Triple ginger gingerbread

This is another one of those recipes that has evolved over time from the original. I've been making gingerbread, the cake/bread version, for as long as I can remember. There was never a written recipe, Grandma just made it and it was my job to stir. 

I asked her once, and she said she'd started from her grandmother's recipe but it was in her hands now. That's...not particularly helpful, Grandma.

A few years ago, I went looking for a gingerbread recipe that worked in a sheet pan rather than a loaf- I was catering for 200 and had access to full sheet pans and an oven that could manage them. A lot of modern recipes are built for loaf pans or Bundt pans or even 9x13 pans- things with real sides. Put them in a standard jelly roll or sheet pan and they have a major overflow issue. So I pulled out my '52 Joy of Cooking and started modifying it to taste more like Grandma's recipe. This can be made with either 2 c of my standard recipe for gf flour (by weight: 2 parts sorghum flour, 1.5 parts brown rice flour, 1 part tapioca starch & 1 part potato starch) + 1/4t xanthan gum, or 1c Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose & 1c Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free 1 to 1 backing flour. Ok, it can probably be made with 2 c of any of the GF flour blends besides Namaste - if you're working with any of the extremely hydrophilic gf flours that make everything taste dry, add half a cup of unsweetened applesauce. 

Triple ginger gingerbread:

1/2 c butter

1/2 c brown sugar, packed

1/2 c white sugar

2 eggs

Dry:

1 t dried lemon or zest of one lemon

2 c gluten free flour blend

1t cinnamon

1t soda

1t salt

2 t ginger

2-4T grated ginger

1/4-1/2 c candied ginger, minced fine

Wet:

1/2 c water

1/2 c molasses

Preheat oven to 350. Cream butter & sugar until fluffy, then add eggs  Alternate adding wet and dry ingredients to butter/sugar/eggs, mixing after each addition. Line 1/4 sheet pan with parchment paper. Bake approx 30 min or until done. 

(This also does work nicely in 2 loaf pans or a Bundt cake pan, actually, you just have to bake it a little longer, and wait until a toothpick comes out clean, 40-50 min)

Gf pie crust

 To my everlasting horror, I just checked the Bob's Red Mill Easy As Pie gf pie crust recipe to send to someone, and they'd changed the directions! 

I will grant that it will make a better pie crust, but it's no longer the simplest failsafe recipe I know. 

For the record (so I can both find it and point to it), here's the original. 

Actual easy as pie crust recipe (makes 1 crust):

• ½ cup Butter cold
• 1 ½ cups Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Flour
• ½ tsp Salt
• 4-6 Tbsp Milk cold

Preheat oven to 400. Cube or grate very cold butter. Mix with flour and salt until it resembles coarse meal, by hand, pastry cutter, or food processor. Add milk slowly while mixing until it forms a dough. 

Roll out two sheets of parchment paper. Place dough between parchment and roll out to 1/4", and slightly too big for the pie plate. Flip into your pie tin, line with parchment, and fill with pie weights*. If it is a filled pie, into the oven for 10 minutes before filling and dump out the weights, then fill and bake according to your recipe. If unfilled, them your dough needs 40 min or until golden.

This is one where I can hand it to a kitchen newbie and trust it will be fine. It also works Just Fine with wheat based flours, even though that's not my need. 

*Pie weights can be anything from a bag of dried beans to a bunch of ball bearings to the ceramic ones sold for purpose. The point is to mimic the weight of a filling with something that comes up to oven temp quickly and prevents giant bubbles in the bottom crust as the butter steams