered that Navratri fasting was devised for healthy living and detoxing the body twice a year.

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white chocolate bars with mixed sun dried fruits and hint of mint : perfect gifting ideas

These white chocolate bars or bark if you prefer to call them like that, were made in the first week of February when we had planned a reunion of our classmates in Banaras. Now that both of us (Arvind and me) were classmates for our post grad, we were looking forward to it keenly. And since most of the other classmates follow my food and blog updates and keep nudging me teasingly to make them taste any of those, I decided to carry some edible gifts for all of them. I made a few fruit jams and marmalade, some cookies and these white chocolate bars with sun dried assorted fruits.

Now there is nothing technical involved in making chocolate bars, or very little technicality to be honest, one can always get a good quality bar or pellets of any chocolate, melt it over double boiler or in microwave and set it again along with whatever one likes. Long ago I used to make white chocolate with a prominent minty taste, just because I did not like white chocolate and someone had gifted me a kilo of Callibout white chocolate couverture pellets. That mint infused white chocolate bark had changed my perception towards white chocolate as I made about 3-4 batches of the same till the chocolate lasted.

The idea of bringing colors to a white chocolate bar was there on my mind for quite long and I once tried such bars with mixed nuts and some prunes and cranberries from Del Monte.  Yes I had started stocking white chocolate couverture after my tryst with the minty white. But it so happened that last year I sun dried so many fruits that I broke all my previous records of doing so. To make it clear I do not follow actual 'sun' drying procedure always but use low temperature oven dehydrating method mostly or a mix of the two processes to make the sun drying faster and better.

If you sun dry any fruit or tomatoes in the sun it may take days to completely dehydrate, so I just slide a semi sun dried fruit laden tray into the oven at 80 C or so and let it dehydrate more for an hour, repeat the process after 3-4 hours again and the method works well for me

Here is the strawberries I dehydrated last year when I had bought too much from the outskirts of Dehradun while traveling there, I had no option to just dehydrate them. I am not regretting one bit.

These perfectly chewy slivers of strawberries get so intense on flavours that you would feel like dehydrating more whenever you get a chance. The ones you get in stores is candied or 'sun dried and coated with glucose syrup' strawberries FYI. Better to make your own if you can.

I even dehydrated peaches last year and those have been so good for snacking..

These were peaches from Mukteshwar, brought from my Te Aroha visits where I am currently working on the menu and training the kitchen team. These peaches had very nice sweet and sour taste and sun drying converted them into perfect bites of fruity indulgence.

I dehydrated black grapes and apples too just to see how different the taste is from the glucose syrup coated ones. I was right in my assumption they would be better and will be rightly sweet and intensely flavoured. For these white chocolate bars I dug out all these jars of sun dried fruits and chopped them up.

ingredients...

good quality white chocolate bar or pellets ( I used Callebout white couverture pellets) 1 kilo
sun dried strawberries 100 gms
sun dried apples 200 gms
sun dried black grapes 100 gms
OR a mix of any colourful sun dried fruits 400 gms
sun dried mint leaves or powder 10 gm or to taste

You can always use sun dried fruits from brands like FabIndia or Del Monte or others.
And if you are making bigger batch of this you can follow the procedure of melting the chocolate in two batches. The way I did as I made double this recipe.

procedure..

Melt chocolate in a double boiler.
To make a double boiler contraption in home kitchen you can take a saucepan or stockpot (pateela) and a deep bowl that fits the rim of the stockpot. Fill the stockpot half with water and let it come to boil. Place the deep mixing bowl over the boiling water stockpot and place the chocolate in the bowl to melt. Stir a few times to see if it is melting evenly.

In the mean time line a baking tray with silpat. I used 2 baking trays of 9"X11" size.You can use any convenient size according to the thickness you want in these bars.

Chop all the dried fruits and half the mint crushed and mix with the white chocolate and incorporate everything together.

Pour the melted mix onto the silpat lined baking trays, sprinkle the rest of the mint leaves over it and press a bit. Let the mixture cool completely before cutting bars with a sharp knife.

These jewel studded bars of white chocolate will be loved by everyone who tastes them. I am planning to make them again as Arvind was cribbing he didn't get to taste last time.

 Never use chocolate compound to make such bars because chocolate compound has trans fats, all the cocoa butter in real chocolate gets replaced with trans fats when they process it to make the compound. Choose the best quality for your family, it will be great in taste and good for health too.

No extra sugar is added to these white chocolate bars, the sweetness of assorted fruits and the couverture is great together and a small bar of this treat will not hamper any health goals you are working towards.

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2 desserts using fresh water chestnuts : using seasonal produce to make diwali desserts , a panna cotta and a chocolate pot de creme recipe with fresh water chestnuts

Diwali is a time when the winter vegetables and fruits are already in the markets and many of them are here just for a couple of months. Water chestnuts are one of those seasonal produce that stay for a couple of months only around diwali season. Most people in North India use water chestnuts during Navratri fasting, in our home we keep eating them all through the season and always get a huge bagful of water chestnuts from our weekly market. We eat them raw or stir fried, or we boil them and add them to salads or eat as is.

A water chestnut and sweet potato salad with feta cheese and a mung sprouts, sweet corn and water chestnut salad keeps repeating in some or the other form at out our table. A really tasty halwa with fresh water chestnuts (actually a pudding) is a perennial favourite in my home.

Peeling them is quite time consuming but once you take care of that it will be a pleasure on the table. Using water chestnut to make a quick dessert for Diwali would be wonderful if you want to avoid the regular mithai and cake-donut rut. I know you are extremely wary of the store bought mithais (if you are reading this) in the festive season as all those are prepared quite early to meet demands on the D-day and is loaded with sugar, trans fats and artificial colours apart from the regular culprit white flour (maida) and others of that ilk. I also realise we don't usually have the luxury of making mithais at home for a festivals and buy the stuff just to get the feel of the festival.

Making some quick desserts that look good too will be quite sensible if you ask me. I am sharing 2 of those here, each one can be cooked within in 15 minutes flat and then chilled before serving.

Here is a fresh water chestnut panna cotta that I cooked some time back and sent the recipe as guest post for Pratibha's blog.

Water chestnut is used as a thickener in this recipe and a gelling agent too as it sets into a nice jelly when it is cooked and chilled. I use the same procedure with some tweaks to make a few more desserts as the gelling property of fresh water chestnut puree can be used to make pudding like desserts easily.

For this fresh water chestnut panna cotta I cooked 200 gm pureed fresh water chestnut puree along with 80 ml heavy cream and 50 gm sugar till the mixture starts thickening and big bubbles arise and burst spitting out hot air. Added 2 tsp rose water and mixed well, poured into serving glasses and chilled. That's it. .

Use the mature and hard water chestnuts for this recipe as those have more starch and gel well. If you have tender water chestnuts you can add 1-2 tsp of corn starch to enable the panna cotta to set well or a little gelatin if you wish.

Garnished with pistachio slivers and rose petals this dessert was an instant hit and has been repeated a few times already. You know Arvind loves desserts for dinner and he would eat 2-3 servings and not have anything else for dinner. This is the reason I need to make our desserts healthier but thankfully he likes them very lightly sweetened and loves all the healthy desserts I make. But to be honest I don't like anything sweet so I can barely finish one serving of this panna cotta, although I love the taste too.

The detailed recipe of this fresh water chestnut panna cotta is shared on Pratibha's blog here.

Another dessert of the same type I made was very different in taste and aromas. The dark beauty that treats the taste buds with some Tryptophan in dark chocolate along with whatever flavours you add to it.

This is a chocolate pot de creme that doesn't use cream. Since fresh water chestnut puree is a good gelling agent and makes the dessert creamier, I used only full fat milk for this pot de creme and it was quite rich tasting. I used good quality dark chocolate (Callebout 72%) and a dash of nutmeg and cherry brandy to get deeper flavours in this chocolate pot de creme but you can add rum and your choice of spices to get desired flavours too.

I sprinkled some seas salt crystals on top of the pot and it tasted really good.

Ingredients
(5 medium servings)
fresh water chestnut puree 1/2 cup
full fat milk 1 cup
2 tbsp brown sugar
dark chocolate chips (pellets) preferably 72% or at least 60% 3/4 cup or a bit more
dark rum or cherry brandy 2 tbsp (optional)
nutmeg powder a pinch
sea salt crystals 1 tsp use as required
hazelnut chopped for garnish

procedure 

Mix the water chestnut puree and milk in a saucepan along with the sugar and heat it on high flame. Keep whisking all the time till it starts bubbling.

Take the saucepan off the fire and add the chocolate pellets and whisk till a smooth creamy mixture is formed. Add the liquor and nutmeg and mix well.

Pour into serving glasses or bowls and chill before serving. Add the chopped nuts and sea salt at the time of serving.

 I have clicked these pictures while the chocolate pot de creme was still hot hence the sea salt crystals have sunk into the chocolate dessert. But it doesn't affect the taste at all.

Now I must tell that I am myself not too fond of chocolate and hot chocolate is the only form of chocolate that I like and crave for in winters. So this chocolate pot de creme was diluted the next day with more milk and reheated in microwave and was had like a real thick and creamy hot chocolate. One of those desserts that even I would like as my dinner sometimes, piping hot in a large mug to wrap my fingers around. The nights are getting nippy.

You would know how good this chocolate pot de creme tastes once you make it. And how easy it is to cook in a jiffy. Very low fat and mildly sweet so you can enjoy this treat even if you are on a diet.

Do let me know if you cook these desserts using fresh water chestnuts. There is a thing in the seasonal bounty that makes it bursting with taste and fresh water chestnuts get a refreshing nutty taste when cooked with butter, ghee or cream this way. I have just exploited that property of fresh water chestnuts to makes these Panna cotta and pot de creme.

Wishing you all a happy Diwali. It will be healthier too if you eat the right things. Please take care of what you put into your mouth in festive season too and trust me it is very much possible.

PS : I must add to tell you that this pot de creme was so delicious when diluted with milk, heated in the microwave and had like a hot chocolate. Deep dark creamy hot chocolate to enjoy at the end of the day when winter is just knocking at the door.
Also, please note that dark chocolate (72%) is not everyone's idea of a good chocolate. So if you are the milk chocolate person of like something between 55-60% dark chocolate, please go ahead and use your own favourite chocolate. I realised after serving it to someone who likes her chocolate really sweet and light.

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