by autumn on April 3, 2010
For the first time, I participated in the monthly “adopt a gluten-free blogger” event hosted at Book of Yum.  So! I am going to introduce you to a gluten-free blogger I like and one of her recipes.
I “adopted” fellow gluten-free blogger Jill Elise of “Hey, that tastes good!” Â Those are her gorgeous english muffins pictured above. The recipe is here. It’s an amazingly easy, one-bowl recipe, which is part of what I love about “Hey, that tastes good!” Jill Elise makes seemingly scary things (gluten-free, vegan english muffins?!) seem completely manageable. Me, I’m pretty intimidated by yeast. It has it’s own agenda. But by the end of reading Jill Elise’s post on english muffins, I had to make them.
Nooks and crannies, as promised. I would like to try  her pie crust recipe. I am also intimated by pie. For the love of god, if she can bake a dozen and a half pies for her own wedding, I can try making one.
Check out more of “Adopt a Gluten-free Blogger” here.
by autumn on March 28, 2010
Last week, I bought some honey at the Friday Union Square Greenmarket, to celebrate the legalization of beekeeping in New York City. Since then, everything I eat revolves around honey. By yesterday, I had polished off the most gigantic container of Greek yogurt I could find and needed another vehicle for my honey. Not that a spoon hadn’t been working just fine.
I usually use faker-buttermilk (aka milk and vinegar/lemon juice) in my baking, but when I saw the real thing (made right near where my mom and I were born, aww) at the Saturday Union Square Greenmarket, I snapped it up. The most logical next step was to make cornbread…. on a Saturday night while the boyfriend watched these videos, of which there is a surprising number. Jealous?
Gluten-free Buttermilk Cornbread
Adapted from here and especially here. Note: Bob’s Red Mill now has dedicated gluten-free corn flour and cornmeal, but make sure to look for their little gluten-free seal. I ordered mine online, but they haven’t seemed to reach all the grocery stores shelves yet.
3/4 cup Bob’s Red Mill AP Gluten-free Baking flour (Or experiment with your favorite flour blend. I am out of both potato and tapioca starch, so I went the safe route.)
1/4 cup corn flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
3 T sugar
2 1/2 t baking powder
3/4 t salt
1 t xanthan gum
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 melted butter
1. Preheat oven to 400 and grease a 9 inch round pan (or something close: a cast iron if you’re feeling legit).
2. Melt the butter using your preferred melting method and let it cool while you complete the remaining steps.
3. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside.
4. In another bowl, beat the eggs. Add the buttermilk and finally the melted butter. Stir to combine.
5. Add the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until just combined.
6. Pour into the greased pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean, about 20 minutes. The edge of the cornbread should also pull away from the pan slightly.
by autumn on March 22, 2010
So. It seems that I’ve been baking a lot lately. Here’s the thing: the weather has been gorgeous here in New York the past week or so. BUT (and now a word from Debbie Downer) this means that baking weather is on its way out. With three roommates, I am not going to be the jerk to fire up the oven in our top-floor apartment on a hot, humid (ie: awful) summer day. That’s a few months away. Until then, the impending end of baking has re-energized me.
These are the Gluten-free Girl’s buttermilk biscuits with a little extra sass. I’ve been so into what other bloggers have doing lately that I haven’t bothered to be original in a while. This is probably the 10th time I’ve made these biscuits since I found the recipe. Think Bisquick, but better.
I had some odds and ends of butter at room temperature in my cupboard and decided, since I’d have to refrigerate it again anyway (so it would cut into the flour nicely), to brown it first. Have you ever made brown butter? It sounds fancy and intimidating, but it’s an awesome science project. And it makes any treat seem more fancy and intimidating. You were impressed when you read “Rosemary Brown Butter Biscuits” weren’t you?
You can Google a tutorial, but I’d urge you to trust your butter. The science part is this: there will be a magic little explosion of foam, when this subsides and you can see your nice brown milk solids at the bottom of the pan, you’re golden (pun absolutely intended). Because of science (!) they’ll stay at the bottom of the pan when you pour the butter out, so you won’t have burnt milk solids in your biscuits.
I also added a heaping teaspoon of fresh rosemary because I, like every other person who has ever bought a fresh herb, had extra in the fridge that needed to be used up.
More on what else I did with the rosemary to come.
by autumn on March 16, 2010
I’m a little embarrassed to admit, that until about a week ago, I didn’t have a banana bread recipe that I loved. I say this is embarrassing because I’ve made a lot of gluten-free banana bread in my day. I am comfortable calling myself a baker and feel like banana bread is one of the basics that a baker ought to have in her repertoire.
I’ve had standing agreements with more than one past roommate that after their bananas got past a certain stage of ripeness, they were mine by default. Last week, there were two (!) bunches of bananas getting to that point in my kitchen. My current roommates and I haven’t had the banana talk yet, so I wrote a nice note on the roommate white board and found myself with more ripe bananas than I knew what to to with.
Or so I thought. After I made just one loaf of this banana bread from GF in the City, all I wanted to do was make banana bread. This is a fantastic recipe. I’ll tell you about what I did, but you should do what makes you happy, including making this (great!) recipe exactly as written.
The adjustments I made were in the name of thrift. I had a bag of garfava flour open, so I subbed that for the sorghum. Same deal with the almond flour. I subbed rice flour because I had a bag open and was looking for a more traditional banana bread texture, without the little chewy bits the Bob’s Red Mill almond flour would provide. Out of fear, I melted the coconut oil before measuring it. I have had some coconut oil baking disasters (hello, Babycakes) and melting it seems to be the accepted way to avoid these sorts of things. I added 3 bananas because I am too haphazard to use a measuring cup any more than I absolutely have to. I replaced brown sugar for white sugar because I had some open that I didn’t want it turning into a rock. Finally, (shudder) I made this a one-bowl recipe, mixing the wet and adding the dry right on top of it. No regrets.
by autumn on March 15, 2010
Make a new friend. Make a few. You’re going to need them, unless you want to put away an entire pan of blondies. Not that I’d judge (see above).
I first made these for my friends who were coming from another borough to cook gluten-free with me. The boyfriend knows my secret baked-good calculus: the awesomeness of what I make for you is exponentially related to the number of boroughs you must traverse to get to me. Queens guilt.
While I’m talking about math, two things: a) I’m not that great at making friends. b) I’ve made these twice in the past month. Did I ever tell you I took logic in college? If a and b then I’ve eaten a lot of blondies recently. I got plenty, but didn’t polish off two pans. Though, for the record, I wouldn’t back down from that challenge.
The thing about these is you’ll seek out people to share them with. You’ll evangelize about these blondies. I brought them to a food swap/twitter meet-up in another borough. On a Sunday. When the A train was running local. Did I mention I’m not good at making friends?
Worth it.
But if this was my recipe, I wouldn’t be evangelizing. I would just be bragging. There’s this great blog called the Casual Baker with a great recipe for Peanut Butter Blondies with Butterscotch Ganache. I barely changed anything, save for subbing (1:1) Bob’s Red Mill all purpose gluten-free mix+ 3/4 t. xanthan gum for the gluten-y flour. In my neck of the woods, the most readily available butterscotch chips (Nestle!) have gluten, but luckily the (Nestle!) white chocolate chips are just fine. I opted out of the ganache and mixed 1 cup right into the batter.
You’ll make friends whether you like it or not.
by autumn on February 27, 2010
I eat plenty of things that are kind of embarrassing. Things that, in certain circles, I may be reluctant to proclaim my love for because they’re a little… strange. Toast with butter, sriracha, and black lava sea salt comes to mind. OR! Things that I would rather not broadcast the frequency with which I indulge because I am worried you would get all judgy. This + this= this.
Then there’s these carrot pickles from David Lebovitz. I have been making them for six months straight. They don’t last a week around me and I’m not ashamed. I started making refrigerator pickles this summer because a) legit preserving scares me b) my CSA meant veg overload. My first refrigerator pickles were these from Instructables. I was skeptical, but (omg!) they tasted like pickles. I pickled peppers, just so I could say “pickled peppers.” And then there were carrots. When they’re in the market, I am repeatedly seduced by rainbow carrots, only to get them home and remember I really don’t like eating carrots. Carrot Soup is fine. Otherwise, I really just get bored with all the chewing. Carrot pickles solved all my problems.
I won’t reprint the recipe because I follow it (mostly!) exactly. I live by this amazing produce stand and bought my first daikon there last weekend. I asked twitter what to do with it and Julia said pickles. So instead of 1lb of carrots I used carrots+daikon to equal 1lb.
