Gluten-Free New Year's Cakes

This is the first recipe that didn’t work out exactly as I planned. I was hoping the overall flavor of the cakes would work out to be more like the commercial sour cream and onion chips. The main factor that I think made them not taste as good as I hoped was the gluten free flour. They still tasted fairly good, but were drier than I had expected. I think that the gluten free flours really soak up the moisture a lot more than wheat flour, making the mixture dryer overall. The taste turned out to be milder than I intended, but they were still good with lots of butter melted on them. For the recipe, I took the original one and switched some of the moist ingredients for sour cream, strong cheddar and green onion.

 The flavouring mix.

One of these next two pictures is the baked cakes and the other is unbaked, but I can't really tell because they were so pale.

Quail (Game Hens)

I think this one worked out pretty well.

On http://www.victoriana.com/christmas/menu-99.htm, I found an item in the example menu that said "quail with mushroom stuffing". However, I couldn't find the actual recipe for it, just the name in the menu. Naturally, I was intrigued by this missing recipe, so I googled "quail with mushroom stuffing victorian recipe". I couldn't find any Victorian recipes with both quail and mushroom stuffing, but I found a Victorian recipe for quail, and a modern recipe for mushroom stuffing, so I made that, and put it in the “quail”*.

Here are the recipes:

Roast Game Hens*

adapted from: http://recipespastandpresent.org.uk/victoriancooking/fowl.php

Ingredients:

• Three game hens*
• ¼ cup wine
• 100g butter
• A few drops of lemon juice
• Salt and pepper
• Parsley
• 1 clove garlic, crushed

Method: Split the butter in half and place a piece of one half in each bird. In a bowl, mash with a fork the other half of the butter with the garlic, the wine** and some chopped parsley, salt and pepper to taste. Rub the butter mixture evenly over all three birds and roast, basting***** until done.

Mushroom Stuffing

from: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/mushroom-stuffing/detail.aspx

Ingredients

• 130 g fresh mushrooms, sliced
• 25 g butter, softened
• 45 g diced onion
• 35 g chopped celery***
• 0.4 g poultry seasoning
• 2 g salt

• 0.2 g ground black pepper
• 370 g dried bread crumbs****
• 100 ml hot chicken broth
• 1 egg, beaten
• 70 g diced apple without peel
• 4 g chopped parsley

Directions    NOTE: Recipe directions are for the original serving size of 14.

Butter one 9x13 inch casserole dish. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Rinse, pat dry and quarter mushrooms. In large skillet heat butter and add mushrooms, onion and celery; saute 5 minutes and remove from heat. Stir in poultry seasoning, salt and pepper. In large mixing bowl, combine bread crumbs with broth and eggs, add mushroom mixture, apples and parsley; mix well. Turn into casserole dish. Cover and bake at 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) for about 45 minutes. Remove cover and bake 15 minutes longer to brown top.

*I actually used cornish game hens, because I couldn’t find quail anywhere.

**The wine doesn’t combine with the butter, so just pour it over the birds after rubbing the butter on.

***Instead of celery, I used a very very tiny bit of alexanders, as they are related to celery, but quite strong this time of year.

****I used gluten free bread, so my mother could eat it too.

*****It turned out that there wasn’t enough liquid in the pan for me to baste them.

The raw hens and stuffing.

The raw hens, with partially cooked stuffing being put in them.

 

the roasted birds.

Close up. Delicious.