Recent Baking Trials and Errors

Last October a friend's sister asked me to bake her wedding cake after she caught sight of these Birthday Cupcakes I brought to a party. Silly me said "yes, I'd be delighted!", even though I have no experience making wedding cakes at all. I don't know whether I'm insane for saying yes or she's insane for asking. Maybe we're both a bit off our rockers. Thankfully, she just wants a small personal sized cake just for her and the groom, and cupcakes for the kids. Everyone else will get regular glutenous desserts. That really took the pressure off. Even better, the bride is easy-going and happy with whatever I suggest. She really wanted ice cream cone cupcakes like the ones from the birthday party for the kids, but I said "No-can-do, Chica, they won't travel well"! Instead I offered these cuties in little baskets. Happy, happy day, she loved them and I can cross the cupcakes off my list of things to nail down before the wedding!


This weekend was a busy one in the kitchen. Saturday I practiced wedding cake, and yesterday I made sort-of failed chocolate chip cookies. Instead of measuring separate flours for the recipe, I got lazy and substituted a flour blend, Sorghum and Millet, instead. I knew better, as millet flour tends to make cookies crumbly. But I did it anyway. The cookies came out of the oven really pretty but crumbled into bits when I tried to remove them from the baking sheet to a wire rack with a spatula. I salvaged the rest of the batch by baking cookie bars in an 8x8 inch baking dish and actually, they turned out great. The bars don't crumble, their flavor is delicate, and they are dry in a way that is vaguely reminiscent of Chips A'hoy.

Thankfully although the individual cookies failed, the cookie bars turned out well. In fact, I'm going to make a note on that recipe to use the millet flour blend for making bar cookies. See, there is some merit to flying by the seat of your pants. Take that, finicky gluten free, soy free and vegan baking! I wave my spatula in your general direction!

Egg-Free Lamb Meatballs and a Diet Update

Anna has been a real sport about her elimination diet since it began in June. I've been testing her slowly to see what foods on her eliminated list can enter her regular diet again. So far, banana, apple, egg and corn make her double over in pain several hours after consumption. Even minute amounts of corn, such as the vegetable capsules of her vitamins and supplements, cause her to complain of pain and nausea. It's been fairly disheartening, since the foods that are giving her problems are ones she loves and misses dearly. But she's been sweetly gracious about the whole thing - even hardly complaining about her supplements being emptied out of their capsules and mixed in with yogurt to get them down.

However, some good news is that she has recently been able to tolerate carrots and strawberries. She's very happy about this, even when I tell her she can have these foods just once per week. I'll keep watching closely for reactions...Saturday she had some strawberries and yesterday I noticed a kind of rash around her mouth. We'll see if that happens again next time she has strawberries. Next up for reintroduction is chicken, and then after a couple of months we'll try banana and apple again, and maybe sesame in the form of hummus. Thankfully, even though she reacts to soy and peanuts which are legumes, she does not seem to have a problem with other legumes (chickpeas, black beans, white beans, green beans). Off the list indefinitely are tree nuts and egg.

Hopefully the fact that she can tolerate carrot and strawberry again means that she's experiencing some healing. I'm not sure if that's due to time or supplements (B-complex, cod liver oil, quercetin, probiotics). I've been rotating meats and fish so that she doesn't get the same type more than once or twice a week - turkey, pork, beef, lamb, salmon, trout, catfish, sardines, and once in awhile tuna. It's harder to rotate the grains - rice, millet, quinoa, so I try to make sure the flour blends I'm baking with rotate too.

Anna seems to like lamb quite a bit, which is fun. She's becoming less picky and more adventurous with food, pointing out items from the grocery store she'd like to try. Megan doesn't like lamb as much, but she's none the wiser if I use ground lamb for meatballs. I threw together these meatballs recently, using yogurt in place of egg, and they turned out really good - good enough for me to post here and then tuck away into my cookbook. I've also been sneaking different vegetables into their meals...shredded beets in meatballs work really well!

3/4 lb ground lamb
1/4 cup plain coconut milk yogurt
2 tbsp. lemon juice
2 tbsp. flax seed meal
1 - 2 tbsp. Penzey's Greek Seasoning or other Greek seasoning blend

Mix all the above ingredients until well blended. Heat a little olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Shape the lamb mixture into 2 inch meatballs and place in the hot skillet. Cook until bottoms are browned, flip and cook on the other side until cooked through, draining the fat from the skillet as needed. Serve hot.

Gluten Free, Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies

(The cookies above have amaranth flour in them, the cookies below have buckwheat flour in them.)

(Don't need to be egg free? See this recipe for chocolate chip cookies that are simply gluten and casein free.)

I've been playing with gluten free and vegan chocolate chip cookies for a little while now. Each time I make them, they turn out wonderful. I've used different flours such as amaranth or substituted my favorite cookie flour blend, but I like using buckwheat flour best. I prefer soft cookies and happily, these stay soft for days in the cookie jar (if they last that long). This recipe is adapted from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. The most important thing to remember about these cookies it to stir the sugar and the canola oil for a full two minutes until the mixture resembles caramel - if you don't, your cookies will be oily and crumbly. But even with this full two minute step, these cookies are fast and easy to make, and they please just about everybody.

1/2 cup buckwheat or amaranth flour
1/2 cup rice flour
1/2 cup potato starch
1/2 cup tapioca starch
1 tbsp. flax seed meal
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. xanthan gum or 1 tsp. guar gum
1/4 tsp. baking powder

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
2/3 cup canola oil
1/4 cup rice milk
2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 cup casein free, soy free chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a cookie sheet with cooking spray, set aside.

Whisk the buckwheat flour through the baking powder, set aside.

Whisk together the sugar through the rice milk. Stir 2 minutes, or until the mixture resembles a smooth caramel. Stir in the vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and beat until smooth. Fold in the chocolate chips. You can refrigerate the cookie dough overnight at this point if you wish.

Drop the batter by teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheet. Bake 10 - 12 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool on the baking sheet for 1 minute. Then, remove the cookies to a wire rack to finish cooling. Repeat with remaining batter. Yield: 2 dozen cookies.

*To make bar cookies, try substituting the buckwheat, rice, tapioca and potato starch flours with 2 cups of Sorghum and Millet Flour Blend. Press dough into a greased 8x8 inch baking dish and bake about 15 minutes, or until golden brown and set in the center. Cool before cutting into bars.

Millet Burgers with Hot Sauce

Millet burger with heirloom tomato and hot sauce.

Today I served these burgers for our Labor Day lunch with friends. Everybody loved them, even the kids. I had originally wanted to make sweet potato falafel but had leftover cooked millet and baking potatoes readily available, and tahini is out for Anna right now as she can't have sesame seeds. So I came up with these burgers instead and inspired by this recipe here, served them with Hot Sauce. I'm really happy with how they turned out. In fact they went over so well that they will enter our regular menu rotation!

Millet Burgers
2 medium baking potatoes
1 can white beans, drained
2 cups cooked millet
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. chopped parsley
2 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. SunButter (or tahini)
2 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground coriander
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper

Wash and peel and chop the potatoes. Put them in a pot of salted water, bring to a boil and cook 10 - 15 minutes or until soft. Meanwhile, cook the onion and garlic with 1 tbsp. olive oil in a skillet over medium heat until soft. Drain the potatoes and put them into a large bowl. Add the drained white beans and mash together with a potato masher. Add the onion, garlic, parsley, lemon juice, SunButter, cumin, coriander, salt and pepper and stir to blend well. Taste and adjust seasonings if desired. At this point, you can store this mixture in the refrigerator to make into burgers the next day.

Heat a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Add a little olive oil to keep the burgers from sticking to the skillet. Form 1/3 cupfuls of burger mixture into 1/2 inch high round patties. Cook about 3 minutes or until bottoms are golden brown and crusty. Flip and repeat. Serve with Hot Sauce (recipe below) and garnish with sliced tomato and avocado.

Hot Sauce for Burgers
1/2 cup Frank's Red Hot
1/4 cup vegetable broth
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. chopped parsley

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan. Simmer over low heat about 5 minutes, or until reduced and slightly thickened.

Rainbow

We got treated to a double rainbow tonight. I've been waiting years for this. A couple of weeks ago we got a rainbow, but by the time we ran outside to see it, it was fading. It was really frustrating. I kept pointing to the sky but the girls could not see it. It reminded me of the days when Anna would not point, nor look at where I was pointing. Ever. Not even a little bit. She didn't even seem to try. I'd point but she would not follow my gaze or follow the direction of my arm. When she was 2 1/2 I brought her outside to see her first rainbow, but she would not look to where it was even though I kept pointing excitedly and making a big deal out of it. At the time I didn't know it was an issue of joint attention, all I felt was extreme frustration.

Fast forward 5 years later. I've been waiting all this time for another rainbow. And when it happened tonight, the girls and I ran outside. They were so excited. They pointed, I pointed, and then Anna said "Mommy, I think there's a double rainbow!". I could have cried. We've come so far. She points. She follows my gaze. She's engaged. I'm awestruck by and grateful for joint attention every time it happens. Joint attention rocks.