Leaving Las Vegas, with S'mores

Once again, I've disappeared for a bit. But you'll forgive me, won't you? This time it was so that I could move back to Alaska, which has been loads of work, but is inspiring all over again. Instead of sweating my buns off in Vegas, ruing the thought of even approaching the oven, now I get beachside campfires, glorious wild berries, a monthly local market to bake for and old friends to share with. In short, I have more motivation to bake and create than ever.

This month I've come up with one more cookie recipe for the Holiday book, no dairy, low fructose pudding, and have two great cake recipes in the works which just need some refining. My favorite achievement though has been polishing my recipe for truly nummy Graham Crackers. Yay! (Except that I can't stop eating them.) They're destined for the summer section of the forthcoming holiday book, right next to the corn syrup free marshmallows I perfected just before leaving Las Vegas. 

I've also tested a nut free version of my beloved chocolate chip cookies with truly glorious results. I might be persuaded to post that one here for everyone if there was enough interest... Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean?

Till then, I'm off to dive head first into a patch of red huckleberries. God, I love them! I think red huckleberries deserve their own dessert. Don't you? For anyone Ketchikan way the first Saturday in August, I will be at the Blueberry Festival, possibly selling some miraculous new recipe full of glorious red huckleberries, selling and signing books and even peddling some baked goods. See you there!

Flour Substitutions for HGGF

It seems the more events I do, the better feel I get for what different people can and can't eat. In the spirit of ultimate accessibility, here are some of the possible substitutions that should yeild the best possible results.

Please note that I have not tested all of these and those I have, I probably haven't tested in every case, so while it is the best information I currently have to offer, it likely will not be flawless. Also, I will update this page periodically as I gain more insight into each possible substitution.

Flours/Ground Nuts & Seeds

Can't eat              Use instead

Almond Flour        Cashew Flour or Ground Sunflower Seed

Amaranth Flour     Millet Flour possibly cut with a little starch, say 1-2 Tb out of each cup

Buckwheat Flour   Oat Flour (reduce or omit lemon juice added to soften buckwheat, but ONLY if leavened with baking powder)

Oat Flour              Buckwheat (be sure to add a little lemon juice to soften it, up to 1 Tb)

Quinoa Flour         Oat Flour or Buckwheat Flour (add up to 1Tb lemon juice to soften buckwheat)

Potato Starch       Arrowroot Starch

Flaxseed               Chia Seed

Fats

Grapeseed Oil      High Oelic Sunflower Oil (perfect and healthier substitute, same weight as olive oil)

Binders

Egg                      1Tb ground flax or chia mixed into about 3 Tb water, allow to sit 10 min

  (Remember, egg substitutes work best in small, contained items like muffins and rolls)

Xanthan Gum       Guar gum (use about twice as much, you will loose some rise)

About Xanthan Gum: If you find yourself reacting badly to Xanthan, and use the one sold by Bob's Red Mill, consider trying another brand before giving up on it entirely. Bob's, for some unfathomable reason, ferments theirs by feeding it WHEAT STARCH. I personally react very badly to their brand. But Xanthan performs so very well in baking, it seems a shame to discard it entirely if you don't have to. Hodgeson Mills is my new favorite for Xanthan. It performs consistently well, doesn't hurt me, and they sell it in little, inexpensive pouches, so it won't cost you a fortune to try it out, and it's always fresh.

Magic is happening, even when I forget to show you

I know I can be bad about posting regularly, but around here we are truly never idle. So when I disappear, it usually means there's something awesome going on.

This week I've finished these amazing low carb, grain free wonders:

Fluffy pancakes

Awesome salmon cakes

Lucious Lamb Burgers

Dairy Optional Whipped Cream

Divine mini cheesecakes 

60 second pizza sauce

And I have in progress:

Good, easy crackers

Those pesky, never perfect brownies

A couple nummy sauces and...

(Trumpets sound... Drum roll.. Symbol crash!)

Tada!

Extremely promising paleo pizza crust

It made a hell of a lunch today! :-)

I can't wait to share a whole new book with you all! Until then, I'll be working really hard to make it worthy of all your taste buds, and able to support and enhance your health, too.

XO,

Dawn

Seeking Low Carb, GF Brownie Perfection

  

Just in case you've never spent 5 minutes in the same room with me, I'll tell you something that everyone who has, already knows. I am a perfectionist.

By perfectionist, I don't mean, I'm meeting every goal, or I'm striving for excellence, or doing my personal best or any of that nonsense that was drilled into us in high school. No, I mean perfect-ionist. Some people will tell you, "there's no such thing as perfection," but I beg to differ. My most persuasive argument against this accusation is simply to feed the offending imperfectionist my Chocolate Butter Cake cupcakes, and that tends to convert them all on it's own. I have tasted perfection. 

Thanks to that taste I've developed for perfection, I'm also acutely aware of the imperfections in so many of my recipes. This recipe is NOT perfect. It's good. Satisfying. Enjoyable even. But perfect, it is not. I will continue to bake and re-bake, as I always do, in search of low carb brownie perfection. Meanwhile, here is the merely good and satisfying for you to enjoy at your leisure.

(This recipe is a part of my low carb GF diet project and calls for natural alternative sweeteners)

Low Carb Coconut Brownies

Yields one 8x8 pan of brownies or 9-12 servings

(Approximately 1-2.5 effective carbs per 1/9th depending upon your choice of cocoa brands)

Preheat Oven to 325*F/165*C

Dry Bowl:

Sift into bowl

   1C (86g) Cocoa Powder (I use Rapunzel. It can be hard to find, but it's sooo good, and ultra low in carbs too!)

Add, then whisk all together to combine

   1/2 C (40g) Desiccated Coconut

   1/2 tsp Xanthan Gum

   1/2 tsp Salt

Mixer Bowl:

Cream together until well combined and almost fluffy

   1C (216g) Coconut Oil

   1/2 C (68g) Chicory Root Fiber (I used a brand called Just Like Sugar that I found at Whole Foods)

   1/4 C (49g) Erythritol (You could probably get away with a little less of this if you care to)

Scrape down the sides of the mixer and beat in 

   3 Large Eggs

   1 Tb Vanilla Extract

Slow the mixer to a stir and add in the dry ingredients a little at a time

Once they're stirred in, bring up the mixer speed and beat until well combined and uniform

8x8 Baking Dish:

Grease the bottom and sides of your baking dish lightly with a little oil or palm oil shortening

Spread the thick batter/dough** into the pan as evenly as possible

Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the center no longer appears damp and springs back when touched lightly 

Cool at least 10 minutes before attempting to slice, they will also taste more sweet the more you let them cool

Cool completely before storing in an airtight container

**Warning- Ridiculous Dawn Rant:

Seriously, what's up with brownie batter? I mean it's so bloody thick, you can hardly call it a batter. But on the other hand, it is a bit damp for a dough. So what is it really? Stiff batter? Damp dough? Maybe it's the missing batter-dough link, like a doubat or a badough... Yes, it must be a badough. 

Thanks for helping me to work through that. 

Holy Project #3

Back from Phoenix, and right back in the kitchen!

I talked to so many great people at the expo, and the experience was awesome! Thank you all. There was one thing I heard quite frequently though, that got me thinking.

Many individuals seemed to be looking for low carb, diabetic friendly, GF foods. I've read that diabetes is commonly associated with Celiac Disease, so this shouldn't have come as a surprise. Coincidentally, I had just began a low carb diet myself. Between a need to undo some of the damage to my waistline after baking constantly, everyday, to finish the first Holy Grail, and having just read Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, low carb seemed like the thing to be. So far the diet has been good to me, and true to form, I'd already started experimenting with recipes. So I made a decision.

I'm already working on The Holy Grail of Gluten Free Holidays, so why not pile on a little more work, take a break from the sugar, and jump into writing a low carb book too? Sounds like a plan to me. I've got crepe wraps in the works at about 5 net carbs each, some great sauces and meat recipes, a lovely low carb cheesecake recipe and tonight, I baked up a marvelous failure. These brownies are definitely not perfect yet, but I still like them.

At least working on this project won't necessitate larger pants.

Birthday Party 99 Cent Kindle Sale!

We're celebrating here! It's a week full of anniversaries for us, of my diagnosis, of my first great recipe, two important birthdays, and while we celebrate today with kids and cake, you can too! This weekend, try out all the awesome recipes on Kindle, or use the kindle app for iPad or android, for only 99 cents! Still on sale next week too, for $1.99.
This is the one and only time this will happen, per amazon's rules, so be sure to take advantage.

The Holy Grail of Gluten Free is also coming soon to Nook and iBooks, but why wait?

Happy Birthday, Holy Grail!

Pound Cake, recipe from Holy Grail

Today is the day that started it all. 

If you're one of the 6 whole people who read the author's note in my book, then you already know the story, so I'll keep it short.

Today is Monkey 1's birthday. It was 4 years ago today that, in a fit of pre-party insanity, I started throwing random flours into a bowl with no rhyme, reason or recipe and through some kind of divine intervention, ended up with miraculously good vanilla cupcakes and my first GF recipe.

That recipe was the spark that ignited enough passion to create good foods and then, a good book. After a minor revision or two, it also became the vanilla butter cake recipe in my Holy Grail, and we still love it. It was shocking when Monkey 1 requested pound cake this year with extreme German chocolate for the party this weekend, because he's still forever begging for that first vanilla cake. If you haven't tried it yet, you should. Celebrate with us this week. We'll make it an official, GF holiday, the birth of the Holy Grail of Gluten Free.

Happy birthday to the boy and the cake and the obsession. May all three flourish.

The Really Empty Carb, or Why I Hate Rice Flour

Just in case you are brand spanking new to the world of gluten free foods, I'm going to tell you something that the rest of us discovered in the first 10 minutes of reading labels/recipes; it's basically all made of rice. White rice flour, brown rice flour, sweet rice flour, brown rice syrup, glutinous rice flour, rice starch, there are seemingly endless permutations of rice, but it's all still mainly rice. The problem is that nutritionally and texturally, not to mention satisfaction and flavor wise, rice in baked goods is the king of suck.

Nutrition has so many pretensions to importance these days that we'd better jump in there first, lest we be accused of only attending to pleasure. Compared to wheat flour, brown rice flour has more carbs, less fiber, more sugar, minimal protein, and far less of most nutrients and minerals, yielding more, emptier carbs per cup than the stuff most fashionably GF people are trying to avoid. This is exactly why the GF diet is NOT synonymous with a low carb diet. Far, far from it. If rice flour substitutes are used, baked goods are even carb-ier, less nutrient dense, and generally offer nutritional nada apart from their lack of gluten, which really, from one angle, is just another thing they don't have apart from carbs. Rice flour epitomizes the empty carb.

Unlike white sugar, rice flour can't even redeem itself aesthetically. Sugar at least tastes good. Rice flour tastes like... Nothing. It has no flavor, unless you happen to keep it around too long, at which point it will taste stale. Before you get excited about the possibility of it taking flavor well, like tofu is supposed to do, try to remember how much of the flavor of a slice of bread comes from the grain itself. This lack of flavor is not an asset, it's a void we seek, and generally fail, to fill. GF store bought breads so often taste like nothing but the excessive amount of yeast in them, even when supplemented with "natural flavor" according to the label.

The last, most obvious deficiency of most commercial GF offerings is texture. Anyone who's had the misfortune to open up a package of Glutino's bread can tell you that GF generally means crumbly, dry, either a sandy or gummy mouthfeel, and stuff that's almost edible when warm, but stiff enough to chip a tooth on once cool. Every one of these characteristics is a direct result of the use of rice flour. Imagine for a moment the texture of cold, plain rice: hard, sticky, dry outside, too chewy inside. This is what they are making bread from. Small wonder that it's nearly all texturally revolting.

Add it all up and you've got baked goods with all the health hazards of white sugar or starch, that have horrid textures, and at best taste like an abundance of yeast, all thanks to our pal, rice flour. You may be asking; if it's so bad, then why do so many companies use it to create their GF offerings? Easy, it's CHEAP. Rice flour's only redeeming quality is of course, the one quality that businesses find most appealing. Figures, huh? But it's not good enough for me, either to eat or to cook with.

For anyone out there who's wondered why I never, ever use rice flour in any of my recipes, now you know. Demand more. Skip the rice.

Bloggity blog blog blog

I suppose it's about time that I kicked off this blog in earnest. But really? I don't want to. Quite frankly, I'm terrified. To even get to this point, my brother had to start the bloody blog for me. I had to be guilted into posting in the first place. Then I had to build up the pressure of desperation and bravado, like shaking a bottle of soda, for 4 months before the top blew tonight and I'm finally trying to post again. Truly, truly, blogging scares me.

I realize that rising incredulity may forcibly roll the eyes most of the people who've actually met me. I was a thespian, drama geek, and even theater teacher before the baking became my primary obsession, and somehow it's difficult to convince people you're an introvert when they know you love the stage. But an introvert I am, and an especially self-conscious one at that. I'll play any role in the world, just as long as you don't ask me to play myself. Which of course, is exactly what blogging does. Somehow, I have to play me. And I don't wanna. 

But I do have to start somewhere. It's hard to sell books that no one's ever heard of. And harder still to justify all of the amazing experimenting I'm doing creating recipes for a holiday book when I can't sell the first one, because again, no one's ever heard of it. Unjustifiable baking. That's what I'm doing. But that's the part I love!

I love working and reworking a recipe until that eureka moment when it finally comes together just right. I love the miraculous few times when I've made something out of the blue and it was completely perfect on the first try. I even adore those few recipes that I keep tossing aside in frustration only to pick them up again a few months later to bang away at once more. Some I may never finish, but I've thought that before and pulled off what felt like miracles in the end. The flat bread and pie crust in my book were both like that. I remember making and remaking the flat bread for whole days, day after day, really aiming for a foldable tortilla but shhh, you didn't hear that. I went through so much flour! But then I turned out this batch that was so heavenly soft and satisfying that we gobbled all of them up plain. They didn't roll well without cracking, but damn! Were they ever good. One more revision, and I had my eureka moment. I felt like I was feeding myself all the way down to my soul as I took bite after slow bite of that bread. Indescribable satisfaction. That's what I found there. That's what I find in the kitchen.

Quite frankly, I just want to bake.

And eat rum cake. Blatant non-sequitur, sure, but none the less true. I do like my rum cake. Wish I had some right now instead of a blog...

Think I've been me enough for one night? Thank god! Have some rum cake.

Pumpkidoodles? New Cookies in the Works!

A friend of mine posted the coolest thing the other day... a recipe for pumpkin snickerdoodles. I was boggled. Combine my passion for pumpkin with my children's insatiable appetite for snickerdoodles? Could such family euphoria be possible?

Apparently it can. I went straight to the kitchen and came up with this first draft.

The texture is amazing just cooled, with a crispy sugared outside but satiny, melting but substantial interior. It was blissful! A day and more old, the initial crispness of the exterior faded, and the melting middle became slightly caky but still in a surprisingly smooth way. I cannot adequately describe it, but we're hooked! A few more drafts to fine tune the spice and flour combinations and these will absolutely be Holy Grail worthy.

Huzzah for another new, amazing, food experience!