I make a variety of friands, which are like cupcakes but almond meal based. Some have fruit, some have chocolate, some have both :-)

Cheesecake with a GF base

Fresh fruit

Cooked fruit- try placing fresh pineapple spears on a grease oven tray, drizzle with coconut essence and a little brown sugar, put a few tablespoons of water on the tray and bake in a 375 oven until the brown sugar melts. Serve with vanilla icecream if you like.

I make fruit crumbles or crisps with GF oats, butter or vegan margarine (when I'm cooking for vegans), organic vegan brown sugar (or coconut sugar) and sometimes some almond flour and/or coconut flour for the top crumble crust. I thicken the fruit with cornstarch instead of flour. I follow my usual recipe and just substitute the GF ingredients in place of the flour.

They are just as good as the original recipe results. Apple, berry or any combo.

Flan....
This is best made in the morning of the day you will be serving it....or even the day before.

Flan...or
creme caramel

You
need a 1 1/2 qt straight sided dish to make this in...I use a souffle dish

Melt
2/3 cup of sugar in a sauce pan over medium heat until it turns caramel color.
Pour into your baking dish and tilt the dish so it covers the bottom and goes
part way up the sides. Set dish aside.

In
a blender (or you could use a bowl and a mixer) mix:

3
eggs

3
egg yolks

2
t pure vanilla extract

1
14oz can of sweetened condensed milk

1
3/4 c. milk

2
oz cream cheese

Mix
until smooth...pour into prepared dish. Bake in a water bath in a pre-heated
350 oven for 1 hour and 10 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center
comes clean. You may have to tent it with foil during the last 15 or 20 minutes
to keep it from getting too brown.

Cool
one hour than chill at least several hours...better overnight. Turn upside down
on a serving plate...one with sides, the caramel makes a sauce and will run
down the sides. Serve in wedges like a cake, topped with strawberries if you
want.

Water
bath: set your baking dish in another larger pan and fill the other pan with
boiling water 1/2 up the side of the baking dish.

What about ice creams & sorbets?

pavlova! Preferabbly with strawberries but raspberries and even peaches are good. And it's not a special recipe either -- so I serve it for company if I have a GF guest.

I don't eat dairy or gluten. Try these cookies, they're delicious and made a big hit with everyone! I used Bob's Red Mill almond flour and orange peel. Cooked a little longer than stated, but not too long for a chewy cookie.

Almond Ricciarelli

I just remembered my all-time favorite GF dessert. It's Nigella Lawson's Clementine cake. It's unbelievably good and very easy with a food processor. Clementines should be in the markets before long (if there is any citrus crop left after the hurricanes). I make sure to buy seedless oranges for this.

Clementine Cake

For pie, most fillings are gluten free. If your recipe calls for thickening with wheat flour, you can change to tapioca or arrowroot starch. For the crust, I've made the Martha Stewart recipe with Trader Joe's GF baking flour, which has a lot of rice and starches in it (the recipe calls for GF AP but I've only tried it with the TJ's). My friends love it. They think it's better than regular (I don't think they're pie crust connoisseurs, but I think if you're not imagining Grandma's perfect pie crust and just accept it on it's own merits, it is good). The trick is to read the comments. The dough is yucky goo, and needs to be rolled out between layers of plastic wrap (or parchment) and handled carefully by the wrap until put into place in the dish. I've only used it once for a closed pie, and that's kind of tricky, but it's great for single crusts.

Cakes: Gluten development is not called for in most cakes, hence the caution not to "over-beat"--i.e., develop the gluten. Chiffon cakes work very well GF because they're held together by eggs. There are also good recipes that use chia or flax goo. Adapting recipes to GF is hard, however, and it's better to find ones that others have had success with, then tinker to suit, rather than starting with a wheat flour recipe. That said, I've substituted buckwheat flour for wheat 1:1 in a moist bundt cake and other than the color (which is a bit gray) it was a success. It could have been a tad lighter, but so could have been the original recipe. :)

There are a variety of Lemon Chiffon GF cake recipes on the web. I've only made one that also has matzah meal, which doesn't have developed gluten but does have wheat. There are other versions that use GF flour or starch. It was the lightest, fluffiest chiffon cake I've ever made. I used orange juice instead of lemon, and added orange zest. Do use the almond flour that doesn't have skins and sift it.

One of my go-to treats that people love happens to be GF, but that's chance. It's Peanutbutter Popovers. It's exactly Annie's Flourless Peanutbutter Cookies (first reply in this thread) with Trader Joe's creamy, unblanched, dry roasted, not salted peanutbutter (no ingredients but dry roasted peanuts), but instead of being made as cookies or in muffin cups, use a mini cheesecake pan--i.e., with straight sides in the cup. The eggs and TJ's make it pop over the top and leave a hollow, tall treat, with a brownie texture, which you can fill or not (I've used other peanutbutter which wasn't as successful as the TJ's, so you might need to experiment a bit).

If people take them home, warn them to put them in the trunk or they won't survive the journey. Apparently they're addictive. :) I have three Chicago Metallic pans, round, heart shaped and pumpkin shaped. The pumpkins are just a bit too big and don't work as well--the recipe is perfect to make the dozen on the other two. The hearts make the prettiest tops. They're also really good just as drop cookies, mind you.

I've only made about half of the cookies in that thread (all are GF), and all were good, but the peanutbutter is the big winner. (I know--you didn't want cookies, but they're there...)

Recently while cooking for a relative who needed fattening up, I've had to make a number of desserts on the fly. One popular one is deconstructed parfait (which could be constructed parfait if one had the time). The important part is freshly whipped cream with just a hint of sugar. Crush some of the ho hum GF cookies with your fingers into a combination of small pieces and "sand". Clean a variety of berries--this is a great way to use ones that aren't ripe enough or sweet enough. Add some chopped or slivered nuts. If you want more sugar, thin down some jam. Stack all in a bowl or pilsner glasses or whatever, alternating. Dead easy, old fashioned, and surprisingly popular.

Plllog reminded me of a couple ;

Eton Mess (or as DH likes to call it, Half-Eton Mess :-) )

Crumble meringue cookies or nests into largish chunks. Combine gently with more or less equal amounts of whipped cream and slightly crushed raspberries or strawberries. Serve in a dessert glass.

Meringue Nests

Make a stiff meringue and pipe into nest shapes before baking in a slow oven to dry out.

Fill cooled nests with lemon curd and top with raspberries.

Thank you, compumom, for posting the Ricciarelli cookie recipe! That looks interesting and I've been hoping to find a different cookie recipe to try. Should I make a point of buying an orange to zest, or can I get away w/ sub'ing 1 tsp. orange extract in place of the zest & OJ? i.e., is the zest a necessary component for the desired texture?

I converted to gluten free flour in my carrot cake recipe and it works well.

I am doing pumpkin pie this weekend. Here is a great recipe for pastry:

http://www.mennonitegirlscancook.ca/2008/10/gluten-free-pastry.html

I change it to full lard (can't have dairy) and used more tapioca in place of corn starch and more rice flour in place of potato starch. My MIL makes it as is and really likes it. Sorry I have no say for original recipe because I have to improvise but still love it.

I improvise another recipe (Company's Coming Almond Torte) to this :

1/2 cup butter (I use coconut oil but give butter to those not bothered by dairy)

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup ground almonds

3 egg yolks

2 tsp vanilla

Mix all these and fold in

3 egg whites

I will lay out fruit (canned peaches usually) on the bottom of a parchment lined 8x8 pan and pour batter on top. Bake at 350 for 35 min or so. Top with whipped cream. I use this one a lot. It is kind of like a sponge, I think.

Ground pumpkin seeds also make a really good "flour".

Yum! Thanks for all these recipes. I have made meringue but not meringue nests.

Cookie8, thanks for the pumpkin pie recipe. If sounds awesome!

Plllog, thanks for sharing the link to the PB cookies. I definitely will make those soon!

Party Music-- I would definitely buy the orange. The zest is what makes the difference. The flavor is perfect!

Oly- That cake sounds good too. It's pricey with all that almond flour, but what the heck!

Socalgal-- which flour do you use? Cup4cup or???

Compumom - have you made those with lemon before? Oranges are also off limits:(.

Yes, I started making that cake before almonds became so scarce in the CA drought and the price rose so high. It's a treat, for sure, but serves many because you don't need much of it for a serving.