Wednesday 5th April - Gluten-free surprise

 Family is dropping by tomorrow - what a lovely surprise! So we have found the 'round tuit' ("I'll do it when I  get a round tuit") and demolished the cobwebs from the bathroom windows, cleaned the bathroom, hoovered the kitchen, hall, stairs and landing (and our bedroom while the hoover as upstairs - after all, why not!?), polished the taps and changed the handtowels in readiness. 

Of course, we Always do All of this Every Week... well, to be more truthful, most weeks. There are only two of us, and sadly no cats anymore, so how dirty can the floors get? (I did work with someone years ago who couldn't sleep at night unless she had hoovered the whole house every evening... I  was speechless, in a mix of awe, admiration and disbelief)

We shan't be entertaining indoors (covid protection is still a thing for me) but there is always the possibility of someone needing the loo before their hour drive home.

Then I thought about needing to be able to offer a gluten free something to go with coffee or tea. Ah. We have got Nairn's plain and also chocolate chip oatcakes in the cupboard,  but not all oats are as gluten free as one might hope. And what about the malted barley syrup in the list of ingredients?

I've gone back to a tried and tested old fashioned favourite; Almond macaroons;

I followed the recipe, halving the quantities; 1 egg white, beaten to a foam, 110g ish ground almonds and 60g caster sugar. Reading on in the recipe, I saw that this also makes a traditional Passover treat if you add cinnamon to the dry ingredients and leave the mix as little balls rather than flattening them. I left out the cinnamon as I'm not sure if my visitors would like it, but otherwise carried on.

The advantage was that ten little balls of mixture fitted nicely into the air fryer, taking about 18 minutes at 160°C. I've rolled them in icing sugar as the recipe instructs and put them away until tomorrow. 

Have you seen tomorrow's forecast? Yesterday's sunny day was more of a trailer for the coming Spring. Today has been mostly cold, and tomorrow looks like being showery. Tea or coffee in the garden might not be happening after all....