Gluten-free Desserts with Pecan Flour

[Patrick A.]

Recently, I have been working on a project for a student group. They are trying to come up with recipes for desserts with pecan flour and pecan oil that are gluten free. We worked with a couple of recipes, but they turn out wasn't great. Most of them turned out very gummy. We added rice flour and xantham gum to help stablize the products.

Does anyone have any ideas?

The products have to be fairly stable, because they will be taking the pre-made products to Germany.

[dystopiandreamgirl]

a very delicious dacquoise can be made with ground pecans - (not sure if pecan "flour" would be too fine or not)

add a little espresso powder and cinnamon, fill with coffee buttercream and cover with ganache.

or vice versa.

[Wholemeal Crank]

Pecans go rancid so quickly I have a hard time imagining something made with pecan oil lasting well--could rancidity be part of the problem, or is this a defatted flour?

[Patrick A.]

It is defatted pecan flour

[Mjx]

Does it have to be a baked item? If not, I'd suggest something along the lines of penuche, which I remember making with finely ground nuts as kid. Even if the flour is very fine, I think it would work nicely with the consistency. I'm wondering if it would be possible to swap in some of the pecan oil for the butter (since it's melted, in the recipe), too. Or, perhaps some form of divinity?

[Mel Z]

Along the same lines, I was thinking macarons--does anyone know if pecan flour is a suitable sub for almond flour? And I'm sure you could make a delicious filling using pecan oil...though unfilled cookies are much more portable.

[RWood]

Along the same lines, I was thinking macarons--does anyone know if pecan flour is a suitable sub for almond flour? And I'm sure you could make a delicious filling using pecan oil...though unfilled cookies are much more portable.

Pecan flour will work for macarons. Sub half of the almond flour for the pecan. I haven't tried it with only pecan flour, but pistachio and peanut flours have worked without the almond. It might work on it's own, I was going to try it at some point.

[natasha1270]

Is pecan flour anyway similar to chestnut flour? There are quite a few recipes out there you could try to sub with the pecan flour. Or perhaps something like a flourless chocolate cake which might be nice with pecan added?

[jaynesb]

Two years ago, there was a recipe in the New York Times for a Chocolate Pecan cake. I've made it a few times and it is like a torte and very easy and I liked it very much. Doesn't even require separating or beating egg whites.

I don't know how similar the pecan flour is to what you would get by grinding the pecans. The flour you've got is probably finer but you could try it (figure out how much a cup of pecans weighs and start with that..)

Nana Jose's Chocolate Pecan Cake

There's a really amazing cookie called Chocolate Sparkle Cookie (Thomas Haas?) There is at least one discussion here on eGullet of it. It calls for ground almonds to make an almost truffle-like cookie. You could see how well that works with pecans.

There are a lot of Passover recipes based on ground nuts that might also work for you.

Jayne

[CanadianBakin']

Just a quick note to add that macarons are not very sturdy. The delicate shells crush very easily so I don't know that they'd travel very well unless very carefully packed.