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!

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

Salsa on the Brain

Sometimes I just get stuck.

An idea will capture me, and my mind will churn and bubble and plan, and I simply will not be able to extract myself from it. I will experiment and create and obsess, but the one thing I can't seem to do is change the subject. Today I am jailed by visions of salsa, and quite frankly, I like it.

I love salsa, but I only started making my own in the last year, recently enough that I only had my own recipes for Roasted Tomatillo Salsa, a favorite of mine, and a flavorful, thick, fiery Habanero Hot Sauce, which I can't seem to live without. I took some of my tomatillo salsa to a get together this week and fell into salsa conversation with a friend over it. He talked about the recipes he'd tried and their plusses and minuses, and the brain started it's bubbling. I began thinking over the many flavors I've loved or loathed over the years, and I knew I had to have more. Two little recipes, however great, cannot quench the salsa lust.

So what am I doing now? I'm making salsa of course! What? I should be making dinner for my kids? But, salsa! It's past my bedtime? There's still this salsa, you see... It's 3 am? SALSA! The only down side is that I've no idea how I'm ever going to eat it all. But I'm going to love trying.

Happiness is turning this

into this.

So, like it or not, we can all look forward to a little more spice in our lives, or at least in my next book.

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.

Holiday Book is Progressing

The real reason it took me so long to get that last post up...

Carrot cake experiments! Ginger Orange Carrot for the win! This is one more for the forth coming holiday book. Look forward to it.

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!