Versunkener Apfelkuchen gluten-free

Because it's been a few years since I'd made an apfel kuchen for my German-loving sons, I thought perhaps something like that would be the perfect recipe to highlight September's #ImprovCookingChallenge ingredients APPLES & HONEY. (The Improv Cooking Challenge is a once-a-month blogger recipe challenge lead by Nichole from Cookaholic Wife. You are welcome to join us for the monthly linky party...)

While googling honey + apfelkuchen I came across "sunken apple and honey cake" by Smitten Kitchen. I thought it looked beautiful and would be easy to adapt to an almond flour recipe to keep it gluten free.

The cake tasted wonderful, according to two of my four taste-testers. (One didn't like the honey flavor and the other dislikes anything that has the "eggy taste")

I thought it perfect for breakfast or brunch!

An InLinkz Link-up

Yiaourti Me Meli ~ filled Profiteroles (gf)

Since I had nothing better to do, I decided to make croquembouche for this month’s Improv Cooking Challenge. bahahaha! Not really – I stacked up some cinnamon cream puffs filled with Greek yogurt and drizzled honey all over them. (then attempted to photograph them before the cat tried to topple my tower…)
For a couple years now the hubster likes a bowl of Greek yogurt, cinnamon, honey & frozen mixed berries before turning in for the night. Little did he know that he was “knocking-off” that famous Greek dessert called “Yiaourti Me Meli” – yogurt and honey (well, minus the walnuts and plus the berries…)
I decided to dress it up a little in a cinnamon profiterole and top it with a bit more honey.
This was my first attempt at pâte à choux using Bob’s Red Mill® Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it turned out. I will definitely be making more gf puffs in the future!
I started by making the yogurt so the flavors could blend together. I used 2 cups of Greek yogurt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/3 cup local honey & 1/2 cup chopped walnuts.
With that resting in the fridge, I went to work on the profiteroles.

Cinnamon Pâte à Choux

1 cup water
½ c. butter (if using unsalted, add a pinch of kosher salt)
½ t. cinnamon
1 c. Bob’s Red Mill® Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour 4 large eggs

• (It’s easier to assemble ingredients before starting, because the process goes fast!) Break the eggs into a spouted measuring cup. Preheat oven to 425°. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment.
• Combine the water, butter and cinnamon in a saucepan, bring to a rolling boil.
• Remove the pan from the heat, and add the flour all at once, stirring vigorously.
• Transfer the dough to the bowl of a stand mixer, and beat for a couple minutes until it’s cooled to below 125°F.
• Beat in the eggs one at a time on medium speed; scrape the bowl after each addition.
• After the last egg, beat the dough a couple minutes until it holds a peak.
• Scoop the batter onto the prepared baking sheets using a 2-tablespoon cookie scoop. (Allow space for the puffs to expand.)
• Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 350°. Bake for an additional 20 to 25 minutes, until the dough has risen and the pastries are a medium golden brown. (They should sound hollow if you tap them…) Remove the pastries from the oven, make a small slit in the top of each, and return them to the oven for another 5 minutes, to allow the steam to escape.
• Transfer the puffs to a rack to cool.
• When they are cool enough to handle, split each one in half to air out the centers, which will help keep the pastries from becoming soggy.
• Fill the bottom half of the profiterole with the yogurt mixture then replace the top. Dip  in honey and form stack on a serving plate. Drizzle with more honey.
• Serve immediately; refrigerate any leftovers.

Yield: 2 dozen puffs

They were quite tasty! To see recipes for more tasty cinnamon & honey dishes, click on the links below:

An InLinkz Link-up

HONEYdew mojito pops

Not a being a huge fan of “mint”, I figured I would have a tough time with this month’s Improv Cooking Challenge ingredients, MINT & MELON… That is, until a friend was describing her favorite drink: Watermelon Mojito. I thought, hmmmmmmmm – I could play around with that.

So I did…

But then I came across a recipe for honey-lime simple syrup. And it was obvious that the mint leaves should go into that, instead of being blended with the fruit.

I love my blender! It made short work of those honeydew chunks.I did have some difficulty pouring directly into the molds, though (& that was before the rum!)

My two “of-age” tasters loved the popsicle!

I even made a batch without rum for the teenagers. Again, rave reviews.Except from me – I just do not enjoy mint & lime.

 

But, here are some more MINT & MELON recipes developed by my friends:

An InLinkz Link-up

Matcha Macs with Honey Buttercream

When our Improv Cooking Challenge moderator Lesa posted the 2016 monthly themes back in November, my eyes roved the list making mental notes of what recipe(s) I would attempt to complete. I cross-referenced with Pinterest pins that have been sitting unused for years… February’s challenge being TEA & HONEY, I decided I would finally try Brave Tart’s “nutless” macarons which utilize ground pepitas instead of almonds for the flour. Since they (pepitas/pumpkin seeds) are green-ish, matcha seemed the likely companion.I first ordered matcha powder back in October. I’ve been gagging down trying to drink the stuff as part of my daily regimen. Usually I just bury its bitterness in our morning protein shake. So, maybe all that powdered sugar can tone it down…

I lightly toasted the pepitas and tossed them into my Blendtec along with the sugar & matcha. A couple seconds on low speed ground the mixture fine enough to pass through my sieve.The egg whites whipped beautifully using Stella’s method of 3 minutes on “4”, then 3 minutes on “6”, 3 minutes on “8”, then a final minute on the highest speed.I piped the batter onto the waiting pans. (Because it’s been a year since I last made macarons, my rounds were a little off!) I loved that I could see the little green specks that were pepitas.Macs were baked, cooled & matched.Next was filling them with the honey buttercream I’d whipped up the day before.Too late I realized the star tip made the beautiful filling quite ragged.  

Oh well…Now for the taste test:Oh dear, they’re hollow this time. (In doing a little research I learned that those cute flecks of the seed might have deflated the meringue while baking…)

Here’s the recipe for the Pepita Matcha Macarons (not going to waste space here with the method, ‘cause you can find such detailed information on other sites.)

• 115g lightly toasted pepitas
• 1 T. matcha powder
• 230g confectioners sugar
• 144g egg whites
• 2g Kosher salt
• 72g granulated sugar

And here’s how I made my Honey Buttercream. (So delicious! It reminds me of the honeybutter my mom used to make when I was a kid!)

• 4 egg yolks
• 1/2 c. granulated sugar
• 3/4 c. whole milk
• 1 t. cornstarch

Whisk together in saucepan. Heat until it thickens, but don’t allow to boil. Cool to room temperature.

Beat 1 cup salted butter (softened to room temperature) in mixing bowl. Continue beating while adding spoonfuls of cooled custard alternating with drizzling in 1/4 cup honey. Whip until combined & smooth. Chill until use.

My fellas were allowed to taste the macarons after dinner tonight. Mixed reviews on the flavor of the cookie; but all of one accord praised the honey buttercream! (I even caught a couple of them dipping pretzels into the leftover filling…)

I used a locally produced honey that is soooooooooo deliciously sweet. It is a Citrus/Mesquite Blossom honey that we use by the gallon!

 

Now you can follow these links to see what my co-contributors made with TEA & HONEY:

An InLinkz Link-up

Honey Lime Cheesecake

Trying to go gluten free and stay away from processed sugars can be tough on a girl. It's tough on a baker & it's downright torture for a carboholic! 
Sooo -- I had a couple cups of lime juice I needed to use up & decided to create a honey lime cheesecake. (Did I ever mention Key Lime Pie is the hubs' most favorite dessert?)
Well, I'm not a huge fan of "Key Lime" recipes made with sweetened condensed milk. Because to me they taste mostly like -- hmmmmmmm -- sweetened condensed milk. 

(ummmm -- 2T serving size & that many grams of sugar?)

Also not a fan of the limeade concentrate in some "no-bake" recipes.

(Please take note of the fact that this is only 14% lime juice. Wanna guess what's in the rest of the can?)

There's gotta be a better way to make a delicious dessert using basic flavors, right? I perused my old-faithful "go-to" book. (It was a gift from my aunt in 1985.)

I found this recipe for a cheesecake made with honey instead of sugar.

It took very little tweaking to meet my demands. Here's what I did:


Into the food processor I put 24 oz. softened cream cheese. Processed until smooth then added 1/2 c. fresh lime juice and 1/2 c. honey. Again I processed until it was smoothly blended then I dumped in 3 eggs -- one at a time. That.is.all.

Heat oven to 300°. Pour mixture into pre-baked crust. Bake for 60 minutes or until done.

Unmold.

Eat.

Add sweetened berries if it is too tart for you. (Could also drizzle with honey as the recipe book suggested...)

This is how the guys ate it; but I loved it just the way it was without the extra sweet! After being sweet-deprived, it tasted soooooo naughty. (I might or might not have eaten a piece for breakfast.)

COCONUT ALMOND CRUST for a lime cheesecake

(You'll have to check back tomorrow for the cheesecake recipe!)

Cranberry sauce: the gift that keeps on giving...

Unfortunately, I grew up with cranberry sauce (from a can) & jelled cranberry (from a can) as a staple on our Thanksgiving & Christmas dinner tables. My grandma also made a relish of ground cranberries, citrus & nuts; while my mom contributed a fresh cranberry semi-jelled salad with huge cream cheesy nut-filled balls throughout.

So, is it any wonder that I totally rebelled and became quite the vocal anti-cranberry-ite throughout my teen & early adult years? Because the hubs was raised with the same cranberry jelly values, the absence of the fruit from our own holiday tables would never be an issue.

...that is, until I discovered the joy of cooking a fresh cranberry sauce on my stove a couple years ago. 

Fast forward to this Christmas, since we were serving both a ham & a turkey breast, I knew the sauce would be required. However, I changed it up a little. I had two bags of cranberries, so I made two sauces:  Honeyed Cran/Blackberry Sauce & Chipotlé Honey Cranberry Sauce. So simple, so tasty, so healthy! (& a little zippy!)

(Chipotlé to the left, with blackberries to the right...)

I know I took pictures of the process -- but cannot find them, anywhere! So alls I got for you are the recipes.

Honeyed Cran/Blackberry Sauce

1 pkg. cranberries

1 cup water

1/2 cup honey

Place in pan and cook over low heat, stirring until the honey dissolves.  Simmer until the cranberries start popping & changing color. After the berries reach your desired degree of doneness, gently stir in 1 cup frozen blackberries. The sauce will thicken as it cools to room temperature.

Chipotlé Honey Cranberry Sauce

1 pkg. cranberries

1 cup water

1/2 cup honey

Place in pan and cook over low heat, stirring until the honey dissolves.  Simmer until the cranberries start popping & changing color. After the berries reach your desired degree of doneness, stir in 1 or 2 Tbsp. chipotlé pepper purée (according to how hot you like it...)

Enjoy!

(Actually, don't enjoy it all -- 'cause tomorrow the gift will give again!)