GF EGGBALL WAFFLES! (GAI DAAN JAI)

The BEST Eggball Waffle recipe yet!  AND it’s Gluten Free!  Guten Tag!  Oh Joy!

As you may recall, I have been feeling a whole bunch of self-pity as I have recently learned that I may need to go Gluten Free for life.  I have had this food blog for approximately 4 years (my blog bday is my daughter’s bday!  July 27, 2007) and I have been blogging about my quest for the best darned cake recipes and best places to eat in Vancouver consistently without any heed to watching my intake of gluten.   Since my first posted recipes, which were really meant to be an online archive where recipes are devoid of the detritus of my stream-of-consciousness (a good thing probably because I know I'm verbose), I have received over 1,000,000 page loads on my blog.  Aiya! That's amazing to me.

I'd like to take a minute to thank all my faithful "followers" and readers right now.  I particularly wish I could take all my fellow food-bloggin' friends out for some good ol' Dim Sum (many dishes are GF! hee hee!) in Vancouver to thank them for their encouraging comments over the years; but I know that would seem awfully weird.  So I won't.   Unexpectedly, I have connected with so many fellow foodies who are just as passionate about cake, desserts, eating well and anything food related and have made some really good friends.  I really appreciate all your comments over the years.  It truly is the only reward for all the hard work I've put into trying to make my blog better.  It's not as if I've gotten paid anything for blogging! I haven't even garnered enough hits to get my first $100 cheque from Google Ads. That may have something to do with me shoving the ads way at the bottom where you can't see it! har har!  It was compromising the "look" of my blog!  My first statcounter, identified by "Cakelicks", located way at the bottom too, shows my pageloads are right now at over a million.  1,022,583 to be exact at the moment of this post. That's not too shabby.  I average about 1,000 page loads a day.  Even if I don't post anything new.     Thank you all for sticking with me this long! I won't let you down and will continue to strive for the best darned dessert recipes; even if some will be GF now!  I will continue to use wheat flours in baking at home because I will bake these for bdays and my kids sometimes.  No one in the family, including me, has Celiac (Coeliac) disease.


But I digress.  Again.  Hey, you're used to it now.

Anyhoo...sure, I’ve been trying to be carb-careful and have been also trying really hard to maintain a healthy balance by running and exercising too.  However, a drastic dietary change like going Gluten Free kind of hit me like the force of a dump truck. 

Well, the self-pity lasted a couple of days and then I started to do what I usually do when confronted with a problem.  I researched it.  

Then, I bought two new GF books on my Kindle…Artisanal Gluten Free Cooking and Simply…Gluten Free Desserts. My goal was to find a decent utilitarian flour blend recipe for my baked goods.  Though the Quinoa Chocolate Cake I made recently was tasty, it failed miserably for lightness.  It was squidgy.  Because nobody else wanted to eat it in my household, I was left picking at it for the next week.  I think as a result of this, I’ll have to start making Small Batch GF recipes.  The more I think about it, the more likely I’ll have to go in this direction if I don’t want to weigh 200 pounds by the end of the summer.  Gluten Free certainly does not mean fat or sugar free!  Rice flour is just as “fattening” as eating refined wheat flour.  In fact, I can kind of see the danger of GF recipe testing…thinking that it’s okay to eat it, you can easily overindulge.  So look forward to small batch (i.e. 2 small cupcakes) GF baking recipes in the future.  I’ll be working hard on developing that. 

Remember also, that I do not have Celiac disease.  I am just being cautious with my thyroid condition (Hashimoto's thyroiditis) and want to prevent further damage.  I have even cut out my fave cruciferous veggies (they're goitrogenic) and soy products (sob!) from my diet.   Ah woe is me!

I feel that this could very likely be like some sort of rebound love affair, where you get dumped by one boyfriend (gluten) and run to someone new (rice flour, sugar, trans fats, etc.)…someone just as bad for you!

Well, I’m going to attempt to do the moderation thing and see how far that’ll get me.  As well, I am going to try to refrain from buying too many GF books.  I find that some of them tend towards Celiac patients and [knock on wood] I don’t think I have to be so wary as to worry about things like wheat-contaminated oatmeal and such.  I love my steel-cut oats and I’m not giving that up if I can help it.  I don’t want to go all healthy on you or something! don’t worry!   If  it doesn’t taste as good or better than the REAL GLUTEN-FULL stuff, I’ll let you know.  I mean, it isn’t as if I haven’t had a lifetime of experiencing what the real good stuff should taste like.  Besides, Celiac patients are so smart about going GF that they’ll know how to adapt my recipes so that they’ll “feel safe”.  It's primarily about the brands you buy and being vigilant at reading labels and researching.

From Simply…Gluten Free Desserts, I found a fabulous GF Flour Blend that seems to work well for refined flour-type baked goods and desserts.  It employs ASIAN white rice flour and sweet rice flours (because of the extremely fine grind).  I had purchased brown rice flour from Whole Foods, but am reluctant to try that in the recipe first because it might taste too healthy and make me really unhappy about the prospects of ever finding excellent-tasting GF desserts.  So I chose this highly refined blend and followed her specific instruction to use the Asian flours.  Besides, they’re WAY cheaper!  Just get the Thai brands from an Asian supermarket.    I don’t think it wise to use the grittier “western” grinds of rice flour if you want to mimic the real thing.  The coarse texture, the fact that there’s sometimes that all-too-healthy rice bran in there.  Ick. 

Have you seen any of my cake recipes on this site ever posted with whole wheat or whole grain flours?  No.  So you probably won’t find the brown rice too often.  Maybe once in a while because I accidentally purchased 2 bags of it…but not after I betcha. 

So before you think this is going to be super easy, it has to be a little finicky first.  Buy a whole bunch of these flours (white rice flour, glutinous rice flour, potato starch, tapioca starch and xanthum gum) and then measure them out into a big air-tight container.  Label it as your Sweet Rice Flour Blend.  Use this in place of your all-purpose flour or cake and pastry flour for baking.  After all the buying and mixing, it gets pretty easy afterwards.

The very first thing I tested this Sweet Rice Flour Blend on was not one of the recipes from her book, but one that I recently made with AP Wheat flour.  I figured I have enough good recipes kicking around and a blend can only be rated good or excellent by me if it mimics the same texture and taste as the original.  So my Eggball Recipe passed with flying colours!  It seemed even better than the wheat flour recipe; mostly because I am aware that Chinese people do rely a lot on rice flours and various starches in their baking and desserts  (unless you're up in Northern China!) so most likely eggball vendors probably use recipes that incorporate rice flours too.

You must make up a batch of the flour blend before you proceed with the recipe.  Go buy her book like I did if you want the recipe or you can even buy her flour blend online.  She put some hard work into making the blend.

GLUTEN FREE EGGBALL WAFFLES
(highly modified and adapted from Christine’s Recipes and Simply…Gluten Free Recipes)

140 grams Sweet Rice Flour Blend (from Simply...Gluten Free Recipes)

7.5 grams baking powder [I used Magic Baking Powder, a Canadian brand]

1 tablespoon custard powder [I used Bird’s Custard Powder]

28 grams tapioca starch

2 eggs

140 grams white sugar

28 grams evaporated milk

140 ml still water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

28 grams grapeseed oil, for making the egg batter

extra grapeseed oil in a little custard cup and a small pastry brush to oil the waffle iron mould.

NOTES:  I highly recommend that you weigh all your ingredients as indicated above.   I used my Williams Sonoma Eggball Waffle Iron. Yes, all the brands I used are GF though they don’t advertise that they are. I did research that.  If you're Celiac and wary (don't blame you) do re-check for yourself.

1. Sift the Sweet Rice Flour blend, baking powder, custard powder and tapioca starch together in a small mixing bowl.
2. In a 4 cup measuring cup, combine the eggs, sugar, evaporated milk water, grapeseed oil and extract. Mix thoroughly until combined.
3. Add the sifted flour mixture into the measuring cup that has the egg mixture and whisk until there are no more lumps.
4. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest in the refrigerator for at least one hour.
5. Preheat your waffle iron on the stove.   Oil both sides with an oil-dipped pastry brush, place it on the smallest gas element on “medium” heat and wait 30 sec.  Then flip the iron to heat the other side and wait a further 20 sec.
6. Stir the batter well and pour the batter into the centre of one side of the waffle iron, being careful not to overfill.  Leave one row around the perimeter empty of batter.
7. Close the iron and quickly flip the iron. Then set your timer for 2 min and 20 seconds.  Ensure your flame is on Medium and no higher. 
8. After the timer buzzes, flip the iron again and place it back on the flame.  Time it for another 2 min and 20 seconds.
9. Hopefully your batch turned out golden brown like mine.  If not, you’ll have to adjust from 2 minutes to 2 1/2 minutes and monitor your flame for subsequent batches.  Carefully, using chopsticks or tongs, pull the eggball waffle from the iron and allow to cool on a wire rack. 
10. Fan the waffle to crisp it up and cool it down a bit. (Get the kiddies to do this while you make subsequent batches!]
11. Eat the waffle while warm.  If you leave it to sit for longer than an hour, it’ll get soggy just like eggballs you’d get in the street market. Stale eggballs are not good eggballs. Eat them fresh. Or keep the raw batter in the refrigerator if you think you can't eat all the cooked eggballs at once.
12. When making subsequent waffles after the first test batch, ensure that you preheat both sides of the iron (10 sec is okay because it’s already warmed up) and remember to re-oil each side too.

Pin It