No Coconut Oil For Me!

The Best Vegan Gluten Free Brownies

•  ¼ cup almond butter
•  2/3 cup maple syrup 
•  2 Bob's Red Mill Egg Replacer eggs 
•  1 teaspoon vanilla extract
•  1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
•  1/4 teaspoon salt
•  1 cup blanched almond flour
•  1/3 cup arrowroot starch
•  1 teaspoon baking powder
•  1 cup chopped walnuts

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Bake in 8-inch baking dish.
2.  Mix together the almond butter, syrup, egg replacer eggs, and vanilla.
3. In cuisinart, blend the cocoa powder, salt, almond flour, arrowroot, and baking powder. Blend the wet ingredients into the dry until well combined.  Stir in walnuts. Pour into the prepared baking dish and bake for 30 minutes. Let cool completely before cutting. 

Almond Avocado Brownies

These gluten-free, moist brownies are super yummy and totally easy to make!

Ingredients:

3 extremely ripe avocados
2 eggs
1/2 sugar
1/4 cup dark chocolate cocoa
1 tsp. baking power
1/8 tsp. salt
1 1/4 cup almond flour
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 chocolate chips

Directions:

Mash avocados with eggs. Incorporate dry ingredients to mashed avocados and egg mixture, mix well. Stir in pecans and chocolate chips, then pour into an 8X8 greased baking pan.

Bake 350F for 25-30 minutes. Cool and serve.

Another way to use overly ripe avocados.

Kinako Ice Cream and Macarons

I made kinako ice cream and then had to make kinako macarons to accompany the ice cream. Kinako is roasted soy bean flour that is used in Japanese desserts as well as some Korean desserts. I found the recipe from this blog, http://icecreamdaily.blogspot.com/2013/05/day-9-black-sesame-kinako.html. I just substituted the black sesame to kinako.

The macarons were made by following this recipe http://www.chow.com/recipes/28339-french-chocolate-macarons-with-chocolate-ganache. I just substituted the cocoa powder for the kinako. As an ice cream sandwich, this combination is so much better than a ganache for the filling of a macaron- totally delicious!

The Yule Mouse

My Yule Log or Buche de Noel cake had a mouse popping its head out of the log this year all thanks to the creativity of my daughter. I used my favorite gluten-free chocolate sponge cake recipe, http://glutenfreecooking.about.com/od/seasonalandholiday/r/gfbuchedenoel.htm, for the cake. The icing was mascarpone, some powdered sugar, and chocolate.

One trick that I do to prevent cracking in the cake when rolling the cake into the log shape is to roll up the cake while warm in a cloth towel that is covered with a coating of powdered sugar. Let the cake cool before filling, then unroll cooled cake, fill with soften ice cream or favorite filling, and roll up cake. If any cracks do form, they can easily be covered with icing.

Betty Crocker to the Rescue

The Betty Crocker's gluten free cake mixes are so tasty!

This marble cake was made with Betty Crocker's gluten free yellow cake and gluten free chocolate cake mixes. The cake was decorated with chocolate mascarpone icing, English toffee bits, and white truffles.

One would never know that the cake is gluten free.

Apple Pies

...are so yummy!  I have always enjoyed working with a flour dough to make pies crusts for scrumptious pies.  In late summer, my one and only apple tree produces apples that only taste good after the apples have been cooked. Every summer, I use the best of the apples that drop to the ground to make apple pies.

This summer I tried a couple of gluten free dough recipes. This one was my favorite since it was the easiest to work with in forming a pie shell. It's the gluten free Land O'Lakes pie shell recipe. I just double the recipe.

This pie was given the thumbs up by husband and son.

Nectarine Tart

I found this recipe in a non gluten-free cookbook. I just substituted the 1/4 cup flour with my rice flour blend to make it gluten free. I substituted peaches for nectarines in my last cake -still very yummy!

Tart
90 grams butter (3/4 of a stick of butter)
1/2  superfine sugar (or regular sugar)
2 eggs
1 cup almond meal
1/4 flour or gluten free flour blend
1/2 tsp baking powder, but I used 1 tsp with the GF blend.

2-3 nectarines (or peaches or apricots) slice.

Oven 320 degree Fahrenheit 

Mix butter and sugar.
Add eggs and blend well.
Add almond meal, GF flour, and baking powder, and mix well.
Spread into 9x9 pan. Top with fruit slices.

Bake 40 mins. to 1 hour or until tester comes out clean.
Cool in refrigerator for a couple of hours.
Serve with cooled orange syrup.


Orange syrup
1/2 cup orange juice
1/8 cup orange liqueur
1/4 cup superfine sugar

Boil for 15-25 minutes then cool.
Pour just a little bit of the cold syrup over slice of cake.

Yummy Brownies

These are easy to make gluten-free brownies.

Ingredients
 6 tbps. butter
 8 oz. semisweet chocolate
 3/4 cup sugar
 2 large eggs at room temperature
 1 tbps. cocoa powder
 3 tbps. corn starch
 1 cup chopped nuts


Preheat oven 350, grease 8" square pan, bake for ~ 30 minutes.

1. Melt butter and chocolate in microwave.
2. Put chocolate mixture into mixer and add sugar, mix well.
    Add eggs one at a time.
3. Sift together cocoa powder and corn starch, then add to mixture.
    Beat well so that batter is smooth, about 2 minutes.
4. Mix in nuts and then pour into greased pan.

Enjoy!
 

Gluten Free Apple Cake

This cake is yummy and pretty!

I have lots of apples from my apple tree this year. I made two apple pies with some of the apples, and I gave away a couple of bags full of apples. Well, I wanted to make an apple cake this weekend, but I had a difficult time finding a gluten free apple cake recipe from other folks' blogs that looked good enough to try. I tried one cake that had buckwheat and brown rice, but that wasn't very good-nor did it look anything like the posted picture. I then saw this gal's post: http://coryographies.blogspot.com/2012/12/recipe-gluten-free-apple-almond-cake.html. I thought could this be true; it looks too prefect. So, I tried her recipe.

Ingredients:
3 chopped apples (I used 4 apples since my apples were small-medium)
Juice of 1 lemon
300g golden caster sugar
8 eggs
325g ground almonds
sliced almonds for top

Directions:
In a pan, cook apples with lemon juice and a bit of the sugar.  Mash them when they are soft enough, but leave them a bit lumpy for texture.

In another bowl mix the eggs, and then add the ground almonds, rest of the sugar and lemon juice, and the apple mash.

Grease a spring form pan and pour in the mixture, sprinkling the sliced almonds on top.

Bake 350 degree oven for 40-60 minutes or until done. At 30 minutes cover top of cake with foil.

Yes, it looks just like the gal's cake. Yes, the cake is easy to make and delicious! 

The Naked Peach Cheesecake Tart

Every morning for the past couple of weeks, I have been making peach and banana smoothies for breakfast. My peach tree provided me with lots of yummy peaches, but most of the peaches were not fully grown. This was all due to the fact that the weight of the peaches caused one of the main branches to bend low and crack. I had forgotten to prop up a piece of wood to support the branch. So, I had to remove all the peaches from the tree to prevent the branch from further splitting. I had two large buckets full of peaches. Well, I tried a couple of peach tart recipes, and this was my favorite, Peach Amaretto Cheesecake Tart.

The recipe can be found here: http://bakingamoment.com/peach-amaretto-tart/
I removed the peach skin since someone in my family doesn't like eating the skins. The peaches look naked and not as attractive without their skins, but the tart is still very scrumptious. In fact, the tart was so delicious that I made a second one that same day since this one got devoured.

Apricot Tart

Due to the high temperatures last week, the fruit on my apricot tree ripen very quickly. I have given some of the fruit to my one neighbor since she loves apricots.

My fruit bin in the refrigerator holds some of the fruits that I picked so that the squirrels and birds don't get to all of the fruit. I'm leaving the fruit on the top of the tree for the birds to enjoy. One year I canned apricots, but I prefer just storing the fruit cold and then eating the apricots out of the bin or using them in tarts and cakes. I tried this yummy tart recipe the other day:http://simplygluten-free.com/blog/2009/07/gluten-free-apricot-almond-tart.html

It's very easy to make and tasty.

Macarons and the Learning Curve

Yes, as in French Macarons. I made a batch of chocolate and a batch of vanilla, two different recipes. The chocolate recipe turned out to be the best recipe to follow since no liquid food color or liquid vanilla was added.

There is a fine line in folding the meringue into the dry ingredients. If macaronage isn't done correctly the macarons don't have the right consistency. Not enough mixing results in the outer surface not having that smooth even look, which is the result above with my chocolate batch. Over mixing makes the meringue mixture too wet with a baked result of hollowness and cracking. Under baking will cause hollowness too since the inside doesn't get a chance to fully cook. Even though the outside of my vanilla batch is brown, the inside was under cooked and hallow. I macaronage the vanilla batch to what looked like the right texture, but with the liquid vanilla added that made for more moisture in the batter. Lowering the oven temperature and longer baking time most likely was what I should have done with the vanilla batch.

Rapping of the tray on the counter before cooking is a must to dislodge any air bubbles that could rise up to cause cracking of the shell.

I made one more batch of the chocolate since I felt that I had the hang of the macaronage technique. The top has that smoothness and the bottom has the classic feet. Looks good!

Since I'm not a fan of the buttercream bases, I filled all batches with mascarpone that had been mixed with 1/4 cup of powdered sugar and 2 tbls of Hershey's 100% cacao since.

Strawberry Cake

Well this cake flopped! It fell after I took the cake out of the oven. That's when I knew this cake would be super dense, not the fluffy cake seen in the recipe's photo. I followed this recipe:http://glutenfreemommy.com/strawberry-cake/

After reading many of the comments left about the recipe, I noticed that a couple of others had problems of the cake collapsing too. The cake is tasty and worthy of another try to rectify the fiasco. Next time I make this recipe, I will separate the egg whites, whisk egg whites into stiff peaks, and then fold whites into the batter. The recipe calls for baking at 350F for 30-40 minutes, but I plan to bake the cake in a water bath at 300 F oven for 60 minutes. Hopefully that will work!

Maraschino-Marzipan Kisses

These elegant cookies are so easy to make. The recipe is from Blackbird Bakery Gluten-Free cookbook. I was so surprised as to how easily it is to make marzipan from just almond flour, sugar, almond extract, and egg whites.

The centers of these delicious cookies are maraschino cherries.

Strawbery-Almond Cake

I followed this recipe that I found on the internet: http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/food/articles/2008/04/23/strawberry_almond_cake/
 

Well, I almost followed it exactly. I couldn't find the Solo pure almond paste; so, I substituted the pure almond paste for the Solo almond cake and pastry filing. That may have been mistake #1.

I didn't use the Manischewitz potato starch because I couldn't find that either locally. And the potato powder that I purchased from the Asian was granular in texture which might have contributed to mistake #2. Normally that potato powder is very fine.

Mistake #3 was baking the cake too long. The cake was a bit dry and hard at the edges. Next time, I'll cut the baking time down and watch the baking more closely.

The recipe calls for 2 cups of heavy whipping cream and a quart of strawberries. I don't know how many strawberries makes a quart since I didn't purchase a quart of strawberries; I had a larger container. I layered the cake with 2 cups of sliced strawberries. And then smothered the strawberries with the rest of the whipped cream, placed top cake on, and dusted top of cake with powder sugar.

 This is a wee bit too much whipping cream. Where's the cake?

The photo below is of the author's cake, while my cake is the above cake. I did use all of the whipping cream that was called for in the recipe. Looking at the difference in the photos makes me wonder if the author used the total amount of whipping cream that they suggested since their slice looks like less whipping cream.

Lessons to be learned: follow directions...well almost, just minus some cream, omit the grated lemon rind(I didn't like that flavor with the almond), and cut down on the bake time. Will I try this recipe again? You bet! Smother anything with tons of whipping cream and it's delicious enough to eat.

Red Velvet Cake

This is the second time I have made this Red Velvet Cake recipe. It has been a hit both times with everyone, even those that prefer eating gluten and have no issues eating gluten. My father-in-law loves this cake so much that my sister-in-law purchased for me this bottle of Red Velvet after I had made the first cake, just a hint to make another cake.

I followed this recipe: http://recreatinghappiness.blogspot.com/2010/10/red-velvet-cakecupcakes.html. Instead of cupcakes, I made a layer cake. I like to frost my cakes with  8 oz. of mascarpone mixed with a 1/2 cup of powdered sugar. This dense and moist cake is so yummy!

I Liked It!

I would have never thought I had something in common with Elizabeth Hasselbeck, other than being a woman.  I'm not a fan of hers. She's too blonde and conservative for my liking. So, when I came across her cookbook, Deliciously G-Free, at the library, I reminded myself to be impartial and just read the book. Surprisingly, I liked it!  I loved her story about her family, the layout of the book with beautiful photos of yummy looking food, and her suggestions on prepping flour mixes to have readily on hand. It's a simple cookbook, not daunting, for the beginner cook or someone with busy schedule just starting to deal with cooking gluten-free.

Since I had some bananas that were extremely ripe and millet flour on hand, I made the Banana Bread recipe from her book. I liked it! I omitted just one ingredient, the 1/3 cup of water in step three since the batter already seemed very wet and runny.  The brown rice and millet flour blend is a delightful flavor that complements the bananas and walnuts, much better than wheat flour. If you want the recipe, you will just have to borrow the cookbook from the library. Recipe can be found on page 213. Enjoy! Oh, and the blueberry muffins look scrumptious too.

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

That's right, no flour in this recipe. I found numerous recipes like this on the internet. This recipe is so simple to make and tastes so peanut buttery...yummy!

1 cup of creamy peanut butter
1 cup of sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder

Mix all ingredients.
Spoon 1 teaspoon of mixture onto un-greased baking sheet, flatten mounds with the tines of fork coated in sugar to make cross-hatch pattern.
Bake 350 degree F  for 10 minutes. Cool before transferring to cooling racks.
Makes around 24 large cookies or 36 small cookies.

Simply Perfect!