For several years I have made Lemon Bars from a Joy of Cooking recipe for my family, to the great delight of everyone: the recipe I use is extremely tart and quite good.
One of the cookie’s biggest fans is one of my inlaws who has recently been diagnosed as wheat-intolerant, however, and my mother-in-law has asked me if it’d be possible to make a batch of the lemon bars without using wheat. So I turn to y’all.
The crust, of course, is wheat-based: it’s a generic shortbread crust. I was thinking that maybe it could be almond-based instead, but I’m not sure how that would work. Otherwise, perhaps it could be spelt-based? (I’ve been assured that spelt will be fine for her).
The curd itself also contains a 1/2 cup of flour as a thickener. Corn starch might work, as might agar, but I’m not sure what quantity to use.
Here are the ingredients:
(for the crust)
1 ½ cups white flour
¼ cup powdered sugar
12 tablespoons cold butter, cut into pieces
(and for the curd)
6 large eggs
3 cups sugar
grated zest of one lemon
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about 5 lemons)
½ cup white flour
Can anyone help me modify this recipe so that it’ll be delicious yet wheatless? I’d experiment, but I or my wife will be making these Wednesday, which doesn’t give me a lot of time.
OK – I’d sub 3/4 cup fine almond meal and 3/4 cup white rice flour for the crust. It should work OK without any guar gum or xanthan gum but it’s probably going to be a touch crumblier than gluten flour shortbread.
I’d use either arrowroot or cornflour to thicken the curd. I’d probably start with 1/4 cup and see how that looked but I’d expect to possibly use 1/2 cup. Do you add the thickener to the lemon juice? I’d definitely be looking to add arrowroot or cornflour to a liquid before I added it to the curd because lumps are hard to avoid with those flours.
Well… for the flour, there are many types available at most grocery stores today, like rice flour, gluten-free flour, etc. I’d think they would tell you on the package somewhere how to substitute it in your normal recipes, if you need more or less or the same - check before you buy, of course. I haven’t used any of these, however, so I don’t know if there’s any difference in the flavour.
As for using cornstarch, my only advice is to add it slowly… judging by the amount of flour I’d say start with 1/4 cup and increase to 1/2 if necessary. Also, be sure sure sure to add cornstarch to cold liquid ingredients - cornstarch doesn’t blend well into hot. You can heat it, of course, after it’s been blended. As it heats, it will get thicker. (You may already know this, but I thought I’d add it in there, since I made many a lumpy pudding without this knowledge!)
I wouldn’t use a premixed GF flour. Most of them are nasty shit and in a recipe like shortbread, you don’t want to be tasting soy. It’s usually a straight sub for quantity when replacing gluten flour with a GF flour although in very damp or very dry conditions, you might need to play around with flour/liquid combos in a cake.
You and/or your in-law should check out Living Without magazine. It is billed as a magazine for people with food allergies and sensitivities, but the vast majority of the content, both editorial and advertising, seems to be geared toward gluten-free stuff. They do have a lot of recipes. I’ll bet they’ve covered this particular substitution at some point.
I suggested almond meal and white rice flour because that’s going to give a good approximation of shortbread. If you want it even ‘shorter’ try brown rice flour.
The Carol Fenster recipe lorie smurf linked to will give you a softer shortbread. It won’t be as crisp as the almond/rice flour combo.
Another warning is that GF baked goods do not remain fresh for very long. Most need to be eaten within 48 hours.
And Living Without is great. Wish I could afford to sub to it. We ate some dreadful things in the first few years of GF baking but I’ve got it figured out now
Thanks for the help, folks! Rice flour, huh? My one experience with rice flour was in a frozen pizza I once got when I was dating a wheat-intolerant woman; the crust had approximately the same texture and consistency as mostly-dried Elmer’s Glue. I’ve been wary of the stuff ever since. But you say it can work? I’ll give that a try. Out of curiosity, why rice flour instead of spelt flour? (I’m pretty unfamiliar with using different flours).
The curd ingredients all get mixed cold and poured on cold, so lumpiness isn’t a problem; the first heat they encounter is inside the oven.
Lorie, thanks for the recipe link! I’ll mine it for ideas, especially for ideas for future things I bake for this inlaw. Unfortunately, that recipe uses a pathetic amount of lemon juice, less than a quarter what I want to use :).
And thanks for the tip that non-wheat baked goods don’t last very long. Probably burundi (my wife) will end up baking these Wednesday, the same day we take them down to the inlaws, so that should not be a problem in this case; but it’s good to know for the future.
GF cooking has improved a lot over the last few years and thank maud for that. I use rice flour in combination with other flours, very rarely on its own because of that elmers glue effect.
I don’t use spelt – it’s not GF and we’re GF, not wheat intolerant (on an aside, it makes no sense to me that someone can be wheat intolerant and can tolerate gluten in other foods.) From what I remember of spelt it’s more coarse and closer to whole wheat flour so you’d end up with a fairly far out and solid shortbread if you try to use spelt. Trust me, almond meal and rice flour will give you a good result. I can go and find my recipe if you like but the quantities I suggested should work.
Okay, good to know. I’m not really sure what her story is, i.e., why she has to avoid wheat. I’ll go ahead with the rice-flour-and-almond combination, as well as the arrowroot thickener. I really appreciate the advice! It’s been about 10 years since I did any wheat-free baking, and it’s pretty much uncharted territory for me.
Celiac/sprue sufferers also can have trouble with oats, rye and barley. Occasionally you will find sopme poor schmuck who has celiac is also allergic to corn, which really sucks for them as well [given how corn and corn by-products are so prevalent in prepared foods=(]
