Category Archives: baking

Gluten Free Strawberry Shortcake with Almond Flour

Posted on July 13, 2011 | 4 Comments

It’s strawberry season in our area, and the boys and I have hit two different pick your own patches (more on that later). For now, I’ll just share a recipe, as I’ve been a little busy this week and am behind on my posts. (More on that later, too. I had nearly two tons of grain in my garage on Monday.)

With all the strawberries in the house, I had a taste for strawberry shortcake, but I really wanted to try a version with almond flour. It just seemed to me that strawberries and almonds would go well together. I did some hunting online (I think I may have to add the Almond Flour cookbook to my wishlist), but most of the recipes I found either used a lot of sugar or artificial sweeteners. Finally, I decided to tweak a recipe from one of my favorite gluten free bloggers – Kelly at The Spunky Coconut. Kelly made a really pretty Strawberry Birthday cake for her daughter, so I modified her recipe a bit and teamed it up with strawberries and whipped cream.

Gluten Free Strawberry Shortcake with Almond Flour recipe

5 whisked eggs (I used 2 duck eggs and one small chicken egg)
2/3 cup yogurt (the original recipe called for applesauce, but I didn’t have any on hand)
1/8 tsp Vanilla Creme liquid stevia
1/3 cup honey
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup coconut flour, sifted
2/3 cup tapioca flour
2/3 cup Bob’s almond flour
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup coconut oil, liquified (grapeseed oil would probably work also)

Grease two nine inch round cake pans. (I put parchment paper in the bottom, too, but didn’t have a problem with sticking.) Preheat oven to 325 F.

Blend together eggs, yogurt, liquid stevia, honey and vanilla extract. In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients until evenly mixed. Mix together dry and wet ingredients. (Kelly just says to put everything in one bowl, but I like to premix just to make sure everything blends evenly.)

Divide batter evenly between the two pans. Bake for about 18 minutes, until lightly browned.

Let cool for a few minutes, then flip onto wire racks to cool completely.

While the cakes are cooling, rinse and hull your strawberries. Chop/mash them with a pastry blender or potato masherto release the juices.

Please, please do not slice your berries and then add water to them for juice. This is not a yummy. (Apologies to a dear family member if you read this.) You may use the berries unsweetened, or add stevia, vanilla stevia, or other sweetener to taste. When we had this with my in-laws, I added 8 drops liquid vanilla creme stevia to 4 cups of chopped berries (my FIL is diabetic). For just the boys and I, I added 2 tablespoons of sugar to 4 cups of berries. A little goes a long way.

For the whipping cream, I whipped one cup of organic heavy whipping cream, and then, for the in-laws, added about six drops of vanilla creme stevia. For just us, I added two tablespoons powdered sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla (my youngest is not a fan of stevia).

I sliced the cakes into wedges and served them up in bowls with strawberries and whipped cream. Delicious! Do refrigerate leftovers, if there are any.

This post has been added to Simple Lives Thursday , Fight Back Friday and

Hearth and Soul Blog Hop #57.

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Posted in almond flour, baking, gluten free, Recipes, shortcake, strawberries

Tagged recipes

Homemade "Wheat Thin" Style Crackers with Soaked Flour

Posted on January 12, 2011 | 13 Comments

My boys love crackers. Unfortunately, most of the brands featured in the store have lots of ingredients we are trying to avoid – transfats, artificial flavors, bleached and bromated flour and so on. Enter Kitchen Stewardship’s Homemade “Wheat Thin” Style Crackers recipe. I love Katie’s blog – it’s full of helpful tips and great recipes. This one was no exception. The only down side was that the crackers were so delicious they didn’t last very long. Here’s my take on Katie’s recipe.

Homemade “Wheat Thins” Style Crackers Recipe

Adapted from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking Cookbook

Ingredients

1 ¼ cups whole wheat flour (can use spelt flour, traditional whole wheat or white whole wheat)
1 ½ Tbs honey (or sugar)
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp paprika
4 Tbs butter
¼ cup water
¼ tsp vanilla
salt for topping

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Blend dry ingredients (except topping salt). Cut in butter with a knife or pastry blender and blend until evenly mixed. Combine the water, honey and vanilla. Add to flour mixture and blend until smooth.

NOTE: If you would like to soak the crackers to reduce phytates in the grains, substitute whey for 1 tsp to the entire 1/4 cup of water. (I put whatever whey I have available into my measuring cup, then add water to reach 1/4 cup.) Allow to sit at room temperature for 12-24 hours. Salt may inhibit the soaking process, so add the salt right before rolling. I used freshly ground whole wheat flour from my Nutrimill.

Here’s the dough after soaking – it looks pretty much the same.

Divide the dough into four pieces and work with one at a time. If you chill the dough for at least one hour before working with it, it should be a little easier to handle. Lightly flour your work surface and roll out the dough one piece of dough at a time. I used my Superparchment to roll on, and then transferred the Superparchment and dough directly to my Airbake cookie sheets. Try to get the dough as thin as possible, at least 1/16 inch thick and 12 inches square. Use a pizza cutter or sharp knife to cut into squares about 1 1/2 inch wide (I think the pizza cutter is the way to go on this if you have one). I don’t have a toddler like Katie, but the boys happily ate the odd shaped pieces.

Sprinkle lightly with salt (this really adds to the flavor of the crackers – you might try other flavors like garlic powder or other herbs along with the salt, too). The crackers don’t expend while baking so they don’t need to be moved apart before baking. You can save the scraps and reroll them one time, if desired. Bake the crackers, one sheet at a time, until crisp and browned, 5 to 10 minutes. (The Airbake pans will help you avoid burning, but will take closer to ten minutes to cook.) You can remove edge crackers from the pan if they start getting too dark and return the rest to the oven to bake. I had to do this with some pans where my dough was rolled a bit unevenly. Watch them closely – they can burn fairly quickly because they are so thin.

Crackers are done when they are almost crispy but not too brittle. They will crisp more as they cool. If they are underbaked, they will be softer and less crackerlike. You can always throw them in the dehydrator for a while if need be, too, but the oven works best to get that tasty caramelization.

Cool completely and store in airtight containers (if they last long enough to store).

Ta-da! Tasty, pretty homemade crackers.

Confession – these are somewhat labor intensive. It’s considerably easier to crack open a box from the store. Still, these are very tasty, and the boys really enjoyed them.

This post has been added to Simple Lives Thursday,

Fresh Bites Friday and

Real Food Wednesday hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.

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Posted in "reduce phytates", "soaked crackers", "whole grain crackers", baking, cooking, crackers, real food, Recipes

How to Make Dandelion Wine and Dandelion Cookies

Posted on May 9, 2010 | 26 Comments

We have been inundated by dandelions – LOTS OF DANDELIONS! They are everywhere! Along the driveway…

…in the garden, in the yard – hundreds (maybe thousands?) of dandelions.

What do yo do when you’re overrun with dandelions? Eat them (and make some wine)!

The boys and I got picking and we gathered a large bowl full of dandelion flowers for wine and cookies, plus some greens for a decoction. I grabbed some roots, too, but then I read that you’re supposed to harvest those in fall, so my dried and roasted dandelion root coffee substitute is on hold.

The recipes I used called for the petals only, so we sat down to a long session of “second picking”.

The cookies called for 1/2 cup of petals, the rest went into the gallon crock for wine. This crock belonged to my mother and her mother before her.

My wine recipe was from the book Dandelion Medicine by Brigitte Mars. It’s really interesting book and I look forward to trying out more of the recipes. There are a great variety for both medicinal and culinary use. This humble “weed” is a veritable pharmacy in and of itself.

From Dandelion Medicine:

Homemade Dandelion Wine Recipe

Dandelion wine, believed to be of Celtic origin, is regarded as one of the fine country wines of Europe. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was not proper for ladies to drink alcohol; however, dandelion flower wine was considered so therapeutic to the kidneys and digestive system that it was deemed medicinal even for the ladies.

Ingredients

3 quarts dandelion blossoms
1 gallon water
2 oranges, with peel
1 lemon, with peel
3 pounds sugar
1 ounce fresh yeast
1 pound raisins

Directions

1) Collect the blossoms when they are fully open on a sunny day. Remove any green parts; they will impair fermentation.

2) Bring the water to a boil and pour it over the flowers in a large pot. Cover and let steep for three days.

3) Peel and juice the oranges and the lemon, saving the peels and reserving the liquid. (Note: I used organic oranges and lemon, zested about half the skin off and cut the rest off in very thin strips to minimize the amount of white pith I added to the brew. I love, love, love my Microplane grater for zesting. I peeled the citrus completely and sliced them into thin rounds. My mom just sliced them in rounds without peeling when she made the wine, so I thought this was a good compromise.)

4) Add the orange and lemon peel to the flower-water mixture and bring to a boil. (At this time I added only the zest.) Remove from heat, strain out solids, then add the sugar (I used one pound Florida Crystals and two pounds white sugar), stirring until it is dissolved. Allow to cool.

5) Add the orange and lemon juice (I added the slices), yeast, and raisins to the liquid. Put everything into a crock with a loose lid (so gas can escape) to ferment. (I covered it with a clean cotton towel held down by a rubber band.)

6) When the mixture has stopped bubbling (2 days to a week), fermentation is complete. Strain the liquid through several layers of cheesecloth (I think my jelly bags would work well for this, too) and transfer to sterilized bottles. Slip a deflated balloon over the top of each bottle to monitor for further fermentation. When the balloon remains deflated for 24 hours, fermentation is complete. Cork the bottles and store in a cool, dark place for at least six months before drinking. (NOTE: Be sure not to seal these tightly before they finish fermenting, and don’t put them somewhere warm. Otherwise, you’ll end up with exploding bottles, like my sister Mary when she stashed them in the closet at the trailer house when she was first married. Apparently it sounded like there were bombs going off or they were being shot at.)

I’m working on getting a video (with sound) of this fermenting. It sounds like a really big bowl of Rice Krispies. I’ll update later on the status of the “medicinal brew”.

For the cookies, I used a recipe from my friend Hannah at Preparing for Our Children’s Future.

Dandelion Flower Cookie Recipe

Ingredients

1⁄2 cup coconut oil
1⁄2 cup honey
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup unbleached, unbromated flour
1 cup dry oatmeal
1⁄2 cup dandelion flower petals

Directions

1) Preheat the oven to 375.
2) Mix the oil and honey and then beat in the 2 eggs and vanilla.
3) Remove the yellow flower parts from the green parts (compost the green parts).
4) Stir in the flour, oatmeal, and dandelion flowers.
5) Drop the batter by tablespoonfuls onto an oiled cookie sheet.
6) Bake for 10-15 minutes.
7) Cool and enjoy!

I chopped some dandelion greens and made a decoction by pouring boiling water over them and letting them steep overnight.

In the morning I strained out the chunks and heated it up with a little honey to make it more palatable. (I can deal with sour much easier than bitter.) I have to say that I prefer my kombucha and coconut milk tonic much better.

Here’s a link to Dandelion Medicine on Amazon.com. The used price is pretty reasonable.

Next posts in the series: Bottling the wine and tasting the wine.

This post has been added to Domestically Divine, Real Food Wednesday and Fat Tuesday.