Christmas Quiche

What's a vegetarian to do for Christmas dinner when her family is eating ham and turkey? Well, bring something even better. Better and more colorful.

OK, so this quiche probably wouldn't win any awards. I've never made quiche before and although it's not difficult, I wasn't really sure what I was going for. So I blindly groped my way around a recipe that I concocted (inspired by Mollie Katzen and Cook's Illustrated) encrusted in a recipe from Gluten-Free Girl. I got something tasty. Tasty enough to try again... some day. It certainly was pretty, anyway.

CHRISTMAS QUICHE
1 single-crust recipe from Gluten-Free Girl (but replace cinnamon with half as much dry mustard powder)
olive oil
2 cups sliced red onion
4 cloves roasted garlic, mashed
1/2 tsp salt
2 sprigs fresh thume
3 leaves fresh sage
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup thinly sliced green pepper
1/2 cup crumbled goat cheese
2 cups chopped Christmasy-looking red-green chard, separated stems and leaves
3 large eggs
1 cup milk
freshly ground black pepper



1. Heat a medium skillet over medium heat. Add oil and onion, and saute about 4 minutes or until the onions start to sweat.



2. Toss salt, herbs, and mustard into pan with onions. Cover the pan and turn the heat to low. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring every 3 minutes or so. Preheat the oven to 375°F.

3. Place your pie crust on a baking tray or cookie sheet. Uncover pan on stove and add vinegar, bell pepper, and chard stems. Return heat to medium and cool another 4 minutes.

4. Add chard leaves, stir and cook one more minute and remove from heat.

5. Sprinkle goat cheese onto crust. Top with sauteed vegetables.



6. Whisk eggs and milk in a 4-cup liquid measure and season with black pepper. Pour into crust with vegetables and cheese.



7. Bake in lower section of oven for 45-50 minutes, or until custard is set. Cool 10 minutes or to room temperature, slice, and serve!



PROS: colorful, tasty, relatively healthy
CONS: crust underbaked, custard not firm enough

What I would change about this recipe: Definitely prebake the pie shell. It's a thick shell and although it's very tasty, a good 1/6th of an inch was uncooked. Also use whole milk instead of lowfat. It would probably make a difference in how much the custard sets. Add one more egg, perhaps....

Carrot Cake

Every time someone has a birthday, I jump at the chance to bake a cake. I love cake. I love baking cake. I think it's because I love licking the mixing bowl afterward...

...but that's another story. My dad's birthday was yesterday, and I was thrilled at the opportunity to make another cake. I made it gluten-free, just because I felt confident enough with my experience to turn it out well. I secretly bought enough ingredients for two cakes in the instance that the gluten-free version was a flop.

But oh. Oh. This was no flop! Whoever says gluten-free baking is inferior obviously hasn't eaten this.

And again, I must credit Cook's Illustrated for the recipe on which my version is based. I know that when I need to bake something for the first time, I will always check to see if they have a recipe for it first. That way, if my adaptation doesn't turn out... I know that it's my fault and not the base recipe's. Oh, what a blessing America's Test Kitchen is. But I've changed this recipe enough to be considered different from the original. Well, duh.

CARROT CAKE
3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp sorghum flour
3/4 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup potato starch
1/4 cup soy flour
2 tbsp tapioca starch
1 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 lb fresh carrots, peeled
1 cup golden (Sultana) raisins
1 can crushed pineapple, drained very well
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil (I used sunflower)

12 oz neufchatel or cream cheese
8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, slightly softened but still cool
1 tbsp sour cream
3/4 tsp vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar
3/4 cup sliced almonds

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease two 9"x2" round cake pans, and line with parchment paper or waxed paper. Grease the parchment as well.

2. Whisk the dry ingredients - flours, starches, xanthan gum, baking powder and soda, spices, and salt - thoroughly in a medium bowl.



3. Using your food processor, shred the carrots (make sure you shred them, not pulverize them). If you're ambitious and/or don't have a food processor - and I used to do this - you can grate them by hand. If you do this, you can probably do most of the rest of the steps in a mixing bowl rather than a food processor.

4. Add the shredded carrots and raisins to the dry ingredients, and wipe out your food processor. Add sugars and eggs to the food processor, and process with the metal blade until frothy and well-mixed.

5. Keep the processor running, and slowly drizzle the oil through the feed tube. Process until well-emulsified and light in color.

6. Transfer wet ingredients to a large bowl and stir in the crushed (drained) pineapple. Fold in the dry ingredients, along with carrots and raisins, until all flour is mixed in. But don't mix it longer than you have to. You'll kill the leavening.



7. Pour batter into your prepared cake pans and stick on a middle oven rack. Bake for 40 minutes or until cake starts to pull away from edges of pan and an inserted toothpick comes out clean. And it's golden brown. Or poke the top of the cake with your finger. If it springs back, it's done.



8. Cool on wire racks, in the pans, to room temperature before frosting. And let me tell you - you don't want to frost this cake warm. Disaster will ensue.



9. Clean out your food processor. This is a good time to lick the bowl, if you're into that sort of thing. I know I am. But for the sake of whomever's going to be eating your cake, please wash it after you lick it. And then dump in the cream cheese, butter, sour cream, and vanilla. Process until well-mixed. If it starts sticking to the sides, then you know what to do. Get out that rubber spatula.

10. Add powdered sugar and process some more until it's nice and smooth. Scrape it all out, put it in a bowl, and stick it in the fridge to chill for oh, 20 minutes or so.

11. Take your cakes out of their pans when they're cool, and put them on the wire racks directly. Face up, of course. When you're ready to decorate, transfer one cake round to whatever it is you like to decorate on. I used a cardboard round sitting on top of an inverted cake pan - it spins easily, and is slightly elevated.

12. Take your frosting out of the fridge, and if you want to reserve some for piping later (letters, little carrots, whatever), save 2 tbsp to 1/4 cup and set aside. Plop some frosting - 1/2 cup, maybe - on the cake and spread to the edges (a large offset spatula works wonders here). Carefully set the second cake on top, and repeat the process. Use the remaining frosting to frost the sides. Try not to get crumbs in the icing, because that looks kinda tacky.

13. Press handfuls of sliced almonds into the sides - you can tilt the cake for this - until the sides are covered all the way around. Put a few in the center of the cake, on the top. It looks cute. And if you want to pipe decorations, color your reserved frosting however you want (I use natural coloring with annatto for the orange letters). And pipe away. For a makeshift pastry bag, you can use either a plastic bag with the corner cut out, or waxed paper folded in a cone. That's what I did. And sit back and admire your cake. Then eat it. Because, let's face it, carrot cake is awesome.



PROS: moist, perfectly balanced spice, great ratio of cake:frosting, delicious but not too nutritious
CONS: frosting is a little wet, and sweetness of cake is difficult to detect through sweetness of frosting (but trust me. it's minor.)

Maybe I should stop posting all my recipes and just write a durn tootin cookbook. I hear that's what all the cool kids are doing these days...

Thanksgiving Stuffed Squash

Happy holidays, everyone.

And down in history goes my first Thanksgiving: at least, my first Thanksgiving making a significant contribution to the dinner table.

It was my year at my dad's this time. Aside from the small ham for the omnivores, the whole feast was vegetarian... and boy, it was good! At least, I think so. But hey, I'm a big fan of food. Especially when I can eat it.

Gracing our table (besides the ham) was many a good food. The appetizers consisted of cheese, my Grandma's deviled eggs, an olive/pickle/pepper tray, and Barb's stuffed mushrooms and cheese-pecan sandwich bites... I could make a meal of those alone. Easily. And when we sat down, we were greeted by the smells and sights of stuffed acorn squash, potatoes au gratin, harvest shepherd's pie with mashed yams, fresh green salad, and Grandma's legendary cranberry chutney that is, in my opinion, the highlight of every Thanksgiving. For dessert, pumpkin cheesecake and mince pie. Who could want a single thing more?

I debated which dish to blog about - I made the squash, shepherd's pie, and mince pie - and I finally settled on the squash. I'm particularly proud of it because I came up with the recipe. OK, no big deal, but I'm proud anyway. Probably because I was afraid it would taste bad. Or bland. Or just stupid. And it didn't :)

The shepherd's pie was very tasty. I got the recipe from the Whole Foods Cookbook - you can also find the recipe on the Whole Foods website. Instead of ground beef, it gets its protein and texture from crumbled tempeh. I chose "garden vegetable" tempeh instead of plain tempeh because... well, it can't hurt. It's a vegetable dish. This was my first experience with tempeh (at least, that I can remember) and wow. I found a new tofu substitute. I'm impressed! And it's gluten-free, to boot. Instead of mashed potatoes on top, this dish has these delicious orange yams and sliced almonds... oh boy. It tasted like yumm. The yams were seasoned by a mixture of butter, orange juice and zest, and brown rice syrup simmered into a viscous liquid. It gave it character. It tasted like Thanksgiving.

And mince pie? The recipe is from my book Baking Illustrated by the editors of Cook's Illustrated magazine. The first mincemeat mixture I simmered up was scorched black. 6 organic apples, 2 cups of apple cider, a stick of organic butter, a cup each of organic raisins and currants, an organic lemon and organic orange, a selection of organic spices and some amount I don't remember of organic dark brown sugar - all ruined. *facepalm*

But it was OK - mum came to the rescue, new ingredients were bought, apples were re-peeled and diced, and mincemeat was back on the stove in no time. This time, I stood there for three hours, stirring it every five minutes. As a result, the mincemeat was a little... well, resembling of apple butter, but it sure tasted good. And it wasn't scorched. Stick it in a gluten-free crust with a lattice top (don't even go there... no easy task, that), and voila. Easy as pie.

From this experience, I learned (as I have learned in the past) that the settings on an electric stove are not the same as those on a gas stove, and Cook's Illustrated writes for a gas stove. But I have electric. *sigh* Such is the life of a over-ambitious hungry person.

And my squash - oh, how proud I am. I wanted a gluten-free stuffing, so I thought hey! Rice. Wild rice is native to the states... perfect. And what goes with rice?

Beans!

Which brought me to this "Three Sisters" idea I keep running across that combines beans, squash, and corn. And I seized ahold of that like a jack russell terrier sizes a rope toy with a labrador at the other end, and hell if I was gonna let go...

Ahem.

To make a long story short, I chose Anasazi beans because of their relative close proximity to the Great Lakes area (home of wild rice) - within trading distance, anyway. And acorn squash, because it's so darn cute and easy to stuff. Sage to season, because it grows wild here in the US. And frozen corn, because... well, fresh isn't in season anymore, and canned has added salt. Ha.

ACORN SQUASH WITH WILD RICE STUFFING
1/2 cup dry Anasazi beans, picked over
1 tsp salt
2 cups vegetable broth
1 cup wild rice
4 medium acorn squash
2 tbsp butter, softened
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup frozen (or fresh) corn kernels, thawed
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp finely minced fresh sage leaves
6 cloves (or one medium head) roasted garlic, mashed
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
2 tsp dry yellow mustard powder
2 tsp salt

1. To soak the beans, add beans to a heavy pot and cover with water by two inches. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Boil five minutes and remove from heat. Cover and let stand for one hour.



2. Drain the soaking liquid from the beans. Cover again with water by two inches. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low. Cover, with lid slightly ajar, and simmer gently for 35-40 minutes. When you can squish a bean with your fingers, add salt and continue to simmer until desired tenderness (about 10 minutes more). Remove from heat, drain, and smell them. Kinda smokey... kinda salty... kinda like bacon. Except better, because nobody had to die. And beanier.

3. Bring vegetable stock to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add rice. Return to a boil and turn heat down to low. Cover and simmer 40-45 minutes, or until rice is fully cooked (it may pop a little, but it should be a little toothsome and nutty still). Transfer to a separate bowl and fluff with a fork. Reserve.

4. Preheat oven to 400°F. Cut each acorn squash in half, from the stem down. Remove seeds and discard (or reserve to toast later, if you want). Prick cavities with a fork, and rub each cut side with butter to coat.

5. Place squash halves cut-side up in a large baking dish with 1 inch water. Roast for about 35 minutes, or until just fork-tender.

6. Remove squash from oven and rest until cool enough to handle.



7. Sauté onions in butter over medium heat 2-3 minutes. Add corn, drained beans, and sage, cooking an additional minute or two. Remove from heat.



8. Scoop flesh from the squash halves, leaving a 1/2-inch shell. Mix flesh with roasted garlic and season with salt and pepper. Gently fold into rice, bean, and corn mixture, carefully not smashing the beans.

9. Rub mustard powder and remaining salt into squash shells. Stuff with stuffing and return to oven in the same baking dish. Bake an additional 25 minutes or until squash is tender and stuffing is heated through.



PROS: very Thanksgivingy, hearty yet vegetarian, nutritious and delicious
CONS: could use some tweaking as far as ratios go, and cooking times, but I lurrved it anyway

So there we have it.

Holiday Cut-Out Cookies

Just getting caught up here... I've made so much stuff and hardly had time to post. Seems a little bit ironic.

Anyway, these cookies turned out pretty well, given my previous experiences with gluten-free cookies. I used a recipe, too, from Land O'Lakes. But I made a few changes. Since I don't pre-mix a gluten-free flour blend, I just use specific amounts of each kind of flour.

These are cookies you should probably eat within a few days, because they will dry out quickly after that and are prone to crumbling into little pieces... but hey. They're delicious. If you like soft, sweet, frosted cut-out cookies, that is... and I know I do.

HOLIDAY CUT-OUT COOKIES
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups white rice flour
1/2 cup potato starch
1/4 cup tapioca starch
3/4 tsp xanthan gum
1/4 tsp salt

1. Combine flours, xanthan gum, and salt in a medium bowl or on a piece of waxed paper and set aside.

2. Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl at medium speed, scraping often (I ran out of butter so I used half butter, half non-hydrogenated shortening) until light and fluffy and beautiful. Add egg yolks and vanilla, and continue beating until well-mixed, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.

3. Reduce speed to low and add flour mix, beating until incorporated. Divide dough in half, flatten into 4-inch disks, wrap and refrigerate 1 hour.

4. Preheat oven to 350°F. Generously rice-flour a work surface (if you don't have enough, the cookies will stick). Roll out one disk of dough to 1/4-inch thickness.



Using 2 1/2-inch cookie cutters of your choice, cut out pieces of dough and transfer them to an ungreased cookie sheet (add sprinkles now if you want). Place them at least 1 inch apart. This is where I goofed, and the cookies I put too close together started kissing in the oven. Sigh.



5. Bake 8-12 minutes or until edges are lightly browned (this took me 16-17 minutes in an accurate oven). Let rest 2 minutes on cookie sheets, then transfer with a metal spatula onto cooling racks. Cool completely before frosting.

6. I'd tell you what the frosting is made of... but I didn't write it down. Heavy cream, shortening, and powdered sugar... for the pumpkins I added some pumpkin puree, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves, and for the chocolate I added melted bittersweet chocolate... But the ratios? Heck if I know. Anyway, pick a nice frosting recipe that you like (butter really is better for this, but I ran out). Frost those cookies. Decorate away. Buy one of those tubs of frosting if you really want to sacrifice all your hard work only to use canned frosting. They're your cookies... No pressure :)





PROS: so soft... and they actually hold their shape in the oven! As long as they're rolled thin enough, anyway. GREAT with frosting. If you hand them out, you'll have no trouble finishing off a batch in a couple of days.
CONS: A bit crumbly... and difficult to brown. The shape kinda gets a little muddled, but you can still tell what it is, especially if you use something like a pumpkin or a Christmas tree. Not so good for little details, though.

I made pumpkins (with pumpkin frosting), ghosts (with vanilla frosting), bats, and cats (with chocolate frosting). Sense a theme here? :)

I'll probably make a few changes next time. Like use Cook's Illustrated's "reverse creaming" method they recommend for holiday cut-out cookies. Definitely use all butter instead of half-shortening. Use a real recipe for frosting... like the vanilla and chocolate buttercream recipes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. Put them further apart on the baking sheet.

I'm so silly...

Apple Pie

Wow, was this a hit. Deeeelicious. :D Not really my recipes, though... I used the Cook's Illustrated recipe for the filling (making one slight modification for gluten-freedom), and scaled up (and slightly modified) a recipe from Gluten-Free Girl for the crust. It turned out well. Really well. Aromatic and appley, and the crust resembled a wheat crust in all ways. YAY!

APPLE PIE
For the crust (mostly courtesy of Gluten-Free Girl):
1 cup plus 2 tbsp white rice flour
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp potato starch
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/4 cup sweet rice flour
3 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
8 tbsp butter, chilled
4 tbsp non-hydrogenated shortening, chilled
1 large egg
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 - 1/3 cup ice water (or enough to make the dough just stick together)

For the pie filling (mostly courtesy Cook's Illustrated):
1 1/2 lb Granny Smith apples (about 3)
2 lbs ripe McIntosh apples (about 4)
1 tbsp juice and 1 tsp zest from 1 lemon
3/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp sweet rice flour
1/4 tsp freshly grated (or ground) nutmeg
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg white, lightly beaten
1 tbsp sugar

Crust:
1. In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, sugar, salt, and cinnamon. Cut butter and shortening into dry ingredients using a fork, pastry cutter, or food processor. Crumble together until butter is the size of large peas (or lima beans, even).

2. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. Add egg and vinegar, and incorporate gently. If using a fork, stir from the center outward.

3. Slowly add ice water, 2 tbsp at a time, into the crust mixture, stirring or processing until it begins to stick together. As soon as it forms a cohesive dough, stop adding water.

4. Divide the dough in two. Compress each into 4-inch disks and refrigerate in parchment paper overnight.

Pie Filling:
1. Take one half of your dough out of the fridge and set on the counter. Let it rest for twenty minutes while you prepare the pie. Place a rimmed baking sheet on the bottom rack in your oven, and preheat it to 500°F.

2. Peel and core your apples. Quarter them and cut each quarter into 1/4-inch slices (if they are too thick or thin, they will cook unevenly). Toss apples in a large bowl with the lemon juice and zest. If you have a microplane grater, use it. It makes zest like magic.

3. Take your second disk of dough out to rest for 20 minutes. Roll out your first disk to a 12-inch circle between two sheets of parchment. You may have to keep flipping it over, because the bottom side tends to get a little wrinkled. Carefully peel off the top layer (make sure there are no wrinkles, as this will make it difficult to get off cleanly). Center an upside-down 9" glass pie plate over the dough, and quickly invert. Use the parchment to help you press the dough into the corner of the pan, and peel off the parchment. Do any quick patchwork you need to before moving on.



4. In a medium bowl, combine sugar, flour, spices, and salt. Toss with the apples. Dump it all (including the juices) into the pie pan - don't be alarmed, it will make a HUGE heap - and arrange so that the pile is as compact and rounded as possible.

5. Roll out the second piece of dough to a 12-inch circle between parchment - same as before. Peel off the top and ever so carefully invert it on the giant mound of apples. Tuck the overhang from the top dough underneath the overhang from the bottom dough so that it sticks out a bit from the rim, and flute the edges however you like. If you don't know how, then google it. Not too hard!

6. Cut 4 slits in the top of the pie - if the dough is super soft, freeze it for a few minutes (no longer than 10, though, or the glass plate may break when it enters the oven). Brush the beaten egg white all over the top crust and sprinkle with sugar.

7. Place the pie on the baking sheet in the oven. Lower the temperature to 425°F and bake for 25 minutes (or until the crust is a nice golden color. Rotate it 180°, turn the temperature down once more to 375°F, and continue baking for another 30-35 minutes. The juices should be really bubbly and the crust a deep golden brown. Put pie on a cooling rack and cool to room temperature. If you CAN'T WAIT, just eat a piece. But it will be hot and it will fall apart. But sometimes that's not so bad.





PROS: Very fragrant, sweet and tart and spiced at the same time. The texture is wonderful - the Macs fall apart when they cook, and the Grannies stay al dente - the perfect combination. Go CI! It tastes of autumn and good times. Crust bakes up just like a standard wheat crust.
CONS: Crust is difficult to handle when rolling and transferring. Not *quite* as flaky as some (though nobody will complain), but with some tweaking I'm sure it could be.

Banana Bread

I never expected this to be successful. After my cookie experiences, I was on the verge of being convinced that baking without gluten would never yield a product as tasty as one with. Boy, did this prove me wrong! I love banana bread. You should too.

So I did some research on different flours - Gluten Free, Not Gluten-Freaky has a great rundown of different flour properties and ratios and things. Very helpful. So I just fiddled with my normal banana bread recipe - one used by Cook's Illustrated - and voila! Tender, moist, melt-in-your-mouth (which, OK, is weird for something that doesn't typically melt at all) banana bread. Here goes...

(don't be weirded out by the lengthy ingredient list... you could probably use just butter and the traditional 3-flour blend instead of 5)

BANANA BREAD
1 1/4 cups walnuts, chopped
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup soy flour
1/2 cup potato starch
1/4 cup sorghum flour
1/4 cup tapioca starch
1 tsp xanthan gum
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 large extra-ripe, spotty bananas, mashed well
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/4 cup shortening, melted and cooled
1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350. Liberally grease and flour (with rice flour) the inside of a 9"x5" loaf pan (or similar - it's actually pretty flexible). Cover the bottom with parchment paper.

2. Toast the walnuts on a baking sheet in the oven for 5-10 minutes or until you start to smell them. They should smell good. Not burnt.

3. Whisk together the rice flour through salt in a large bowl, then add walnuts and mix to evenly distribute.

4. Mix together the bananas through vanilla in another bowl, stirring with a wooden spoon. This is fun. Oh, trust me. And it works way better when all your ingredients are at room temperature, so there is nothing to clump the butter and shortening. Because you don't want little pieces of butter and shortening wandering around, do you?



5. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and fold together to incorporate. It should look a little chunky. This is normal. This is good.



6. Transfer batter ASAP to your loaf pan. Stick it on the lower-middle shelf in the oven and bake for 55 minutes - or when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean - and it looks ready.



7. Remove bread from the oven and let cool in the pan for 5 minutes before transferring it to a cooling rack. Serve whenever you want to eat it - it is divine when warm and a wonderful breakfast. I didn't try toasting it, but I'm sure it would be great. And oh yeah. It's great with honey.



PROS: melt-in-your-mouth, soft, banana-y, sweet but in a good way
CONS: are you kidding me? There's nothing wrong with it...

So there you go. I've only made it once, so I'm sure some improvements/simplifications can be made to the recipe, so feel free to try it out with your own variations... no recipe is final, you know?

Learning Experience #2: Snickerdoodles

Apparently gluten-free cookies are no easy accomplishment. Not for me, anyway.

OK, so they turned out a little better than the last ones. Definitely tastier. But woah. Flat much? Very breakable, hardly workable dough, and they just plain look sad. But they are killer on ice cream...

I'm still wondering how I managed to fit them in the cookie jar.

Because when I tried to take them out, the cookies were about an inch wider than the opening. Creepy.

Let's get down to business, though, shall we? How exactly did I concoct such a... concoction?

Well, I wish I could tell you - but I wrote over my test recipe (darn) with a second version that I have yet to try. Instead, I'll walk you through the basic procedure.

You start by creaming your fat and sugar together. It should look beautiful and white and fluffy (full of air, you know). Add your wet ingredients like eggs and vanilla and such, beat it, and add your flours and chemical leavening and salt and stuff.

So it should be all stiff and cookie-doughish, right? But it wasn't. It was sticky and soft, like butter that's been out of the refrigerator way too long.

So I froze it for like, 10 minutes. I took it out and rolled it into little balls, tossed them in sugar-spice mixture that I'd made earlier, and set them on parchment paper on my cookie sheet. About 2 inches apart. Should be pleeennnty of space. This, my friends, is where everything goes wrong, so wrong.

Suffice to say that 2 inches was not enough room. These guys like to really expand. And by expand, I mean out. Not up. What I got ended up looking like crispy cyclooctane rings all strung together with their little shared carbons and their lack of personal space.

One thing I can say is that they look a lot better on screen than in person. Not that I didn't see them fit to eat, obviously. They're long since digested, actually...

For the record, I make pretty delicious "normal" snickerdoodles. I'm not just doodle-deficient or anything. But there's more to wheatlessness than meets the eye. I obviously haven't conquered the gluten-free cookie yet. But I will.

You just wait.

Buckwheat and Corn Pancakes

This was a fun one.

I haven't experimented much (read: at all) with buckwheat before, but it's right up my alley. And yes, buckwheat is gluten-free - it's not wheat at all. It's not even a grass. It's a knotweed with wickedly awesome seeds.

It tastes very earthy, mild yet powerful. The pancakes were dense and filling, but not uncomfortably so. Just buckwheaty and beautiful.

I think next time I'd like to add more corn, though - the flavors really go well together, and with the ratios I tried, the buckwheat flavor all but ate up the corn flavor. I might also add more leavening (baking soda, maybe, with buttermilk instead of milk) to see if it helps the pancakes rise at all.

BUCKWHEAT AND CORN PANCAKES
3/4 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup corn flour
2 tbsp cornmeal
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup milk
1 large egg
1 tbsp vegetable oil or melted butter
2 tbsp honey (molasses is good too; just not blackstrap)
1 cup mixed fresh sweet corn and blueberries (or whatever you wanna stick in there)
butter for the pan
topping of your choice!

1. Combine the dry ingredients in a medium-large mixing bowl. Play with the ratios some (of the flours, anyway), if you like. Even a failed pancake is a good pancake (well, in most cases).

2. Warm your ingredients to room temperature. Put the egg in some warm water (not hot - it will cook), sit a measuring glass of milk in some warm water and stir it, whatever. Honey and molasses are hard to mix into cold things.

3. In small bowl (I like to use a 2-cup liquid measure to save dishes), measure out the milk and the egg, and beat until the egg is nicely broken up and no longer globby. Nobody likes a globby egg; you get big white patches in your pancakes that way.

4. Add the oil to the dry mix and whisk together until it looks good and well-coated, then pour the egg-milk in. Drizzle in the honey and whisk the batter until it looks well-incorporated. Don't overmix it though, or the baking powder will be rendered useless.



5. Let the batter rest while you heat up your skillet. I love a heavy cast-iron pan for pancakes - it gives them a nice, brown exterior. Heat to medium heat and drop in a pat of butter and spread it around to coat. It's good and ready when it bubbles and foams right away but doesn't burn and smoke.

6. Ladle, spoon, or pour some amount of batter (whatever looks good to you) on the skillet. Immediately sprinkle a small handful of corn/blueberries over the top. They'll sink right in.



7. When the edges of the pancake are set and the middle has bubbles, flip it. Do the other side until it's done. It's up to you when it's done - it takes about 2 minutes, depending on the size of your pancakes. I like 'em big.



8. Transfer to a cooling rack or the oven to keep warm, but don't stack them or they'll steam each other. Then they'll be all floppy and moist. Not crispy and wonderful.

9. Serve with butter, maple syrup, or blueberry jam... Yummmmmy!





PROS: homey, hearty, filling, healthy, tasty, great combination
CONS: not very sweet, buckwheat can be is an acquired taste, not enough corn, a little dense


This is based on the recipe from Bob's Red Mill - Down Home Buckwheat Pancakes - with several additions/substitutions. I would make these again. Maybe with some changes, but it's definitely going down in the book.

stuck in the wormhole

I'm still cooking, I swear! But hot dang, I have no spare time to blog. In the coming posts, you can look forward to:

- buckwheat pancakes
- banana bread
- snickerdoodles (another learning experience)
- apple pie
- pumpkin filling cookies
- Araya's Vegetarian Place

Comment if you wanna see any of those more than the others, so I can post that first.

Well, I'm now a month gluten-free, and doing fine. Although, my eczema is still here. In fact, it hasn't changed a bit. *sigh* I'm a little bit addicted to the challenge of a gluten-free existence, though, and feel a heap healthier. Learning to bake again is a ball. I wish I had one of those commercial kitchens with the big mixing equipment and the calibrated oven and huge sinks for washing dishes with one of those sprayer things... and large bags of gluten-free flours and such. And fresh fruit up the yin-yang... Really, though, I'd settle for a nice KitchenAid.

I'm discovering all sorts of cool grains... Quinoa I've got down. Millet I'm currently conquering... next is amaranth.

I'm trying to like millet. But right now, I think it smells like budgies... :-S

Bananas, Almonds, and Hot Fudge

Bananas are fun. You can whirl them in the blender for a smoothie. You can eat them like a monkey. You can chop them for fruit salad. My latest favorite? Fryyyyy them :D

So, OK, fried banana. I thought it would make a good dessert because... you know, bananas are healthy. *grin* Oh, but you know what would be good with it? Hot fudge. Oooh! And toasted almonds! Man, I was so excited when I thought of all this and realized the ingredients were on hand. Stoked. So I got everything together, Robert fried up the bananas (he being the master of anything that's heated in a pan with fat), and put them all together. It needed a mint leaf. Which we didn't have.

So I used a basil leaf. Shh, don't tell anyone. Basil actually tastes good with chocolate... *shifty eyes*

BANANAS, ALMONDS, AND HOT FUDGE
1-2 tbsp butter
2 large bananas, ripe but not TOO ripe, peeled
4oz dark chocolate
3 tbsp milk or cream (we used lowfat lactose-free, since that's what was on hand)
2 tbsp butter
2-3 tbsp sugar
pinch salt
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup sliced almonds, toasted
mint sprig(s) for garnish



1. Heat butter in a 10" skillet over medium-low heat. Slice bananas in half lengthwise.

2. When butter begins to foam, add bananas to pan, cut side down.

3. Meanwhile, place chocolate, milk, butter, sugar, and salt in a glass bowl or top half of a double boiler. Place over a pan containing about an inch of gently simmering water.

4. When bananas are lightly golden brown on one side, gently (and quickly) flip them over to brown the second side.



5. Stir chocolate with a spatula until it melts and mixture looks homogenous. Dip your finger in it and taste it. Add whatever you think you need (sugar, milk, butter). Repeat once with all 9 other digits. Add vanilla at the very end and stir to incorporate, then take off the heat.



6. Remove banana halves from pan when browned to your liking and put on a serving plate. Drizzle some fudge sauce over the top, sprinkle on your toasted almonds, drizzle some more fudge sauce over them, and garnish with mint. Oh, boy.





PROS: Hard to go wrong with this one, unless you over-toast your almonds or something... versatile, you can make your chocolate how you like it, and put as much or as little on as possible. Bananas are healthy!
CONS: uh... not good if you don't like chocolate. Or bananas. Or nuts.