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, 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!
Oct 14, 2015 | Dairy Free, Entrees, Nut Free
Bacon, Bacon, Bacon … oh wait, that’s another post.
Pork, Pork, Pork. There we go! That’s much better. I’ve proclaimed my love for the other white meat many times on this site. And I’m about to do it again!
With my wife and children not doing GF as a standard, I have been given free reign to come up with my own dinners for the most part. I usually cook sides or the main dish that we can all eat and then I deviate from there. So this recipe came from one of those evenings of my deviating from their planned meal.
I’ve always loved what has been lovingly termed country-fried or chicken-fried pork chops. It seems a little odd to me to call something chicken-fried, especially chicken-fried chicken, when it’s just breaded and fried. But I digress …
Since normal flour is verboten with Celiac Disease, one is left to use either GF flour or come up with alternatives. I’ve always been intrigued by different breadings as well, hence the pretzel crust!
With the added seasonings, the pretzels form a nice crunchy crust that proves without a doubt that GF is Not Taste Free!
Jerk Pretzel Pork
2 eggs
9 pork chops
2 cups Glutino pretzels
1 tbsp Caribbean Jerk seasoning
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp seasoning salt
- As your oil heats in your frying pan, tenderize your meat and beat your eggs.
- To make the coating you will need to grind your pretzels. I used a food processor and got a very nice blend on the pretzels, not quite dust but processed enough that it wasn’t large chunks.
- Mix the seasoning with the crumbs.
- You should have enough crumbs and eggs to double dip your pork: egg, crumbs, egg, crumbs, frying pan.
- Try to flip them as little as possible to let the crumbs create a crust – and don’t have your heat too high. If you burn the crust before the meat is cooked, it will crumble off and just be a disgusting mess. Try about 3-4 minutes each side on about medium heat and then check them. A little pink won’t kill you and remember that your meat cooks up a bit as it sits anyways.
Oct 6, 2015 | Appetizers, Dairy Free, Egg Free, Nut Free
Ever since CD, it has been harder and harder to find food that does not have gluten. And not all GF products are of the same quality. So finding something to snack on is not as simple as just walking down the chip aisle.
That said there are a ton of GF products out there. And there are more hitting the market every day. But with my penchant for the spicy, they are few and much, much farther between. I had to take matters into my own hands.
I’ve always been intrigued by the recipes featuring flavoured pretzels. This is my version featuring GF pretzels and my Cajun seasoning.
Cajun Pretzels
8 0z. GF pretzels (Glutino)
1/3 cup veggie oil
2 tsp Cajun seasoning
1 tsp garlic powder
- Mix all the ingredients except the pretzels in a freezer bag. Ensure the oil and seasoning are mixed well before pouring over the pretzels.
- Bake at 200 degrees for an hour, turning every 20 minutes.
