Foodie Pan Pals – Miso and Sesame Gluten Free Crackers

I’m a little bit late with my Foodie Pen Pals post this month, but I blame Easter for getting in the way. And as they say good things come to those who wait and this month I really do have an amazingly good box of goodies thanks to Anna over at Lemony loves Baking.

So in no particular order I got;

Zero Noodles – These are gluten and wheat free ‘Konnyaku’ noodles. Apparently Konnyaku is a perennial plant and the root from this is edible and used to make these noodles. It certainly isn’t an ingredient I had ever heard of before but am looking forward to trying this unusual ingredient.

Garlic and Black Sea Salt – These are really cute little pots of salt and I’m really intrigued by the black salt as it isn’t something I have come across before.

Edible flowers – These are so cute and will certainly suit some spring time cup cakes (I just need the weather to match before I start some baking!)

Umami Paste – This is something I have been meaning to invest in for ages but Foodie Pen Pal intuition has kindly provided this for me, a great addition to my ever bulging store cupboard.

Caramel, Lemon and Poppy Seed popcorn – I love popcorn so tucked into this straight away. As first it has a really sweet, toffee kick but a little more munching and the subtle savoury lemony flavours burst through….delicious.

Tea – I love tea and I love tea pigs tea even more so this was a perfect addition to the parcel.

TimTams – Last but not least a packet of TimTams. These are an Australian biscuit (I think a little like a penguin) that should be eaten by performing a ‘TimTam Slam’. Luckily Anna provided me with instructions on how to perform a ‘Slam’ and although I haven’t had a chance to do this yet I am looking forward to sitting down with a cup of Tea Pigs tea and one of these later to give a TimTam Slam a go.   

So thanks Anna, this was a really gorgeous parcel with so many exciting things that I haven’t tried before and look forward to munching my way through all of the lovely treats….thanks!

I then sent a parcel to Rose this month. As well as some dried rose petals which she used in this delightful looking recipe I made some gluten free miso and sesame crackers using my home made cannellini bean flour and thought I would share this recipe with you all.

INGREDIENTS

FOR THE FLOUR

400g dried cannellini beans

FOR THE CRACKERS

300g homemade bean flour

100g rice flour

50g sesame seeds

1 tsp gluten free baking powder

3 tblspns melted butter

2 tblspns red miso paste

1 tblspn soy sauce

1 egg

120ml water

To make the bean flour pre-heat the oven to 200°C/390°F. Place the beans on a large baking tray and place in the oven for 30 minutes, shaking occasionally to ensure none of the beans brown to much.

Remove the beans from the oven and allow to cool before transferring in batched into a food processor. Blitz each batch of beans to produce a fine flour and sieve into a large mixing bowl, returning any larger pieces of bean to the food processor for a second blitzing. Repeat until all of the beans have been transferred into flour.

Lower the oven temperature to 100°C/225°F.

Place the bean flour, rice flour, sesame seeds and baking powder into a large mixing bowl. Add the remaining wet ingredients to the bowl and mix until fully combined. As the ingredients come together use your hands to form a ball of dough.

Line a large baking tray with greaseproof paper. Place the ball of dough onto the centre of the baking tray and use a rolling pin to roll out the dough until it spread evenly over the tray. Take a sharp knife and score the dough into equal sized rectangles.

Place the baking tray into the oven and bake for an hour (checking every now and again to ensure the mixture doesn’t brown too much around the edges). Then remove from the oven and allow the mixture 

to cool before carefully breaking into the rectangles and previously scored out.

These crackers are quite salty but go really well with cream cheese and cucumber or smoked fish.