Gluten Free Desserts, Sightseeing, and my Dissertation

I stayed with my cousins for the last couple weeks of dissertation writing. I can't thank them enough for putting me up and putting up with me during such a stressful time. In an attempt to thank them, I baked quite a bit for them. Below follows a stream of consciousness post including some gluten free baking and some miscellaneous non-food photos.

 

Before I stayed with them, I made my cousin Sophy a gluten free battenberg cake for her birthday. I'd never made a glutinous battenberg cake before, so this was a challenge...quite a fun one though! Now that I'm not writing a dissertation, I'll write a proper post about this cake soon.

Once I was staying with the cousins, I didn't have access to all the kitchen equipment I have at home (obviously) so I made simpler desserts. My favorite, by far, was a delicious plated dessert of dark chocolate and white chocolate swirl mousse served with strawberries and fresh blackberries from their backyard. Yum!

I also made an Eton mess with strawberries, raspberries, and more of those gorgeous blackberries. Since I forgot to take a picture of it, here's a photo of Greenwich from the Greenwich Observatory.

Speaking of Greenwich, I spent a precious day not working on my dissertation in Greenwich. I stood on both sides of the prime meridian, stopped into every museum in the area, and had an Italian fried rice ball from the market for lunch.

I also came up with a title for my dissertation. So my day off might not have been entirely unproductive...

I happened to have some great gluten free flour left over from the Battenberg cake, so I made some gluten free scones. Scones are very easy to make gluten free, because much of the point of them is that they are low in gluten (that's why a good scone is flakey not cakey). In this case, I added some almond flour and mixed berries. Delicious.

On my second day off I saw Matilda (the musical) in the afternoon and the TARDIS at night! Apparently the whole cast was doing an interview in a movie theater in Leicester Square after the live broadcast of the first episode of the season, so they parked the TARDIS outside.

Finally I made a batch of gluten free chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips. They came out a bit crumbly rather than gooey, but no one seemed to mind. I can't believe it, I'm done with my dissertation and I'm moving back to the U.S. It's been a crazy couple of weeks and handing in my dissertation (two days early) capped them off quite well. Now I just have to wait until November to find out my grade.