Muffin Madness

As I mentioned here, I've kicked off Christmas baking season at my house, and I'm starting to experiment with some gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free and egg-free baking recipes.  At some point, I plan to go back to my rice flour sugar cookies, which are already reminiscent of shortbread, and see if I can kick them up another Christmas-y notch.  (Cranberries and candied mixed peel, perhaps?)  However, today I thought I'd start my investigation of cakes and muffins.

What makes Christmas baking?  For me, it's all about the spices and the fruit.  All other times of the year, I'm all over the chocolate - chocolate cake, chocolate brownies, chocolate chip cookies, etc.  But once December hits, then the dried fruit comes out.  I did a survey of my baking cupboard today: sultana raisins, golden raisins, currants, craisins, apricots, candied ginger, and candied mixed peel.  And then I moved onto my spice cupboard, where I found cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, and allspice.  What to do with all this bounty?

It's my goal this season to find a really good spice cake recipe that I can turn into a fantabulous layer cake, using my super-secret apple filling.  (Ok, not that secret - I promise, once I've finalized the recipe, I'll pass it along).  However, today, I wanted to make individually-portioned baking, because I also need December  birthday baking for my choir.  So, I opted for muffins instead.

Christmas Baking: A Trial Run

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted.  Drat being employed, it so gets in the way of my blogging habit...

Anyway, I have a few recipes I've made since then (vegan "shepherd's pie", apple-cranberry crisp, gluten-free apple pie, and even some Thanksgiving recipes) which are hanging out in the back-log, but I thought I'd jump back into blogging with something a bit more relevant.  Namely: holiday baking.

I got thrown into the holiday spirit fairly early this year; my roommate decorated our entire house for Christmas (including a giant Christmas tree) on the 30th of November.  Plus, the week before that, we had a huge snowfall (like, 10+ cm).  Now, in Vancouver, it doesn't snow.  Certainly not often, and most definitely not in November.  So the minute I see snow, I immediately think Christmas, because the earliest it normally ever snows is the week before the holidays.  All of which is to say, after spending most of November fighting the oncoming holiday fever with every bone in my body, I've now jumped solidly on board.  I haven't sent out my cards yet, or bought presents, but I have started my favourite part of holiday preps - baking.

Vegan Gingerbread Cookies

This recipe has been used by my family for as long as I can remember.  Unfortunately, it's not gluten-free.  But it is vegan; and more than that, it's tons and tons of fun to make.  The batter itself is my favourite part, because it makes use of the baking soda-vinegar foaming reaction.  My mom, on the other hand, prefers the fun of rolling out the dough and cutting out the cookie shapes.  (We make a pretty awesome baking team!  She is also the cake-decorator in the family to my cake-baker).

The dough in this recipe needs to chill for a minimum of several hours before it can be rolled.  At first, this may seem like an inconvenience; but in my opinion it's really a blessing in disguise, because the dough can stay chilled for extended periods of time.  (We've left the dough in the fridge for up to a week with no ill effects.)  Our general strategy is to make huge recipe in one go, and then portion into smaller batches of dough we can roll, bake and eat as we need it and/or as we have time.  Once I left home, I would generally do my favourite part (the mixing), stick the dough in the fridge, and then bring it home with me when I went back for the holidays so my mom could have fun cutting out the cookies. 

The short baking time also makes these cookies ideal for classroom (or Sunday school) use - bring in the dough, pre-made and chilled, and let the kids have fun rolling, cutting, sprinkling, baking, and eating!

A Holiday Salad to Remember: Cranberry-Orange-Avocado with Maple-Glazed Walnuts

This past winter, I was part of a 3-month, residential, personal development program for young adults.  One component of the program involved cooking for one another.  We were split into cooking groups, and each group was responsible for two meals over the three months.  My cooking group lucked into cooking Easter dinner, and decided, in order to accommodate all the food restrictions in our group, to cook a gluten-free, vegan meal.

The cornerstone of our main course was my rice dressing recipe, but we still needed a couple of veggie dishes.  We ended up opting for glazed carrots, and this salad recipe, which was recommended by one of my other group members.  The recipe features mandarin oranges, glazed walnuts, craisins, avocado, and blue cheese (which we decided to omit, since half our cooking group had dairy allergies).  I expected the salad would be tasty, but I was shocked how amazingly it turned out.  It was completely devoured, and even people in our group who hated walnuts with a fiery passion went back for seconds and thirds.

The Key to a Good Salad: Some Glazed Nuts, and a Killer Dressing

I want to share one of my secrets to sounding like a much fancier cook than I am: glazed nuts.  Have you ever gone to a restaurant and seen a salad served with "maple-glazed pecans" or "honey-glazed walnuts"?  Sweet, maybe a little spicy, with an aura of gourmet - not bad for a garnish or a salad topping.  Well, guess what: they are also one of the easiest things ever to make.  Glazed nuts are one of my go-to desserts, because I feel less guilty eating a lot of sugar if that sugar is wrapped around some protein.  They're also an easy snack food, and, most importantly, they make for one damn fancy-sounding salad.

But what is a salad without the dressing?  I am constantly frustrated by store-bought dressings.  Almost all of them feature dairy, or eggs, or soy products, or beet juice (all-natural colouring!)  Some salad dressings that have absolutely no need for dairy (such as honey-mustard) still use milk ingredients for flavour!  It's infuriating.  Luckily, years ago a family friend (who also happens to be a personal chef) taught me the key to a good dressing, and now I would like to pass it along to you.

So keep reading to find out my two secrets to an amazing salad.  Once you have a dressing, and some fancy nuts, the rest is easy!  Wash and shred some lettuce; or, if you're like me, and hate the salad spinner with a fiery passion, invest in one of the bags or boxes of pre-washed salad greens.  Chop up whatever veggies or fruit you happen to have on hand.  (May I suggest roasted red pepper, tomato, and strawberry?  Or avocado and black bean with some chopped tortilla chips on top?  Or some kiwi fruit and celery?  Honestly, whatever you have on hand works; and you can adjust your dressing recipe to match!)  Then pour on the dressing, top with some nuts, and enjoy!

The Best Rice Dish ever (And It Just Happens to Make a Wonderful Holiday Dressing, Too!)

In my Thanksgiving post, I mentioned that my parents have been celebrating the three major turkey holidays* (i.e. Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving) with the same group of friends since well before I was born.  Over the 25 years or so this tradition has been running, some recipes have been developed, perfected, and cemented in tradition.  One of those includes a brown-and-wild rice stuffing that my dad's friend developed years and years and years ago.  Many of the regulars at our holiday dinners are wheat-sensitive, so a long while ago it was decided that a rice alternative to a traditional bread stuffing would be a good move.

*My family and our friends tend to not eat a lot of red meat.  So while I realize ham or lamb are often traditional for Easter, our family definitely goes for turkey instead.  And pumpkin pie is served at all three holidays, because it's just that good!

While this dish found its origins in a turkey stuffing, it goes well and beyond just a holiday side dish.  Full of nuts and fruit, it has enough bulk and protein to be the main dish at a holiday dinner (and I've certainly used it as such, to great acclaim), and enough sweetness to make a killer breakfast food.  A chef-to-be friend of mine has developed a rice-cooker version, using slightly fewer holiday-specific spices, and she uses this recipe as a side dish all year round.

I've tried to stay true to the original spirit of the dish, while also modifying it to be fully vegan and gluten-free.  And being me, I've upped all the flavour notes just a bit.

A Much-Belated Thanksgiving Post

Turkey

This year's Thanksgiving was a momentous one, for a couple of reasons.  For starters, it was the first year ever that I haven't made it to my family's traditional Thanksgiving Dinner.  My parents are part of what they call "orphans holidays" - three couples and their kids who don't have extended family in the area, and who celebrate Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas together every year.  This tradition predates me (the oldest of the kids), and it's become such a well-oiled, perfect machine that we barely have to think about it every year.  The food is almost always the same (the veggies change up a bit, and occasionally we add a seasonal dessert), and while we occasionally invite other "orphan" friends in need of a place to go for the holidays, the core people are also pretty unchanging.  So I was a little sad when I ended up having to work on the Sunday evening and missed out on the traditional family dinner.

Stuffing, salad, potatoes with gravy, and yams

But everything was alright!  Because from the moment my roommates and I moved into our epic new house, I knew that I wanted to host Thanksgiving Dinner here.  I love to cook for people, and I enjoy entertaining; and now I finally lived in a house big enough to do both!  And two of my roommates hail from different provinces and don't have family to celebrate with, so we wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to celebrate Thanksgiving.  So we invited a bunch of close mutual friends, and then all of us went about making our own traditional Thanksgiving dishes, taken from our years of family celebrations.  In the end, it was a wonderful celebration with good food and great people; and we all got a chance to honour our own Thanksgiving histories while also moving forward.  I felt so incredibly grown up cooking and hosting my OWN Thanksgiving Dinner, with the close people in MY life - somehow, knowing I was capable of putting a holiday dinner on the table proved to me that I really can handle some of the big changes in my life.

Pumpkin apple soup

And the best part?  How low-stress we all were!  We started cooking on the Friday, and by Saturday afternoon (dinner was Saturday evening) we were taking naps, relaxing, leisurely getting ready, and enjoying some fine cheeses.  Our washing machine overflowed, a couple of glasses got broken, and our coffee machine exploded; and yet, beyond a couple of harried 5 minute intervals, everyone was calm and having a good time.  I call that the true measure of holiday success!

Apple pie

The Menu
Appetizer: five kinds of fancy cheese, exotic crackers, and some red pepper jelly
Soup course: Pumpkin-apple spice soup!!!
Dinner: turkey, brown rice dressing*, baked yams, garlic mashed potatoes*, gravy (turkey or vegan*), succotash, cranberry-orange salad*
Dessert: apple pie, vegan-gluten free pumpkin pie* (both homemade, of course!)

All the starred recipes were the ones I had a hand in, and I'll address them in other posts to follow.  And I hope that all of you had an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving dinner yourself!

Kitchenprovisation (Or, the Joys of Quinoa)

Quinoa (pronounced KIN-wah, not kwe-NO-a) is probably my favourite grain at the moment, and has been for awhile.  Why, you ask? Well, for starters, quinoa is a complete protein, which means that it contains all the essential amino acids in the right proportions for our bodies to use them.  This doesn't mean that quinoa alone is a sufficient source of protein; but it certainly doesn't hurt, given my occasionally protein-challenged diet, if my carbohydrate component is also building up my protein intake.  (Most whole grains, however, do contain a lot of protein - they just may not all contain all of the essential amino acids in a single type of grain).  More practically, quinoa is just faster to make than rice, given I only cook with whole grain rice.  Whole grain rice takes 40-50 minutes to cook, while quinoa takes 15.  And finally, and probably most importantly, quinoa just works in everything!  It's extremely delicious plain, as a side (especially when made with veggie broth instead of water), it's great in salads (a Mexican black-bean salad with quinoa is on my to-do list to try), and it can replace couscous or bulgar wheat in salads like tabbouleh.

And, my favourite application, it's absolutely brilliant when mixed with a tomato sauce.  During the year or so that I'd tired of soba noodles, but hadn't yet discovered amazing brown rice pasta, quinoa was how I got my fix of delicious veggie tomato sauces.  I've made tomato quinoa with shrimp, with black beans, and with chickpeas.  And like most pasta dishes, it's the easiest recipe to make up on the spot.  At its simplest, mix some cooked quinoa with jarred marinara sauce, and enjoy.  But sometimes I like to make my own tomato sauce, which is what I did this week.

My inspiration came from an eggplant.  I was grocery shopping with my roommates when I spotted a GIANT globe eggplant.  I don't eat eggplant very often, but I really like it.  My friend (who's vegan) and I have had conversations about how eggplant can take on the flavour of so many different "forbidden foods" to us, although most people who can still eat those foods will probably thing it's nothing like.  (An example: one of the Thai restaurants in Vancouver I frequent adds eggplant to their green curry.  I swear that eggplant tastes like the elephant ear doughnuts they have at the PNE, although I couldn't tell you why.)  So I decided it was time to experiment with eggplant again.  The next morning, I got up, opened my fridge and cupboards, and started concocting a sauce.

Macaroni Cheese Redux

Whenever I try a radically new recipe, I generally make it exactly as written, just to master the technique.  Once I know how to make something, though, watch out - if I have confidence I can make the final product, that's about all I need to start radical experimentation.  So even though I've already talked about gluten-free Mac'n'Cheese, I felt it warranted a second post, because really, that first attempt was just a proof-of-principle.  This second, unbelievably delicious, attempt, however, is the recipe with my own spin, and it's rapidly becoming my new favourite food!  I would definitely entertain with this dish, although that would mean having to share it...

Anyway, as I've indicated before, mac'n'cheese was a dish that I loved to modify back when I could still eat cheese.  I figured many of these modifications would still apply, and indeed, this dish turned out pretty much perfectly.

Rice Flour Sugar Cookies

As I mentioned in my last post, at 11 pm the night before my housewarming party, I decided I wanted to make cookies.  But I'd already made my favourite gluten-free chocolate chip coconut cookies three days earlier, and I didn't really feel like making another batch.  (Plus I was out of brown rice flour.)  Unfortunately, that was my one and only gluten-free cookie recipe, and I wasn't quite prepared to subject my body to spelt or wheat flour on a night when I knew I was probably going to eat other things I was allergic to (potlucks can be dangerous).  So what was a girl to do?  Turn to google, of course!

After searching through many rice flour cookie recipes (because the only flour I had on hand was white rice flour), I finally found this recipe for rice flour sugar cookies.  It was dairy-free but still had eggs, so I knew it was a gamble to make - but I was intrigued, so I figured I would take the challenge.

No Better Way to Warm a House Than With Salsa

Last Saturday was the official housewarming party for our new place.  My roommates and I (there are five of us) all invited out friends over for an epic potluck and barbecue party.  The day started off auspiciously - it was super hot and sunny as late as 4 that afternoon - and despite an unfortunate torrential rainfall that made an appearance later that night, the party was still a success!  Good conversations, lots of mingling between friend groups, and some really awesomely good potluck food made for a really fun evening.

I tend to get a little overzealous when cooking for parties.  I started with my usual culprit for any potluck party: mango-avocado salsa.  I also made black bean burgers (my go-to choice for barbecues, although this particular batch was very disappointing).  And then, at the last second, I decided that I wanted to make sure I had a dessert I could eat too, so I made sugar cookie/biscotti hybrids as well.  (My roommates thought I was a little nuts to start making cookies at 11 pm at night, I must say). 

Burger and cookie recipes will hopefully follow later this week, but for now: salsa!

Taco Night!

Monday nights in our house have become unofficial (or possibly official, by now) roommate night.  Some weeks that means house meetings, and it often involves chores (last night we cleaned out the fridge), but last night it also involved a pretty awesome dinner - taco night!  At last count, our dinner required 11 bowls, 2 plates, and a tub of sour cream just to serve, and the meal was a constant chorus of "could you please pass the ___", but it was oh so totally worth it!  What was in all those containers?  Taco meat (for the non-vegetarians in the house), awesome bean filling, two kinds of guacamole, tex-mex cheese, salsa, lettuce, tomatoes+red peppers, cucumber, green onion, and cilantro, plus soft (flour) and hard (corn) tortillas.   I personally like to eat one or two hard tacos before getting fed up with how small they are or how easily they break, then I tend to switch to crumbling the taco shells over a salad.  So tasty!

Given that a traditional taco involves a lot of beef and cheese, and occasionally some guacamole which has been spiked with sour cream, I thought I'd talk about some of the recipes I use to make taco night equally enjoyable but all-the-more vegan.  (Although for the non-vegetarians, adding ketchup, garlic powder, chili powder, hot sauce, and a pinch of curry powder to browned beef makes for a pretty tasty alternative to pre-packaged taco seasoning packages).

Macaroni & Cheese, Vegan-Style

True story: I learned how to cook because of macaroni and cheese.  Every Friday, my elementary school let out at noon, and my dad would pick me up and drive me home. Then, I'd wait for my mom to get home and make me President's Choice White Cheddar Mac n' Cheese (KD but better =P)  A couple of weeks she didn't get home until much later and I was SO hungry and SO impatient, that she finally told me that I should make it myself if I was going to complain that much.  So I did.  And then one week she got home early and offered to make it for me...and it tasted wrong!  I always used less butter and more milk, and when mom made it for me again (just the way she always used to), it just wasn't as good as when I made it myself.  For years, these were my two major motivations for cooking for myself - I could eat when I wanted, and I could make it just the way I liked it.  Half the mayo, twice the pepper in my tuna salad; extra pineapple on my pizza; mushrooms in my chili.  I guess in a way this suggested my eventual love of experimental cooking (every recipe could always be improved), but really at the time it was purely a matter of pragmatism.  I also loved the Food Network, and wanted to try and test out some of the new skills I picked up from the shows I was watching.

Gluten-free pasta

As a kid, I grew up with my mom trying different whole-grain or wheat-free kinds of pasta every few months.  I remember that corn pasta was utterly disgusting, rice pasta was mush, spelt and kamut pasta were tolerable, whole-wheat macaroni was tolerable, and white pasta was the world's biggest treat.  (I'd request white pasta for my birthday every year).  So when I suddenly found myself needing to find wheat-free pasta, I was pretty upset.  All the alternatives were terrible, I thought!  As I've discovered over the past few nears, not necessarily.  So I thought I'd pass along some suggestions for those trying to eat pasta wheat- or gluten-free.

• Rice noodles: I started out with Asian-style rice noodles, which I used even pre-allergies to make pad thai, or as a base for curry when I was too lazy to make rice.  I wouldn't recommend these noodles for Italian-style pasta recipes (they do not have nearly enough structual integrety to stand up to heavy sauces, and the flavour is very different).  But I do recommend trying some Asian-inspired noodle dishes, because they're very tasty =D

• Soba Noodles: Soba noodles are a Japanese noodle made in part or completely with buckwheat flour.  (Some soba noodle brands are pure buckwheat, but some cut with wheat flour, so check ingredient labels!)  For years soba noodles were my solution to all things pasta. They are delicious for stir-fries, or just to eat straight with some sesame oil and soy sauce as a high-carb comfort food.  They are also similar-ish in appearance to spaghetti and I used to use them as my catch-all pasta replacement. They don't taste exactly the same, but they were passable.  Now that I've discovered some better pasta substitutes, I tend to reserve soba noodles for more Japanese- and Chinese-influenced dishes, but I still keep them around and thoroughly enjoy them

• Rice pasta: Several companies make Western-style pastas out of rice flour, to very mixed results.  I know many people have had terrible experiences with rice pasta that falls apart upon cooking or turns to mush; I certainly had many such experiences as a child.  However, I am happy to report there is now a good alternative: Tinkyada Brown Rice pasta!  They make penne, fusilli, shells, elbow pasta (i.e. macaroni), and a really fun kids' mix that's all different shapes.  (I dare you to try and eat pasta shaped like sailboats and bunny rabbits and not have a good time).  I've found Tinkyada pasta at Save-on-Foods, and much cheaper at specialty stores (Greens on Broadway at Maple, Dollar Groceries on Commercial at 6th, and Tim's Fresh Produce on Broadway at Macdonald all carry it for $3.50-$4.00/lb; Dollar Groceries even sell it in bulk).  I'd be shocked if Capers & Choices didn't also carry it.  Unfortunately neither Costco nor Superstore stock it - SuperStore has a different brand of (white) rice pasta that I've never tried.  The pasta is whole-grain and rice, but holds up to overcooking very well and yet isn't tough.  Wheat-eating friends have really enjoyed it, and I'd say it's as good an equivalent to white pasta as whole-wheat pasta is.  And it's so easy to cook!  It takes longer than regular pasta, but the cooking strategy is to boil water, add the pasta, and then take it off the heat and cover - the residual heat in the water will cook it in <20 minutes.  I haven't yet managed to overcook it, which is something I'm usually very good at (I have made so many recipes with pasty, over-boiled soba noodles before...)  There isn't a spaghetti/linguine alternative I've managed to find yet, but I'm perfectly happy with fusilli or penne (it's what my family eats anyways); and I can't imagine a better alternative to wheat pasta.

•   If you can eat spelt or kamut, both have been made into very decent pastas.  I personally prefer the brown rice for shaped pasta (like penne), but for people who really want long noodles like spaghetti, both spelt and kamut brands have very good alternatives to offer.

Happy pasta-making!

"Banana and Pancakes are Pretty Much the Greatest Thing Ever"

Better rise than I expected!

So spoke my friend from Manitoba who's visiting for several days and was hanging out in the kitchen while I made my latest batch of gluten-free, vegan pancakes.  I'm not entirely sure I agree (I am a huge fan of strawberry and/or apple pancakes as well), but I think they're definitely in the top 10.

I've gone through many iterations of trying to make pancakes I could eat.  First I wanted them dairy-free; then vegan; finally, vegan gluten-free.  I've used some very weird substitutions that led to some very weird-tasting pancakes, but I think I've finally arrived on a recipe that works!

(I should also add that these pancakes passed my critical test for awesomeness: roommate approval.  None of my roommates have crazy food restrictions, so when they eat a gluten-free vegan anything and proclaim it delicious, I know that it's truly good, and not just a pale imitation of out-of-reach delicacies).

Best Bean Chili (Fully Roommate-Approved)

My apologies for a lack of posts this week, I just finished moving!  My new place has my first proper, house-sized kitchen in years, and I am very excited to make use of it and its extensive shelf space.  So, today, in order to properly break in the new house, I made one of my absolute favourite dinner-for-friends-plus-leftovers dishes: all-bean chili!

Chili was one of my favourites growing up.  It was my mom's stand-by vegetarian recipe, and for years she would make it any time we had vegetarian guests over.  My first memory of her chili was New Year's Eve: every New Year's when I was little, four families (all close friends from before they had kids) would get together and do a big dinner, thanksgiving, year-in-review and celebration.  Every year my mom's friend made rainbow tortellini with alfredo sauce for the kids (a huge treat), and mom made chili for the adults.  Initially my mom made her chili with tofu; as we got older and started to turn our noses up at this weird white stuff in our chili, she switched temporarily to ground beef.  Then, with the advent of veggie ground round, the recipe once again became vegetarian.

The secret to mom's chili lay in using cans of Campbell's concentrated tomato soup mix as a thickening agent.  The chili was thick, and slightly sweet, and generally utterly delectable.  However, Campbell's soup tends to be very high in salt, and as I discovered recently, also contains gluten.  Clearly that was something I needed to learn to work without.  I also can't eat ground round (I have a soy allergy), so I wanted to increase the number of beans.  And I have much more of a love for spicy food than most of my family, so I played around with the spice mix as well.  But I love chili, for the taste and also because a big pot of chili can last me a week in leftovers.  So I've been playing around with customizing this recipe for the past two years, and I've come up with a combo that I personally think is pretty awesome.  If you try it out, let me know your thoughts too.

Brownie sagas!

Brown rice banana brownies!

One day earlier this summer I went into Capers because I had a couple of hours and wanted to chill out over a coffee.  As I was ordering my mocha (decaf with almond milk!), I noticed that Capers carried vegan spelt brownies*.  I was over the moon!  A real, cake-y, chewy, brownie I could eat!  Now, a brownie + a mocha ended up being way too much chocolate, but it didn't matter, I was inspired - if Capers could do it, so could I!  It was time to try making brownies!

*(Note for those of you who want to try the store-bought version - Capers in Kits no longer sells them, but Whole Foods on Cambie has them in their bakery)

My intentions were great, and I set off googling recipes for spelt brownies, which I could then vegan-ize.  The results: a lot of failures.  This baking endeavor, more than any other, reminded me that allergen-free baking really is an experiment, and often it can go very, very wrong.  Why so disastrous?  The answer: no eggs.  Brownies rely so much more on eggs than flour for their chewy texture - most recipes call for two eggs but only 1/2 cup of flour.  Sometimes, vegan substitutes just don't work, as I quickly proved.

Cookie Shenanigans!

Brown rice flour cookies!

Last week was a week of crazy baking.  A couple of weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to learn how to make wheat- and gluten-free cookies.  Since giving up wheat, I'd primarily restricted my baking to cakes & muffins, but I was starting to crave a good cookie.  So I went on a googling spree.  After finding a surprising number of good recipes, I made a short list, and on Monday last week I went shopping.  And Wednesday I started baking.  Well, by Friday, the cookies were all gone, so what was I to do to make more?  So many cookies...by Saturday I definitely had a headache from eating cookies in place of real food.  But, both recipes turned out pretty well, so I thought I'd pass them along.  (Both recipes contain almond butter, by the way, so anyone with nut allergies may want to pass up on this post - sorry!)  See below for spelt-flour super-energizing cookies, and my first stab at a (pretty much) gluten-free chocolate chip cookie (seen above)

Gluten-Free Cooking: Tips & Tricks

First off, I should start this by saying that I am NOT an expert gluten-free baker or chef.  I've been playing around with it for the past few years, but it hasn't had to become a full-on lifestyle choice yet (I still use a fair amount of spelt).  There are many, many food blogs out there that give much more thorough advice on how to manage a gluten-free lifestyle.  And for those of you who are gluten-free but aren't vegan, including eggs in your baking will make life a lot easier.  However, for anyone interested in gluten-free and vegan baking (on a student budget) for beginners, or just wants to read about my own baking experiments, read on.

Gluten-Free Baking: Wherefore and Why

There is so much I could say on this topic, and in fact I've been putting off writing this post for two days because the scope of information is so vast it's intimidating.  So, ultimately, I've opted to split this into two posts: the why, and the how. Later on I will follow up with some more concrete science info to back up my assertions & descriptions, but right now I just wanted to touch on the surface of the issue a bit.

So: gluten-free baking.  Why bother?  It's certainly a major challenge: gluten provides the elasticity and binding that most of us take for granted when baking with flour.  It's a double challenge if, like me, you're attempting gluten-free AND vegan baking, because the other food ingredient that traditionally provides elasticity and binding in baked goods is eggs, and I can't eat those either.  But gluten intolerance is becoming a bigger and bigger issue in society today.  For example, when I used to volunteer at a theatre festival selling ice cream, I was frequently asked which  ice cream products were gluten-free.  People were always excited when they realized I actually knew the answer.  And while I now am trying to follow a gluten-free (or at least gluten-low) diet myself, I actually started learning about gluten-free baking so I could bake for gluten-intolerant friends.  So I'm guessing most readers probably know someone in their life who have issues with wheat or gluten.  But before one can go about accommodating these restrictions, it's important to know what exactly your (or your friend's) sensitivity is.

Vegan Recipe Archives

I recently discovered that wheat has joined my list of forbidden foods.  However, for the past couple of years, when I could still tolerate gluten on occasions, I discovered a whole host of amazing, easy, soy-free, vegan baked goods.  So this is a collection of a few of my favourite vegan baking recipes, in hopes you will all enjoy them even though I no longer can!

Vegan Baking: A How-To

The first major baking-limiting allergies I discovered were dairy and eggs.  While I wasn't primarily motivated by ethics, the end result of these limitations was that I dived head-first into vegan baking.  Even now, as I'm venturing into wheat- and gluten- free baking, the same rules to vegan-izing recipes still apply.  So I thought I'd start out this blog by summarizing the easiest how-to's of vegan baking.  I don't claim originality for any of these ideas, and they can be found all over the internet; but a summary is never harmful and this way I have somewhere I can link when I reference substitutions in future.

My first approach when baking anything vegan is to search for a tried-and-true vegan recipe.  But, if I find an incredible recipe that still has milk or eggs, or if  I really want to make one of the recipes I grew up making as a kid, I know I can always turn to one of the many available substitutes.

Welcome!

Here goes my first shot at an actual blog.  I've always felt super self-conscious about the idea of blogging, because I have a hard time believing people actually want to read what I'm writing.  But when someone suggested to me that I start a food blog, I had to stop and think about it for a minute.  For years, people have asked me to send them recipes; instead, I send them essays.  And between my own food restrictions, and those of my friends, I've certainly learned how to get creative. Therefore, my hope is that I might have something to offer people, even though I am nowhere near as expert as any of the other food blogs I gratefully search for recipes and inspirations.  Thus after spending months and months sharing my food exploits via facebook status updates, I thought I'd move them to a slightly more permanent, coherent form.

My training is in biology, and when I first started working in the lab, I lost all desire to cook for two months.  This is because lab biology is, really, very very similar to baking or cooking: I mix ingredients in a certain order, following a recipe, and then heat and cool my mixtures for varying periods of time (sometimes in water baths) to get a certain product.  The title of my blog comes from one of my favourite images from that first lab: one of our technicians had a blue box of index cards, so reminiscent of my mom's recipe box at home.  When I looked through it, I found lab protocols (how to make a proper Western transfer buffer from scratch, for instance), mixed in with recipes for casseroles and biscuits.  That's what really drove home to me the idea that cooking and lab work are pretty much the same thing with a different context.  (We use Carnation brand milk powder in the lab, the yeast cultures I grow smell like fresh-baked bread, and agar is a nice vegetarian substitute for jello).  And, in addition to all that, there were some AMAZING bakers in that lab, so I had to up my game just for birthdays and journal clubs.

So, welcome to my blog.  Posts will be sporadic, as I embark on new baking adventures, and share some of my past successes.  And, hopefully, at some point I'll be able to indulge my inner biologist by sharing some of the research I've done into food allergies, and the science behind why certain food substitutions work better in certain recipes. Enjoy!  And please let me know if there any kind of recipes you're interested in seeing!