Cooking Mojo

My cooking mojo is back, and I have no pictures, a cardinal sin on the interwebs because who wants to read all of the words?

But it's back, and along with it a frenzy of disorganized work on The Book That Shall Not Be Named or talked too much about, lest I scare it away. It's like a frightened stray kitten, but I want to be the one riding the kitten, like this:

[caption id="attachment_1163" align="aligncenter" width="300"] (not my picture, so if you know whose it is, let me know and I will credit the photographer)[/caption]

But I digress.

I just sat down to a lovely bowl of Chipotle-like goodness, with the beef and the rice and the corn salsa, except I made it all, smoky and spicy and sweet and crunchy and lime-spiked with cilantro that I am growing to love. I just at this moment remembered that I forgot the peppers and onions, but it was still delicious.

In the past 24 hours I have also:

• Cooked and canned strawberry rhubarb ginger jam


• Made scones to go with the jam (they were delicious but flat. Working on that; see below)


• Started almonds soaking for almond milk


• Concocted a chicken tandoori marinade of epic fucking proportions (very excited about that)


• Researched another two ways to make GF scones (one trial will happen tomorrow)


• Mixed another batch of GF flour because PIZZA DOUGH is happening


• Planted two types of tomatoes and four herbs (it's a crapshoot with not much sun anywhere in our tiny Hampden backyard, but I have to try because TOMATOES)

I recruited my new neighbors to be tasters because The Teenager hasn't been around much and has been eating her meals out with friends, and when she is here she is picky as hell. So there is a surplus of food to try and comment on, and they are close by.

So nice to be cooking again, in my own kitchen, with my own tools. It's about freaking time.

What's your mojo rising towards?

Strawberry Rhubarb Ginger Jam

That's a mouthful for a jar of springtime sunshine, isn't it? And yet it is the most delicious thing ever, and the first real cooking project in the new kitchen (except for a minor corn salsa, but I don't really count that so much).

Saturday at the farmer's market I was talked into buying rhubarb. I had been wanting to experiment with rhubarb a little, and with a week of 90-degree weather forecast, I figured this might be my last chance for the season. If my week got crazy and I ran out of time and couldn't make anything, rhubarb freezes beautifully, so I bought a pound.

I should have bought more.

This tart jam gets its sweetness from crystallized ginger and overripe, nearly-gone strawberries. Fresh grated ginger brings a little heat into the mix, and it sets firm without pectin or fuss of any kind. I am a fan of small-batch canning, but this is too small a batch for how much I love this jam. Usually I share what I make, as The Teenager is not always consistently appreciative of my efforts, and it's just the two of us, but this recipe made only two half-pint jars and a little extra, which I promptly slathered on scones this morning. I plan to stalk the market for more rhubarb this weekend and freeze whatever I can forage so that I can work on variations as the summer progresses (raspberry rhubarb? Blueberry rhubarb with cardamom and clove?).

For now, here is this lovely jam.

Strawberry Rhubarb Ginger Jam

Ingredients:

2 c. sliced strawberries

1/8 c. (ish) grated fresh ginger (pro tip: freeze the entire knob of ginger and grate as needed)

1/4 c. chopped crystallized ginger

one pound rhubarb (about four 18" stalks), trimmed of leaves and chopped into 1/2" pieces

1 1/4 c. sugar

Method:

Combine all ingredients in a  heavy saucepan and simmer on medium heat until rhubarb and berries break down and thicken into jam. Stir frequently to prevent scorching. This process varies wildly from 20 to 45 minutes, depending on altitude, berries, alignment of the stars, etc.

Caution: At this stage the jam is like molten lava. Keep the simmer low and be mindful of spluttering spatters.

To test if it is done, spoon a bit onto a cold plate and cool to room temperature (use the 'fridge). The jam is ready if, when you drag a finger through it, it does not seep back together.

This will keep in the 'fridge for a couple weeks, or use a water bath canning method to process for 10 minutes and keep it fresh for up to one year.

Enjoyed on gluten free scones this morning, but delicious on conveyance of any kind, to be sure.

Cream Cheese Tarts With Lemon Marmalade

It's winter. Not the depths of winter, technically, but we got seven inches of snow yesterday, so here in Baltimore, we are IN IT.

I love winter. It's annoyingly true. While others grumble about snow days and kids staying home, I like nothing better than to have The Teenager all to myself for the day. Yesterday at the height of the storm we hiked down to Golden West for the Lisa Marie (a pancake with a strip of bacon fried in it, topped with peanut butter butter - not a typo, a real thing -and served with maple syrup), plus hashbrowns for good measure. We let the dogs run up and down the alley, off leash, until they found a kitty and chased it, then we made snow angels in the middle of the road.

So snow days are my thing.

Especially when you have this just lying around in your cabinet:



This is a jar of epic, three-day organic lemon marmalade that I made last week. It is tart and sweet and faintly bitter from the pith that gives it the pectin to set up all by itself.

I have five of these. That's a lot for two people to eat, one of whom doesn't actually like lemon marmalade. Logical choice, for me, is a lemon cream cheese tart. Individual tarts because a whole tart is too much but maybe individual ones will be more manageable.

An easy, gluten-free pie crust, a luscious, creamy, whipped cream and cream cheese filling, and a thin layer of juicy lemon marmalade. Drizzling it with chocolate may be overkill, but I am going there.

Come with me.

Cream Cheese Tarts With Lemon Marmalade

Crust:

5 tablespoons butter (softened)

1/4 cup sugar

1 room temperature egg

1 cup AP flour (I used gluten-free)

1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions: Cream butter and sugar with a hand mixer until smooth. Add egg and incorporate thoroughly. Combine flour and salt in a small bowl and then add into the wet mixture a little at a time until it is just mixed. Shape dough into a ball, then wrap in plastic and flatten. Pop in the 'fridge and chill for an hour.

When it's chilled, remove from 'fridge and flour your work surface. Turn out dough and roll until it is between 1/8" and 1/4" thick (I use a wine bottle to roll, but I suppose a regular old rolling pin would work as well). For individual tarts, you could rush out and spend lots of cash on individual tart pans, or you could grab some wide-mouthed Mason jar lids and flip the lid so the metal faces up in the center of the ring (instead the white underside).



Place your tart dough in the lid, pressing lightly into and up the sides of the ring. Make sure you make your dough circles just a bit wider than the ring so that there is enough dough to go all the way up to the top of the metal ring.



This recipe made eight of the wide-mouthed lids and three of the regular lids. Perfect if you have small children who need an even smaller tart. Chill in the freezer for half an hour (wrap lightly in plastic wrap).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake mini crusts until lightly browned and dry, about 15 minutes (about 30 minutes for a full-sized tart). Keep an eye on them. If they start to bubble up, you can prick them lightly with a fork, or you can line each crust with aluminum foil and use pie weights to prevent bubbling (or just use rice. I use the same rice over and over. I let the rice cool after each use then store it in a jar for the next time. This lasts indefinitely, or until you move and decide to throw it out.). Your crust should be a lovely golden brown color. If you are using pie weights or rice, remove them in the last few minutes so the whole crust can brown.

Let crusts cool completely while you make the filling.

Filling:

1 8-ounce bar of cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup of sugar

1 cup of whipping cream, whipped until it forms peaks

optional: 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and one tablespoon of sugar to add to whipping cream

Directions: Cream the cream cheese and the sugar together until fully mixed. Whip the whipping cream (and optional sugar and vanilla extract) in a separate bowl until the cream forms stiff peaks. Beat the cream cheese and the whipped cream together. Spoon into cooled crusts and chill for at least an hour.



Top with your topping of choice and chill for another 30 minutes. I am using lemon marmalade, about a tablespoon per tart, but guess what? Jam of any sort would be delicious, or slather the tops with hot fudge sauce. If you do that, be sure and finish with a bit of fleur de sels.



To serve, unmold from the Mason jar rings. You should be able to slide the tart off the lid, but if not, serve it with a dollop of whipped cream, a smile, and a strong cup of black coffee.

Spring is just around the corner.

 

Snow Day Zeppolis

So this happened:



Zeppolis. Pillowy little clouds of ricotta and lemon zest, fried and rolled in cinnamon sugar, then eaten warm. It's a classic, simple recipe.

These happen to be gluten free. You're welcome.

To start, you need three or four cups of oil for frying. I used canola, but coconut would probably also be divine. Start heating it while you make the dough. It needs to be 350 degrees to fry well. Hotter than that, though, they burn. Cooler and they soak up all of the oil. #Balance

In a small bowl, stir together: 

1 c. all-purpose flour (I used gluten free)

1 1/2 t. baking powder

1/4 t. salt

In a medium bowl whisk:

3 large eggs

3 T. sugar

(until frothy, but don't beat it half to death)

To the egg mixture, add:

1 c. ricotta

2 T. grated lemon zest (make it organic)

2 T. vanilla

(and mix until combined, but don't overmix)

Add flour to ricotta mixture and stir to combine.

Before you start frying, mix together 1 c. sugar and 1 t. cinnamon in a bowl. Better yet, a paper bag. You'll see why.

Drop by teaspoonfuls into the hot oil. They should only take a minute or two. Flip them over to brown evenly on both sides. If they are burning or cooked on the outside but raw on the inside, your oil is too hot.

When the zeppolis are done, use a spider to get them out of the oil and transfer to a plate lined with paper towels. Let drain briefly, then toss while still warm into the cinnamon-sugar.

Perfection. The zeppolis should be a contradiction: dense but pillowy, light but satisfying, soft but crunchy.

You could call these breakfast because EGGS and RICOTTA. Or you could make them as an after-snow snack with a cup of hot chocolate. They take almost no time to whip together.

What's your snow day go-to?

Scones: The United Nations Of Breakfast Pastry

Today is chocolate-chip scone-making weather.

This morning I woke to the sound of our next-door neighbor playing his saxophone. It was a little early for last night's late night, but he is very good, and it was like playing a Coltrane record, like a real record, not a remastered CD or some other stupid technological refinement that takes all of the soul from the sound.

Even the farmers think it is scone-making weather; there were no pickles or granola at the farmer's market this morning (wind chill temp: 3 degrees), and the cute British boy with the delicious beets was also MIA. So I went to new vendors, spreading my little cash around and letting everyone keep the change. It's the simple things.

Back to scones.

They couldn't be more simple. Some flour (my GF flour mix is perfection here), baking powder and soda, salt, sugar, butter. Then sour cream, egg, and whatever you like. Chocolate chips can be spiced up with finely chopped candied ginger. You could add lemon zest and a little more sugar and some finely chopped rosemary (go easy on the rosemary or it will taste like a lemon-flavored pine forest). Add prosciutto and cheese. Or bacon and maple syrup.

But scones warm the house and smell divine. Baking is chemistry, and not just in the laboratory sense. From time to time (like today) I wake The Child up with a warm scone and a cup of peanut butter hot chocolate. This does more than fill her belly; it eases my non-morning child into the day and smooths parent-child relations for the day.

Scones are the United Nations of breakfast pastry.

When it is cold, you need something that warms everything in your body, from your belly to your very being-ness.

Scones.

 

Muffin Sunday

Some mornings are made for muffins.

Sunday mornings, in particular, seem like the perfect time to wander sleepily around the kitchen in your bathrobe, throwing ingredients together. As you feed the dogs and they head back to sleep, your muffins will be filling the house with the warm, tantalizing smells of cinnamon and, because it's the holiday and you happen to have some in the 'fridge, eggnog.

These particular muffins are delicious, dense and sweet but not cloying. They take five minutes to throw together and are highly adaptable to whatever is in your pantry. They don't make many, though, just eight goodly-sized muffins, so be prepared to double if you are feeding a crowd. They freeze well, so every morning can be Sunday morning.

Cinnamon Eggnog Crumble Muffins

For the muffins:

1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour (gluten-free blends work well here; try this recipe)

1/2 c. sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 egg

1 egg yolk (or just add 2 full eggs, easy like Sunday morning)

1 teaspoon vanilla

5 tablespoons yogurt

splash of eggnog (or milk if you have accidentally consumed all of your eggnog)

Crumb topping:

1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. all-purpose flour (gluten-free here, too, if needed)

1/4 cup melted/cooled butter

1 tablespoon cinnamon (you could use less if you want to, and maybe add in a pinch of nutmeg. Your kitchen. Your choice. You could also add pecans or some other kind of nut.)

Steps:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Use muffin liners, or spray muffin tin with non-stick spray.

In a large bowl, mix together dry muffin ingredients. In a small bowl, whisk together wet muffin ingredients. Add wet to dry, and mix until combined. The mixture will be fairly thick, but if it seems too thick, add another splash of 'nog or milk. Spoon into prepared muffin tins.

For the topping, combine flour, sugar, and cinnamon. Add melted, cooled butter and mix with a fork. Top each muffin with a  generous spoonful.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the muffins peek a golden brown top through the crumble. A toothpick inserted into a muffin will come out with crumbs sticking to it but not be wet.

Try to wait a couple minutes while they cool in the tins, then eat. Cool completely if you are planning to freeze. Fresh muffins keep well for three days, but they won't last that long.

(image is what I plan on doing after eating these)

Spicy Ginger Pumpkin Pancakes

You know you want them.

I don't usually hop on the pumpkin bandwagon. It's not that I don't like pumpkin. It's that it's not really pumpkin that is in pumpkin-flavored stuff. I am not a purist in that sense, but I won't generally seek pumpkin-esque things out intentionally. I like cloves and cinnamon year-round, so when fall hits and everyone starts up with their pumpkin this and pumpkin that, I am not so influenced.

But.

I had some leftover pumpkin from my pumpkin chocolate chip scones. And I thought I would try some pancakes because The Child loves pancakes and if I can get actual breakfast into her before school that would be great.

I have only the picture above because we ate them as fast as they came out of the pan and then I was too full to care about taking pictures.

These pancakes could not have been more delicious if they tried. Faintly spicy, studded with crispy candied ginger and tasting very much of pumpkin. Light and fluffy. Delicious with or without maple syrup. Delicious with homemade apple butter. You will want to keep this recipe and make it often, especially my gluten-free friends. They freeze beautifully, and you can even freeze the batter (although the resulting pancakes are less fluffy. Still delicious.). Add more or less spice, use the ginger or don't, fry bacon until it's super crispy and then crumble it into the batter before you fry them up: go crazy. Here is the basic recipe.

Spicy Ginger Pumpkin Pancakes

In a large bowl, mix together the following dry ingredients, adjusting the spices as you see fit:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I used the GF flour mix I made)

4 tablespoons sugar (use less if you like)

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

minced crystallized ginger (as much as you like; I ended up with about 4 tablespoons).*

In a separate bowl, mix together the wet ingredients:

1 1/4 cup pumpkin puree (freeze the leftover puree in ice cube trays and pop them in soup as a thickener)

1 1/2 to 2 cups of milk (when combined with the dry ingredients, it should be like thick cake batter)

4 tablespoons melted butter, cooled slightly

2 eggs

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. You don't have to be gentle here, but it's also okay if there are still lumps in the pancakes. I gave the batter a good thrashing with a whisk because lumps drive me crazy, and the pancakes seemed to like it. Use a little less than 1/4 cup of batter per pancake, and cook on one side until the edges are dry and little bubbles form (about 2 minutes, depending on the heat. Figure that your first pancake is going to look awful and just resign yourself to eating that steamy mound of deliciousness right away. It's a sacrifice I am sure you are willing to make). Flip, cook for another minute or two, then serve with syrup, apple butter, wrapped around a sausage, or plain.

This makes about 20-24, 4-inch pancakes. Maybe. I can't actually remember. Plus we ate many, many pancakes and I lost count. But it makes a bunch.

If you have leftovers, cool them all the way then pack them four to a bag in Ziplocs and freeze. YUM.

*You can also use ground ginger, but I like the texture of the crystallized ginger in the pancake. For ground ginger, try 1 teaspoon.

 

Pizza

Today's blog is about pizza. Hot, bubbling, pizza. Pizza is intensely personal, in my view, but it is just as they say: as with sex, even when pizza is bad, it's still pretty good.

However.

Try a gluten free pizza once. The sauce can be amazing, the cheese the best, the toppings local, organic, whatever. The crust on a gluten free pizza is merely a conveyance. Often the crust on a gluten free pizza resembles nothing more than a stale cracker, bearing zero resemblance to the yeasty, thin, crispy-yet-chewy crust that a pizza should have. Gluten free pizza is, generally, not worth the time it takes to order.

So today is about pizza.

I made crust with my gluten free AP flour mix. There is promise here; the dough feels vaguely elastic as I am kneading it, and the yeasty fragrance floats up for a moment. There are, in fact, little bubbles in the dough where the yeast is going to work, eating and farting and eating and farting. The bubbles are small, though, and the crust is still a bit crumbly without the stretchy, satiny feel of a good pizza dough.

Half will go in the freezer; the other half will be dinner.

Awkward update: it was, indeed, like a cracker. Beyond the initial promise of springy dough and gassy bubbles, the dough rose no more and resolved itself into a thin, over-crispy base for sauce and cheese. Not awful, per se, but not pizza.

I still have half of the dough in the freezer, and I may turn them into crisps of some sort, maybe with some fresh parmesan and cracked black pepper. Back to the drawing board.

Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour Mix

This is the basic recipe for a gluten free flour mix that you can sub in cup-for-cup when a recipe calls for AP flour. It is based on this recipe but changed for ease of creation.

Here’s the recipe:

1 24-oz. bag Bob’s Red Mill brown rice flour

1 24-oz. bag Bob’s Red Mill white rice flour

1 16-oz box of mochiko (sweet rice flour; available only at Asian grocery stores or online. We subbed potato starch in our first batch because we couldn’t find an Asian grocery in Marietta, GA)

1 15-oz bag of tapioca flour (also at Asian grocery stores, but sometimes in regular stores)

2 tsp. xanthan gum

Directions: Dump everything in a big bowl, stir together thoroughly. Stir again when using.

A word about xanthan gum. Some gluten free people are still sensitive to gums, and they can actually be eliminated from this recipe. I choose to keep it in there because A) it seems it make the flour perform a wee bit better, and B) it’s not an issue for me. Xanthan gum is a bit pricey, but I got it on sale for 25% of the regular price, so it was a no-brainer.

To date, this has worked well in chocolate chip cookies, pancakes, scones, and biscuits. Leave a comment below and tell me how it worked for you!

Update, 11/1/14: Made batch #2 with ingredients all purchased at a local Asian grocery and made over five pounds of mix for $8.77. Still more than regular flour, but way less than other mixes!

(image source)

Weekend Baking/Cooking

It makes no sense to write every time I use this new gluten free AP flour blend, especially since I am going a little crazy right now because A) I am back in my own kitchen, and B) I want to try the flour in as many things as possible to make sure it's rock-solid. So this is a weekend baking/cooking round up.

Pumpkin cream scones with chocolate chips 

First of all, there was a lot of pressure on these  to be good because they used an absurd amount of butter and flour, three sticks and four-and-a-half cups, respectively.

(in hindsight, I would have taken the butter wrappers out of this picture. Next time.)

I did make some adaptations to the recipe (including using my gluten free AP flour mix). Additionally, I cannot fathom a pumpkin/chocolate recipe without cinnamon (I added a teaspoon), and I don't have a stand mixer, so I did not freeze/grate the butter but simply cut it in with my hands (which was messy but worked well). The original recipe also calls for vanilla extract but never says when to add it, so I just put it in with the sour cream and pumpkin. I didn't have white chocolate chips and am not a huge fan anyway (chocolate impostors, they should be called), so I used dark chocolate chips.

The result?

YOWZA.

These scones were tender, crumbly, not too sweet, and delicious. They make me want to sit on the couch and curl up with a cup of coffee, several of the scones, and a Sunday New York Times. And maybe a nap. These are for sure a lazy brunch day treat. Highly recommended and will make these again, perhaps with a touch more cinnamon and some clotted cream.

Apple butter

An unqualified success. What could be easier? Five pounds of apples, a splash of apple cider vinegar, about 3/4 cup of apple cider, and tons of clove and cinnamon. I used an apple peeler to save my old lady hand joints (you could keep the skins on if the apples are organic and just run the final product through a food mill, but I don't have a food mill. This blog totally takes donations, and while you're at it I could use a stand mixer, a food processor, a tablespoon, a new pastry brush, and a bench scraper. Oh, and a large stainless steel mixing bowl to replace the one a dog watcher made off with. How weird is that? He took a rectangular glass baking dish, too, and slept in my bed. That was his last engagement at our house.), and I don't believe in measuring spices for apple butter. You just add them until it tastes good to you. Put the whole shebang in a pot on the stove and simmer until it turns brown and mushy (or double/triple the recipe and do it in a crockpot. That's what I usually do, but I didn't have that many apples), then blend with an immersion blender until super creamy. You could shove it through a chinois if you REALLY wanted to make it smooth, but I don't have one of those either.

I didn't add any sugar to this batch because it was plenty sweet (I used Red Delicious and a couple stray Honeycrisp), but if you do use sugar, add it later in the cooking time, and taste often as you add because that is a bell you cannot unring.

I also canned the apple butter but promptly opened a jar on Sunday and ate it on a scone. And I am giving another jar away. But it's nice to have a spare.

The bread brick

Seriously.

I blame the bread machine. Yes, I used a machine, and I don't give a rat's ass who doesn't like it. A bread machine allows me to make pizza dough and bread fresh daily if I want. When I have the time and space, I do make bread the old-fashioned way, but otherwise, it's all ingredients into the bread machine, push a button, and walk away.

Except maybe my bread machine is getting old and didn't make the move quite as elegantly as it perhaps should have. I noticed when it was in the kneading cycle that it wasn't kneading so much as building a little cave in the bottom of the dough. I opened the lid and tried to push it down, but I had visions of a broken finger and was a bit tentative. Safety first.

Plus, when you make bread on a quick bread cycle it is supposed to get super hot, so I maybe ruined it that way.

Whatevs. I am not giving up on the gluten free AP flour for this. I  may need to tweak the recipe to up the protein content, or something. The GF bread I am buying is crap, and it costs a small country's GDP per loaf.

Bubble (boba) tea

This one was a bit of an outlier. I have never had bubble tea before, but it looks interesting and "Asia Grocery" had black tapioca pearls. So in the interest of doing whatever the hell I feel like, I decided to throw this one in.

Note to self: perhaps a better idea to try it somewhere that makes it professionally first.

Another note to self: if it says to cook the tapioca pearls for a total of a half hour, 15 minutes will not cut the mustard. That's just hubris.

The Child was not a fan of the black tapioca pearls, which are large, chewy orbs that can be disconcerting if texture is an issue for you. I like them.

You drink bubble tea out of fat straws, and watching them approach your mouth up the straw is half the fun (or terror, if you are The Child). The tea itself is just very strong, very sweet black tea. I added clove and cinnamon because Fall Flavors. Some people also use fruit-flavored tea.

A note of caution: every element (tea, sweetener - we used sweetened condensed milk - and boba needs to be very cold, and when the boba get cold, they get firmer/chewier. I thought The Child was going to vomit when she swallowed her last slippery black orb. #PointsForTrying

As this has gotten rather wordy, I shall continue tomorrow with Korean curry. No pictures of that one; it looks a bit like the aforementioned potential vomit. And that's not an enticing thumbnail.

Chocolate Chip Cookies: Part 2

So this happened:

But let's backtrack a bit, shall we?

Firs came the gluten free flour mixture, adapted from another recipe to be easier (no measuring, no muss, no fuss). When I told The Child what I was doing, she went on a brief rant about how dumb the American measuring system is (based on units of twelve) and that colonists developed it because they wanted to be nothing like the British but in the process they totally screwed generations of children who are clueless about the metric system, an infinitely more logical system.

Can't argue with that, really.

The other good part about my flour mixture is that it is based on the weight of the flours, not the physical measure, which as any baker worth their chocolate chips will tell you is the way to go with baking.

But I digress.

I used the basic Nestle Tollhouse cookie recipe. Nobody said this was going to be a health food blog.

Cooking tip: most chocolate chip cookie recipes require packed brown sugar. This is a pain, very messy, and ultimately super bad for you because you always end up licking the delicious brown sugar off your fingers when you're done. Also bad for your sampling team if you happen to have ebola and don't wash properly after licking your fingers. Easier method is to dump the brown sugar in a plastic freezer bag, then use the side of the bag to pack the sugar into the measuring cup as needed (lightly or firmly, as required).

I did promise food photography ranging from the terrible to the merely okay, but that's part of the process, yes? You get the idea here. No sugary fingers. Which could be a blessing or a curse. I may or may not have eaten a big clump of sugar anyway.

So when the cookies came out, I made a huge mistake, and tragedy struck.

This is what happens when you don't wait a minute or two for the cookies to cool. Half of the hot, chocolately deliciousness falls into the sink where, try as you might, it is unsalvageable. No 5-second rule in a sink with soap in it.

The verdict?

I thought they were damn near perfect, but I needed an unbiased set of opinions. I sent a bag of cookies to school with The Child with instructions to share at lunch and not tell her friends they were gluten free until after after they were eaten. Apparently, I have several new fans and orders for more.

This is not quite enough, though, as teenagers are not known for their palates (generally). I also delivered some to my gluten free friend Peter and asked for an honest assessment. Did they taste like gluten free cookies? Did they feel like gluten free cookies, or could they pass as a regular cookie?

Let's be honest: many (most?) gluten free cookies have the mouthfeel of that wonder sand stuff that sticks together. The texture is generally dense, grainy, and heavy, with a slightly beany aftertaste (from the chickpea and other bean flours that gluten free folks seem to favor).

Peter reported thumbs up all around. Not only were they chewier and softer than other gluten free cookies, but there was also a pleasant salty aftertaste (I may or may not have added a little extra salt than was called for to achieve this).

Days later, the cookies remain chewy in the center and crispy around the edges. So I rate this gluten free flour experiment  success, and move on to the next two challenges: bread in the bread machine (no counter space to properly knead, plus, if I am being honest which I always try to be, I am just too lazy) and pizza dough. I am also making apple butter in the crock pot, which can save most any baking disaster. Stay tuned.

(Images all mine. You were warned.)

Chocolate Chip Cookies On A Rainy Day: Part 1

So apparently we are experiencing a hurricane. The rain has been torrential and unceasing since the middle of the night, but without the threat of funnel clouds I can't bring myself to worry too much about it.

Just seems like a good day to bake. And chocolate chip cookies are just the thing.

Even better are gluten free chocolate chip cookies because then even I can eat them.

First, there was flour.

This recipe is adapted from a gluten free all-purpose flour from The Art of Gluten Free Baking. Sicily and I used it once before without including the mochiko (more on that later) and it was AMAZING. Light, tender biscuits and fluffy pancakes. Normal people would leave it alone and not change a thing, but no one has ever accused me of being normal. I wanted a flour recipe that didn't involve actually measuring different flours to combine in odd ratios, leaving a 1/2 cup of four weird flours in crinkly bags in the pantry. I wanted it to be easy and delicious. Here's the recipe:

1 24-oz. bag Bob's Red Mill brown rice flour

1 24-oz. bag Bob's Red Mill white rice flour

1 16-oz box of mochiko (sweet rice flour; available only at Asian grocery stores or online. We subbed potato starch in our first batch because we couldn't find an Asian grocery in Marietta, GA)

1 15-oz bag of tapioca flour (also at Asian grocery stores, but sometimes in regular stores)

2 tsp. xanthan gum

Directions: Dump everything in a big bowl, stir together thoroughly. Use as a cup-for-cup substitute when AP flour is called for.

A word about xanthan gum. Some gluten free people are still sensitive to gums, and they can actually be eliminated from this recipe. I choose to keep it in there because A) it seems it make the flour perform a wee bit better, and B) it's not an issue for me. Xanthan gum is a bit pricey, but I got it on sale for 25% of the regular price, so it was a no-brainer.

Gluten free all-purpose baking mixes can be pricey themselves. This mix costs about $10 to make and produces almost five pounds of flour (4.9375 pounds for the sticklers among you). In comparison, Pillsbury's Best all-purpose flour costs about $7.50 for five pounds, while Bob's Red Mill's gluten free all-purpose flour costs $8 for about half as much. One of the things detractors of gluten free eating point out is that you pay three times as much for something that doesn't make a difference (absent a celiac diagnosis). I'm not here to debate the merits of gluten free food, but I sure as hell don't want to pay three times as much for flour. If this particular formula works as well as the last batch, I am sold.

In addition to the cookies I will be baking this afternoon, I plan on making pizza crust and bread in the bread machine this weekend. I am sure a batch of scones or biscuits will happen, too, as the test much be thorough and well-documented.

And bread is dee-licious. So there's that. Stay tuned...

Part 2: The Cookies.