constantly seeking variety in food and life
Combining sourdough and einkorn flour makes for the most easily digested wheat bread available, even for some who are gluten intolerant. (Not celiacs though of course.) Here’s the beginnings of my sourdough starter at home and how you can make your own: https://botanicalalchemyandapothecary.com/sourdough-starter
![581583FA-CC61-4980-BD9B-664CA0C9580B[1]](https://spiceoflifeblogdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/581583fa-cc61-4980-bd9b-664ca0c9580b1.jpg?w=819&h=1024)
Looking for an easy scone recipe that takes less than an hour start to finish? Look no further: https://botanicalalchemyandapothecary.com/gluten-free-vegan-chocolate-chip-scones
It’s so easy to make your own vanilla extract. Here’s the link to the recipe.
‘Tis the season for all things pumpkin, and the gluten/dairy/nut/egg intolerant of the world should not live without. I’ve been wanting to make these lately to join in the pumpkin fever around, but somehow didn’t get to it this weekend. I’m hoping by pulling it up here I’ll be motivated to get baking this week. In other words, this is a reblog reminder. While looking for the recipe through my archives I also found this post which has the link to pumpkin spice granola. This weekend is going to smell fabulous.
For years I’ve been making these scones with slight variations, trying to find the best recipe. I think I’ve found it. They are not too sweet and therefore would be lovely with a cream cheese icing or a sugary glaze, plus that would make them a little prettier, because honestly, they are not that attractive. If you add xanthan gum I’m sure you can get a smoother finish, but it’s just not that important to me and I like the not-so-sweetness of them. As any gluten-free eater knows, it’s fairly easy to make sweet gluten-free items taste good, but it’s harder to find things that aren’t loaded with extra sugar. Of course, you can use all white sugar instead of the brown sugar that I use below, but the depth that the brown sugar adds is lovely and suits the pumpkin well. Here’s the recipe:
Gluten-free, Vegan, Nut free Cinnamon Pumpkin Scones
2 C oat flour (make sure it’s gluten-free)
1 C brown rice flour
3/4 C + 1 T sorghum flour
1/2 C garbanzo bean flour
1 T cinnamon
1 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
3/4 t salt
1 C pumpkin puree (I use canned pumpkin)
1/2 C brown sugar
1/2 C cane sugar
1 T flax meal
1 C vanilla coconut milk (or whatever milk you like)
1/2 C sunflower oil (or whatever oil you like)
Add the flax meal to the milk and set aside. Add the dry ingredients up through the salt together and mix. Blend the sugar and oil in a separate bowl, then add the pumpkin. Slowly add the dry ingredients and the flax/milk combo to the wet ingredients and blend until just mixed, adding more milk if need be. Refrigerate the mixture for 3-8 hours (or overnight), then bake at 360 for 30 minutes on baking pans lined with parchment paper.
I hate to add a picture because the really are much tastier than they look, but here goes~
Oy. I better make some more so I can get some good pics of these little beauts. My boys certainly won’t mind another batch and the house smells divine for hours after they bake so it’ll be more than worth it.
Happy Holidays! No matter what you celebrate, one thing we can all agree upon is holidays call for fresh baked cookies. I wanted to make something besides gingerbread men this year because those fellas are just so darn high-maintenance with rolling them out and reworking the dough into a big enough piece to cut in to and such, so this year I went the opposite direction and made the easiest cookies ever (with the exception of sugar cookies I suppose.) I even cheated and just used Hershey’s Kisses for the filling on most of them, although for my dairy-free friends I used raspberry jam. Unfortunately I gave all those away (and maybe ate a couple myself) before taking pics, but both versions turned out to be a hit. My husband even likes them and usually if I offer him gluten-free food he looks about as enthusiastic as though I’m offering him a mud pie. He’s my own personal “Mikey likes it!” barometer and these pass with flying colors.
Gluten-Free Thumbprint Cookies
5 Cups Gluten-free flour mix such as Pamela’s baking and pancakes flour
1/2 Cup melted coconut oil
1/2 Cup Maple syrup
1 cup Coconut milk (I used unsweetened vanilla) or any milk you like best
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
Hershey’s kisses (about 20 or so) or whatever filling you choose.
Mix all the ingredients besides the filling/kisses and then roll each cookie in your hands to make them round as you set them on parchment papered cookie sheets.
Go ahead and make a thumbprint in the cookies before baking but you’ll have to deepen them when they come out of the oven too.
If you are using jam, add the jam before baking. There should be about 20 cookies or so. Bake for about 14 minutes or slightly less, depending on your oven. When they come out, deepen the thumbprints and add the Hershey kisses right away so the bottom gets to melt a tad into the cookie.
Cool on a cooling rack for a good couple of hours before trying to bag up these babies, otherwise the chocolate will melt.
These are not super sweet, so you can sprinkle them with sugar or a cinnamon/sugar mix if you want, although personally I like the fact they taste almost like a shortbread biscuit rather than a cookie. I mean considering these are made with coconut oil and cinnamon, and are lacking in refined sugar, they are practically a superfood, right? Well, maybe not quite but I like to think that they are on the healthy side for a cookie.
And now it seems only appropriate to say, “Merry Kissmas!” XOXOX
We just took a trip to Maui, my sons and my first to Hawaii, and I was of course nervous about what we were all going to eat. The good news is that it wasn’t actually that difficult, but the bad news, I have to say, was it was food-boring. On the first night we got in late and ordered room service because it actually pointed out their gluten-free foods on the menu (Westin Ocean Villas at Ka’anapali). Their gluten-free buns were dark and awesome, though I was much more enthusiastic than my boys who prefer whiter breads. They must use teff or some other flour that isn’t in heavy rotation in the gluten-free bread circles because they were darker than I’d ever seen any gluten-free baked good, and hearty like a dark whole wheat. The next day we went to a typical grocery store and bought gluten-free pasta, corn tortillas, refried beans and a few other things plus fruit and veggies. We ended up eating those things just about every single meal of every single day of the week, hence the food-boredom. We went out to two other meals, one, a Mexican restaurant so more tortillas and beans, and then another to an open-air sports pub kind of place where the boys and I got…tacos. Thank goodness for corn tortillas but it will be a long time before I care to make anything with them again. My youngest son found a bread he adores though, so he actually ate toast, plain toast nothing on it, for part of many meals. Ener.g tapioca bread was a big hit with him and about as white as you can possibly make any bread. 
I had brought with me pumpkin seed butter by Omega Nutrition and my other son spread that on all his toast and Udi’s bagels which I had brought with us. 
That pumpkin seed butter is really good~ it tastes closer to peanut butter than sunflower seed butter does, and less salty. If you have a nut-free child, or are nut-free yourself, I definitely recommend trying it if you haven’t already.
I suppose people don’t go to Maui in November for the food, but it made it a little easier to go from 80+ degree weather to 30 degree weather when we were so bored with our meal times. It is nice to be home with our warm kitchen, even if the weather outside is back to the typical Fall drizzle and there are no oceans nearby. It was good to see that so many gluten-free things could be found in a regular grocery store though~ I suppose traveling anywhere in the U.S. would be fairly easy at this point, as long as you had your own toaster and stove-top to use.
Thanksgiving is next week already and all the recipes I’ve seen going around all look so tempting! I think I’m going to stick with a few side dishes I know though while my husband deals with the turkey. So far this is the plan:
Marinated goat cheese appetizer (Café Flora cookbook) with crostini and rice crackers
Gluten-free, vegan corn bread muffins
Rolls from Wildflour
Roasted Winter Vegetables from Whole Living
Husband will make (or buy!) Turkey and Mashed Potatoes and probably cranberry sauce which no one ever actually eats at our house
Some kind of pie with (non-dairy) ice cream
(Please ignore my ‘creative’ capitalization.)
What’s on your menu?
For years I’ve been making these scones with slight variations, trying to find the best recipe. I think I’ve found it. They are not too sweet and therefore would be lovely with a cream cheese icing or a sugary glaze, plus that would make them a little prettier, because honestly, they are not that attractive. If you add xanthan gum I’m sure you can get a smoother finish, but it’s just not that important to me and I like the not-so-sweetness of them. As any gluten-free eater knows, it’s fairly easy to make sweet gluten-free items taste good, but it’s harder to find things that aren’t loaded with extra sugar. Of course, you can use all white sugar instead of the brown sugar that I use below, but the depth that the brown sugar adds is lovely and suits the pumpkin well. Here’s the recipe:
Gluten-free, Vegan, Nut free Cinnamon Pumpkin Scones
2 C oat flour (make sure it’s gluten-free)
1 C brown rice flour
3/4 C + 1 T sorghum flour
1/2 C garbanzo bean flour
1 T cinnamon
1 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
3/4 t salt
1 C pumpkin puree (I use canned pumpkin)
1/2 C brown sugar
1/2 C cane sugar
1 T flax meal
1 C vanilla coconut milk (or whatever milk you like)
1/2 C sunflower oil (or whatever oil you like)
Add the flax meal to the milk and set aside. Add the dry ingredients up through the salt together and mix. Blend the sugar and oil in a separate bowl, then add the pumpkin. Slowly add the dry ingredients and the flax/milk combo to the wet ingredients and blend until just mixed, adding more milk if need be. Refrigerate the mixture for 3-8 hours (or overnight), then bake at 360 for 30 minutes on baking pans lined with parchment paper.
I hate to add a picture because the really are much tastier than they look, but here goes~
Oy. I better make some more so I can get some good pics of these little beauts. My boys certainly won’t mind another batch and the house smells divine for hours after they bake so it’ll be more than worth it.
Well, there it is. The first gluten-free sourdough bread we made. After stirring the ever-funkier starter for several days complete with cabbage leaves and apple skin, my son was not feeling too confident about actually trying the bread. To be honest, neither was I. I really had no idea if the starter we’d made was going to work because it wasn’t ever as bubbly as I expected it to be, but we both were pleasantly surprised. The bread is pretty good!
As you can see from this picture, it did not rise much though. I am guessing as the starter sits for a few more days there will be more yeast activity, and we will try again on Wednesday to make another loaf. My son thought the bread was more than “pretty good” incidentally, probably because he helped make it and felt ownership in it. That loaf is a blend of teff flour, millet, brown rice and tapioca and he pointed out that the hard crust tasted like cereal and he was right~ it really did. Next time I might do less teff and try gluten-free oat flour for a lighter loaf~ more trials to come!
My son needed a science project and I needed a reason to try to make the sourdough starter recipe I’ve been eyeing for months, so we decided to work together and see what happens. The recipe we are using is from Jennifer Katzinger’s Gluten-Free & Vegan Bread. I’ve wanted to make sourdough starter for a long time now, ever since I read about it being a more easily digested bread than other types with single strands of yeast, but the recipes I read always seemed too complex and involved too much planning. Once I read Katzinger’s version which was already gluten-free I started thinking I could do it. Except I didn’t. There was still that planning part that got in my way, until my son’s science fair came up and I thought, we could do this~ we have a week and a half, plenty of time to get the starter going and then to try to bake with it a couple of times, with enough time even for a failure or two. We will actually use the starter later today for the first time, but actually making the mother was easier than I expected, so in case you are feeling daunted by the idea yourself I thought I’d share the steps so far. First, get a gallon size glass jar and put in 1C teff flour and 1C water.
Stir well.
Then add two purple cabbage leaves and the skin of half an apple.
Mix well again and then let it sit in a warm spot for 12 hours before stirring and adding more teff and water. After 48 hours (with 12 hours in between stirrings and adding more flour and water) it should be bubbling with yeast activity.
It is then time to take out the cabbage leaves and apple skin and put it in the fridge. It is ready to be used.
Now it’s time to test if this has worked. There is starter resting on my kitchen counter right now warming up with fresh teff and water for 4 hours and hopefully creating some yeasty activity. Crossing my fingers that we will have fresh sourdough bread by tonight. We’ll see!
These biscuits taste as traditional as a gravy-dipped southern morning. Thank the wonderful cooks at Jovial for this recipe, and try their Einkhorn versions too. I used gluten-free oat flour, brown rice flour, sorghum flour and tapioca starch, but feel free to experiment, or just use up what is in your pantry. These are made with kefir which is chock full of those oh so very important probiotics, so once you use some in this recipe, you can add the rest of the bottle to smoothies, mix it with flavoring like cinnamon or chocolate (or both!) or drink it straight. The only thing about these biscuits is I find them hard to cut in half without a lot of crumbling action, which also means they are a bit hard to toast. The broiler works best, but they are also just good straight out of the fridge where I am storing them. Here’s the link: Jovial’s recipe for biscuits.
spice of life blog 