Sugar-Free Peppermint Tea from Scratch

Fresh Picked Mint (plant)

Refreshing Homemade Fresh Mint Tea Recipe, No Sugar

Fresh mint sprigs are the key to brewing your own homemade fresh mint tea from scratch. I just picked a handful of tea-mint (shown in picture above) from our yard to make yet another batch of a favorite summer cool-down drink. The temperature has been approaching 90-degrees here the past few days, and I can go through about a gallon of iced mint tea every 2 or 3 days.

After picking the mint, fill a 5 or 6-quart pot with roughly a gallon of water. I first rinse off the mint leaves and sprigs a bit (lately, a requirement since there is so much tree-pollen on everything outside), and then toss them into the pot (the whole sprigs — I don't waste time plucking leaves from the plant sprigs).

I then bring the water and mint to a boil, and allow the mint to remain at a light boil for about 5 minutes, stirring the mint leaves every so often. I do this to release the mint flavor, but also to kill any tiny little bugs or microbes that may be left on the mint after I've rinsed it. Next, I turn off the heat, and allow the mint to steep another 10 minutes. After that, I then remove the sprigs from the water using a strainer-spoon and discard them (this is also why I leave the sprigs intact — removing them from the water is so easy compared to removing a whole bunch of individual leaves).

Xylitol : A sugar-free gluten-free sweetener

While it is still warm, the tea can be sweetened. I have lately been experimenting with sugar-free recipes (in addition to gluten-free recipes), and purchased some Xylitol (bag of it shown below). Xylitol is a sweetener used in things like Trident gum.



The Xylitol is gluten-free (of course, or I wouldn't use it), and the Xylitol dissolves readily in liquids just like sugar. I find it tastes quite similar to sugar also. And, it's always nice to know that when I am drinking so much of this sweetened mint tea, that I am not subject to tooth-decay: in fact, Xylitol has been shown to be a proven cavity fighter! If that wasn't good enough, it has zero net carbs, and is safe for use by diabetics and hypoglycemics (it has a Glycemic Index of only 7 - which is super low).  In a way, you can consider it an alternative to things like Splenda or perhaps even Stevia.

Finally, after my tea is sweetened to my liking, I simply let it cool down to close to room temperature and then funnel it into a gallon water-jug and refrigerate for future use.

I still have not baked any gluten-free desserts with the Xylitol, but I hope to soon. Xylitol can't be used to replace sugar in baked goods that rise using yeast (since, it will not "feed" the yeast properly), and it doesn't crystallize the same as sugar when heated, so you can't make hard candy from it. But, I think it has potential for other desserts where I can substitute part of the sugar. According to the label on the bag, it is recommended that you ramp up your Xylitol consumption gradually over a few weeks for proper (intestinal) tolerance adjustment. And, you can not feed it to your pets, since it can be toxic to them (note: this includes chewing gum sweetened with Xylitol — don't give it to your dog!)

If you have any interest in xylitol, I found mine xylitol online here: World Health Depot (just search for Xylitol, and you'll get a list of items including the granules I pictured above). I get Spry brand chewing gum from this same place (it's Xylitol sweetened too).

So, there you have it. Sugar-free, dairy-free, and gluten-free peppermint tea just in time for summer!
Enjoy.

Continue to read this Gluten-Free Blog for all sorts of gluten-free recipes, product-reviews, and related information. In addition, visit my Gluten-Free Recipes Site where many of the recipes I have featured on this blog are available.

Glutenfree English Muffins Review

Foods by George: gluten-free English muffin, toasted

Gluten-Free English Muffins from Foods by George Product Review

Above is a picture of one of my favorite recent gluten-free food discoveries: Gluten-Free English Muffins from Foods by George. What you see here is one-half of a glutenfree muffin (in the foreground) that I sliced and toasted. And, with luck, the picture is detailed enough to give you a pretty good idea what the interior texture of the toasted English Muffin is like. Quite simply, it's wonderful!

Had I not been gluten-free, and had someone give me one of these muffins for breakfast, I am rather sure I would have still found it to be a nice morning treat. Although the picture shows a plain muffin, I later created a breakfast featuring one of these gluten-free English Muffins with Eggs and a bit of cheese (I'm sure a few of you are familiar with a McDonald's restaurant creation that is quite similar). The results were excellent and delicious, regardless of which way I served the muffin.

Toasted (as shown), the muffins get a nice crispy, crunchy surface as you'd expect, while maintaining a softer spongy/resilient inside region. This makes for a nice balance of texture as I think a good English muffin should have. And, the taste is quite mild and is easily complemented by your choice of butter, eggs, jam, or whatever else you love to eat on your breakfast creations.

I first encountered this product when I met George and his wife at the Long Island, NY Celiac event a month ago, and I was quite pleased to recently find out that both my local corner health-food and gluten-free foods provider (a mere mile up the road from me) carries these gluten-free English Muffins, as does Whole Foods and a couple other nearby stores. I have now added these to my regular-items list, and make sure I keep a bag in the freezer.

There are four of these (quite thick) gluten-free breakfast treats per bag, and even once sliced horizontally in half, they will almost certainly require one of those wider large-mouth (or bagel type) toasters. I suppose you could also brown them in a pan or in the oven if you didn't have the wide-capacity toaster.

These muffins are also dairy-free if that is of interest to you as well.

The Product Review Verdict

I definitely give these gluten-free English Muffins an unconditional "thumbs up" rating, and am glad I found them. After years of living gluten-free, it's always nice to encounter yet another wonderful product to have available for regular consumption. Tomorrow I'll be trying one of these muffins with some Black Raspberry Jam - I'm already looking forward to it!

Continue to read this Gluten-Free Blog for all sorts of gluten-free recipes, product-reviews, and related information. In addition, visit my Gluten-Free Recipes Site where many of the recipes I have featured on this blog are available.

Buckwheat in Gluten-Free Recipes

I received an Email from someone interested in my Gluten-Free Desserts book yesterday that asked specifically about whether I used oats and/or buckwheat in any of the recipes. Although I responded to this inquiry directly, I thought this would be a good time to make sure I made such information available directly to anyone else that had the same question.

Oats
We avoided Oats completely in our Gluten-Free Gourmet Desserts recipe book due to the controversy over them. So, there are no recipes with Oats in them. Certainly, if you can tolerate (certified) gluten-free oats, there is no reason why you could not use such oat-flour in some recipes.

Buckwheat
As for buckwheat, very few recipes use it, because many people are rather scared by just the name "buckWHEAT" if you know what I mean. Pure buckwheat is gluten-free, and you can find it from a few sources that certify it as such. We only used it in a few recipes, where the flavor was a nice complement to the recipe.

If a particular Celiac sufferer was allergic to certified gluten-free buckwheat or otherwise intolerant to it, I would probably recommend using Sorghum flour instead if I was to still want to make the few recipes that used buckwheat by performing a direct-substitution; or if you could tolerate Teff, perhaps use just a bit of Teff with mostly Sorghum to still get a bit of the "grain" flavor that buckwheat would have otherwise added. Certainly buckwheat flour is not contributing any "binding power", since it does not contain gluten -- just like other GF flours like Sorghum.

Recipes that Use Buckwheat
There are only a handful or recipes in our book that use buckwheat, and where it is used, it is not a primary flour and should be quite simple to substitute out if you so desire. Here is a list of the only dessert recipes with Buckwheat in the ingredients list:

• Buckwheat Chocolate Torte (the book's cover-image recipe actually)
• Peanut Butter Cookies
• Almond-Snowball Cookies (i.e., Russian Tea-Cakes)
  
• 2 Biscotti Recipes (easy substitution to remove this minor ingredient)
  
• Ginger Bread
• The crust for the Rhubarb pie
  

Conclusion
I hope that this clarifies our use of Buckwheat in any recipes, the lack of oats in our recipes, and how simple it should be to perform a substitution if required. Our objective with the book has been to deliver wonderful gluten-free recipes for high-quality desserts, and to also include a few recipes that make use of a couple more healthy (not just simple-starch type) gluten-free flours like buckwheat, sorghum, and even a bit of amaranth here and there (also slightly used). And, we guarantee you'll like the results!