Cake and Commerce

Gluten-free and (mostly) vegan (mostly baking) ebook

Last summer I spent several weeks working on recipes with the inimitable Sara Boswell, sorghum scientist and vintage goddess, and the results are here, in this ebook (note: I am uncredited as I wrote it while an employee of Enjoy Life Foods). 

Here's where you can download the ebook: http://www.enjoylifefoods.com/ebook/

The donut recipes, a joint effort between the two of us, are by far my favorites. 

The pumpkin donut is especially tasty:

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake Donuts

Makes 4 large or 6 small cake donuts

These not-too-sweet pumpkin donuts will fool even the most discerning donut eater. They’re light, fluffy and delicious and we loved them when they’re simply dipped in sugar glaze. As with the other donuts, the key to making these come out just right is mixing the donuts as we recommend below and not adding the baking soda until the very end.

 

¾ C sorghum flour

¼ C tapioca starch

1 ½ t baking powder

1/4 t salt

¼ t cinnamon

1 pinch nutmeg

1 pinch clove

3 T sugar

1 T honey (or maple or agave)

2 T palm oil

2 T “Tapioca egg” (1 T tapioca starch, 1 Cup water, combined and heated until translucent and gelled; use cold) More info here.

1/4 C pumpkin puree

1/3 C rice milk, coconut milk, water

½ t apple cider vinegar

1/8 t baking soda

1 T  Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

Sugar Glaze (recipe below)

 

Preheat oven to 375F.

 

Grease the donut pan with a very thin coating of palm oil and dust the oil with sorghum flour. This will allow the donut to de-pan easily.

 

Mix dry ingredients except for baking soda together. Cream honey, sugar, and palm oil in a bowl, then mix in pumpkin puree. The mixture will be streaky – don’t worry. Mix in ½ the dry ingredients including the spices (except the baking soda) followed by the rice milk and the remaining ½ of the dry ingredients (except the baking soda). Fold in the “tapioca egg” 1 tablespoon at a time and mix thoroughly. Add apple cider vinegar to the mixture. Once that is mixed in, incorporate the baking soda. Fold in the chocolate chips then pour batter into prepared donut pan.

 

Bake at 375 for 15-17 minutes.

 

Dip into sugar glaze while still warm and place on wire rack. Excess glaze can be returned to the pan and reused.

 

If baking ahead, freeze un-iced donuts as soon as they cool. Decorate before serving.

 

Sugar Glaze

2 cups confectioner’s sugar

2 T water + 1 T water if too stiff

1 t vanilla (optional)

 

In the bowl of a food processor, mix the confectioner’s sugar until free of lumps (you can skip the mixing step if yours is lump-free). Add water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until the mixture is smooth. If using vanilla, add it while the mixture is still lumpy to avoid making the mixture too thin.

If using this to coat donuts, stir mixture just as donuts are coming out of the oven and pour over top of donuts set on a wire rack a minute after they have come out. The excess glaze can be reused.

 

 

Chocolate Sunbutter Pie - gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, soy-free

When I was in culinary school, one of my classmates from Virginia always fell back on the same recipe whenever she was responsible for coming up with the dessert special: chocolate peanut butter pie. As a fan of chocolate and peanut butter, I found the combination - and in a pie, no less - irresistible. It was homey and rich and satisfying.

Cut to 2011. Food allergies, especially peanut allergies, are way up. Gluten intolerance is on the rise. Chocolate peanut butter pie is off limits to many. So what's a girl to do?

Make a vegan chocolate sunbutter-chocolate pie, that's what.

This is a fairly easy recipe with not many ingredients. It works like a charm. You'll need to make my much adored tapioca gel as the base for this, and the results will look strange at first, but the resulting pie filling is custard-smooth. 

Cake and Commerce's Fudgy Chocolate Sunbutter Pie (vegan and free of the top 8 allergens)

Yield: one pie

Time to prepare: 30 mins

• 1 Classic Graham Cracker Crust (see below)
• 1 bag (10 oz) Soy, Dairy, Nut-free semi-sweet chocolate Mini Chips (Enjoy Life or similar)
• 1 C Sunbutter
• 1 T Vanilla
• 1 T Agave Syrup (optional – for added sweetness)
• 1 C Water
• 1 T Tapioca Flour

Procedure:

Empty bag of chips into a medium-sized bowl  (make sure they are mini because larger ones will not melt fast enough. If you only have large chips, break them up in a food processor first). Combine tapioca flour and cold water in saucepan and bring to a near boil. The solution will turn translucent and sticky. Pour immediately over chocolate, stirring constantly, until all chocolate is melted. The mixture will be very lumpy and bumpy – don’t fret! Immediately whisk the sunbutter into the mixture – it should start to look smooth, although a little grainy. Stir in the vanilla and the agave, if desired. Pour into prepared pie crust.

Top with chocolate chips, extra crumbs, and roasted sunflower seed pieces, if desired.

Leave in the refrigerator overnight, or until set, about 3 hours.

Serve cold or at room temperature. To store, tightly cover with plastic wrap and store in refrigerator. Keeps up to four days.

Enjoy!

Classic Graham Cracker Crust

Yield: 1 pie crust

Time to prepare: 30 mins

• 6 oz gluten-free grahams OR one box Enjoy Life Vanilla Honey Graham Cookies
• 1/3 C Organic or Vegan Granulated Sugar or Evaporated Cane Juice Crystals OR natural sugar
• 1/4 C Oil or Butter of your choice (I use safflower or grape seed or coconut)
• Pie Pan (it doesn't need to be greased)

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350 F

Place entire package of cookies in food processor with sugar. Process until fine. Add oil and process until crust becomes a little wet.

Place the crust in the middle of the pie pan and with your fingers spread crust around pan, pressing as you go, making sure to have about 1/8” of coverage over all surfaces – and no holes!

Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until crust turns golden brown. Use immediately or freeze for later. 

To be used in cheesecakes and cold-set type pies.

 

 

Making the assumption that each pie can be sliced into 8 large pieces, here are the nutritionals for a single slice, an eighth of a pie, or a nearly 5 oz slice! Calorie bomb!

The saturated fat comes from the cocoa butter in the chocolate chips. The rest of the fat is from the sunbutter and oil.

 

The government recommends a serving size of 125 grams. That's still pretty huge! If you slice your pie in nine pieces, you get 120 gram slices. Here are the nutritionals:

And here are the nutritionals if you make your servings about 2.5 oz (70g)

Gluten-free pasta doesn't have to suck: a simple kitchen trick that will blow you away

I've been eating brown rice pasta since this blog was founded about 5 years ago. And I've always liked it. Not as much as I like the chewy, toothsome texture of wheat pasta, but I find that if I drowned it in enough sauce, I can fool almost anyone. Except when I reheat it.* There is no mistaking the gummy texture of reheated rice pasta. But I recently discovered a trick that significantly improves the texture, performance, and speed of cooking of brown rice pasta. And allows reheating  (though microwave cooking more than a few seconds will still gum it up a bit). And I learned it from a book.

By chance, The other day during a long plane ride I read the remarkably enjoyable and enlightening book, Ideas in Food, the print version of the much loved pro-chef blog, Ideas in Food by Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot. If you love to cook and haven't read this book, I can't recommend it enough. Although many of the insights are around techniques and concepts that may be alien to some home cooks, their advice and insight is inspiring and may get you to try out things you'd otherwise not consider.

One simple idea from their book has completely changed the way I prepare brown rice pasta. On page 116 of their book, (or, in fewer details, this page on their blog), Talbot and Kamozawa explain how to quickly cook pasta - cutting cooking time in half, if not more - by soaking pasta in cold water for 1-2 hours before cooking (they hold the hydtrating pasta and water in a Ziploc-type bag). The hydrated pasta can then be stored in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. The pasta can then be quickly cooked in boiling water for 1-5 minutes, depending on the duration of the soak. It is a great trick for restaurants, which often par-cook their pasta before service with mixed results. Pre-hydrated pasta cooks up fresh and chewy, and the long soak in cold water prevents sticking in the water and reduces sticking during storage, so less boiling water is needed to get perfect pasta. Think of the pot of water you boil for a pasta dinner, now imagine that water reduced by more than half. The time required to boil that smaller pot is significantly less than that large pot of water. Voila, you just got a few hours of your life back.

Talbot and Kamozawa then make the hydration even more compelling by introducing a flavorful soaking liquid. They tried out mushroom stock and clam broth as the soaking medium for the pasta, and both yeilded excellent results. They also found that they could roast it in the oven prior to soaking, and that leaving dry pasta for a two-hour stint in the smoker resulted in a savory, flavorful finished dish.

So how does a chapter and a blog post on wheat pasta translate into meaningful gluten-free food prep? 

Well, what applies to wheat also applies to rice, with some modifications.

Wheat hydrates much more quickly than rice does, by a factor of about .5, or 50% more quickly. So rice pasta needs a longer soak to reduce cooking time. Wheat doesn't mush up quite as much as rice does, so rice requires a second cold water rinse after cooking. But for spaghettis made of either grain, a one hour hydration vastly improves the texture of pasta. And the cold water soak helps reduce the amount of starch on the surface of the pasta, making it much less sticky as it cooks. 

After a one hour soak, spaghetti-style rice pasta is slightly more flexible than raw pasta but still brittle. Cooking to al dente at this point reduces boiling time from 15 minutes to 4 minutes, and only a small fraction of the water recommended by the manufacturer is needed. After 1.5 hours, the pasta was much softer and flexible though it broke when bent. After two hours, the spaghetti could be bent without breaking. It was al dente, though I'd not want to eat it raw. At 2.5 hours, the pasta is al dente and is extremely flexible, but it cooks almost too fast and gets mushy quickly. All of the pastas, once drained and sealed in a Ziploc-type bag and refrigerated continued to soften as the water migrated to the dryer center of the pasta strand. The softening was perceptible in the raw pasta but did not negatively impact the finished texture. 

Here are the results for the rice spaghetti, side by side:

Hydration Time  Al Dente Cook Time            Texture

0 hr    14 mins        Al dente, slighty mushy, needed rinsing

1 hr     3-4 mins        Al dente, not mushy, didn't get too sticky after cooking

1.5 hrs   3 mins            Al dente, not mushy, a little bit sticky after cooking

2 hrs       1-1.5 mins       Some pieces al dente, some mushy, cooked very fast

2.5 hrs     1 minute max       Easy to overcook, some mushy pieces, sticky    

I prefered the 1 hour or 1.5 hour soak over the hydrating soaks of longer duration. Even though 1-1.5 hour soaks required a longer cook time, it was easier to control the cooking time and texture and the pasta was slightly less sticky. I fed the results to a friend and he agreed that the al dente pieces reminded him more of the wheat pasta and that the gummier mushy pasta was definitely not like wheat pasta at all.

Once the pasta is cooked and cooled in cold water, it can be wrapped in an airtight container or bag and stored in the refrigerator up to three days and reheated. The results will be excellent.

Other pasta shapes - penne, macaroni, rigatoni, sprials - will require more hydration time. Two hours is usually enough.

My takeaway is that any amount of hydration will improve cooking time. Even if you can only hydrate the pasta while you wait for your pasta water to heat up, you will reduce your cooking time.

Can hydration be accelerated? I don't like sticky pasta, though. What else can I do?

Well, there's not a ton you can do about stickiness. Rice pasta is rice pasta, though as you'll see below, you can do a few things that will help it become the best pasta it can be given its inherent limitations.

I decided to try out another technique to see if I could further improve the process without affecting texture. I had read in Ideas in Food about the par-cooking of rice for risotto. They explain how starch absorbs water thusly:

"When we cook rice or potatoes in hot water, the starch granules soak up the water and swell to the point of bursting, or gelatinize. The more water is absorbed, the lower the gelantinization temperature. If the starch does not cook long enough to absorb enough water, it will not completely gelatinize."

        -Talbot and Kamozawa, Ideas in Food, page 120

One of the problems with rice-based pastas is they get gummy fast, that is, rice pasta gels and gets sticky when cooked because the cell walls of the starch (mostly amylopectin, with a low but appreciable amount of amylose) burst when cooked. If a starch can undergo retrogradation (a process that is responsible for the staling of bread but also the reinforcement of starch cell walls, a good thing for rice pasta and potatoes), some of this sticky/gummy texture can be remedied. But rice is generally low in amylose, one of the keys in retrogradation. The amylopectin fraction of rice starch forms crystals as it cools that melt as it is heated up. Anyone who has eaten cold rice before reheating it has experienced this. Rice pasta is similarly grainy when cold. 

Rice pasta, however, is not rice. Unlike rice, rice pasta is heat-extruded and dried, meaning its chemical composition is quite different from that of dried rice. According to this study from Cereal Science (published in 2000), heated and extruded pasta that is cooked and then kept in refrigeration will undergo rapid but low levels of retrogradation - meaning that stickiness cannot be completely eliminated from rice pasta but that it can be reduced to a minor but perceptible extent. 

But here's the good news: you can both speed up the hydration of the pasta AND (mostly? somewhat?) conquer stickiness with a process that's a little fussy but not difficult. 

METHOD

Rice gelantinizes at 150-170 degrees, depending on the type of rice used. I don't know what kind of rice is used in brown rice pasta, but I assumed that because the starch molecule was damaged in heating and extruding, the gelatinization temperature should be lower. If rice pasta is cooked somewhere around that temperature, I reasoned, maybe I could use retrogradation to my advantage by gelatinizing the starch without bursting the molecule. 

I heated water on the stove to 155F. I put the uncooked dry rice pasta in the 155F water for 20 minutes, until it was soft. I immediately plunged it in cold water to chill it down completely. At this point the pasta could have been refrigerated up to three days. I then boiled water and put the par-cooked pasta in for 30 seconds. That's right. 30 seconds. I then drained it and plunged it into cold water. I put it in a bag and put that bag in the refrigerator and checked it every five minutes.

And guess what? 

The pasta wasn't sticky at all. It didn't stick to my hands or to itself. It was a little tacky, but significantly less than it does from a straight boil or even from the pre-hydration method. Of course it still got a little crunchy  and sticky over time in the refrigerator, but not to the extent I had experienced before. And the texture was much more toothsome and - dare I say it - similar to wheat pasta.

And it tasted really good.

Here's the summary of what I did:

Parcook pasta 20 mins in 155F salted water > chill down in cold water and drain > Boil for 30 seconds > Chill in cold water and drain > use immediately OR refrigerate up to 3 days

Buckwheat Soba

I wondered how the soak would affect buckwheat pasata, or Soba. I love soba - it is easily one of my favorite noodles. I've almost never liked the ubiquitous-in-the-US dry soba as the texture never seemed quite right to me. From time to time I've purchased fresh frozen soba noodles, but they're expensive and available only at specialty markets. By contrast, dry soba is available almost anywhere that has an international section with Japanese or Korean ingredients, including Whole Foods. Not all soba is 100% buckwheat, so read the label carefully before purchasing or you may inadvertently glutenize yourself.

I soaked the (Roland Brand, purchased at Whole Foods)  buckwheat soba in cold water and checked it every five minutes. Because it is thin and fine, and buckwheat is highly water absorbent, after twenty minutes it was soft and hydrated. If broken, it looked al dente. I was worried it would be sticky, as cooked dry soba often is. I rinsed it just before plunging it into boiling water and cooked it for 1 minute.  I removed it from the water, gave it a quick cold-water rinse and tasted it. 

It was the best dried soba I'd ever tasted - it had the texture of fresh soba. It was chewy and tender. It wasn't mushy or sticky. It was perfect. 

So you think you want to try this out

Of course, you do need to prepare ahead to use this technique. Hydrating pasta takes at least an hour to rinse of the sticky surface starches and accelerate cooking time - so planning is a must. If you hydrate your pasta as you prepare the rest of your meal, and save cooking the pasta until the end, you can use the technique at meal time. Because you can hold the hydrated pasta up to three days, a meal planned in advance can be simplified with the technique. The technique is passive and the hydrating pasta only needs attention when it needs to be removed from the water it is soaking in. The pasta will disintegrate if hydrated for too long. You'll need to hydrate larger pasta shapes longer - every pasta type is different.

There's a bunch of food science behind why this works, but I'm no food scientist and any attempt I make to explain it will fall short. If you're really interested in rice science and food tech, you can always read this book.

 In any case, pre-hydrating your gluten-free pasta will improve it. Even if it is just the time it takes to prepare and serve it. And if you try the flavorful hydration liquid, you'll make it far more interesting than you ever imagined it could be.

 *Note on reheating: if you use a microwave to reheat your pasta, I don't care how it's been pre-hydrated, it will always turn out gummy because of the rice flour. To avoid gummy, sticky, mushy and dissolving pasta, reheat your cooked pasta either in hot water, sauce heated up in a pan, or, if already sauced, gently in a covered sauce pan, stirring and checking as you reheat it. Once it starts gumming up, there's no going back. Such is the danger of high temp high heat reheating of rice-based pasta.

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies: no eggs, no gluten, all delicious (vegan, too!)

 

 

I love chocolate cookies. I know a lot of people out there with egg allergies love a good, fudgy chocolate cookie too.

Most egg replacers don't go quite the distance - they'll bind but they don't provide body. Using my tapioca gel (recipe and explanation here) I developed a gluten-free, vegan cookie that's just like the original except for one thing: these won't make you ill if you are allergic to the Big 8.

I made four versions of these cookies until I came up with a taste and texture I liked. All of the versions worked, there was just something a little off about each one of them until one of my colleagues helped me identify what it was: in my gluten-free baking mix, which is made entirely from whole grains (brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat and millet, finely ground and purchased here), I had neglected to toast the quinoa. A quick toasting in the oven remedied that flavor issue (note: even if quinoa is washed before milling, it still needs a little time in the oven).

These cookies are pretty easy to make and are very fudgy. You can make them cakier by adding about 1/4 C more flour to my basic recipe, outlined below. You'll want to press them down a bit if you go the cakey route - otherwise they'll be very tall). 

If you have time to refrigerate them overnight, it will allow the dough to absorb moisture and make it a little easier to handle.

If you don't want to use grapeseed or sunflower/safflower oil, use coconut oil - but melt it first. The dough will be a little different, a little easier to handle, but the texture will change from what I have in the pictures above and below. Coconut oil is solid at room temperature and behaves differently in baked goods from liquid fats. This is not a problem, just a choice!

 

 

Cake and Commerce's Gluten-free and allergy-friendly Chocolate Crinkle Cookies 

Yield: 24-32 cookies

• 1-1/4 cups natural cocoa powder (not alkalized or 'Dutched')
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup grapeseed, sunflower, or coconut oil
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• Tapioca Gel: 1 cup cold water + 2 teaspoons tapioca starch/flour
• 1-3/4 cups PLUS 3 tablespoons gluten-free flour blend***
• 1/2 C chocolate chips (optional)
• 2 cups organic, corn-free confectioners sugar (or make your own in a food processor or spice grinder)

***Gluten-free flour blend: I used 1/2 cup + 3 tablespoons TOASTED QUINOA FLOUR, 1/4 cup millet flour, 1/2 cup brown rice flour and 1/2 cup light buckwheat flour. You can use anything you like, but keep in mind that not all flours are created equal. You may need to add a few T of flour to this mix if your mix has a lot of starch in it.

Procedure

Preheat oven to 350F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or use 2 non-stick baking trays.

Make tapioca gel: in a sauce pan combine tapioca starch with cold water and stir until dissolved. Over high heat, stir gel until it goes from thin and cloudy to thick and translucent. Remove from heat immediately - don't boil. Cool (you can speed this up by whisking it or pouring it into a glass baking pan with lots of surface area and putting it in the refrigerator). 

Combine sugar, cocoa, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Mix until combined. Add the oil and vanilla and the cooled tapioca gel. It will look a little spongy.  Mix until evenly combined. Stir in all the flour at once and mix. Add chocolate chips, if desired. Mix until dough is uniform.

If the dough is very soft and pourable, add a little bit of extra baking mix to the bowl, one tablespoon at a time. It should be sticky but pliable, not hard and not too wet.

If possible, allow to sit overnight. Flours will absorb some of the water and it will become a little easier to handle. It is not necessary to do so, however. The dough will still be sticky either way. Just a little less so if you can let it sit overnight.

Here's where it helps if you have a small ice cream scoop - it'll make forming cookies easier.

With that small, .25 oz ice cream scoop (or with a tablespoon) drop small scoops of dough into the confectioner's sugar. Roll in sugar (this is sticky work, okay?) and place on sheet pan, about 12 per pan.

Bake in oven for 12-14 minutes, or until surface is crackled and does not look wet.

Allow to cool. Enjoy or store in an airtight container up to 3 days.

For a more 'cakey' cookie, add in up to 1/4 C extra of gluten-free baking mix. It will not spread as much.

 

Gluten-free, allergy-friendly Brownies and Minty Iced Brownies (and they're vegan, too!)

If it looks like I've been posting photos from my phone lately, it is because I have. I've been doing most of my baking at work. I happen to not keep my camera at work, and most of the time I want to get pictures taken the moment I've finished a project. So I use my phone. Ehhh.

Every month I have to create recipes for a 'recipe blast' we send out to customers. Sometimes I adapt a recipe a customer has sent us. Sometimes I just make something up.  I didn't actually intend to make brownies, they just sort of happened. Allow me to explain.

Someone asked if it was possible to make chocolate ganache with coconut milk. Of course it is. Using a 1:1 chocolate to coconut milk blend, I heated the milk to boiling and and poured it over a bowl of mini chocolate chips. Stir stir stir, done. Ganache. Easy.

Well, at the end of an experiment I was doing (what if I add lecithin? What if I heat it over a double boiler?) I had a ton of ganache left. And I thought, hmm, why don't I make some brownies with this?

One problem: we don't use coconut at work. Even thought it isn't a nut, coconut has been categorized as a nut by someone at the FDA since 2006. So no coconut here.

So I made ganache again, this time with water. I needed to change the ratio to 1:.5 - 1 part chocolate to .5 parts water. One-to-one simply didn't work - it made a lovely, water-based hot chocolate. But not a thick ganache.

Using the tapioca gel as the base, I made a brownie that the non-allergic, non-gluten-free crowd here at work actually liked (this is a big deal; if they don't like it, I don't share it). And then I stepped it up by turning it into a mint brownie, the type my mom used to make when I was growing up.

This brownie is more cakey than fudgy- though if you add a little more granulated sugar and reduce the baking time, you will get a fudgier brownie.

 

 

Yes, you’ll need to do a few steps before making these, but trust me, this is worth it! No one will ever know these are free of the top 8 allergens!

STEP 1:

Tapioca Gel:

• 1 C COLD Water
• 1 T Tapioca Starch

 Combine water and starch in a saucepan and place on the stove set to high. Whisk until liquid becomes translucent and viscous. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

STEP 2:

Chocolate “Gananche”

• 1 C Allergy-friendly Mini Chocolate Chips
• ½ C Boiling water

Boil water on stove. Pour over chocolate chips. Stir until smooth and glossy. Allow to cool

STEP 3: MAKE BROWNIES! 

Cake and Commerce's Gluten-Free, Allergy-friendly Chocolate Brownies

• 1/3 C Tapioca Gel (see recipe above)
• ½ C Chocolate “Ganache” (see recipe above)
• 1 T Vanilla Extract
• 2 T Agave Syrup
• ½ C Brown Sugar
• 2 T Oil (your choice)
• 2/3 C + ¼ C Gluten-Free Baking Mix (I used 1/3 C Buckwheat, 1/3 C Sorghum, ¼ C Brown Rice Flour - try to avoid starch, there's enough with the tapioca)
• ¼ t Sea Salt
• ¼ t Xanthan Gum (Optional)
• ½ t Baking Soda
• ½ t Gluten-Free Baking Powder
• 1 T Unsweetened Cocoa
• ½ - 1 C Allergy-friendly Chocolate Chips

 

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350F.

Line a 9x9 cake pan with parchment paper.

Combine the wet ingredients (tapioca gel, chocolate ‘ganache’, agave, oil, vanilla) with the brown sugar. Whisk until combined.

Mix the dry ingredients together. Add to the wet ingredients. Whisk until well combined, even, and smooth.

Scrape into the parchment-lined baking pan.

Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, or until edges appear dry and top of brownies are a mostly firm to the touch. The brownie will have risen considerably during baking but will deflate quite a bit.

Allow to cool. Cut and serve.

Variation:

Minty Iced Brownies

Using the brownie recipe above you can make a decadent minty treat that no one will ever suspect is free of the top 8 allergens!

 

Mint Icing:

• 1-1/3 C Confectioners Sugar
• ½ t Peppermint Extract
• 2 T Water 

Combine all ingredients and stir until smooth

 

MInty Brownie Recipe:

• 1 Brownie Recipe, above
• ½ C slightly warm Chocolate “Ganache”, above (or melt 1/2 C chocolate chips with 1 t oil)
• Mint Icing, above

 

Procedure:

Spread mint icing over cooled brownies and allow to sit for at least 30 minutes.

Once it feels dry to the touch on top, pour the chocolate ganache over the top. Place in refrigerator and allow to harden, about 1 hour.

The brownies are best if they can sit overnight in the refrigerator. And easiest to cut!

Cut into squares with a warm knife (run it under hot water). Enjoy.

Keep mint brownie and regular brownie in an airtight container. Keeps for 2 days at room temperature. Can be frozen.

My friends at How2Heroes show you how to make my pizza crust shine!

Want to see how my pizza dough with the crazy tapioca gel is made? Here you go:

http://how2heroes.com/videos/entrees/gluten-free-thin-crust-pizza

Thank you How2Heroes crew!

Cinnamon Rolls: gluten-free, egg-free, nut-free and vegan!

I don't know what got into me.

I don't bake much at home, and I certainly don't bake cinnamon rolls. But something about my baking experiments of the last few days (I think I made about a dozen versions of gluten-free, egg-free, vegan bread until I gave up in frustration after the toasted quinoa flour ran out) made me hungry for cinnamon rolls. I think a failed bagel experiment (failed because I forgot to boil the bagels before baking them) made me yearn for a success, and I figured that my basic dough, with the right ratio of wets to drys, might get me there.

It took me four attempts to get the liquids right. The first one was tasty but too dry. The second one was too wet, then, when I tried to fix it, too dry. The next: too dry again. The fourth? Just right! Wet and roll-able and full of yeasty goodness. 

The recipe may look complicated, but it is not. Basically you make tapioca gel, add it, along with some wet ingredients, to the dry ingredients. Make a rectangle, sprinkle cinnamon sugar all over it, roll it up, cut it, let it rise, bake it, spread it with icing then eat. Some of the textural issues with this gluten-free, vegan version (a slight wetness in the dough) can be addressed with a few egg whites, for those who can eat egg (my tips at the bottom of this entry). 

One thing to note: like the pizza dough, this dough is very wet and sticky. Don't let that discourage you! Some well-placed plastic wrap on the counter will help you pat it into a rectangle and roll it out.

 

Cake and Commerce's Cinnamon Rolls

Tapioca Gel (make first):

• 1 C Cold Water
• 1 T Tapioca Starch

Dry Ingredients:

• 1/2 t Salt
• 1-1/2 t Instant Yeast 
• 1 t Xanthan Gum
• 1 T Sugar (any kind will do except confectioners)
• 1/3 Cup Starch (I used Rice Starch; Corn Starch or Arrowroot or Potato will work)
• 1/3 Cup White Rice Flour
• 1/3 Cup Brown Rice Flour
• 2/3 Cup Light Buckwheat
• 1/3 Cup Millet, finely milled

Wet Ingredients:

• 1 C Tapioca Gel (Recipe Above)
• 1/3 C Water, cold
• 1 T Agave Syrup (or honey)
• 1 t Vanilla extract
• 1/2 t lemon juice (or cider vinegar)
• 1 T Oil (Grapeseed, Sunflower, just not EVOO)

Cinnamon Sugar Filling:

• 1/2 C Vegan Brown Sugar
• 1 T + 1 t Cinnamon
• pinch of finely ground salt
• OPTIONAL: 1/4 C Vegan Margarine (this make the filling more ooey gooey but harder to spread on this dough)

Icing:

Beat together:

• 1 C Confectioners Sugar
• 1-1/2 t Cold Water
• 1/2 t Vanilla
• 1 T Oil

Procedure:

Make tapioca gel: combine water and tapioca in a sauce pan and stir until dispersed. Turn heat on stove to high and, stir mixture until it goes from cloudy to translucent. Remove from heat immediately and cool. You can speed up cooling by adding wet ingredients to this mixture (if you are not using instant yeast, don't add the water to the gel, save it to bloom the yeast).

Combine dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer (or in a bowl). If NOT using instant yeast, add it to the cold water.

Once the gel has cooled, add it  and the rest of the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. The dough should come together, be sticky, but not liquid. Mix with a paddle for about 1 minute.

OK...here's where patience is required. If you've ever rolled sushi, that skill will come in handy.

The dough is very very sticky. 

Take a good length of plastic wrap and spread it on the work surface. Scrape the contents of the bowl onto plastic wrap. Set your bowl down. Wet your hands with cold water. Now, pat the dough down so it makes a nice, long rectangle, about 9" x 12". You're going to roll this into a sushi-style spiral, so flat and rectangular is very important.

Take your cinnamon and sugar 'filling' (it needs to be dry rather than sticky or else the dough will tear) and evenly dust it all over the rectangle of dough. Now start rolling:

Taking the long end of the plastic (you can start from the short end if you want GIGANTIC cinnamon rolls), carefully roll the dough up - use the plastic to guide the dough, not your fingers (too sticky!). You will get a nice tube with a snail of cinnamon sugar inside. 

Cut the tube into 1" widths. I roll these in the cinnamon sugar, but you only should if you like cinnamon a lot. Place these in either a muffin pan (for individual servings) or in a non-stick brownie or round cake pan with lots of space between the rolls. If the pan is not nonstick, prepare with oil and a little GF flour of your choosing. The rolls shouldn't be touching - the dough will rise and they will need to have space to expand. If you like a more 'baked" and chewy outside of your rolls, definitely use the muffin cups OR place these on a baking sheet, tucking the end piece under the rolls so it won't start unraveling during baking.

Allow to rise in a warm place for about 1 hour (you want them to not quite double in size). Or, instead of allowing the dough to rise, you could stop the process and place the dough in the refrigerator overnight. The yeast will slow way down but the flavor will develop a little more - and you can have them fresh in the morning.

After one hour (note: in hindsight I find this much too crowded. I like it when the rolls get a little more browning on the sides - if you can bake these in muffin tins or crowd them a little less, that would be ideal):

If you like, you can sprinkle more cinnamon sugar on the rolls. 

Now, preheat your oven to 375F (190C).

Bake for about 20 minutes or until browned.

Allow to cool. Top with icing. Serve!

Enjoy

A couple tips:

• If you can use egg, replace the Tapioca Gel with 3 egg whiles and water - to make 1 cup.
• The flours can be in any combination you like, as long as you do include 1/3C of starch and don't use 100% rice (it can have a very wet chew). All of the flours I use are finely milled, so they do absorb quite a bit of water. If yours are less finely milled, or you go the all rice route, your results will be very different from mine.

(Here's what it looks like in the kitchen when I'm working out a recipe)

 

Oh yes, pizza! Gluten-free, egg-free pizza dough with an outstanding chewy texture (recipe)

 Pssst! Allow me to share the secret of chewy, tasty, egg-free (and vegan) pizza crust. This recipe builds on an earlier blog post about tapioca gel, something which allows gluten-free doughs to have better structure and chew. 

In my work I develop products free of eggs, dairy, nuts, soy (and beans), oats, gluten, wheat, fish, shellfish, sesame and sulfites. I'm a little jealous of people who can use eggs or dairy - both dairy and egg proteins give gluten-free products more of that 'just like wheat' taste and texture. It also means my work can be very challenging, something I rather enjoy, though it does require seemingly endless iterations until I hit something I'm actually satisfied with.

The pizza dough is made in two parts: tapioca gel is made first, and then you use the gel to make your pizza dough. The gel gives it an outstanding texture - nice crumb, good chew and decent crunch on the crust. Here's a small roll I made with the dough to show its internal structure and crumb. Not perfect, but pretty darn good:

If you use only 1 cup of Tapioca Gel and omit the oil, you can make a very easy-to-handle bagel or pretzel with the dough. I'm serious!

I liked my old version of pizza dough, but truthfully, it is too complicated - too many ingredients that I generally avoid (bean flours, oat flour) and it didn't have an ideal structure. This pizza recipe, using the tapioca gel recipe (link below) makes a great product that has a better structure than simple starch alone. I made a version of this with pre-gelantinized tapioca flour and it really didn't perform as well. The gel makes the difference.

This is slightly more elaborate than mixing all ingredients in one bowl, but trust me, it is worth the extra effort. 

Cake and Commerce's Pizza Dough

First, up to one day ahead:

Tapioca Gel:

• 2T Tapioca Starch/Flour
• 2 C Cold Water (hot water will not work)

Combine in a sauce pan and turn on heat to high. Stir until color of mixture becomes transparent and a texture becomes gummy. Do not boil. Remove from heat immediately. Cool. May be kept in refrigerator for up to 24 hours. May be used as is when still warm, about 100F. Be very careful - the tapioca mixture will kill the yeast if it is above 110F.

While the gel is cooling, measure out your pizza dough ingredients:

Pizza Dough:

• 1-1/2 teaspoon dry yeast (if you use instant, you can omit the water and add yeast to the dry ingredients)
• 1 T cold water
• 2 Cups tapioca gel (above)
• 1/4 C arrowroot
• 1/2 C toasted quinoa flour*
• 1 C light buckwheat flour (or substitute additional toasted quinoa Flour)
• 1/4 C white rice flour
• 1 t xanthan gum
• 1-1/2 t salt
• 1/4 C Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Procedure:

In a stand mixer, combine water and yeast and stir to dissolve. Add the 2 cups of tapioca gel and continue to mix. Add all dry ingredients, mix until smooth. Add in olive oil. Mix for an additional minute.

The dough will be very wet, unlike a traditional pizza dough. This is not a problem. Dry dough will not rise as nicely or taste as good.

You have two things you can do now:

1. scoop the dough into a loaf pan, allow to rise until double in volume and bake as bread (if you decide to go this route, replace the oil with water) 

(it will look like this - this version has the 3T tapioca AND oil)

 

OR

2. Make Pizza

(I'd make pizza.)

To make pizza, lightly cover your mixing bowl with plastic wrap and allow dough to rise until double in volume, about one hour if you used slightly warm tapioca gel. If you prefer to make pizza ahead, you can put it in the dough refrigerator before you let it rise and use it the next day. You'll still need to let it warm up and rise if you do opt for the cold method.

Ready to bake?

Preheat your oven to 500F.

Scrape down the dough. It will come apart in chunks. Do not worry - it will bake like a dream. Keep your hands wet at this point - the dough is sticky and wet hands will allow you to handle it without making it stick.

On a baking pan place silicone baking sheet (recommended), piece of parchment OR tinfoil. You can use oiled tin foil on top of one of those aluminum pizza pans, the ones with perforations, if you like. Scoop out about a third of the dough from the bowl. With wet hands, shape it into a round. Press into the middle to thin it out. Keep the edges slightly thicker. Don't worry about putting a hole in the dough. You can fill in holes with more dough. You can poke holes in the middle to keep large CO2 bubbles from making your dough look less than perfect. Or not.

Allow your crust to sit in a warm place for ten minutes. It doesn't need to be oiled, but oiling doesn't hurt. You're not leaving it out for long and it won't dry out.

Place the dough in your extremely hot oven for 8-10 minutes. You'll be baking it twice (for an extra crispy dough) so make sure the crust doesn't get too dark. If you have opted for bread, bake it at 375 degrees rather than 500 for about 20-30 minutes.

Remove from oven. You can freeze the ungarnished crust at this point OR sauce, cheese it, and top it.

Place your topped crust back in the oven. Bake for about 5 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and bubbly. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

A few tips: For a crispier crust, replace the arrowroot with white rice flour and increase the toasted quinoa flour to 1 C while reducing buckwheat to 1/2 C.

Have a different grain preference? That's fine, just substitute in the grains you like...the results will be a little different, but it will still work as long as you include some rice flour and starch.

Remember: when handling the dough, keep your hands wet. It will not harm the dough.

* To toast quinoa flour: heat oven to 300F. Turn oven off. Place quinoa flour on sheet tray and leave in hot oven until oven cools down, or about 2 hours. It is ready to use when cool.

 

In search of a better egg substitute for egg-free and vegan baking

For a year or two of my life following college I flirted with The Very Modern and Sophisticated Vegan Lifestyle, the influence of my cute animal activist boyfriend who my friends called Boring B. In an effort to take our dining above stir-frys, salads, and hummous, I took over cooking responsibilities and began plowing through the vegan bibles of the era, including a Seventh Day Adventist cookbook that focused on creating vegan items that imitated meat-full comfort foods like sour cream, meatloaf and mac and cheese with generous helpings of soy, nuts, and brewers yeast. 

One of our stock pantry items was the ubiquitous brown box: Ener-G's egg replacer. I remember wondering how I could create a delicious-looking quiche like the one on the front of the box and the disappointment that followed as I pulled the resulting failure from the oven and, following a bite, dumped it in the trash. 

And like that, Ener-G egg replacer and I were through. Soon after Boring B the Vegan animal activist moved across the country to the city where young people go to retire and I started buying eggs and dairy again. I didn't miss the hours-long sessions kneading seitan at the kitchen sink or struggling to find something on the menu that Boring B could eat when we dined out. I also didn't mind never hearing again the jailhouse confessionals from my mother after dinners at her house, dinners that were, as I later found out, full of hidden animal products added not for flavor but to give my mother secret satisfaction that she had forced Boring B to eat something he would have otherwise refused. 

My next boyfriend was vegetarian. Cooking for him was a pleasure. And I totally forgot about my brief flirtation with egg replacer. I could walk down the aisle of a store, pass right by the weird products packed inside brown boxes and not even turn my head. I could make a quiche, an egg custard, heck, I could have an omlette. I didn't have to think about egg substitutes ever again...

Until I started a new job as the food developer at a company that makes baked goods free of eggs, dairy, wheat, nuts, soy and a host of other ingredients that are collectively known in the US as "The Top 8" (lucky us! - in Canada its" the top 10" and in the UK "the top 12"). In 20 years I had ended up exactly where I had started after college: desperately needing an egg substitute for vegan and allergy-friendly recipes I develop for our website (that's actually the easy and fun part of my job - the hard part is developing new products for the retail market that people want to eat and that taste good - have you tried gluten-free products lately? Most of them are terrible, though things have gotten much better). 

Most egg substitutes are combinations of gums and starches that are added dry to a mix or hydrated briefly in cold water and added with the wet ingredients. They provide little binding and can, as in the case of flax gel, cause stomach discomfort in some. Ener-G's substitute is mostly potato and tapioca starch, with some leaveners and binders added. It is also expensive, retailing around $6 for a 16 oz box. A quick online search for other egg substitutes shows there's not much creativity in the world of binding, spreading and rising. 

When I was developing a better version of my blondie recipe, I decided to play with the idea of a cooked gel as an egg and gum substitute. I had used flax gel in my first version and although I liked it, I didn't think it made a moist enough product. I also wanted to find an egg substitute that I could use when frying foods. I had seen some allergy-friendly cooks using flax gel, but again, I wanted to avoid using flax (and...just for the record: if you cook flax, you don't get the benefits of the omega 3 fatty acids - they're effectively destroyed by heating). 

Since I don't like potato starch or corn starch, I started off with tapioca starch, which is bland (a good thing) and known for its excellent cooking and baking qualitites. I combined 1 T of tapioca starch with 1 C cold water (8 oz). I stirred it until the tapioca dissolved and then heated the mixture to boiling, stirring constantly, for about 30 seconds after it had begun to boil. I removed it from the stove and allowed it to cool. Once cooled I checked the viscosity - it was a little too gummy and thick. I watered it down to the consistency of egg whites. And used it as a 1:1 substitute for eggs in my recipe.

The results were spectacular. The blondies rose beautifully and were exceptionally moist. 

A day prior I had been talking to one of my friends about a starch substitute he had been using on an industrial level to give soft pretzels a better sheen before alkalizing and frying them. It reminded me of some work I had done at my former employer, The Extremely Large Food Company With No Soul, when we had used a starch coating to give our baked goods shine without the high cost of real eggs. Which made me think: this tapioca gel may be just what I need to make a coating stick to food prior to frying. 

I tried two different foods: chicken and eggplant. I gave each a dusting of rice flour, then dipped them in the tapioca gel (and shook off the excess) and then coated each in a gluten-free bread crumb substitute. I pan-friend one piece of eggplant and oven-baked another. Although the appearance of the pan-fried piece was prettier - it was golden brown - both were uniformly crunchy on the outside and moist on the inside, with absolutely no leaching of liquid into the pan or the baking sheet and minimal oil absorption of the food. The chicken also worked well. Here's a picture of the baked eggplant disks - not really interesting, but it shows how well the coating held to the eggplant:

 

 

One thing to note about using the tapioca gel in high fat and sugar baked goods is that it allows you to omit gums and gelling agents (such as xanthan, guar, agar agar, pectin, carageenan) from the recipe - unless you're in an industrial setting, which, if you are reading this blog for fun, I suspect you are not. The gel binds well and retains moisture - and survives the freeze-thaw cycle (as in, it retains its gelling property even after it is frozen and thawed out, something a basic corn starch cannot do). I'll try it in cake soon and see if the results are as satisfying as they are with cookies and bars. I've adjusted the recipe so that you won't need to water down the resulting gel - use as-is.

Cake and Commerce's Tapioca Gel Egg Substitute

• 2 t (approximately 5.3g)  Tapioca Starch
• 1 C (226 g) Cold Water, filtered

Stir together starch and cold water and, stirring or whisking constantly, heat in a stainless steel pan (or other non-reactive pan) until boiling. Stir for 10-20 additional seconds after it comes to a boil but no more than that (do not overcook it - this can damage the gel structure).The color will become translucent. Remove from heat. Allow to cool before using. Because starches tend to retrograde (break down, causing water to leech out of the bound starch) over time (tapioca does this very very slowly), use this within 8 hours of making it and dispose of the gel when finished. 

A 2t tapioca gel is close to the viscosity of an egg white. Simply water down, one tablespoon at a time, for a thinner gel. For frying, thin the gel by about 1/4-1/2 cup, until it is still viscous but not too gummy and thick.

Use it one for one in recipes as an egg substitute. Use 1/4 C of Tapioca Gel for one egg. I use a little more - about 1/3 C - with excellent results. May also be used as an egg substitute for r coating foods for oven-frying or oil frying.

For a thicker gel, increase tapioca to 1 T. For a thinner gel, decrease to 1 t. 

Enjoy!

Gluten-free, allergy-friendly vegan Blondies (recipe)

We've got a photo shoot on Tuesday for some new packaging we're developing, and I've been tasked with the creation of our visual props - sweets that will make our chocolate chips and chunks look gorgeous.

Though I've got carte blanche to make anything I like with any ingredient I like (including wheat, eggs and butter - ingredients that are usually verboten around here) I decided to try my hand today at a gluten-free, vegan, and allergy-friendly blondie, a bar cookie that would highlight the magnificence of our chunks. Allergy-friendly means no soy or  bean flours - there is some cross-linkages between certain bean flours (such as pea) and peanuts and soy is one of the top 8 allergens. 

The recipe came out surprisingly well - baked for 20 minutes, it is soft, chewy, and good. And decadent. If you like a less moist blondie, bake this up to 25 minutes. But I don't recommend it. If you usually keep your blondies around for a few days, you'll want them to be moist.

Admittedly I used a few ingredients that aren't easy to find in the market. Pre-gelatinized rice flour, anyone? I've taken those out of this recipe - it will work just as well.  When you mix the dough, it won't look like much - but it spreads like a dream when baked. Double up the recipe and increase baking time if you like a thicker blondie.

Cake and Commerce's Decadent Vegan and Gluten-free Blondies

• 1 C + 1 T Gluten Free Flour Blend (I used 1/2 C Cassava Flour, 1/4 C White Rice Flour, 1/4 C Buckwheat Flour and 1 T Rice Starch)
• 1/4 t Xanthan Gum (optional if you use my tapioca gel - you don't need gum with it!)
• 1/2 t Baking Soda
• 1/4 t Baking Powder (I use Hain's Gluten-free with tapioca)
• Flax Gel: 1/3C Water, warm PLUS 2T finely ground flax (or 1/3 C Tapioca Gel)
• 1/2 t Salt
• 1/3 C Grapeseed Oil (or oil of your choosing)
• 1 C firmly packed brown sugar OR 1.5 T Molasses and 1-1/4 C Vegan Cane Sugar
• 1 T Vanilla Extract
• 1 C Chocolate Chunks or Chips

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350. If using convection, preheat to 300. Prepare a 9" square baking pan with parchment or non-stick spray. Set aside.
2. Combine all the wet ingredients  and allow to sit while you mix the rest of the ingredients
3. Combine all the dry ingredients except the brown sugar. sift together if desired
4. In a large bowl, combine wet ingredients with brown sugar. Mix until uniform
5. Add all the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until well combined
6. Add in the chunks, stir until mixed
7. Place batter in prepared pan. Bake for 20 minutes, or until sides begin to turn golden and top has formed a golden crust - it will be firm but not hard all the way through.
8. Allow to cool. Cut into squares and enjoy.

Keeps for up to one week when stored in an airtight container in a cool place. May be frozen.

Cheers!

 

Back to basics: mushroom risotto for my vegan friends

Thanks to a care package from Justin at Marx Foods, I found myself swimming in samples of dry exotic mushrooms. The haul included about a half-ounce each of dry porcini, shiitake, matsutake, maitake, chatarelles and black trumpet mushrooms. Although my mandate was to experiment, I was in a comfort food mood when the package arrived. And what better way to enjoy the mushrooms than to work them into a simple risotto?

Before I started the risotto, I reconstituted the dry mushrooms in water just off the boil (translation: I turned off the heat once it boiled and poured the water over the mushrooms to cover). I let the mushrooms sit for 10 minutes. I strained the mushrooms and placed the liquid in a sauce pan. I added a 5" strip of kelp (kombu) to the liquid (seaweed contains .27% glutamic acid and intensifies the flavor) and put the shiitake mushrooms in the sauce pan as well, along with a sprig of thyme and two more cups of hot water. I brought the liquid to a simmer while I prepared the risotto.

What I love about risotto is that it doesn't take much to make it, and make it tasty. A little stock, some garlic, rice, oil or butter. Herbs. And then whatever else your refrigerator is willing to yield.

Here's what I put in mine:

Cake and Commerce's Vegan Mushroom Risotto

Yield: approximately 6 cups

Mushrooms:

• 1/2 oz Dry Porcini
• 1/2 oz dry shiitake
• 1/2 oz dry matsutake
• 1/2 oz dry maitake
• 1/2 oz chantarelles
• 1/2 oz black trumpet

Other ingredients:

• 5" strip of kelp (kombu)
• 4 large cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 onion, diced (I don't really like onions, so feel free to add more)
• 1 small carrot, minced (you may omit this)
• 2 T olive oil
• 1/2 C red wine
• 2 C Arborio Rice
• 1 T lemon juice
• 2 sprigs thyme
• Zest of one lemon, finely minced
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Procedure:

Reconstitute mushrooms, as above, and strain. Place liquid in a large saucepan along with at least 2 additional  cups of water. Return shiitake to saucepan along with kelp and one thyme sprig. Simmer. Dice the rest of the mushrooms. Set aside.

Remove thyme leaves from remaining thyme sprig. Chop fine. Set aside.

Meanwhile, heat 2 T olive oil oil in heavy-bottomed sauce pan over medium heat. Add onions, garlic, carrots and saute for 1 minute. Lower heat if too hot and sweat until translucent. Add in 3/4 of mushrooms and turn up heat. Continue to heat until mushrooms have given up much of their liquid.

Add in arborio rice and stir until all rice grains are covered in a fine coat of oil.

Pour red wine over rice. Stir until completely absorbed.

One cup at a time, add in mushroom broth, stirring the rice until the liquid is absorbed. Continue to add stock until the rice is al dente, making sure the rice has not absorbed all the liquid. It should be soft and, when served, a ring of stock should pool around the rice.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir in lemon zest, lemon juice,

Garnish with cheese (parmigiano-reggiano) if desired.

If you do not wish to make this vegan, you can always reconstitute the mushrooms in unseasoned (unsalted) chicken stock.

Enjoy.

Vegan, Gluten-Free Gingerbread Cookie Recipe (and it works for houses too!)

This crunchy cookie makes picture-perfect gingerbread people, stained glass cookies, decorations (you can make edible ornaments with the dough), and gingerbread houses. If you don't like palm shortening or Smart Balance, try this with butter. You can substitute xanthan or guar for the agar, but I strongly urge you to try the agar if you haven't yet. If you don't have rapadura, which is evaporated cane juice, you can substitute 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar. Just omit the maple syrup, too. If you don't have all the flours I recommend below, you can use all-purpose gluten-free flour. Make sure it does NOT have added xanthan or guar or leavening.

The dough is a bit dry at first, but rolls out beautifully and holds together well.

Cake and Commerce's Gingerbread Cookies

Yield: approximately 29 oz (822g)

• 1/2 C (4 oz) Jungle (Palm) Shortening or other trans-fat free vegetable shortening
• 1/2 C Rapadura
• 1 T Maple Syrup

• 1/2 C Unsulphured Molasses
• 1/2 t Vanilla Extract
• 1 T water, cool

• 2-1/2 t Ground Ginger
• 1 t Cinnamon
• 1/2 t Fresh Ground Nutmeg
• 1/4 t Ground Cloves

• 1-1/4 t Baking Soda
• 1/2 t Sea Salt
• 1-1/4 t Agar Powder
• 1/2 C Teff Flour
• 3/4 C Light Buckwheat Flour
• 1/2 C Brown Rice Flour
• 3/4 C Tapioca Flour

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350 (or 325 in Convection oven).

Combine shortening, rapadura and maple in the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix with a paddle until light and fluffy. Add in molasses, water and vanilla and continue to mix.

Separately, combine all dry ingredients together. Add to the wet mixture. The dough will be crumbly at first but will soon come together. It may take a few minutes. Finish kneading by hand.

The dough can be rolled out right away and cut into cookies or it may sit, wrapped in plastic, in the refrigerator overnight. It may be frozen and stored up to a month.

The dough should be very easy to roll out - it does not need to be rolled out between two sheets of parchment.

Bake on a parchment-lined sheet pan for 8-10 minutes, or until slightly risen with a touch of color at the edges. Cool. Store in a airtight container for up to a month.

Almost Virtuous Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Maple Glaze (Vegan, Gluten-free & Whole Grain)

A few nights ago, my friend Kate C. won an "Iron Cupcake" competition with a recipe for Chocolate Pumpkin Ale Cupcakes with Spiced Caramel Icing. This, my friends, is not that recipe. But I was inspired by her recipe - and a tete-a-tete with Ellen of I Am Gluten-Free - to go and play with some *totally* in-season pumpkin puree. Since the idea to play with pumpkin came to me an hour before Ellen and I were to meet, I didn't have any time to look up a tried and true recipe, not even my own. Using ratios I had played with before, I put together a chocolate chip pumpkin cupcake that is full of whole grains, unprocessed sweeteners (honey, maple, rapadura), and is kept moist by a generous helping of pumpkin. I used canned organic pumpkin, but feel free to substitute your own roasted or steamed pumpkin puree. It will taste just as wonderful.

A note: this cupcake tastes best if it is slightly - oh so slightly - underdone. Not wet on top, but just set. Before it cools completely, top it with the maple glaze. It locks in the moisture and you'll love these cupcakes just as much on the second day as the first.

Cake & Commerce's Almost Virtuous Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

Yield: 18 Cupcakes

Mix together dry Ingredients:

• 3/4 C Light Buckwheat Flour
• 1/2 C Sweet Brown Rice Flour
• 1/4 C Teff Flour
• 1/4 C Tapioca Flour
• 1/4 C Millet Flour
• 1/4 C Cocoa Powder (non-alkalized)
• 3/4 C Rapadura (or organic sugar)
• 1 t Baking Powder
• 1/2 t Baking Soda
• 1/2 t Salt

Separately combine:

• 1/2 C Cold Water
• 1.5 Cups Pureed Pumpkin (or 15 oz Can)
• 1/2 C Grape Seed or Sunflower Oil
• 1/4 C Maple Syrup, Grade B
• 2 T Vanilla Extract
• 1 T Raw Local Honey (or Raw Honey, or, for strict vegans, Agave Syrup or Rice Syrup)
• 1 t Lemon Juice

In the bowl of a stand mixer add the wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix for 2 minutes.

To the mixture, add

• 1 C chocolate chips (or nuts...or nothing).

Bake in 350 F degree oven for 15-20 minutes, or until well-risen and firm to the touch.

Allow to cool so it is just barely warm to the touch. Once cool, ice with your favorite icing or use....

Maple Glaze

• 1/4 C Maple Syrup
• 1 C Confectioner's Sugar
• 1/4 t Salt
• 1/4 t Lemon Juice
• 1/4 t Vanilla Extract

Combine All ingredients together and mix until uniform. Dip tops of cupcakes into glaze and allow to drip off. When topping is set, it will be shiny. Serve.

Keep in an airtight container for up to 3 days. Freeze before icing.

Gluten-free, egg-free baking: Grandma's Chocolate Cake (and it is vegan, too)

I've finally managed to adapt one of my favorite chocolate cake recipes - the only tricky thing about this is the Salba/Chia seeds I used - you can substitute ground flax meal, but it won't be quite the same. You could also just replace it with eggs, if you like eggs. Which I do, but I was baking this for a friend who isn't doing eggs right now.

Cake and Commerce's Gluten-Free Grandma's Chocolate Cake

1/2 C Cocoa - unsweetened - alkalized or not (slightly better rise with alkalized)

1 C Water

Dry Ingredients

1/2 C Brown Rice Flour

3/4 C Buckwheat Flour

1/4 C Tapioca Flour

1/2 C Teff Flour

2 C Granulated Sugar OR Rapadura (Rapadura makes for a fudgier cake)

1/2 t Baking Powder

1 t Baking Soda

1/2 t Salt

1 t Guar Gum (Optional - your cakes will still rise without it but it does give nice lift)

Egg/Substitute

2 t ground Salba or Chia (for ground flax, increase by 1/2 t)

1/4 Cup Water

-OR-

2 ea Eggs

Wet Ingredients

1 C Buttermilk (substitute dairy-free milk OR water with 2T apple cider vinegar)

3/4 C Vegetable Oil (safflower, sunflower - you can leave this out for a more dense cake)

1 T Vanilla

Procedure

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line cupcake pans, grease and flour cake pans. Makes about 2- 9" cakes or 24 ea cupcakes.

Combine cocoa and water. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly until thick. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely

Place dry ingredients in bowl of mixer fitted with a paddle. Stir all ingredients together.

Combine all wet ingredients. Slowly add wet ingredients to dry ingredients, EXCLUDING cocoa (you'll add eggs or egg substitute here).

Mix for one minute, scraping down after mixing.

Slowly add cooled cocoa to batter with the mixer set to the lowest speed. Scrape down, mix for 1 more minute on medium speed.

Pour batter into prepared pans.

Bake until done - approximately 20 minutes for the cupcake, 20-30 minutes for the 9" cake.

Cool completely.

 

The case does not rise to a high dome, but is rich and moist.

Ice with Grandma's Chocolate Cake icing, here:

http://cakeandcommerce.typepad.com/cake_and_commerce/2008/05/how-to-make-gra.html

The crumb is really nice: