Month: May 2016

Heat Resistant Silicone Oven Gloves Review

Celiac disease has given me the rare opportunity to replace many items in my kitchen, one being the oven gloves I use. I have cloth gloves and squares but they get food on them all the time, are in constant need of washing and don’t always come out of the wash looking like they’ll save my fingers from a burn. I had a hard time keeping the gluten separated from non-gluten and I ended up ruining my oven gloves from over washing. In need of oven gloves that are easily washable, I bought these Heat Resistant Silicone Oven Gloves on Amazon.com. I got the orange and grey colors – the orange are my gluten-free gloves and the grey are for the gluten.

I love that they come in a pair, as you do need one for each hand. The gloves are dishwasher safe and do a good job of protecting my hands from the heat. The critiques I have are that they are fairly large gloves. I’m average size, 5’5” and about 140 lbs. and my hands swim in them. A smaller size would be nice, but I imagine if they were too much smaller, the gloves wouldn’t be easy to put on my hands. Also, if a pot touches the inside lining where there are no nubs, the heat comes through the glove and stings. It leaves a slight red mark on my skin, but I not a serious burn, so they did protect my skin, although I only held the hot pot a second or two.

These silicone gloves work well for keeping your hands protected from the heat, even if they are a little on the large side. Sometimes I use them without putting my hands in the silicon oven gloves, but it is better to wear them when pulling things out of the oven or microwave, so I don’t burn the tops of my fingers. I haven’t run them through the dishwasher because I don’t like to put silicon in the dishwasher. We have hard water and I don’t trust the plastic from being damaged by dishwasher soap, so I wash them by hand. They hold up well with daily use and washing with Dawn and hot water. All things said, they were a good buy for $9.99.

Gluten-Free Blueberry Scones with Stonewall Kitchen Traditional Scone Mix

Hello there! Today I made these delicious blueberry scones that came out tasting incredible. I used a box mix for traditional scones, Stonewall Kitchen Traditional Scone Mix and added half a can of Oregon Blueberries at the end. I enjoy the Stonewall Kitchen brand of gluten-free mixes and have tried other gluten-free mixes under that brand. Stonewall Kitchen has easy-to-follow directions and base ingredients that allows you to add your own flavors and spices, plus they usually come out tasty and moist, not dry, unless I make a mistake on the recipe.

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I mostly followed the directions on the box. I’m not a big butter fan, or my body hasn’t been lately, so I used half coconut oil and half Smart Balance Extra Virgin Olive Oil dairy free butter. It should be a solid type of oil for the mix to crumble and hold properly. The mix calls for 2/3 cup cold water and 1 large egg, slightly beaten. Keep a tablespoon of flour aside to coat the pastry sheet or counter before spreading the mixture. I don’t have a pastry sheet, so I put wax paper down on the counter and then sprinkled the tablespoon of mix on the paper, it worked great!

Add butter/oil to mix and cut with a pastry blender, fingertips or a fork, until the batter resembles coarse crumbs, then add water and egg until just mixed. I lightly beat the egg with a fork in the measuring cup for the water before adding it to the mixture, mixed all the ingredients until they were blended and folded half a can of drained and rinsed blueberries into the batter.

A pizza slicer works well to slice scones

A pie spatula to lift the gluten-free scones

Then I took the dough ball, it was pretty moist and sticky, and spread it onto the wax paper, making about an 8 inch diameter circle and used the pizza cutter to slice it into 8 pie-like slices. I used a pie spatula to pick them off the wax paper, greasing it with some coconut oil to make it easy for the dough to slide off the spatula, and placed the sliced scone batter onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.

The directions say to bake at 450 degrees for 10-12 minutes, I cooked my scones about 12-14 minutes, until they were semi-golden on top. They came out so delicious! I was glad I added in the blueberries. The first time I made the scones I didn’t add fruit and they were a bit too dry for my liking, though moister than other scones I’ve tried, though it hasn’t been many. I was never a big fan of scones because they were a dry pastry and I prefer moist cakes. The Stonewall Kitchen Gluten Free Scones have a plain, vanilla flavor, as I imagine most scones have, but even plain they are more moist than other scones. The fruit adds even more moisture and so much flavor. In retrospect, I could have used the whole can and gotten an even tastier scone. I bought a can of cherries too, so with the next box I might use the cherries. I’m still on the fence with buying canned anything, but that’s for another post. Any other ideas for the cherries?