Christmas party for one

HA! I bet you clicked over to read my post on “the reason for the season” or see a “Happy Birthday, Jesus!” party.
Nope
It was a party for one – me! You see, I’ve been baking biscotti (6 different flavors!) and cookies all week. I even made some white (gasp) bread dough this morning so my sons could make focaccia bread tonight that they’ve been begging for almost a year. But, no tasty goodie tastes for me.
When I bake gluten free, it’s usually for breakfast & I don’t have time to bake something for the guys with wheat. Sooooo, what takes forever to prepare is soon devoured (& sometimes complained about because it’s “nasty”) with none left over.
This morning, after the guys left the house (oh, except for the university one who lives in his room hunched over his laptop…) I baked a batch of donuts.
I’d baked two previous batches since I got my pan (which I ordered online & on sale through Hobby Lobby!) I had pinned this recipe for Almond Flour baked donuts, and through various links & searches concluded I could use fine-shred coconut in the same fashion.

For today’s batch I had to combine finely grated coconut & almond flour. (“somebody” knocked my jar of grated coconut out of the pantry & sent shards of glass & coconut dust all over the kitchen…)

I mixed dry ingredients:

I added the remaining ingredients:

I put some dried cherry-cranberries in the donut pan:I put the batter in the pan (it’s recommended you fill only 2/3 full, but I likes ‘em plump!)Baked in a 350° oven for 12 minutes.And then I had myself a little piping-hot donut pre-Christmas party:

Key Lime Trifle (the gluten-free way…)

I was very pleased with my Thanksgiving dessert! Evidently, so was everyone else, for this is all that was left:I need to work  a bit with the texture of  the cake, but the flavors worked so well together.
Here is what I mixed together for my “Faux Graham Cake”:I’m pretty sure I tried to get too much cake into the trifle dish. Using half of the 9x13” would’ve been sufficient.I’m very pleased with the lime/cream cheese layer. (As previously mentioned here, we prefer our key lime pie to not have the traditional sweetened condensed milk flavor…) Our limes were ripened on the tree, so you might need to adjust your lime/honey ratio to your own taste. (No need to worry about the extra liquidity, for it will be absorbed by the cake.)Here are the ingredients I beat together:
Honey whipped cream is becoming a favorite at our house. Being “off” of processed sugar, cream tastes so sweet to me. The boys love to stuff this into scones or slather on a piece of berry pie.
I crumbled a layer of cake, spooned on the lime filling, then dolloped on the whipped cream. Repeated the entire procedure…
Covered it with plastic wrap & refrigerated until we served it after dinner.
Here you see it in it’s natural state: (empty plate & 1/2 cup of coffee…)

pumpkin molasses cookies

My daddy brought over some plants for my garden that he had sprouted this spring. I thought I planted a couple zucchini, a couple watermelon & a couple cucumber plants. 

Well, what grew the fastest (kinda took over both raised beds with its foot-diameter leaves...) turned out to be a pumpkin vine.

So far I've seeded  2 of them (the seeds are cleaned, 

salted & sun-drying as we speak) 

and cooked them up in the crockpot. 

After processing, I think I have about 4 cups of pumpkin pureé in the frig.

Decided I would try to come up with a molasses cookie of sorts. Here's what I wanted it to look like:

(source)

In the food processor I creamed 1/2 c. butter with 1/2 c. molasses. I added one cup pumpkin pureé and one teaspoon vanilla. After those were smooth and creamy, I beat in an egg.


I sifted in these dry ingredients: 3 cups gluten-free flour, 1 & 1/2 teaspoons guar gum, 3 "mini-scoops" Stevia, 1 T. ground ginger, 1 T. cinnamon, 1/8 teaspoon cracked black pepper, 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves, 1 t. sea salt, & 1 teaspoon baking soda. I pulsed until I had a nice dough to refrigerate for an hour.

After preheating the oven to 350°, I rolled tablespoon-sized balls & set on my parchment-covered cookie sheet. (OK, gotta admit, the dough was still quite sticky.) I baked them for 20 minutes.


I liked the flavor of the baked cookie, but wanted the outside to have a little more texture & sweetness. My substitute for rolling in sugar was 1/2 cup unsweetened ground coconut mixed with a "mini-scoop" of Stevia.

Gorgeous.

So I baked & cooled about 3 dozen of these things:

The cookie reminded me slightly of those coconut covered donut holes...

Where's my coffee!?!

Raspberry Peach Crisp (gluten-free)

And, I might add, cooked in my crockpot with no added sugar!

Having guests for dinner tonight... 


I wanted to fix a dessert that would please my gluten-free palate, delight a near diabetic & be suitable for someone with lactose intolerance. As I meandered through Winco, I found some gorgeous peaches on sale. Suddenly I had a hankerin' for a peach crisp.


As I headed to the freezer to get some vanilla bean ice cream to top it off, I spied a bag of frozen raspberries. Suddenly I was hankerin' for a raspberry/peach crisp!


Since it's supposed to be 106° this afternoon, I wondered if I could cook this in the slow cooker instead of heating up my kitchen with the oven. Did a little research & found that the trick seems to be the paper towel under the lid while the cooking's going on...


OK -- so here are the deets:


     stir into crock pot:
          8 cups fresh sliced peaches
          12 oz. frozen raspberries
          1/4 c. white rice flour

     mix together & drop on top of fruit:
          1/2 c. butter
          1/2 c. honey
          1 c. ground almonds
          2 c. rolled oats
          1 T. cinnamon
          1 t. kosher salt

     dollop on top of fruit in crock

     Cover crock with paper towel, then lid. 

     Bake on low 4-5 hours.

     Serve with your favorite vanilla bean ice cream!

COCONUT ALMOND CRUST for a lime cheesecake

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

Self-confessed Carbo-holic

There!

My secret's out.

"My name is Melody, and I'm a carboholic."

Croissants are my "crack," & I simply crave a good crusty sourdough boule!

*/sigh\*

So, in an effort to make the scales stop screaming when I step on them, I'm living very low carb the past couple weeks.  This is very difficult for me given my addiction, my love for baking & the need to feed my growing boys & the hubs. Also, unfortunately, when I do find something 0-carb & palatable, the guys scarf it down. (With the exception of tuna dishes, I've found...)

God bless the creator of the Chocolate Black Bean Torte recipe! It's a guilt-free brownie kinda treat. I'm working at perfecting my recipe -- and I'm getting close to what I want.

We had slow-cooker black beans last night (I fix them about once a week & if there are left-overs, they make up chili a couple days later...) and I grabbed what I needed before I "savoried" them up for the table.

This morning I got up early & gathered my remaining ingredients:

 

 (Yes, Costco ♥s our family! -- We buy most everything in bulk: 5 dozen eggs, 5#s of cocoa, large box of kosher salt...)

REALLY! good cocoa!

Processed the beans:

Added remaining ingredients & whirled them up:

Scraped batter into the waiting pan:

Baked it:

Cooled it:

Sliced it:

Ate it:

And shared it with some disbelieving, low-carb needing friends.

Now I share with you this recipe with my modifications:

Chocolate Black Bean Torte

Ingredients:

1 – 15 oz can black beans, drained and rinsed 2 cups cooked black beans

8 oz Egg Beaters 4 eggs

¾ cup Splenda  6 packets Splenda®

¾ cup sugar  ⅓ cup blue agave syrup

½ tsp baking powder

1 t. vanilla

¾ cup cocoa
¼ t. salt

Cooking Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350° F. Spray a 9 inch cake pan with cooking spray. Set aside.

Place beans in a food processor; purée until smooth. Add egg beaters while beans are puréeing. Turn food processor off and add remaining ingredients. Process until well blended and pour into prepared pan.

Bake for 25 to 35 minutes until toothpick comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool for 15 minutes then remove cake from pan. Serve torte at room temperature.

(I can't provide you with accurate nutritional information, because the original recipe uses white sugar as well as having a sauce made with raspberry sorbet!)

Last time I baked this I used Splenda® & stevia which made it super "sicky" sweet but seemed one-dimensional. The blue agave (which I've never cooked with until today) really seems to "round out" the flavor. Even the batter was fight-to-lick-the-bowl good!