Tapioca Flour

Studded with chocolate and with a crisp yet yielding texture, these gluten-free chocolate chip cookies could compete with any classic version.

Use this simple mix of brown-rice flour, tapioca flour, and potato starch as a 1:1 substitute in all your gluten-free baked goods.

On the outside, this cake looks like any other Bundt cake, but inside, it has a vibrant shade of green and a beautiful honeycomb pattern.

This rose-scented kuih lapis is popular in the Malay community, served either as an evening snack or for breakfast and making an appearance at special events.

These ring-shaped mochi doughnuts use mochiko and tapioca flours to get a little extra chew and bounce.

This vegan pecan pie is flavored with coconut oil, maple syrup, and almond milk, while tapioca flour takes on the role of thickener, replacing eggs.

Millet flour and rice flour are bolstered by tapioca starch, cornstarch, potato starch, and guar gum in this gluten-free all-purpose flour substitute.

We’ve found that the best gluten-free recipes rely on a custom blend of flours and starches. To make your own sorghum flour, blitz whole sorghum to a powder with a Vitamix blender or a NutriBullet.

This gluten-free crust is inspired by the very popular gluten-free cakes we've baked at CakeLove for years. Here, I've added freshly ground golden flaxseeds, which add a wonderful, nutty aroma and taste to the dough. The rice flour lends sweetness, and millet is a good substitute for the starch component in flour, but it doesn't do much in the way of binding. That task is left to the tapioca and egg white, which help hold the dough together as you roll it out.

Editor's note: Use this gluten-free flour mixture to make Jeanne Sauvages' Spritz Cookies or Sufganiyot (Jelly Doughnuts).

These crisp yet chewy cheese puffs are traditional staples in Brazil. Epicurious member InewportTX, from Pflugerville, Texas, recommends cooking the balls in mini-muffincups, as the dough will be fairly runny. Find tapioca flour (also known as manioc starch and tapioca starch) at specialty markets like Whole Foods.

In this classic cold sweet soup, maroon adzuki beans and chewy clear tapioca noodles, jokingly called worms in Vietnamese because they are slippery and sticky, swim in rich coconut milk. I usually prepare all the ingredients in advance and then bring everything together at the last minute. The beans and coconut milk base may be prepared a few days ahead and refrigerated until serving time, and the sugar syrup keeps in a jar in the refrigerator indefinitely. The noodles, however, are best if readied only a few hours ahead. Adzuki beans are sold at Asian markets and health-food stores. Once you have made this version, you may substitute other beans, such as black beans, hulled mung beans, or black-eyed peas. You may also blend the beans for a mixture of colors and flavors.

These nearly translucent, soft steamed rice crepes are served plain with slices of gio lua (sausage), or they are filled and shaped into small rolls, as they are here. Finished with cilantro, shallots, thit rouc bông (cotton pork), and a little sauce, these rolls were one of my father’s favorite foods to prepare for our family when I was growing up. In Vietnam, making bánh cuon was usually left to professional cooks who had mastered the technique of steaming a thin rice batter on fabric stretched over a pot of boiling water. In the 1970s, Vietnamese expatriates devised an easier method of making the crepes in a nonstick skillet. For the batter, they blended cake flour (very fine, soft Thai rice flour was not readily available then) with tapioca starch and cornstarch. While that approach works fine, I prefer to use Thai rice flour in place of the cake flour because it yields a more delicate result that is closer to the original version. The tapioca starch and cornstarch help the batter set up nicely and contribute to achieving the tender yet chewy texture of the traditional crepes.

Versatile rice sheets are an integral part of many Asian cuisines; they can be cut into fresh noodles, dried into rice papers or crackers, and used as delicate wrappers for filled treats. Called ho fun in Cantonese, the sheets are nothing but big noodles made from silky batters of mostly rice and water. Many Asian cooks purchase opaque rice sheets, but for the purposes of dumpling making, it is best to prepare them yourself, as this guarantees freshness and a terrific toothsome texture. You need just a few for an abundance of tasty shrimp- or beef-filled rolls like the ones found at dim sum parlors. The sheets can be cooked and filled hours in advance of serving. A quick steaming is all they need right before serving. I have tried soaking and grinding raw rice for this batter but have never been as satisfied with the results as when I use rice flour from Thailand. The flour is both consistent and convenient. Look for it at Asian markets in plastic bags, typically with red lettering. Adding cornstarch and tapioca starch to the batter contributes to the sheets’ resilience and slight translucence. When starting out, make a double batch of batter so you can get plenty of practice.

It is easy to overindulge in these chewy-soft dumplings because they slip right down your throat. Just as you are savoring the rich scallion oil, well-seasoned filling, and tangy-sweet-spicy dipping sauce, the dumpling is gone, and you must eat another. The skin of this central Vietnamese specialty is traditionally made of tapioca starch; I add a little wheat starch for firmness, lest the dough become unpleasantly rubbery. Some Viet cooks laboriously wrap each bánh bot loc in a banana leaf and steam them. I don’t have such patience and boil mine for the “naked” (tran) version. When peeling the shrimp, save the shells for a stock to use in the sauce.

This malleable, snowy white dough is the foundation for many Cantonese dim sum favorites, such as Chiu Chow Dumplings (page 137) and Har Gow Shrimp Dumplings (page 135). Wheat starch dough is easy to manipulate; texturally, it is like Play-Doh. In fact, I’ve seen rabbit-shaped dumplings made from this type of dough. You can definitely sculpt it, though I mostly focus on making sure the filling is sealed up well. When cooked, this dough has a translucency that allows the filling colors to be visible in a beautiful, impressionistic way. Wheat starch on its own would make a dough that is too firm, so dim sum cooks commonly add elasticity by way of tapioca starch, though cornstarch and potato starch are options, too. The oil lends suppleness and richness. This dough can be prepared up to 6 hours in advance and kept at room temperature in the plastic bag. When forming wrappers from this dough, do your best to keep the cut dough and formed wrappers covered with plastic wrap to prevent drying. At Chinese markets, look for plastic bags of wheat starch near other starches and flours; Middle Eastern markets sometimes carry it, too. Tapioca starch is reasonably priced at Chinese and Southeast Asian markets but is also available at health food stores, specialty grocers, and some supermarkets.

If you’re as wild about berries as I am, you’ll find that this pie is the height of luxury and one of the season’s greatest treats. It’s a dessert that I make only in the summer, at the moment when berries are abundant and at their peak. When I lived in San Francisco, I’d drive east across the bay to Monterey Market in Berkeley where flats of berries were so plentiful—and so inexpensive—that I found it impossible not to come home with at least a few piled up in my trunk. In addition to turning the berries into jams, compotes, and sorbets, I’d always bake this pie. A total of 6 cups of berries makes up the filling—use whichever types you prefer. Unless you buy berries by the flat, like I did, most berries are sold in half-pint or pint baskets, so expect to have some leftover fruit, which I know you’ll put to good use. I always did.

The hardest recipe for me to develop was a really light yellow cake that was still nutritious, moist, and delicious. Well, here it is, and it’s gluten-free to boot. Without the food coloring, the frosting will be a pale lavender color.

The key to the very best gluten-free baked goods is Authentic Foods superfine brown rice flour; it is the Cadillac, or cashmere, of brown rice flours and is worth its weight in gold. It is not grainy like other rice flours, and bakes the most fantastic cookies, cakes, pie crusts, and so on. If you can’t find it at your local natural foods market or Whole Foods, order it online. Both Ener-G and Bob’s Red Mill brown rice flours will also work in these recipes, but they won’t turn out quite as well. I do not recommend Arrowhead Mills brown rice flour, which I find too gritty. The brands of potato starch and tapioca flour or starch are not important; I find them all interchangeable. (Please see Resources, page 177, for more information.)