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Carrot Cake, Not too sweet and also gluten free!

Saturday, December 22nd, 2012

Carrot cakes are ubiquitous, and I find many of them to be cloyingly sweet and too full of stuff like raisins and pineapple.  I especially hate it with cocoanut for some reason.  This carrot cake was supposed to keep the overall feel and spicing, but to be pure carrot cake and only a little sweet.

Picture to come after I bake this again and before it gets eaten!

I have been experimenting with adding nut and seed mixtures to baked goods after reading Peter Reinhart’s latest gluten free cookbook.  He uses all artificial sweeteners, which I generally avoid, so I am sticking with mostly sugar on the premise that you shouldn’t eat too much cake anyway.  I have found his cakes a little too fragile, so I have used his approach of the nut / seed mixtures and modified my flour to incorporate more nuts and seeds.  Because nuts and seed are higher in fats than other flour ingredients, I have found that reducing fat makes a better outcome.  I have made this cake several times now to rave reviews and requests for the recipe, so here it is.  I am also trying a few more modifications so I may update this later.  Also, don’t be alarmed that after a few hours the carrots oxidize and they look like little green specks.  I have usually added buttercream icing on just the top, but the cake is delicious without this as a less sweet nibble with coffee or tea.

Carrot Cake – Gluten Free

Developed by Shelley at Riverleafoods.com

Ingredients Method
1 ¼ cup Family Mix gluten Free Flour

¼ cup sunflower meal

2 Tbl ground flax seeds

6 TBL sesame meal

¼ cup ground almonds

1 ½  tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

1 ½ tsp soda

1 ½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp guar gum

 Note:  all the meal ingredients were ground in my little spice blender.

Mix all dry ingredients and set aside.
1/3 cup butter

½  cup brown sugar

½ cup white sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

½ cup buttermilk

2 cups grated carrots

 Cream eggs and sugar  until fluffy as you would for any cake.  Add eggs and blend until incorporated.  Add buttermilk and flour mixture in stages.

Add carrots to batter.  The batter will be firm and sticky.

Place in cake pan, 9” springform or medium rectangular (one size smaller than 9 x 13).  If needed wet fingers and press the batter down in the pan.
Bake at 350 until it looks well done.  The nut mixtures tend to need a little more baking time or they can end up undercooked and soggy.

Ice with any buttercream frosting just on the top.  I used 1 cup icing sugar to ½ cup butter. The overall effect of this cake should be just slightly sweet.

Family Mix Flour

1cup garfava flour (i use Bob’s Red Mill)

1 1/2 cup arrowroot flour

1 1/2 cup cornstarch (or sometimes I use  1 cup cornstarch and 1/2 cup buckwheat)

1/4 cup amaranth flour

1/4 cup quinoa flour

(you can use just quinoa or just amaranth and then use a 1/2 cup)

Posted in Recipes, baking, gluten-free | Comments Off

Peanut Butter Chocolate Tower – Gluten Free Version

Monday, September 5th, 2011

I have had a recipe for chocolate towers marked for a long time in Emily Luchetti’s cookbook, and finally decided I would make it.  After looking over the components, it looked like a recipe that could easily be made gluten free.  I also thought the coffee flavouring sounded ok, but since I didn’t have any instant coffee I looked in the cupboard for inspiration and found some peanut butter.  Alas the inspiration of a chef sometimes comes from sheer practicality.

I made the cake in a rectangular pan and cut out the chocolate rounds. To make the mousse the right size I looked through my dishes and found some souffle dishes that were about the same size.

The chocolate topping is sort of like a really thick sauce, so it slithers over the edge just enough before the frigid mouse stops it in its tracks.  The chocolate recipe ended up making enough for another batch, so I made this dessert twice in one week.  Greg is tired of it now, but it was a big hit until we ate too much of it.  This is a really good company dessert because it can all be made even a day before you need it, and even freezes well.

Emily Luchetti has written several cookbooks, and I have found them all great.  A Passion for Desserts is an excellent cookbook, and has the original  Chocolate Tower recipe (non gluten-free).

So, with thanks to Emily Luchetti for the inspiration, but the final recipe has been tweaked a fair bit and I am naming it Choco-peanut  Tower.

Read on for the recipe… (more…)

Posted in Recipes, gluten-free | 1 Comment »

Daring Bakers Challenge: Framboisiers

Sunday, July 31st, 2011

Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

This was a great challenge, and something I had never made before.  I really like the Tartine cookbook, and have made several other recipes in it, so I thought the recipe would be tasty.   I used the recipes with a gluten free adaptation (explanation below) that worked out well.  I have a lovely raspberry patch in fruit right now, so the “Frasier”  turned into a “Framboisier”  with a few ripe blueberries thrown in.  See a very thorough recipe and explanation of the steps here:  Daring Bakers Frasier Challenge and Recipes.  I used a chocolate ganache for the topping, and pansies for decoration.  The final cake tasted great, and looked ok.  I would try to have a more dramatic side next time, and strawberries seem to be better for that precise pastry look.  I made 4 small cakes just so I could have leftovers that still looked decent.

There are pictures on the Daring Bakers site of amazing creativity with this challenge.  One of the best parts of participating in these challenges is seeing what others have done with the recipes and concepts.

I usually use many flours in gluten free baking, but recently saw a gluten free mix in a magazine called Canadian Family that did not have rice, so I tried it and substituted it for the flour amount called for in the recipe.  The resulting sponge cake was delicious, and I will definitely make it again.

Changes to the Daring Bakers recipe (link above)

  • gluten free flour mix instead of wheat flour
  • added 1/4 tsp guar gum to the flour
  • used 5 egg yolks and 5 egg whites (instead of three and 5)

Gluten Free Flour Mix from Canadian Family:

  • 1/2 cup garfava flour
  • 1/4 cup amaranth flour
  • 3/4 cup corn starch
  • 3/4 cup arrowroot flour

This makes more than you need, so use it in something else too!

The resulting cake was delicious, you really could not tell it was gluten free.

Posted in Daring-Bakers, Recipes, gluten-free | 3 Comments »

Apple Quark Streusel Cake

Sunday, January 9th, 2011

Over the holidays while grocery shopping I spied some quark, and decided I better buy it while the store had it.  Exotic groceries are not as plentiful here in the winter.  I like summer for many reasons, but one of them is that the deluge of tourists and cottagers to this area also brings better grocery shopping.

Why quark?  Well long ago in Bracebridge there was a really scrumptious German bakery.  My favourite item at this bakery was the cheese danish.  They were made with a quark filling, very tart and lemony.  On top of the filling was streusel.  The bakery closed many years ago, and I have never found such wonderful danish anywhere else.  So, I though maybe I could make something like that.  After searching around on the internet I found a recipe for a quark streusel cake on the About German cooking blog http://germanfood.about.com/od/baking/r/streuselkuchen.htm.  So, I made the recipe, then had to adapt it by making the dough work with a lot more liquid, and adding apple to the layers.

The taste of the quark layer was very similar to my memory from the bakery danish.  The rest of the cake was quite good as well.  Overall this is a make again cake.  Although there are several steps, making the dough the night before using the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day method of just mixing the dough and letting is sit worked well and is very easy.  The  is not very sweet, and even though I like cakes that are only a little sweet, I might add some brown sugar to the apple layer next time.  A slice of this is great for breakfast when you cant stand cottage cheese one more day (I try to eat a high protein and nutritious breakfast, but occasionally I fall off the wagon and have something like this instead).

Here is my adapted recipe.  The quantities are pretty forgiving, so feel free to adapt or to use another fruit or no fruit at all, and enjoy the “quarky” goodness of the filling.

Apple Quark Cheesecake

(Adapted from recipe on About.com germanfood)

Ingredients Method
Dough

2 c flour

1  tsp yeast (dry type)

½ cup milk

2 Tbl butter

1 egg

2 T sugar

½ tsp salt

Enough additional water to make a dough (around a ½ cup, but depends on your flour)

 Melt the butter in the milk.  Add the yeast and proof this until the yeast develops a foam.

Put the flour in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients, add the milk, egg,  and mix until this turns into a soft dough. You will probably need to add a little water, depends on the size of the egg and your flour.

Let the dough rise at room temp for about an hour or until it has risen and started to fall, then put it in the   fridge or a cool place.  (Basically this follows the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day method)

The next day push the lump of dough into a greased pan, I used a pyrex pan just one size smaller than 9 x 13.  You could also use a 10” springform pan.

Let the dough rise until it is doubled again (about 1 hour).
Quark Filling

1 ½ cups (about 1 container) of quark

1 tsp lemon zest

1 egg

2 Tbl cornstarch

 Mix this all together as for cheesecake.  Spread over the dough.
Apples

Peel, core, and slice about 4 apples.  Granny Smith are good, needs to be a tart apple.

 Layer the slices over the quark filling so they overlap each other and completely cover the filling.
Streusel Topping

1 ½ cup flour

2/3 cup sugar (use some brown and some white)

½ cup butter

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp cinnamon

 Note:  This was the original recipe.  I ended up only needing about 2/3 of this, so I saved the rest and froze it for another apple concoction, but if you are using a larger pan you might need all of it)

Mix the incredients like pie dough so you have lumps of butter remaining.

Spread this over the apples evenly.
Bake at 350 for about an hour, watching that the crust gets slightly brown and the apples and streusel are cooked. This cake freezes well.

Posted in Interesting Ingedients, Recipes, baking | No Comments »

Daring Bakers-Swiss Ice Cream Cake

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.

(Note:  Recipes added at the end of post now.)

This is the baby version, made in a small souflee dish.  We ate it tonight for dessert, and it was yummy, plated on banana slices.


The final cake is in the freezer gelling right now, so I will add a picture to this post when I cut the cake. The Daring Bakers recipes are here http://thedaringkitchen.com/sites/default/files/u11/_Swiss_Swirl_Ice_Cream_Cake_-_DB_July_2010-2.pdf and the Daring Bakers site has picture of the results right now on their site http://thedaringkitchen.com/

After ruminating on what flavour combination I would experiment with, I developed a gluten free peanut butter chocolate version with one ice cream made of peanuts, and the other banana.  I love the combo of peanuts, banana, and chocolate.  I made the sponge cake adapting a recipe from The Low Carb Gourmet by Karen Barnaby that normally has almonds, but I added a little over half the nut mix using peanuts.  The resulting cake was excellent, and I will post this recipe soon. It is gluten free, and would also be a great cake.  For the ice cream, I adapted a recipe from Pure Desserts by Alice Medrich that was originally for sesame ice cream.  I had no milk, so I used buttermilk, and this gives an interesting flavour with a hint of sour edge that counteracts the sweetness.  Recipe to come.

I followed the steps in the Daring Bakers recipe, and all worked well. I made some little versions in souflee dishes as well.

I will be adding more to this post soon, but wanted to get this up to meet the challenge deadline for the blogroll.  Thanks to Sunita for an interesting challenge.

Peanut Butter Buttermilk Ice Cream

I should call this a mistake, but really it was because I had no milk so I used buttermilk, and it is really good!

1 cup whip cream

1 cup buttermilk

¼  cup peanut butter

¼ cup sugar

Blend all this, then refrigerate, then process in an ice cream maker or take it out a lot and stir it up while freezing it.  I wanted this to be only semi sweet sue to the other sweet ingredients in the ice cream cake, so taste and add a little sugar if you like it sweeter.

Gluten Free Sponge Cake

This recipe is very useful when you need a sponge cake that you can add flavourings to for compound type desserts with a cake component (tira misu, etc.) Sometimes I use sugar, and sometimes I used the spenda.  This was adapted from The Low Carb Gourmet by Karen Barnaby.

Ingredients

Method
½ cup almond meal

¾ cup peanuts ground fine (but stop before they turn to butter)

(Note:  You can use all almonds or a different proportion of the 2 nuts but make a total of 1 ¼ cup)

1 tsp baking powder

6 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

½ cup sugar plus 2 T splenda (approx)
  • Put parchment paper and light mist of cooking spray on a jelly roll size pan.  (Or you can use any shape pan, but this should be a thin cake in order to rise best.)Spread grease around with your fingers (ie, you want a really thin layer)
  • Combine the nut meal, baking powder, and salt.  Set aside.
  • Place eggs and sweeteners (sugar, splenda, or a combination) in large bowl and beat with whisk on electric mixer for several minutes until they have a foam that is thick and will hold the path if a spoon is in it (ie, the consistency you would use for sponge cake)
  • Gently fold in the almond mixture.
  • Spread in jelly roll pan lined with parchment.
  • Bake at 350 until done (about 15 minutes or so, depends on your oven. )

Posted in Daring-Bakers, Recipes, gluten-free | 3 Comments »

Split Personality Ice Box Cookies

Friday, July 23rd, 2010


We had a terrific weekend with our daughter and friends from Toronto, newlyweds Bhaskar and Farhanna.  Farhanna and I had a blast cooking Bengali food (that’s another post coming soon) and we ate all weekend! After the weekend, the newlyweds went to a local resort for a couple days, but I asked them to come back for a care package from me before they headed to Toronto.

So, I wanted something special for the care package, and decided that  some unusual butter cookies with different flavourings would fit the bill.  I love lavender and also grow it in my Muskoka garden.  I grow the English type and it flourishes even here in garden zone 4.  The type I really love however is the French type grown in Provence.  There are also lavender farms in Ontario that are experimenting with different types and their hardiness.  My lavender was in full bloom, so thus my inspiration.  Last year I had tried a lavender sable recipe in a Provence Cooking School Cookbook, and they were scrumptionus, with an unusual menthol taste from the lavender.

The ice box method of making cookies is really easy.  The recipe I started with is adapted from the Martha Stewart Baking Handbook, one of my favourite and most reliable cookbooks, I highly recommend it as one of the most comprehensive home baking books available.

When you make these, keep the logs very thin, I like about 1 1/2 inches.  I like the cookies sliced very thin so the calories are also small, but I can tell you they taste just as good a little thicker.  I must warn you that these are very addictive and that I have to ration them unless I want to walk several miles a day.  They freeze very well, but like many shortbread cookies they keep a long time (like I have eaten them even a month old when I forgot them in a cookie can!) in a good tin cookie can).  Experiment with other flavour variations.  Another good combination is anise and orange.

Anyway, the newlyweds like the cookies, so Bhaskar and Farhanna this post is dedicated to you and thanks for such an enjoyable weekend.

Split Personality Ice Box Cookies

This recipe is adapted from a  basic butter cookie recipe from the Martha Stewart Baking Handbook.  They are very easy to make, and delicious.  Here are two of my own favourite flavor variations, with the lavender being a somewhat different taste for a sweet cookie.  If you don’t want to make two flavours, just double the ingredients and make one flavor for the whole batch.


Ingredients Method
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)

¾ cup sugar

1 tsp salt

2 ½ cups flour

1 egg

 Cream butter and sugar, add salt.

Add  egg, then the flour in batches.

Mix until small crumbly mixture evolves and all the flour is incorporated.

Divide the mixture into two equal size batches.
Flavourings (for ½ recipe)

Lavender Orange:

2 tsp dried cooking grade lavender (ie, don’t use lavender from a bath mix)

1 tsp orange flower water

1 tsp shredded orange rind, avoid a micro grater size, larger such as the type from a little zester is better.

Maple Pecan:

½ tsp vanilla

¼ tsp maple flavouring

½ cup coarsely chopped pecans

 Add flavourings to each batch.  Press dough together to form a long log about 1 ½ inched.  Roll in parchment or wax paper and refreigerate (or freeze).

To make cookies, roll log in sanding or coarse sugar to coat surface.  Then slice into rounds ¼ inch think.  Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes.

Cool.

These freeze beautifully but also keep at room temperature for about 10 days.

Posted in Recipes, baking | 2 Comments »

Coconut Mistake Cake

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

This is without a doubt the best gluten free cake recipe I have developed so far.  Here’s the story behind the name.

I wanted to make a gluten free cake for G. and had the idea of a cocoanut cake.  I looked at a few recipes, then tried to adapt one from the Jean Pare Decadent Desserts cookbook.

The first time I made this it smelled great, very cocoanutty, and rose beautifully. When I took it out of the oven I smiled and figured I had accomplished something.  Then I happened to glance at the recipe and realized I had left out the sugar!  So, undaunted by this mistake, I made a sugar syrup and soaked the cake before icing it.  Overall, it was still a promising cake. The next time I made it I remembered the sugar, and it also came out fragrant and fluffy.  Anyway, I have since made this cake 4 times, each time tweaking the recipe a little bit.  You will groan at the number of flours I have used, so just substitute if you dont have all of them, but it might not be as good as mine then!

The most recent version of this cake was for G’s birthday, and everyone had seconds.  You really cannot tell this is a gluten free cake, it tastes like a moist, somewhat rich buttermilk cake.  I decorated the birthday cake with Johnny Jump Ups fresh from the garden, but when the birthday boy blew out the candles they all blew off! The naked cake still tasted delicious.

Coconut Mistake Cake

(Gluten Free)

This cake is scrumptiously full of coconut.  It is a substantial buttery cake that is ideal for a birthday or other special occasion. Use real buttermilk – no substitutes. The icing is very sweet.  You can cover most of the cake with the recipe, if you want really thick icing double the recipe.

Ingredients

Method
½ cup unsalted butter

1 cup sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

I tsp coconut flavouring

 Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time.  Add flavourings
Dry Ingredients:

Flours (total is 1 2/3 cup)

  • 1/4 cup garfava (bean) flour
  • 1/3 cup arrowroot or corn starch
  • 1/3 cup white buckwheat flour
  • 1/3 cup tapioca flour
  • 2 Tbl quinoa flour
  • 3 Tbl amaranth flour
  • 2 T chestnut flour

1 tsp guar gum powder

1 Tbl baking powder

¼ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1/3 cup ground almonds

 Mix all dry ingredients together.  I have tried variations on the flours, but this mix is the best.
1 cup buttermilk

½ cup sweetened flaked coconut

 Add the flour mixture and buttermilk in about three batches, Then stir the batter enough that there are no lumps.  I do this all in the mixer. Fold in the cocoanut last.
Bake in 2 – 8” round layer cake pans for about 20 – 30 minutes until lightly browned depending on your oven.  When done check with toothpick.  The cake will mound slightly in the middle and have a fairly firm texture.

Icing

½ cup unsalted butter

2 cups icing sugar

½ tsp coconut flavouring

¼ tsp vanilla

Dash of salt

Whip cream or milk – enough to moisten (1-2 Tbl)

 Cream butter, add sugar and flavourings and beat until smooth.  Add just enough cream or milk to make the icing smooth (Do this a little at a time because it can get too runny quickly)

Spread thin layer on first cake, then top with flaked cocoanut.  Stack next layer and ice the top.  Do the sides if you have enough icing.

Posted in Recipes, baking, gluten-free | No Comments »

Pâté Anyone? Daring Cooks Challenge

Monday, June 14th, 2010

Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.

I used to make pâté quite a bit many years ago, but have not made any for quite a while, so I was looking forward to this challenge.  I chose the pork and liver recipe and  actually followed it to the letter (not something I am usually very good at!) I have a real French  pâté baking enameled pan that I almost gave away a couple years ago but then thought better of it.  The thick cast iron really bakes the pate slowly,  and the narrow shape is perfect, so I am glad I relented when I was in one of my get rid of clutter phases. This was the first time I tried a liver and pork combination.  It is absolutely scrumptions.  The spicing seemed a little light when I read the recipe, however due to the slow cooking and letting it mellow in the fridge for a day, the flavours are really subtle and quite delicious.  The other good thing is that there is no wheat in it.  Unfortunately wheat is often present in bought pâté, so this was a bonus as well.  The recipe is here at Daring Bakers http://thedaringkitchen.com/sites/default/files/u11/14_Pate_and_Bread_-_June_2010.pdf

For the bread, due to gluten free needs for my hubbie I developed a recipe that was good as bread, but even better as crackers when they were twice baked like biscotti.  They came out so good that I also developed a wheat based version from another recipe, and frankly I can’t stop eating them. The crispy initial bite is followed by the mellow taste of wheat and a hint of rosemary.   So, both recipes are here for you following this post. This made a lot of pâté, so now I am trying an experiment – how does pâté  freeze?

Recipes

Savory Gluten Free Parmesan Crisps

I developed this recipe starting with the concept in a recipe in a cookbook called Grazing by Julie Van Rosendaal to go with a Daring Cooks pate challenge.  It is very good as a quick bread right out of the oven, but also wonderful as a cracker or crisp if thinly sliced and baked again to dry. They are sort of like Raincoast Crisps, a popular but very expensive west coast cracker sold in Canada.

Ingredients Method
Dry Ingredients:

  • ¼ cup garfava flour
  • ¼ cup amaranth flour
  • ¼ cup cornstarch
  • ¼ cup buckwheat flour
  • 1 tap baking powder
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • ½ tsp (or more) dried rosemary
  • 1 tsp xanthum gum powder
  • ¼ cup fresh parmesan cheese, grated
  • 1/8 tsp garlic powder
 Combine dry ingredients. The total flour is 1 cup, so you can try other combinations.

Whisk the ingredients to distribute all the stuff.
Wet ingredients:

  • 1 egg
  • 2 Tbl olive oil (I used extra virgin)
  • ¼ cup water
 Add wet ingredients and mix a stiff batter.  Put in oiled small loaf pans then wet your gingers and push the sides of the batter down so the center is mounded up like a loaf.
Bake at 350, the time depends on the size of your pan, mine were very small load pans and they took about 15 – 20 minutes.  If making crisps, allow to cool, in fact even put the loaves in the freezer for a little while.  Then slice into 1/8 inch pieces and arrange on ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake at 300 for about 12 minutes, then turn opver and bake again until crisp, about 12 minutes more.  Watch carefully towards the end because they go from crisp to overdone quickly.

Try spicing this with other spices like herbes de province, cumin and coriander, etc.  The cheese can also be left out.

Savory Wheat Crisps

I love a Canadian Cracker called Raincoast Crisps, but they are really expensive and sometimes hard to find here.  Julie Rosandaal, in her cookbook Grazing, has a recipe that is close to the bought versions, and I have made it several times with lots of creative tweaks.  This time I tried to develop a savory rendition of crisps.  They were so good as bread that I ate half a small loaf right out of the oven.  They are equally good dried as crisps.  And another great thing, there is no butter or eggs in this recipe, but because of the buttermilk they are moist and rich as a bread, and crisp as a cracker.


Ingredients

Method
Dry Ingredients:

  • ¼ cup whole wheat flour
  • ½ cup unbleached white flour
  • 2 TBL amaranth flour
  • 2 Tbl buckwheat flour
  • 1 TBL almond meal powder (optional)
  • 2 T ground flax seeds
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • ½ tsp dried rosemary
  • 1 Tbl brown sugar
  • 2 TBL chopped pecans
 Mix together and blend thoroughly.

Re flax – grind your own meal in a coffee grinder, it is far better than bought
1 cup buttermilk Add buttermilk and mix quickly.  (Yes, there is no butter or eggs in this recipe!)
Bake at 350 in small loaf pans until the tops are cracked and slightly browned.  Allow to cool.  Eat fresh like this, or cool, even freeze for a little while, then slice very thin.  Bake at 300 on a cookie sheet for 15 minutes, then turn over and bake again for 15 minutes. Watch like a hawk at the end because they overcook easily.

Posted in Daring-Cooks, Recipes, baking, gluten-free | 2 Comments »

Beets that Bleat – an Appetizer!

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

I love beets and find that they are really versatile and can blend flavours in many different directions.  This appetizer is wonderful and eye candy as well, so I hope you will like it as much as all my testers have.

My most recent rendition of this recipe was for my parents friends on my recent trip to PEI.  So, this post is dedicated to Mum and Dad, Shirley, Verna, Ted, and Ray.  I really enjoyed our lunch!


I saw a picture of an appetizer like this while browsing the internet, so I had to try it because not only was it beautiful, it sounded delicious.    I roasted the beets with their skins on.  Rather than the usual practice in recipes of wrapping them in tin foil, which is really wasteful, my method is to wash them, oil them in the surface, then cover in a pyrex dish and bake them.  They are soooo much more flavourful that boiled beets, but do take a long time to cook.

My version of this recipe is at the end of this post.  The SAVEUR link is here, look at their picture, it is really nice as well.

http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Beet-and-Goat-Cheese-Napoleons

Layered Beet Appetizer

I tried this recipe from the SAVEUR magazine website and have adapted it with a variation on the filling and dressing.  This is a wonderful appetizer or addition to a salad as a first course.  I have made it several times now to rave reviews even from people who are not keen on the individual ingredients.

Ingredients Method
Roasted Beets:

4 medium beets  with tops cut off

1 Tblsp  vegetable or olive oil

(Note:  this method of doing beets creates much more flavor  and better colour than boiling. The method of oiling and baking in a pyrex pan is better than the usual instruction of using aluminum foil, and also better for the environment!)

 Use fresh beets, not the type that come in a bag.  Cut off tops and leave about a ½ inch of the leaves.  Wash each beet, dry it, then but oil liberally around the whole beet.  Place in pyrex pan with maybe a teaspoon of water, and roast at 350 for as long as it takes to make then fork tender.  This is usually at least an hour, and can sometimes a fair bit more.  Keep tabs at the end because they go from not done to really done quickly.

When beets are cooled enough, peel off the skin and clean off bits, but do not rinse them.

SAVE the remaining oil and juices for the dressing.
Filling:

1 pkg (about 170g or 4 ounces) of chevre, the type that breaks apart

About 2 Tblsp yoghout or sour cream to soften the cheese

1 clove garlic

½ tsp Herbes de Provence

Salt to taste – a few shakes

pepper

 Place all these ingredients in a food processor.  If you don’t have one then do it by hand and use a garlic press.  Don’t try to use a blender, it makes it too runny.
Assembly:

Cut the beets into slices about ¼ inch thick.  Spread about 1 tsp on each slice, you don’t want it too thick or they will topple over.  Press each new slice on to the cheese enough to stick but not to push out the cheese.  You can assemble the pieces  in whatever order will make a flat sitting mound.  The first time I made them I then cut the stacks into perfect circles with a pastry circle, then you get perfect sizes.  Since then I just cut the stacks into quarters and live with a ragged edge.  Let you degree of anal fixation be your guide.
Dressing:

2 Tblsp orange juice concentrate or boil some orange juice to reduce it

1 shallot chopped very finely

1 TB juice from the roasted beets

2 T olive oil

1 TB balsalmic vinegar

¼ tsp Dijon mustard

A little garlic

 These are approximate quantities.  Play with it.

Boil the shallots in the orange juice for a minute to soften them, then add the rest.

Spoon a little dressing over the beet stacks.
These keep for about 2 days in the fridge.  They are best if they have been allowed to cool in the fridge until solid, at least a couple hours.  The cheese does take on a pink colour, but they taste great.

Posted in Recipes, gluten-free | 7 Comments »

Daring Cooks Challenge – Brunswick Stew and a Gluten Free Cornbread

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

The 2010 April Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf’s Den. She chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make Brunswick Stew. Wolf chose recipes for her challenge from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt Lee and Ted Lee, and from the Callaway, Virginia Ruritan Club.

I have seen recipes for Brunswick stew in some of my more traditional cookbooks but had never been inspired to make it.  So, this is often where Daring Cooks and Bakers is good for pushing your envelope a bit.

The stew is basically a mixture of meats, including chicken and ham, with vegetables similar to succotash.  I made the shorter recipe that was in the challenge.  The stew is a tasty meat and potatoes stew.  The spicing is poultry seasoning.  It was fortuitous that I had just made a large roast ham o the weekend, so the rest of the stew was easy to prepare.  When I finished the stew that night it was good, but not really awesome.  So the next night I decided that a gluten free cornmeal topping would jazz it up a little, and it did.

My version of a gluten free cornmeal batter was placed on warmed bowls of stew, then baked for about a half hour.  The cornmeal soaked up some of the liquid, and made a very tasty top to the stew.  My hubbie liked it, but said it was not on his definite make again list, and I feel the same.  Anyway, it was a fun challenge and I thank wolf for the challenge.  Gluten Free Cornmeal Recipe follows here.

Sorry there is a problem with permission on my site tonight, so I will add the pictures tomorrow.

Gluten Free Cornbread

I use this basic recipe for cornbread but often cut back the cornmeal to about a cup and add other strong gluten free flours.  If I want a strong corn taste, I use the full 1 ½ cups cornmeal. Use real buttermilk, it really makes a better product, ignore the advice that vinegar and milk works the same, it doesn’t.  This is a very dependable gluten free recipe for me.

Ingredients Method
Dry Ingredients:

  • 1 ½ cup or cornmeal or( 1 cup cornmeal plus total of ½ cup GF flours)
  • ¼ cup tapioca flour
  • ¼ cup buckwheat flour
  • ¼ cup sugar
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp guar gum
  • ½ tsp xanthum gum
  • ½ tsp salt
 Instead of 1 ½ cups cornmeal I used:

  • 1 cup cornmeal
  • ¼ cup garfava flour
  • ¼ cup amaranth / quinoa

Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
1/4 cup butter, cut in like biscuits Cut butter into small pieces and cut into the batter like in a piecrust.  You can use ¼ melted butter or oil, but I like the texture better done like the piecrust method.
2 eggs

1 ½ cup buttermilk (use the real stuff!)

 Add eggs and buttermilk.  The batter will be fairly runny but thickens up quickly.

Bake at 350 until done, the time depends on the size of your pans.  I also make this into muffins.


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