A Japanese New Year's Treat of Pumpkin Mochi

Investigating naturally gluten-free foods is one way of dispensing with the frustrations of a GF diet. In Japan, there is a tradition of making mochi (pronounced mo-chee) during New Year's festivities, with families and neighbors gathering together to pound steamed glutinous rice (glutinous as in sticky, not full of gluten) in special stone mortars to make a mochi dough paste. This mochi dough is then rolled, molded and decorated into little cakes to eat and offer at Buddhist or Shinto altars.

Mochi has become wildly popular in Hawai'i as well, and there are a seemingly infinite ways of blending in various fruits, flavorings and other additions to make a beautiful rainbow of mochi. It is easy to make mochi using a box of sweet rice flour, which I have found locally in natural foods stores and Asian markets marketed as Mochiko by Koda Farms. I first saw mention of mochi when I read Victoria Abbott Riccardi's book "Untangling My Chopsticks: a Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto" and then checked out blueberry and cherry mochi recipes on The Food Librarian's blog, as well as this cool Pumpkin Mochi variation on Kirbie's Cravings.

Since I have lots of pumpkin puree in my freezer from the mammoth harvest of Rouge Vif d'Etampes pumpkins from our 2009 garden, I thawed some out and made up a big batch of these moist little rice cakes. I spiced them up with some allspice, nutmeg and cloves and they were a hit with the family. They made such a big batch, that I froze some. They are very moist and have sugar in them, so be careful to eat them quickly (I had a few that got moldy by the third day and the dog enjoyed them).

This Pumpkin Mochi is my submission to Grow Your Own, a blog event started by Andrea's Recipes and hosted this month by House of Annie, which celebrates home grown and foraged foods from around the world.

I am delighted to have discovered this Japanese delicacy and will be experimenting with other flavors in the future for sure.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Together in a Cookie: Pass the Milk!

Hubby had the hankering for some peanut butter cookies and I was happy to oblige my sweetheart on Valentine's Day. I used the recipe for gluten-free peanut butter cookies from Elizabeth Barbone's wonderful Easy Gluten-Free Baking cookbook (you can test drive some of her recipes at her website but this PBJ cookie recipe is from her book) and decided on the variation she noted at the bottom of the recipe page to make a thumbprint in the middle of each cookie and fill with a smidgen of jelly (I used strawberry jam). What I didn't notice with the first hot batch was her admonition that the hot jammy centers can cause burns, so if you make this luscious cookies, don't shove one in your mouth before it thoroughly cools!

I made my batch of PBJ valentines using some of the products seen below for my baking, courtesy of samples sent by the Earth Balance company. The peanut butters and butter substitutes worked perfectly in the cookie recipe and it was nice to make a sweet indulgence with a light hand on the indulgence part. The Earth Balance products are not only gluten-free, but vegan, lactose-free, and casein-free, so you can use them to cook for all your friends and family with special dietary needs. Here in Saratoga County, New York, I could only find the Earth Balance buttery sticks and spread in my local markets, but hopefully the creamy and chunky peanut butters will be on local shelves soon.


I am not as fancy a dessert chef as I would like, but those of you with mad pastry chef skills might like to try the Earth Balance recipes for Vegan Espresso Brownie Sundaes with Fudge Sauce and Vegan Lemon Cheesecake with Agave Glazed Berries.

The Earth Balance Peanut Butters get a thumbs up from the Crispy Crew in our peanut butter sandwiches (and straight from the spoon too). The peanut butters are lightly sweetened with agave, rather than sugar or corn syrup, like some other brands, so the mother in me approves heartily. I have bought the Earth Balance buttery spread before because we like it as an alternative to butter for our bread, but it was nice to play around with the other Earth Balance products and I would recommend them to others.

Potato & Rosemary Pizza

I had a few queries about the Potato Pizza I described in my last Crispy Cook post, so I will share the kitchen wisdom of my pizza maestro, husband Dan, in that regard. After all the many steps in making the perfect thin and CRISPY gluten-free crust, the topping for a Potato & Rosemary Pizza is ridiculously easy. Here's what Dan does:

Potato & Rosemary Pizza

1 prepared pizza crust (see this post)
1 lb. Russet potatoes, peeled and sliced very thin
1 Tbsp. fresh or 1 tsp. dried rosemary, crumbled
4 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Fresh ground black pepper
1/3 cup grated Parmesan

Dan slices the potatoes thinly using the slot on the side of our box grater. You want the potato slices to be about 1/4 inch thick. A mandoline makes them too paper thin, but the box grater works just great. Dan then soaks the potato slices in cold water, both to keep them from oxidizing brown and to wash off some of the starch. Then he drains and pats the potato slices dry when the other ingredients are chopped, and the pizza crust has gone through the first baking stage and is ready to receive its bountiful toppings.

Arrange potato slices on pizza crust so that they are slightly overlapping at the edges. Sprinkle with chopped garlic, season with salt and pepper and brush on a little olive oil over all. Sprinkle with a final coating of Parmesan and then bake your pizza in a preheated 375 degree F oven for 15-20 minutes.

We saw a potato pizza being made on one of Martha Stewart's shows last year and experimented with the basic idea a few times before coming up with this version. You'd think having two starches in one recipe would be too heavy, but it's actually a nice combination and not too rich.

Mangia!

Perfecting the Gluten-Free Pizza Crust

It's been four years (and 400 posts!) of living gluten-free and Dan has finally perfected his pizza crust. He's the head baker in the house (I just dabble at it) and loves to tinker around with recipes for gf rolls and breads. After many, many tweaks and taste testings, the recipe below gives the latest, greatest version of a chewy, thin pizza crust, just like Dan used to chomp on in his carefree, pre-celiac days.

Many of the other pizza crust recipes we've tried either come out crumbly and dry, like that Chef Boyardee pizza from the box mix we thought was the ultimate in deliciousness in our Seventies-era youth OR you get a big, spongy "Sicilian" type pizza crust, which is not to our family's taste. We like our pizza thin and CRISPY, of course. The better to slap toppings on, we say! Here's a picture of a delicious rosemary-dusted potato pizza:



Since we love pizza so much and since we are eating gourmet GF meals at home rather than dining out 99% of the time, we invested in a wooden pizza paddle, a pizza stone and special pizza pans. The pizza stone really seems to get the pizza crust to crisp up over our pizza experiments just using the pizza pans alone or trying pizza on a cookie sheet.

Dan starts out with 2 cups of the flour mixture called for by the late GF legend, Bette Hagman, in her wonderful bread bible, "The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread" (NY: Henry Holt, 2000). He makes this up in 12 cup batches and we keep this is a separate canister in the pantry so we can make up rolls, bread and pizza crusts more quickly at dinnertime. Dan adds potato flour for a springier texture in his pizza crusts.

Here's proportions in the French Bread/Pizza Flour Mix:

7 cups white rice flour (we buy rice flour and tapioca starch in bulk at an Asian supermarket)
5 cups tapioca starch
1/4 cup xanthan gum
4 (7 gram) pkts. unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup Egg Replacer (bought at health food store)
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup potato flour (not potato starch, we buy Bob's Red Mill at supermarket)

Dan's GF Pizza Crust

This recipe makes one pizza crust (about 12 inch diameter), though Dan usually makes two at a time and then pops one in the freezer for later. They thaw beautifully.

2 cups French Bread/Pizza flour mix
2 Tbsp. baking powder
2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup dry milk powder

3/4 cup gluten-free beer
3/4 cup water
1 Tbsp. cider vinegar
1 Tbsp. olive oil

Shortening
Cornmeal

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Combine dry ingredients. Combine wet ingredients separately. Slowly add wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until thoroughly combined into a soft dough.

Generously grease 16 inch pizza pan with shortening. Slap on dough and pat it into shape with a fork. Finish spreading dough to the edges of the pan with your greased hands.

Bake pizza crust at 375 degrees F. for about 15 minutes, or until it is no longer wet on the bottom. Dust pizza paddle with cornmeal and slide pizza crust off the pizza pan onto the paddle.

Place pizza stone in oven on a lower rack. Turn up oven heat to 475 degrees F. Add your pizza toppings (a marinara sauce well-seasoned with oregano and garlic and topped with shredded mozzarella is our usual go-to topping, but the aforementioned potato pizza with very thin slices of potato, chunks of garlic and rosemary is a close second. And when the zucchinis are flying out of the garden faster than we can harvest them, zucchini pizza (see below) rules!).

Place pizza onto pizza stone. Cook until cheese melts and crust reaches desired crispiness, about 8-10 minutes. Keep an eye on your oven, though, as this high temperature can easily scorch all your hard work if you overcook it.

Makes one 12 inch pizza.

Pastry-Wrapped Brie, Gluten-Free? Mais, Oui!

Francophilia reigns in our house. I took French lessons from junior high through my college years and revel in the sensuous sound of the French language whenever we visit Montreal or hear French Canadian visitors here in upstate New York. Dan and I honeymooned in Quebec City and my two daughters have picked French as their second language. Someday, I hope to cross the pond for an extended visit, but until then, armchair travels with books will have to suffice.

Peter Mayle's "French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew" is the current book pick for Cook the Books, the virtual book club for foodies, and like Mayle's other books about his adopted home, the writing captures his bemused impressions of the French landscape, the food, and the people. The Provence books capture life as an expat Englishman trying to adapt to a life where one's central priorities and the pace of life itself are quite different. And historic home renovations are not accomplished in a day, a month, a year, perhaps several years.



"French Lessons" is entirely about the French preoccupation with one's meals and the various food festivals that Mayle explores throughout France. We travel to many regions to celebrate frog legs, truffles, snails, spa cuisine, the sublime chickens of Bresse, Livarot cheese and other delights, and in my favorite chapter, "A Connoisseur's Marathon", are treated to the spectacle of the Marathon du Medoc, a long-distance road race in which 8,000 participants run 26 miles through the vineyards of Bordeaux. Only one quarter of the runners aspire to seriousness in the race (though the winner receives his/her weight in wine); the others are there to have fun, clad in crazy, cross-dressing costumes, and helping themselves to superior wines and gourmet snacks at civilized refreshment stations along the race course.

It is these kinds of vivid scenes, and Mayle's genial, self-deprecating sense of humor that made the book such an enjoyable read. Mayle describes his joy in reading a used book treasure that his wife bought him, "L'Escargot Comestible", in researching his upcoming snail festival sojourn:

"The text was scholarly in tone, and there were no unnecessary typographical flourishes. In other words, it was a serious piece of work, designed to inform students and breeders of the mollusk, rather than entertain snail diletantes like me. But serious work though it was, a Frenchman had written it. And so, inevitably, there was a recipe section".

I read "French Lessons" last month and it inspired me to attend two local food festivals in our area, Bennington's Garlic Festival and the Washington County Cheese Tour. After all that luscious cheese sampling, I wanted to try my hand at baking some pastry-wrapped Brie for a savory appetizer course for the mister and me one romantic day when both girls were out with their friends. Doing so when gluten is not your enemy is easy enough. Wrap one piece of store-bought Brie in some thawed store-bought puff pastry, heat it all up in the oven and then attack the gooey result with gusto. Alas, the gluten-free diner must approach this simple culinary project with the perusing of many wheatless pastry recipes and then attempt to cover their cheese without the whole crumbling, flopping over and sticking to rolling pins and countertops.

Surprisingly, I couldn't find a recipe online or in my arsenal of cookbooks for a gluten-free pastry-wrapped Brie. Clearly, there are unchartered waters here.

It was easy enough to find a luscious wedge of herb-infused Brie at the supermarket, but the pastry, which would have to be flaky when cooked and not outlandishly hard to maneuver around my cheese when raw, was a stumper. Eventually, I came upon this recipe on a cooking message board which seemed like a good launching point, though the pastry recipe was intended to house an appalling amalgam of kidney beans, maple syrup and raisins. I had a bag of white bean flour in my pantry and have made some garbanzo bean pie pastry in the past with success, so I set to it, with some tweaking here and there. Most notably, the pastry recipe called for 3/4 cup of cold water, which would have made an unworkable slurry rather than a good, workable crust, so that must be a misprint.

The experiment ended up a success (though the pumpkin pie I made with the remainder of my crust tasted a little too beany) and I would even have been proud to share a bite with Mayle himself. Here's how to make:

Baked Brie in a Savory Gluten-Free Pastry Crust

1 (1/2 lb.) wedge of Brie (I used President's double creme Herb Brie)

1-1/2 cups white bean flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 Tbsp. cornmeal
1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt

6 Tbsp. shortening (I used Butter-Flavored Crisco)

1 egg, separated
1/4 cup cold water


Let Brie sit, unwrapped, at room temperature, while you make your pastry.

Mix together white bean flour, cornstarch, cornmeal, baking powder and salt in mixing bowl. Cut in shortening with pastry blender until it resembles coarse crumbs. Mix together egg white and water. Add enough water to pastry mix to make it a smooth, workable dough. You may not need to add all this liquid.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Maneuver pastry into a ball and then squash it down between two sheets of plastic wrap. Parchment paper will not do, as the dough will stick to it and cause inappropriate amounts of cursing in the kitchen.

Roll dough out to about 1/4 inch thickness in a roughly rectangular shape. Peel off top layer of plastic wrap and then play your wedge of Brie, top side down, over your pastry. Wrap your cheese in the pastry, pressing down the seams to make your pastry case as hole-free as possible.

(I found that this pastry was very workable, kind of like working with fondant or that old childhood standby, Play Doh. The heat from your hands makes the pastry seams come together very easily and the one advantage that this pastry has over regular wheat flour pastry, is that you can work it over and over without the dough becoming tough. Without the tough strands of gluten, you can keep handling your doughy mistakes over a long period of time. The dough smells very strongly of raw beans when raw, but it will change to a much pleasanter aroma when baked.)

Grease a glass pie pan with some extra shortening and then flop your pastry-wrapped cheese right-side up in your pan. Again, the dough is eminently pliable, so you can adorn it with fancy pastry scraps. I gave my Brie a pastry boutonniere for a little extra Gallic elegance.

Whisk up your remaining egg yolk and brush over the top of your pastry. You are now ready to bake your Brie!



Bake your production at 375 degrees F. for 15-20 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown and melting Brie has popped the seams of its pastry shell.

Makes 4-6 appetizer servings.

We ate this for Second Breakfast on a rainy mid-morning, but I imagine that this luscious cheese experiment would be wonderful as a romantic meal paired with grapes, pears and a bottle of lusty red wine.

Note: This makes enough pastry to wrap 3 wedges of Brie. I used the remainder of my pastry to make a 9 inch pastry shell for a pumpkin pie (the crust edges burned so next time I would cover the rim with foil), but I would imagine one could freeze the remainder into pastry logs to freeze and roll out another day.



Please join in the fun when our current Cook the Books hostess, Jo of Food Junkie, Not Junk Food, rounds up the blog posts about "French Lessons" and the foods we cook up inspired by our reading. The deadline to do so is November 8th, and then it will be my turn to host this fun, bimonthly biblio-foodie fiesta. Anyone can participate in Cook the Books as long as they read the selected book and blog about it and some edible inspiration.

I Heart Pumpkin: A Multiplicity of Gluten-Free Pumpkin Treats

I Heart Pumpkin. What a great bounty from the old pumpkin patch this year. I planted four hills of Rouge Vif d'Etampes, a French heirloom variety this year, and even after giving away pumpkins to various friends, I still have ten pumpkins adorning my kitchen floor (we have had our killing frost so my babies have to come inside).



After last weekend's pumpkin bonanza, where I got 16 cups of pumpkin puree out of a 30 lb. beauty that was almost as big as Cinderella's Coach, I cooked up a big batch of pumpkin treats for my family.

There was a moist and spicy loaf of Pumpkin Bread, which I studded with a cup of golden raisins:



And a couple of Impossible Pumpkin Pies using Susan the Fat-Free Vegan's great recipe. You mix up all the ingredients in a blender or food processor and then pour it into your pie pans. This pie comes out very custardy and makes its own crust on the bottom. No foolin' around with rolling out crumbling gluten-free crusts between waxed paper and then cursing while attempting to transition them into the pie pans.



Then came the roasted pumpkin seeds. They were so ridiculously easy to make, I wonder why I never tried them out. Here's what I did:

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Rinse and remove pumpkin flesh from seeds. Pat dry.

Toss with corn oil to coat, sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Place on lightly oiled cookie sheet and toast in a preheated 300 degree F oven and toast, stirring every 15 minutes, for about an hour.

Voila! A nutty, healthy treat!



This trio of pumpkin delights is being sent over to Life, Gluten Free, who is the current hostess of Go Ahead, Honey, It's Gluten Free, a monthly blog event started by Naomi at Straight into Bed Cakefree and Dried. The theme of this month's round is "Pumpkin Treats" and I look forward to the roundup for other autumnal cooking ideas as nine other pumpkins await me in the Crispy Kitchen. Life, Gluten Free will post the roundup after the end of October, so do join me in stopping by for a tasteful peek at some more pumpkin fun.

Gluten-Free Baking with Flour Arrangements

For this month's round of Adopt A Gluten Free Blogger I went for some baking instruction from Sophie of Flour Arrangements. She's a real adventuress in the kitchen and knows how to bake, which is something that particularly flummoxes me. I end up getting distracted in the assemblage of the myriad flours and leavening agents need for baking up GF things and usually end up missing a step or putting in a tablespoon of something when a teaspoon is called for. Clearly, I need more guidance in the kitchen to hone my less than "mad" GF baking skills.

So Sophie was my Baking Guide last weekend when I attempted two of her wonderful recipes. Both came out as luscious as advertised on her beautifully-designed and photographed blog and my GF husband was delighted to have two new treats to devour.

First on my agenda was Sophie's Cracker Recipe. I had some success in making some crispy Sesame-Rosemary Crackers and Chickpea Hearts in the past, but these looked thicker and had a nice combination of flavors, so dug out my rolling pin, bought a fresh roll of parchment paper and popped out a batch of Sophie's Crackers.



They reminded me of Wheat Thins in texture and had a nice hearty flavor. I made up a batch of Vegetable Cream Cheese to spread on them (I whizzed up 1 pkg. softened cream cheese with a few radishes, celery stalks, carrots, chives, dill, and part of a red bell pepper) and Dan tucked into the cracker stash with gusto. They are also not so fragile as to buckle under the heft of a slice of cheese.

Bursting with self-esteem over the success of this first Flour Arrangement project, I decided to tackle a yeast bread. I was enamored of her photo of her Gluten-Free Honey and Flax Yeast Rolls and liked incorporating the fiber-rich powers of the flax seed, so I devoted an afternoon to the coddling of these yeasty babies. Man, they were good! Once again, with Sophie's detailed instructions, I produced a winning recipe. The rolls were great warm out of the oven and nuked up the next day in the microwave (I froze the immediately uneaten rolls in a bag in the freezer so they wouldn't dry out). Next time, it will be a double batch!

The rolls are soft, yet chewy, with a nice crunch from the flax seeds and a honey-tinged, nutty flavor. It's a time consuming recipe, as most yeasty breads are, and one does need a full gluten-free pantry supply as you need 1/4 of this and a 1/4 cup of that, but the end result is really lovely. A lot of gluten-free baked goods are somewhat on the white and fluffy side, and this was a hearty and substantial roll that my husband particularly enjoyed. He misses the "chew" of glutenous breads and these rolls gave his choppers the right amount of workout.



Sophie's blog is a visual delight to peruse. It has a clean layout, appealing graphics, and widgets that pop up and allow you to easily print out recipes. Her writing style is funny and engaging, and it is easy to lose track of time while browsing her posts, like standing in front of a great big GF bakery showcase.

Sea at the Book of Yum is the founder and current host of this edition of the Adopt a Gluten-Free Blogger Event. Check back during the first week of October to see the roundup of all the other GF blogger adoptions and to see how we took our test drives with their recipes.

Confections of a Closet Master Baker: A Biblio-Culinary Review and a GF Cheescake

Confections of a Closet Master Baker: A Memoir, by Gesine Bullock-Prado (NY: Broadway Books, 2009)

This is an engaging and lively account of the author's transformation from unhappy Hollywood film producer to happy, flour-dusted baker in America's smallest and funkiest state Capitol, Montpelier, Vermont. I was delighted to receive an advance copy of this book through the good folks at A Blithe Palate and Dispensing Happiness, who are cohosting The Edible Word event, wherein participants read a book, cook up some inspirational edibles and then blog about it.

Gesine (rhymes with subpoena) had an interesting upbringing as the daughter of an Alabama dad and German opera-singer mom. During her preschool years, she and big sister Sandy were reared in Germany, looked after by a collection of maternal relatives and nannies while mom was onstage. When Gesine was five years old, they moved to the U.S. and Mom (Mutti) seems to have retired from singing to rule the family with a strict regimen of health-conscious foods. No more Continental sweets unless it was a holiday or birthday. Instead, it was "a dietary lock-down of whole-grain, tofu-laced, sucrose-free hell".



Gesine grew up and moved in with Sandy, a struggling actress, to share an apartment while she went to law school. Sandy, whom the rest of the world knows as Sandra Bullock, achieved star status during this time and after passing the bar and going to a few dispiriting legal job interviews, Gesine signed up to work in her sister's new production company.

While working with the ebullient Sandy and meeting her future artist husband, Ray, helped "dull the pervasive ick of work", Gesine was still unfulfilled by her work, filling her free time with a frenzy of recreational baking. She bakes and bakes and bakes her way through various pastry arts until finally, while helping nurse Mutti through a terminal illness, she realizes that she is happiest in the kitchen. She and Ray chuck the Southern California lifestyle, pack up their fuzzy dogs and relocate to Vermont, where Gesine plans to attend culinary school.

A huge mail order for her specialty French almond-based macaroons that she had continued to pack off to Sandy and friends puts school on hold while she finds a commercial-scale kitchen in which to crank these out. Soon after, she and Ray buy a little building in the outer orbit of Montpelier and a bakery is born. The rest of the book details her daily adventures in catering to various customers, developing new recipes, and enjoying her new lifestyle. As a small business owner myself, I especially enjoyed the war stories about the mix of cranks and angels one gets in the shop each day. Gesine is a very descriptive and witty writer and can quickly place the reader right into each of the scenes she describes, whether it is sharing a cup of coffee and a pastry at tea-time with her Oma in Germany or performing the balletic pre-dawn bakery routines in a dark, chilly winter kitchen. Husband Ray Prado's delightful illustrations further season the book and they are humorous and affectionate portraits of scenes in Gesine's world.

Gesine offers a generous serving of recipes throughout the pages, and one can also find some recipes, further writing and even a video about how to make Golden Eggs on her blog, where you can absorb even more of her sparkling and sarcastic wit while she whisks and pours. Alas, it is at her blog, that I found out that Gesine's bakery is now shuttered while she is on hiatus working on other projects, so one cannot make a pilgrimage to Montpelier to sample some of her wonderful creations. (Montpelier is a fun town to visit, nonetheless, and I offer a little tour of bookshops and restaurants here).

Though I am more partial to the savory end of cooking, I really enjoyed this trawl through a baker's life. My only negative comment is that I found the many descriptions of Gesine's late mother disturbing. She strides about the book, clad in leather pants, stilettos and a Foxy Lady belt buckle at school functions (okay that's embarrassing but forgivable), seems to always have a critical comment for Gesine on her tongue, noting things down in her "endless ledger of unforgivable venialities" (that seems pretty harsh), and then humiliates her daughter in a school cafeteria scene that made my stomach clench (Mutti Dearest crossed the line there). I realize everyone's parenting styles are different, but reading these scenes made me uncomfortable. Gesine would always counter these maternal descriptions with a sentence about how much she missed her mom, but they added jarring notes to an otherwise interesting foodie memoir.

It was easy enough to select a recipe that I wanted to make from the book. I ran down the list to my dear husband, and without hesitation he chose the Espresso Cheesecake. Of course, Gesine's recipe would require some fiddling to make this gluten-free for our household. Thankfully, cheesecakes don't require much flour and the architectonics of gluten molecules to make them stand up. Mercifully too, my local supermarket stocks the gluten-free chocolate sandwich cookies needed for the crust so I didn't have to spend three days on this dessert project.



I got 2 cups of cookie crumbs ground up finely in my food processor and then added the 2 sticks of butter called for in Gesine's recipe. Maybe 2 cups of non-GF Oreo-style cookies absorb much more oil than my cookies did, or perhaps there is a typo in the cookie crust recipe for the Espresso Cheesecake. I think 1/2 stick of butter might have sufficed. I had an oily, liquidy bunch of chocolate crumbs that would just slither through the springform pan, so I ground up the second 8 oz. package of GF chocolate cookies to make another 2 cups of crumbs which I mixed in for the crust. Then I spooned up as much butter as I could off the top of the mixture, spooned it into the bottom of my pan and blotted up as much excess butter as I could with paper towels. In it went to bake (I put a foil lining on my cookie sheet underneath to absorb more oily excess) and then I blotted again as it cooled.

The rest of the recipe went smoothly and my family enjoyed this not-too-sweet, pleasantly caffeinated cheesecake just fine (I also subbed in white rice flour for the wheat flour called for in the filling). It is particularly nice with a cup of coffee on the side and garnished with some chocolate-covered coffee beans for extra Javanation.

I am looking forward to the roundup of book reviews and blog posts about this book on the Edible Word, which will be posted later this week. Thank you to the sweet hosts for the book and thank you to Gesine for a great read. I hope the author will continue to explore baking and will write some other books for us to enjoy about her creative adventures.

Let's Cook the Books with Some Parkin in Honor of Elizabeth Goudge

A spot of tea and a spicy bite of parkin, an oat-laden gingerbread from England's Yorkshire country made our windy and cool (some might say parky) summer afternoon extra special. I made this English tea-time treat in celebration of Elizabeth Goudge's well-loved juvenile fantasy book, "The Little White Horse". This book is the current book selection for Cook the Books, the online foodie book club that was started last year by me and my bibliophilic blogger friends Johanna of Food Junkie, Not Junk Food and Deb of Kahakai Kitchen.

For each bimonthly round of Cook the Books we have chosen a book to read and then ruminate upon for culinary and bloggity inspiration. We have previously read and blogged about Sicilian cuisine for Lily Prior's novel "La Cucina", explored Middle Eastern food for Diana Abu-Jaber's delicious memoir "The Language of Baklava", and cooked up delights for bad boy chef Anthony Bourdain's book "Kitchen Confidential".



It was my turn to host Cook the Books again and so I thought to change things up a bit. Goudge's book, "The Little White Horse", is our first foray into the world of juvenile literature and fantasy and I found it to be a delightful escape into a world of coziness and comfort. Goudge's writing reminded me of my youthful devouring of George Macdonald's Curdie series and of reading C.S. Lewis' wonderful Narnia series as an older reader. Having similarly swallowed the Harry Potter series whole in reading them to my children (and reading ahead) I can see where author J.K. Rowling drew inspiration from Goudge's book, self-described by Rowling as one of her childhood favorites, for the mouthwatering Hogwarts feast scenes and tremendously sensual descriptions of train carts full of a vast array of Wizard sweets. I had thought that these feast scenes and colorful, descriptive character names were straight out of Charles Dickens' canon, but after reading "The Little White Horse", I sensed the inspiration from this jewel of a novel and imagined the young J.K. snuggled up with it, reading and re-reading it during wintry Scottish blizzards.

The litany of English baked goods which emanated from Moonacre Manor's castle kitchen was what most intrigued me about Goudge's book. I enjoying researching fairy cakes, rock cakes, syllabub, and other tea-time treats. I decided to make a Saffron Cake, the culinary history of which is amply described in this blog post. I had some saffron in the spice cupboard which was fairly well aged from having been purchased for some special recipe of distant memory, as well as some leftover rosewater from another kitchen experiment, so I thought I would take a stab at this recipe for Golden Saffron Cake.



Alas, in my attempts to convert this recipe to a gluten-free version and in perhaps having elderly saffron threads, my Golden Saffron Cake, though rather smart looking, turned out to be medicinal tasting and in my husband's words, like something that had been stashed away in Aunt Tilda's drawer of undergarments, next to the packet of moth balls. I don't even want to think about an elder Auntie's niceties when I'm noshing away. Or at all, for that matter. The cake had a lovely crumb, but it was inedible, and its golden remainder was handed over to our trusty kitchen hound, Martha, for disposal. So back to the Crispy Kitchen I went to figure out something else for the Cook the Books post.

End of the school year madness got in the way, however. With two active teenagers around, there were music concerts to attend, softball and soccer games to squire the young 'uns to, academic awards ceremonies (not to boast (too much) but those Jag girls are brains, don't you know), sports banquets, gardens to plant, etc., etc. So my culinary artistry was stymied by various time constraints, so I do beg everyone's pardon who was waiting for the Cook the Books hostess to get with it and post already.

At last I found some unencumbered hours to spend by my oven, and decided to whip up some parkin. Parkin is a chewy gingerbread traditionally made in England's North Country with oats and plenty of ground ginger, then stashed away to ripen until it is sticky and moist. Again, I had to make my Parkin gluten-free, so I made a few adjustments to this recipe, and we enjoyed a square of parkin recently with a nice cuppa and a dollop of buttercream to fuel us up for an afternoon of yard work.



Here's my adaptation of a hearty Yorkshire Parkin recipe:

2-1/4 sticks butter, room temperature
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup corn syrup (golden syrup is most traditional)

4 cups gluten-free flour (I used a mixture of sorghum, brown rice and leftover packaged GF flour mix)
1 tsp. baking soda
1 Tbsp. ground ginger
3 cups gluten-free rolled oats, whizzed in food processor until coarsely ground
1 tsp. xanthan gum

3 eggs, beaten

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease a 9 x 12 glass baking dish with shortening or butter.

In saucepan, heat together butter, brown sugar, molasses and corn syrup until butter is melted and sugar grains are smooth.

Stir together flour, baking soda, ginger, ground oats and xanthan gum. Add in melted butter-syrup mixture and stir until thoroughly mixed.

Stir in beaten eggs and blend thoroughly.

Pour into prepared baking dish.

Bake 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center of pan comes out clean.

Cool completely in pan before serving. Ideally, parkin can be aged at room temperature in a closed tin least three days to one week before consuming, so that it has a chance to ripen and soften.

Makes about 15 squares of parkin.

I am delighted to report that Deborah Gaudin, of the British Elizabeth Goudge Society, will be judging the submissions for this round of Cook the Books after the June 26 deadline and can't wait to see what everyone has come up with. Be sure to check back at the Cook the Books blog to see our roundup of tasty "Little White Horse" inspirations.

Grandma Trudie's Southern Apple Cake Made Gluten-Free

I was lucky enough to have three loving grandmas when I was younger: my mom's mom, my dad's mom and my stepfather's mom. All three were interesting, sweet women, and I miss them all now that they are gone. Each one had their own interests and kitchen passions.



My mom's mom was a Depression baby who collected cookbooks and loved to bake and I have many recipes in my card file from her kitchen experiments. Each summer we would plan lovely picnics where we would pick wildflowers, collect abandoned balls from a nearby public tennis court, and feast on deviled eggs, her special iced tea and her buttery cupcakes.

My dad's mom was a butcher's daughter and was known for her slow-cooked roasts and chops and for having an electric coffee percolator snuffling away in the corner of the kitchen when her best friend would come over for an afternoon of card playing and conversation. She was incredibly well-read and could polish off the Sunday crossword puzzle in expert time. In pen, no less.

My step-grandmother, Grandma Trudie, lived far away in Atlanta, Georgia, but would come up on the train for a week or two each year toting heavy suitcases filled with cans of my stepdad's favorite breakfast sausage and boxes of Nabisco cookies from the factory where she worked. She was a fantastic Southern cook and as a teen foodie I pestered her to explain how she made her Brunswick Stew, potato salad, and her moist apple cake. She was an intuitive cook that had most of her recipes in her head, so she'd smile when I'd ask her for measurements.

"Oh, I don't know, sugar", she'd say, "add about enough flour until the batter is right."

I'd knit my brow with youthful puzzlement and write something down to approximate what I saw her doing.

I had a hankering for my Grandma Trudie's Apple Cake last week and pulled out the framework of the recipe I had. It called for a small ("you know, small") bag of sweetened flaked coconut, but as I have a coconut-phobe in the house, I left it out. I also made adjustments to this treasured recipe to accommodate our gluten-free needs, so feel free to substitute wheat flour or your favorite GF flour blend).




Grandma Trudie's Southern Apple Cake

1-1/2 cups corn oil
1-1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 large eggs

3 cups GF flour (I used a blend of 1 cup garbanzo bean flour and 2 cups
amaranth flour to use up some bags in the pantry; later used mix of sorghum, brown rice and white rice flours)
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. xanthan gums

5 medium apples, peeled, cored and roughly chopped
1 cup chopped walnuts
2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup sweetened flaked coconut (optional)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Grease and flour a 10 inch bundt pan.

Combine oil, sugar and brown sugar and blend until smooth. Beat eggs
in, one at a time, making sure batter is smooth after each addition.

Blend together dry ingredients: flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, baking soda
and salt. Gradually add to wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

Add in apples, walnuts and vanilla and mix until blended. Batter should be wet. Spoon into
prepared pan.

Bake for 1-1/2 hours, or until a skewer or toothpick inserted into
cake comes out clean. Cool in pan 10-15 minutes.

Then invert onto plate and then invert onto cooling rack.

You could glaze it, but Grandma Trudie always just served it plain and it would disappear quickly. I sprinkled a little powdered sugar on top just to make it blogworthy.

*I made this again with a cider reduction glaze that was outstanding. Cook 2 cups cider in pan until reduced to 1/2 cup. Watch carefully, or the burned pan will have to be thrown out. Add in enough confectioner's sugar to make stiff glaze (about 2 cups). Drizzle over cake when it has cooled completely. Let sit an hour or so to stiffen up.

This recipe will be submitted to a new blogging event: Family Recipes: Memories of Family, Food and Fun, which is being hosted by my fellow upstate New York foodie, The Life and Loves of Grumpy's Honeybunch. This new event concentrates of family recipes, and this one sure brings back some happy memories of my Grandma Trudie. There's still time to join in the fun, as the deadline for this nostalgic event is May 23rd.

Mojito Cupcakes, Gluten-Free, Boozy Little Bites

Ever since last summer when I whipped up a batch of Brii's Mint Sugar, I've been thinking about making my favorite cocktail into a GF cupcake sprinkled with some of this sparkling, magical substance. I've put Mint Sugar into lots of cups of hot tea this winter, but never got to making those cupcake cuties until yesterday.


It is a retro-baking concept to infuse cakes with the flavors of mixed drinks and I am partial to lime, mint and rum in their separate incarnations. With all three involved, it's a Mojito party! So I was determined to research this cocktail cake concept. A lot of these cakes were concocted of cake mixes and flavored Jello packets, poked when cooled and saturated with flavored glazes, but I was going for more of a minty fresh and aromatic cupcake and of course, I wanted to cap my creation with sparkling Mint Sugar.

Cooking with mint is a balancing act. Too much mint and you get that toothpaste taste; too little and you don't get that herbal aromatic flavor. I also had to do this baking thing gluten-free, which is ALWAYS a challenge when I'm at kitchen helm. I have to rein in my riffing impulses and I'm easily distracted, so more often than not I am roused by the screech of my smoke detector when I get spin off onto another project.

Back to my baking success, however, since I gotta crow when something works out in my oven. I started with a basic yellow cake recipe from my favorite GF baking bible, Elizabeth Barbone's Easy Gluten-Free Baking cookbook. I have Elizabeth's original self-published cookbook, but a new spiral bound, color photo-infused revised version with even more recipes is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

I needed to get that Mojito trio of flavors in there, so I pressed some dried mint through a kitchen strainer, threw in a glug of dark rum and squeezed a lime. I am also more partial to the taste, texture and protein-rich aspects of sorghum flour blends than the white rice flour blends Elizabeth uses, so I went that route. And I thought I would skip the glaze that some cocktail-flavored cakes sport so my proposed cap of minty-lime frosting wouldn't slide off.

Holy Mojito! It worked! These little cupcakes came out great and were quite delicious, though I must say the adults in our household have consumed more of them than the kiddies. Mint must be more of a grownup flavor.

Here's my recipe for these minty little gems. And thanks again to my Italian blogging buddy Brii for sharing the wonderful recipe for Mint Sugar. I put up four half-pints of this magical Mint Sugar when my garden mint was overtaking its barrel and I'm glad I did!



MOJITO CUPCAKES (Gluten-Free)

1-1/2 cups sorghum flour
3/4 cup cornstarch
3/4 cup tapioca flour
2-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt

2/3 cup softened butter (10-2/3 Tbsps.)
1-1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs
1/2 cup dried mint, crumbled
1 shot dark rum
Juice of one lime

1 cup milk (fat-free, full milk, soy, etc.)

Mojito Frosting:

1 cup softened butter (2 sticks)
4 cups confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp. salt

1 shot dark rum
Juice of 1/2 lime

Mint Sugar and or 1 tsp. crumbled dried mint to garnish (if you have none, you can add 1/2 tsp. mint extract for the third key mint ingredient for this Mojito combo)

Slivers of lime peel for garnish


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix sorghum flour, cornstarch, tapioca flour, baking powder and salt together in medium mixing bowl.

In large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. A stand mixer will make quick work of this, but otherwise you can use a hand mixer or your own arm power and a wooden spoon.

Mix in eggs, lime juice, rum and 1/2 cup crumbled mint. Blend until smooth. Then alternate adding dry ingredients and milk gradually, blending in each addition until smooth.

Place cupcake liners in each of two 12-cup muffin or cupcake pans. Place in preheated oven and bake 18-20 minutes or until done. Cupcakes will be springy to the touch.

Remove from oven and place on racks to cool 5 minutes Pluck out cupcakes and let cool on rack until completely cool.

Meanwhile, whip up your Mojito Frosting:

Cream butter until fluffy. Add confectioner's sugar and salt and blend well. Add rum and lime juice and blend until creamy. Frost your Mojito cupcakes when they are thoroughly cooled. Garnish with mint sugar or crumbled mint and little lime peel twists, to keep up the cocktail theme.

Makes 24 Mojito Cupcakes.

I hope you get a chance to try these little beauties. If you don't bake gluten-free, perhaps they would be just as good made with regular flour, but I thought they had a lovely texture and a delicately tangy taste made with the sorghum blend.

I'm sending my cupcake photo over to Bee and Jai at Jugalbandi for their Click Wood event, running through the end of this month. I took a bunch of photos of these cupcakes in various settings in an attempt to get a good natural light shot even at these northern latitudes and the best one turned out to be the one I took outside in our open-ended garden shed, perched on a large wooden spool we scavenged from the side of the road last year. Click is a monthly food photography event which is featuring the theme of wood (also includes paper and wood products) so I imagine the roundup will feature a lovely array of warm, textural food photos. Be sure to stop back at Jugalbandi after the March 31st deadline to see!

Culinary Trip Around the World: Poland

Joan at Foodalogue came up with the brilliant idea to plan A Culinary Tour Around the World event both to sample the world's cuisines and to promote BloggerAid, a new consortium of food bloggers united to raise awareness and funds for world hunger. Last time, I traveled with Joan to Norway, where unfortunately I was blinded by the whiteness of the food, but now we journey to Poland, my husband's paternal grandfather's home land. While Dan never sampled much Polish food at home as his family, like many other immigrant families at that time, wanted to be as Americanized as possible, we do know a few Polish phrases like "Dah me boozhie" (Give me a kiss) that his grandfather passed on.

I had some cabbage (kapusti) in the vegetable crisper and thought I'd try some sauteeing it up with mushrooms and dill seed for some Polish flavor. The recipe turned out to be a toothsome one and I paired it with some plain steamed rice for a simple dinner, as I had a fancy Polish cake to pull out for dessert.



Sauteed Cabbage a la Polska

1 half head of green cabbage, core removed and chopped coarsely
1/2 lb. mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
4 Tbsp. butter
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tsp. dill seed

Melt butter in large skillet. Add mushrooms and saute, stirring occasionally, 5 minutes. Add cabbage and saute, stirring, another 10-15 minutes, until softened, adding water if skillet becomes dry. Add dill seeds and season with salt and pepper to taste, and cook, covered, another 5 minutes to let cabbage steam up and become tender.

Serves 4 as a side dish.

Now, I had high hopes for my Polish dessert. I have a newly acquired cookbook, "Ultimate Cake" by Barbara Maher (NY: Dorling Kindersley, 1996), which, like the other DK publications, has clear photos and lots of them, to illustrate all different kinds of cakes and baking techniques. I was flipping through it and my caught on a Polish Coffee and Walnut Cake recipe which was virtually gluten-free, so I thought I would attempt making it, despite the fact that there were about a twenty different steps to its fabrication.

In the last book I read, Diana Abu-Jaber's "The Language of Baklava" (for the Cook the Books club), the author describes the great divide which separates cooks and bakers: "Cooks are dashing, improvisational, wayward, intuitive; bakers are measured, careful, rational, precise." I am a cook and when I tackle being a baker it takes great restraint in following instructions exactly, measuring precisely and not deviating on some cooking tangent. I was determined to make this complicated Polish treat without doing anything different other than subbing some gluten-free breadcrumbs for the tablespoon of bread crumbs called for in the recipe.

And so, with Ms. Maher's detailed cookbook instructions and lavish illustrations, I:

-Separated and whipped egg yolks and whites
-Prepared a Coffee Mousseline Buttercream Icing
-Made Simple Syrup and Coffee-Flavored Sugar Syrup
-Concocted Apricot Glaze
-Made Coffee Glace Icing
-Sliced a Cake into Layers

It took me the better part of two afternoons to do all these steps in my fabulous dessert and I enjoyed learning some new baking skills. However, this story ends badly at the very final step, when after brushing my split nut torte with apricot glaze and letting that dry, I attempted to "coax" my coffee glace icing over the top of my cake and down the sides. As much as I tried to coax this frosting over my cake, it kept bunching at the top and pulling at the glaze, which in turn, pulled at the top layer of crumbs from the cake. Granted, my cake was a little (alright, a lot) lumpier than the model cake in the cookbook photo, but this kept my Polish cake from becoming the gloriously beautiful dessert I had slaved for.

Nonetheless, my culinary Polska Palooza proved to be a hit with my family, as we all enjoyed the humble cabbage dish and ate my less-than-perfect cake, as it was still awesomely tasty.



I hope to join Joan on some of her other stops along her Culinary Tour of the World. Next up is Germany, which is another cuisine I'm not entirely familiar with, so I will have to go forth and research their traditions before attempting a Teutonic feast. One thing is for sure, I am not going to try any fancy cakes!

Savory Rice and Cheese Muffins

Most mornings, the Crispy cantina is kind of slow. I need two mugs of coffee before I am able to think clearly so the kids are used to grabbing a yogurt or some cereal for breakfast before school. If they want something more substantial, it is my Dear One, Dan, who cracks any eggs or goes near electrical appliances to whip up lumberjack breakfasts.

On weekends, however, I am more likely to be creeping about the kitchen in a post-caffeinated state and the other morning, when our daily snowfall started, I decided to whip up a batch of hot muffins. I had some leftover rice, some cheese and some of Carol Fenster's Bean Blend left from my holiday cooking baking projects to use up, so I came up with these lovely muffins:

Savory Rice and Cheese Muffins

2 cup bean flour mix (if you are not cooking gluten-free, use regular wheat flour and leave out the xanthan gum below)

2 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
1-1/4 tsp. xanthan gum

1 cup leftover cooked rice
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup grated cheese (I used Asiago)
2 tsp. cider vinegar
1 tsp. onion powder
5 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 egg, beaten lightly


Grease 12 cup muffin pan.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C)

Mix together dry ingredients.

In separate bowl, mix together milk, cider vinegar, oil and eggs. Mix into dry ingredients until everything is just blended. Add rice and cheese.

Pour into muffin cups. Bake for 25-30 minutes.

Delicious served hot with butter.

Store leftover muffins in an airtight container when cooled.

Makes 12 savory muffins.



I am sending a virtual batch of these delicious muffins off to Joelen's Culinary Adventures, where this month's Tasty Tools event features measuring cups and spoons, which were put to good use in this recipe. You can join in the fun by submitting a measuring tools recipe by the January 31st roundup over at Joelen's blog, where she is always cooking up a storm.

Sesame-Rosemary Crackers, Gluten-Free and Crispy!

With two teenagers in the house, the Crispy Cook has to constantly prepare and throw food at them in between working, driving them everywhere, nagging them to do things, buying them ever longer pairs of pants, and, oh, squeezing in a little bit of bloggery. My two kids don't have to eat gluten-free, but they constantly raid the stash of GF snacks I have set aside for their wheat-free dad. My youngest has a special affection for Nut Thins crackers and manages to ferret out these tasty snacks no matter where I try to hide them.

I figured I better get "cracking" on learning how to make my own gluten-free crackers for Dad so that we will always have a chance of having things to pair with cheese and spreads for a quickie dinner and for his beloved football playoffs. (Go Giants!). These crackers would be great to take to parties and on trips, and would absolutely make an easy and thoughtful homemade gift for a gluten-free friend or loved one.

The GF cracker recipe over at Lauren's Daring to Thrive was my initial starting point for my cracker research. I like her recipe because the flax seeds add a lot of fiber, which is usually deficient in my gluten-free baking (no whole wheat bran to add). Her recipe calls for almond meal, which I haven't yet added to my Brave New World of GF Flours, so I substituted in some finely ground pecans. And I wanted a Middle Eastern flavor combo for my plan to partner these crackers with some hummus, so I used rosemary and toasted sesame seeds. Thus, here is a variant of Lauren's excellent Gluten Free cracker recipe:


Sesame-Rosemary Crackers

1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/4 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup pecans, finely chopped (I used my food processor to make them finely ground, almost into a coarse meal)

1/4 cup flax seeds
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 cup sesame seeds

2 tsp. extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp. dried rosemary, finely chopped
1 tsp. cider vinegar


Toast sesame seeds until golden and fragrant, about 5 minutes in a toaster oven or hot oven. Watch carefully so that they don't burn.

Soak flax seeds in 1/4 cup warm water for about 15 minutes, or until they have swollen to absorb the water.

In a medium mixing bowl, blend together sorghum, tapioca, pecans and salt. Add flax seeds, olive oil, sesame seeds, rosemary and cider vinegar and mix into a ball of dough. If dough is too dry, add a tsp. or two of warm water to make dough ball stick together. Divide dough ball in half.

Place a sheet of parchment paper on your counter and place first dough ball on top. Cover with another sheet of parchment paper. Roll with rolling pin to rough rectangular shape to fit a cookie sheet. I rolled this out to a little under 1/4 inch thickness. Remove top sheet of parchment paper and place bottom parchment layer and dough on cookie sheet. Score crackers into serving size with sharp knife or pizza cutter (about 1/5 x 2.5 inches).



Bake at 400 degrees F for 10 minutes, or until slightly brown at edges. While first batch is baking, roll out your second cracker batch as above.

Makes about 60 crackers. Once cooled, store in airtight container to keep fresh.

We served these tasty crackers with hummus and this inaugural batch was scarfed up in one day, so I will have to double the recipe next time. They resemble the "Mary's Gone Crackers" brand that is available in our local supermarket Natural Foods aisle and are pleasantly nutty.




In addition to this Sesame-Rosemary Cracker and Lauren's original Crispy Cracker recipe, here are some other gluten-free cracker recipes you (and I) might like to try:


Goldfish Crackers from the Book of Yum

Chickpea Crackers from the Fat-Free Vegan (test-driven by the Crispy Cook here)

Savory Grain-Free Crackers from Karina's Kitchen

Herb Blend Gluten Free Crackers from Culinarty

Walnut Crackers from Elana's Pantry

Armenian Style Lavosh from Gluten A Go Go

I am submitting this recipe as my entry for this week's round of Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted this week by Pam at her Australian blog, Backyard Pizzeria. This fun weekly event, now in its third year, highlights herbs and unusual plant ingredients in recipes from amazing cooks around the world, and is now coordinated by Haalo of Cook (Almost) Anything Once. The homegrown rosemary in my cracker recipe will serve as my highlighted ingredient, although the flax seeds (available at most health food stores) and sorghum and tapioca flours would certainly qualify as unusual plant ingredients as well. I certainly never cooked with them until three years ago, when Dan became a citizen of Planet Celiac, but this has been part of our new culinary adventures!

You can check Haalo's site to see archives of Weekend Herb Blogging recipes and check to see who some of the upcoming guest hosts will be. I have the honor and pleasure to be next week's host for this popular food blogger event and will have to look through my recipe file for another interesting recipe to contribute then.

Panforte and Madeleines with Gluten Free South Africa

Sea over at the Book of Yum had a thematic Adopt-A-Gluten-Free-Blogger event to prepare recipes for the holiday table and I knew immediately who I was going to adopt: Aylena of Gluten Free South Africa. Originally from Ireland, Aylena moved to South Africa two years ago and blogs about the beautiful landscape and gluten-free restaurants, bakeries and bed-and-breakfasts in the Capetown area. And then there are those wonderful recipes for baked goods that she provides with equally enticing photographs! Her recipes are provided in metric measurements, but these are easy to convert to American measurements if you click on the Cooking Conversions link at the lower right-hand side of the Crispy Cook links section.

I was lured in originally by her panforte recipe. Panforte is a classic Italian dessert studded with lots of fruits and nuts, somewhat like a fruitcake, only without those nauseating clots of candied fruit. Aylena's recipe makes use of some non-traditional nuts and seeds, like sunflower and pumpkin seeds, and adds a tasty bit of cocoa. Based on Aylena's photo, I assumed they would be more chocolate-y than they are. Rather, this panforte version is more spicy from the ginger and makes a sophisticated sweet treat. You could make one giant panforte or make smaller panfortes for, as Aylena puts it, versions of the "original energy bar".

Aylena's recipe was easy to follow, and though I couldn't find my candy thermometer, I was able to determine when the heated syrup was ready through the old soft ball test (a drop of syrup is plopped into cold water and it can be squished between one's fingers to form a soft ball). I decided to divide my panforte into two separate batches. One was formed into small patties and baked on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and the other half was pressed into some silicon Christmas tree forms.



The Christmas trees really came out well as the syrup base of the panforte oozed into all the crevices of the silicon mold. If you go this route, though, you have to let the panforte cool completely before popping them out. These were intended as holiday gifts for some friends, but I notice that my panforte supply has been tapped by hungry members of the Crispy Cook brigade and I will have to do a better job of protecting my homemade holiday gift supply. Or make more panforte!



Thrilled with Gluten Free South Africa's panforte goodness, I decided to make a second recipe from Aylena's wonderful blog and got another hit with her Baby Marrow Madeleines. Marrows are also known as courgettes or zucchini, and I had a bag of frozen shredded zucchini from our garden which I thawed out and squeezed dry for this lovely recipe. I actually have a madeleine pan (from the Dollar Store, woo hoo!) which formed the lovely shell shape for these appetizers. We ate them with some other snacks while waiting for the main part of our Thanksgiving meal to cook. They are like mini-quiches, delectably moist and cheesy and were so easy to make.



Two stunners from Gluten Free South Africa! Thank you, Aylena! And thank you Sea for hosting this great gluten free blogging event. It is so much fun to roam around the gluten free blogosphere in search of new recipes and blogger buddies. Be sure to check back at the Book of Yum for Sea's delicious and festive roundup.

Upcoming Gluten-Free Event

Happy National Celiac Awareness Day! Today's a great day to remember to educate someone new about celiac disease and the need for more testing of the huge numbers of undiagnosed people who may suffering some of the myriad symptoms of the disease. Check out the Celiac Disease Foundation for more information about celiac, the gluten-free diet, and the latest in medical research. This link will also clue you in to 80+ gluten-free lifestyle, recipe and parenting blogs that focus on La Vida Gluten-Free from regular folks around the world.

I also wanted to let Capital District residents know that our own Rensselaer County gluten-free author, Elizabeth Barbone, will be signing copies of her book, "Easy Gluten-Free Baking" at It's Only Natural, a health food store in Albany's Stuyvesant Plaza, on Saturday, September 27th, from 11 am to 1 pm. I bought a copy of this book when I first met Elizabeth at a celiac support group meeting in Glens Falls and it is the most bespattered gluten-free cookbook I own. Lots of everyday baked goods recipes with very clear instructions and the best Lemon Bar recipe ever! Jeanne and MaryAnna from Saratoga Gluten Free Goods will also be on hand at this book signing to serve refreshments, so don't miss out.

Rebecca Reilly: Gluten-Free Baker

I just bought a copy of Rebecca Reilly's "Gluten-Free Baking" (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2002) and am delighted with it. Baking has never been my strength, even in the days before gluten became our nemesis, so I having several gluten-free cookbooks for my baking library is essential. Reilly is a Cordon Bleu-trained chef, former restaurant owner and caterer and is gluten-intolerant herself, so she is obviously an expert Gluten-Free Baker.

My daughter and I went a little wild at the grocery store in buying up seasonal fruit and couldn't eat up all the blueberries, nectarines and plums we had overbought so I thought I'd make up a dessert and freeze some extras. The cookbook had a lovely photo of a Plum Coffee Cake (recipe on page 62) and after reminding myself to follow the recipe exactly, it came out beautifully. Best of all, Reilly's recipe made two cakes, so we devoured one and I smuggled out the other to frozen for later consumption.



I'm not going to share the recipe for this excellent edible without the author's permission, but I can recommend her cookbook highly. The recipes are very detailed, but don't have overwhelming, difficult bakery tricks to master, so I found this plum project easy enough. There are also many unusual recipes, like Fresh Nectarine Almond Cake, Crostata di Riso, six kinds of biscotti and Raisin Cream Scones, mixed in with more common recipes, to make the cookbook a worthwhile purchase.

I can, however, pass along the link to four of Reilly's recipes which are posted online at this site. She is going to be a presenter at a Gluten-Free Cooking Expo - what fun! -- in Oakbrook, Illinois on Sept. 12-13,2008. Click on the above link to get her gluten-free recipes for: Moroccan Quinoa, Cream of Vidalia Soup, Brownie Cheesecake and Caldo Verde.

Cranberry & White Chocolate Shortbread

I needed a Father's Day treat for my sweetie, and found this great recipe on The Joy of Baking. It was easy to adapt as a gluten-free delight by substituting sorghum flour for the all-purpose wheat flour. I sprinkled Turbinado sugar on top for a little extra sparkle. I also didn't have a 6 inch tart pan so I used an 8 inch springform pan. Next time I will put a cookie sheet under my springform pan to catch any drips.

Since this recipe didn't need a lot of structure (aka gluten) and the crumbly, sandy texture is one that benefits from cornmeal and rice flour, it was a perfect, rich end to a lovely meal to pamper our favorite daddy.

Apple Nut Muffins (Gluten-Free)

The always hungry folks over at the Greedy Gourmet are hosting the Snack Shots blog event and the theme is the trusty muffin. You can find out more about the event, which runs until May 6, 2008 here.

We always seem to have some substandard apples lying around the house. When apples aren't in season, they really go mushy quickly and then nobody wants to eat these mealy fruits. Luckily, even when they lose their crisp texture they are suitable for cooking, so I whipped up a double batch of these muffins to get us through a busy week. Here's my recipe:

1-1/2 cups brown rice flour
1-1/2 cups white rice flour
1-1/2 cups sugar
1 cup tapioca flour
4 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. xanthan gum
1/2 tsp. salt

1-1/2 cups milk
2 tsps. cider vinegar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs

3-4 apples, peeled, cored and diced
1-1/2 cups chopped walnuts
1/2 cup Turbinado sugar

Grease 2 12-cup muffin pans or use paper liners. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix together dry ingredients (except nuts and Turbinado sugar). In separate bowl, mix milk, vinegar, oil and eggs. Stir both together to combine. Fold in apples and nuts.

Fill muffin cups with batter about 2/3 full. Sprinkle tops with Turbinado sugar.

Bake 25-30 minutes.

The tops get nice and crusty from the sugar. This recipe can stand a bit of over-baking, as I forgot all about my poor second batch and left them in for another 20 minutes! They were hard as rocks at first, but I froze them and then they calmed down to perfect texture when thawed.

Makes 24 muffins.