Feb 7, 2016 | Allergen Alert, Desserts, Nut Free
This was a double recipe made for my son’s Beaver camp. Everyone loved their veggies that night!
This simple GF zucchini cake recipe is a number of years in the making (or at least putting it online is). Back when I was an editor for a small, rural weekly newspaper in North Dakota, I got zucchini’d! I had never had that experience as a city boy before. So I made veggie burritos and had heard about zucchini cake some time later.
Then I tried it once and knew what I would always do with my zucchinis since I am not a fan normally. I’m one of those guys that looks at zucchini cakes as a good way to get my veggies. But in this case, my veggies are rich, moist and covered in chocolate!
Chocolate Zucchini Cake
1/2 cup (125 g) butter
1/4 cup (60 ml) canola oil
1 3/4 cup (420 g) sugar
3 large eggs
1 tbsp (30 ml) vanilla
2 1/4 cups (530 g) GF flour
3/4 cup (180 g) cocoa
1 tsp (15 g) baking powder
1 tsp (15 g) baking soda
1/2 tsp (7 g) salt
1 cup (250 ml) sour cream
2 cups (475 g) zucchini – grated with skin
3/4 cup (180 g) chocolate chips
Directions
- While your over preheats to 325 degrees, beat the your room temp butter, oil and sugar on high with mixer for 3 minutes, then add the eggs and vanilla.
- Add the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt and mix well. Add in the sour cream until it’s all combined. Then mix in the zucchini and chocolate chips. Watch out, this batter will be thick, so go easy on the mixer until it’s combined.
- Spray the bottom of your cake pan with cooking spray, not the sides. If you spray the sides, it will stick to the sides and give you unevenly cooked, charred sides.
- Bake for about 45 minutes on convection (an hour otherwise) and let cool completely until you are ready to cover with delicious frosting. Something like this Sour Cream Chocolate Frosting would work.
Feb 7, 2016 | Allergen Alert, Egg Free, Nut Free, Sauces & Seasonings
Sour Cream Chocolate Frosting
1 1/4 cups (280 g) semisweet chocolate chips
5 tbsp (75 g) butter
1/2 cup (125 ml) sour cream
1 tbsp (15 ml) vanilla extract
1/4 tsp (4 g) salt
2 3/4 cups (620 g) powdered sugar
- Melt the chocolate and butter together.
- Let it cool and blend in the sour cream, vanilla and salt.
- Gradually add the sugar beating well until it thickens enough to spread.
Jan 18, 2016 | Breakfast
This version was missing the bananas and used Reeses Peanut Butter Spread. It was still amazing!
About 15 years ago I used to work in a breakfast cafe in Roswell, Georgia. It was just a bit more of a training ground for my favourite meal of the day! While I was there, I perfected the egg flip and most of the other classic staples of breakfast making. Not sure that I would want to go back to being a line cook, but there have been plenty of times that I do the short order deal for family and friends.
And while I love a good omelet, there’s a special place in my heart for French Toast. It was the first real thing I learned how to cook from my paternal grandmother, Nanny. And the love affair with cooking and breakfast in particular was born.
Now as a CD card-carrying member, making French Toast is a little hard now. However, you just have to really be willing to go with small bread pieces (think Udi’s) or make your own. In this conglomeration, that is the way I go since this recipe combines French Toast, bananas, peanut butter, Anglaise and chocolate sauce to make a decadent dish that really doesn’t need anything else with it. Who says Gluten Free is Taste Free?!
Since this one is a dish unto itself with multiple components, I will be putting links up to other recipes on site that relate to the whole of this dish. As a side note, this recipe can be nut free if you decide to use WowButter or SunButter as a substitute.
Drunk Monkey Bread
1 recipe Banana Loaf
1 recipe Baileys Anglaise
1 recipe Kahlua French Toast Batter
Chocolate Sauce (I use this recipe – it’s originally a chocolate fountain sauce but works really well!)
Peanut Butter
Bananas
- Once you’ve made all the components, you can start assembling sandwiches. Spread peanut butter on one side, layer with sliced banana and then top with another slice of banana bread.
- Dunk the sandwich in the batter and fry it up on a griddle until it’s golden brown.
- Ladle first your Anglaise over the top and then a bit of the chocolate sauce.
- Serve immediately!
Jan 18, 2016 | Breakfast, Nut Free
Mix –
3 eggs
1/4 cup milk
1 tbsp (15 g) Cinnamon
1 tsp (5 g) Nutmeg
1 tsp (5 g) Ginger
2 oz Orange Juice
2 oz Kahlua
Dunk your bread in the batter once it’s completely mixed and cook on a medium heat until golden!
Jan 13, 2016 | Allergen Alert, Nut Free, Sauces & Seasonings
Who needs a measuring cup?! And obviously for this batch, I used flavoured Baileys. In this case, Baileys website says that all of their products are made with GF ingredients so there should never be a problem with their liqueurs.
This is a simple Anglaise recipe that you can find almost anywhere. There are a few minor tweaks from my restaurant days. In this case, GF is definitely not taste free!
Baileys Anglaise
2 cups (500 ml) whipping cream
1.5 vanilla beans or 4-5 (75 ml) tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup (150 g) white sugar
8 egg yolks
1/2 cup (125 ml) Baileys Irish Cream
- Put your cream and fresh vanilla beans in a sauce pan and heat slowly, stirring constantly until bubbles form at edges.
This would be after I added the egg mix to the cream. Remember you want to continually stir so you don’t cook the eggs or scorch the cream on the bottom. Low heat is the best!
- While your cream is coming to just under a boil, whisk together your egg yolks and sugar until they are smooth. Supposedly you should add 1/2 of the milk to the eggs mix and whisk constantly. I usually just add the whole egg mix into the pan since you will be heating it slowly anyways. The point is not to cook the eggs so you should likely make sure you have the pan on a very low heat if you pour it all in.
- Continue to heat the sauce, stirring constantly, until the mixture coats the back of a spoon. If it starts to lump, you’re cooking the eggs and will not have a good sauce.
- Once the sauce is done, pull it off the heat and add in the Baileys and whisk it together. Then put it in the fridge immediately to keep those eggs from cooking!
- When you’re ready to serve it, it should be a little chilled but not fresh out of the fridge unless you want your hot food to get cold immediately!
