Review: Better Batter Gluten Free Flour

If you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed that I've been having a lot of baking struggles lately. I don't know what happened, I feel like last year I was so much better at this. I've baked probably five different cornbreads and thrown away all of them. The last one was almost a success, the flavor was better, but after a day the bread turned into a dense brick.

Last week on a random afternoon I decided to make the trip out to A New Leaf in Needham, MA because I heard it's a mecca of gluten free deliciousness. It really is too, shelf after shelf of gluten free products. I went to get a box of Better Batter gluten free all purpose flour mix. I also knew that they stock Joan's Gluten Free Great Bakes. Their English Muffins are $12 for 6 but they are SO incredibly good that I couldn't resist.

Pardon the iPhone pics:





So anyway, back to the post at hand. The Better Batter. My first experiment was cornbread. I used a regular cornbread recipe from allrecipes.com and subbed the flour 1:1. I've learned over the years that the key to gluten free baking is in the mixing process and I usually dissolve the sugar in the eggs/milk mixture before adding it to the dry ingredients and then folding the two together very gently. This usually gives me a light fluffy end result. I wasn't paying attention when I made the cornbread and I forgot to do this and ended up with some pretty dense stuff. It tasted good but I ended up throwing it away because it was like a rock after one day.

The next experiment was cupcakes for the New Year's Eve party. I used another basic recipe from allrecipes.com and again subbed the flour 1:1. This time I remembered to dissolve the sugar and it worked perfectly. Light, fluffy cupcakes!!! Not crumbly or gritty, no gluten-free aftertaste. Delicious!!!! I made a chocolate buttercream frosting and that was heaven. I used Earth Balance buttery spread and Almond Breeze unsweetened vanilla milk for the dairy substitutes. I believe the almond milk is what's giving my cupcakes their greyish hue. I am going to use rice milk next time to see what happens. I highly recommend Better Batter, it works perfectly as a 1:1 substitute in your old gluten filled recipes and the taste and texture is fantastic. It even smells like wheat flour in the bag I think. I love it.