Here are a couple Recipes that always please...Gluten-free Coffeecake and Old-fashioned Portuguese Sweet Bread.
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The first recipe is gluten-free for you who cannot digest wheat. At Shipman House Bed & Breakfast, we try to accommodate those guests with dietary restrictions, and this is one of those recipes. We call it a coffeecake, but it contains no coffee (yes, people do ask!), and would more properly be called a Macadamia Nut Crumb Cake. If you have a nut allergy, just omit the nuts...and you didn't need to be told that, I'm sure.
Shipman House Gluten-Free Coffee Cake
Topping--Blend together, set aside:
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon cocoa
- 1/2 cup rice flour
- 1/4 cup chopped nuts (Macadamias or what appeals to you)
- 3 Tablespoons butter
Cake
4 egg whites, whipped until stiff but not dry
4 egg yolks, beaten until light and creamy
1 cup sugar...beat into yolks
Add to yolk mix:
1 cup potato or rice flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 1/2 Tablespoon gluten-free vanilla (check label)
Fold egg whites into the batter. This part takes effort and patience. Spread gently but smoothly in a greased and floured 9" round pan. Sprinkle topping evenly over the batter. Bake 325 degrees F for 20 minutes, then 350 for 15 minutes.
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This second recipe is for Old-fashioned Portuguese Sweet Bread. The Portuguese came to Hawaii to work in the sugar cane fields, and brought music and wonderful foods with them. When I was a child, this was every local kid's favorite toast! It is hard to come by today, and the commercial varieties are just not right. I was given the recipe by Mrs. Alice Peters up in Laupahoehoe on the Hamakua Coast. Alice is a wonderful lady in her 90's, who used to bake the bread for groups doing fundraisers. When I told her our guests were asking for her recipe, she replied, "Share it! Give it to everyone!"
“Small” Sweet Bread
3 loaves
Received from Alice Peters in 2002, via Ann deConte Buck, as edited by Barbara
Mix in largest bowl, make well in center:
9 cups (2lbs. 8 ½ oz.) bread flour
1 cup (8 oz.) butter, softened (Alice used ½ butter, ½ Imperial margarine)
2 cups (14 ¼ oz.) sugar
a little salt (optional)
Mix, let rise a few minutes:
2 Tablespoons sugar
3 Tablespoons yeast
1 cup warm water
Then: Beat 6 eggs into foamy yeast mix
Mix into liquids:
2 cups warm milk (may use canned milk, thinned with water)
Add yeast mixture to flour mixture, pouring into well. Stir thoroughly with wooden spoon. Add 2 cups or more bread flour (sifted), stir well. Knead for several minutes to make it elastic.
Cover, let rise until doubled (1 hour?), punch down and divide into 3 greased loaf pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.
Bake 50 minutes, 325 degrees F. Remove from oven, cool a minute or two before dropping loaves out of pans onto racks. Let cool on their sides.
- Alice brushed her loaves with evaporated milk before baking, and lined round cake pans with banana leaves, placing the ball of dough on top.
There seem to be two factions among Portuguese Sweet Bread lovers--those who like the pure, unadulterated bread (above), and those who like it 'doctored up' with raisins or flavorings.
The secret ingredients of one Shipman House B&B guest’s mom, who always won the blue ribbon at her county fair on the Mainland, were a little lemon peel added to the dry ingredients, and ½ teaspoon anise extract added to the liquids. Alice feels these have no business being in her recipe, and she's quite adamant about it.