Spiced Sorghum & Yogurt Cake

What’s a grain, a flour, and a sweetener? Hint: it used to be a popular foodstuff in the U.S. back in the pioneer days, and it’s still popular in African and Indian dishes. You can make beer out of it, too. It has more fiber (and iron) than and nearly as much protein as soy and wheat. And it’s gluten-free!

I’m talking about sorghum. It’s my #1 go-to flour — I like it even better than brown rice flour — and I often include whole sorghum grains in my main dishes. Sorghum syrup tastes a lot like blackstrap molasses and is fun to bake with; sorghum-based beers are tasty, too. The U.S. still grows plenty of sorghum, but most of it is used as animal fodder rather than as food for humans. What a shame! It’s nutty and chewy and is lovely tossed with a simple drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil and a shake or two of sea salt. It’s true that it takes a good 50 minutes to cook — sorghum is a hardy grain — but you can cook a big potful of it and keep it in the fridge for up to a week, dipping into it whenever you want cereal or a hearty grain-based meal.

This recipe makes use of both sorghum flour and sorghum syrup. The former is getting easier and easier to find in grocery stores (health food stores, ethnic stores catering to African and Indian clientele, and well-stocked stores like Whole Foods almost always offer sorghum flour), but sorghum syrup is  a bit trickier to find…although it is quite popular in the southern states. If you can’t find the syrup, feel free to substitute blackstrap molasses.

Spiced Sorghum & Yogurt Cake
This recipe makes a cake big enough to serve ten people. Since it isn’t overly sweet and also packs a ton of whole grains and whole-milk dairy products, I like to have it for breakfast.

3/4 cup sorghum flour*
3/4 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup teff flour*
1 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. allspice
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. sea salt
1 stick (8 T.) butter, preferably from grass-fed cows (Kerrygold and Organic Valley are great choices), softened
1/2 cup sucanat
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1/2 cup whole-milk Greek yogurt
1/2 cup sorghum syrup OR blackstrap molasses
3/4 cup buttermilk, preferably from grass-fed cows (you can make your own last-minute buttermilk by filling the 3/4 cup just shy with whole milk and then squeezing in enough fresh lemon juice to finish filling the measuring cup; let stand for 10 minutes before using)
Raspberries for garnish (optional)

Preheat oven to 325F. Grease the bottom and sides of a 10″ springform pan. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking soda, spices, and salt. In a large bowl, beat the butter for at least 2 minutes. Beat in sucanat, mixing for another full minute. (The creamier and more aerated the butter is, the fluffier the final cake will be.) Beat in eggs until well-blended, then beat in yogurt and sorghum syrup.

Add half of the flour and mix well, then add half of the buttermilk and mix well. Repeat with remaining halves. If you’re making a gluten-free cake, you can beat these in with your mixers; if you’re making a wheat-based cake, stir them in with a spoon. (If there’s gluten involved, you don’t want to overdevelop it and make your cake tough. No need to worry about that with gluten-free baking.)

Pour into the springform pan and bake for 40 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. (This may take 50 minutes, but you want to check it at 40 so that you don’t risk overbaking it and drying it out.) Garnish with raspberries — or any kind of berries — if you like. You could top it with a dollop of yogurt, too.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d rather make a wheat-based version, use a total of 2 cups of spelt, kamut, and/or whole-wheat flours.

Blackberry Surprise Muffins

February may have turned into April overnight (44F? Weather gods, what is going on??), but there’s still enough of a chill in the air to warrant baking muffins. Especially whole-grain muffins with a jammy surprise inside. I opted for locally made, naturally sweetened blackberry jam for this batch; next time I might go for raspberry or cherry. That’s the great thing about making “surprise” muffins: as long as you can come up with different treats to tuck inside the batter, you can keep reinventing your recipes! Other fun surprises include dollops of nut butter and chunks of dark chocolate.

If you are going for a jammy surprise, though, make sure to pick an all-fruit jam, not one that has a bunch of added sugar and/or high-fructose corn syrup. Always, always read the ingredients label! You can save yourself a lot of headache and heartache by skipping all of the misleading claims and marketing flimflam on the front of any given package and going right to the ingredients label. If you don’t like what you see there, put it back and go on to the next brand…and possibly the next one…until you find an appealing list of ingredients.

Blackberry Surprise Muffins

3/4 cup brown rice flour*
3/4 cup sorghum OR millet flour*
1/2 cup almond flour (I run sliced almonds through a coffee grinder until I have flour; this is a far more affordable — and tastier! — way to enjoy almond flour)
1 T. baking powder
Dash of sea salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows, OR coconut, grain, or nut milk
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp. vanilla
Blackberry jam

Preheat oven to 375F and line a muffin tin with paper cups. This recipe tends to make at least a baker’s dozen, so you may need to line a few openings in a second tin. Get out a small spoon to use for scooping the jam into the muffins right before you pop them into the oven.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, maple syrup, oil, and vanilla. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ones.

Promptly fill each cup in the full 12-cup tin halfway with batter. (If you are using aluminum-free baking powder — which I always do — time is of the essence since the powder will immediately start to react when mixed with liquid. Now is not the time to tarry!) Use your tiny spoon to scoop a dollop of jam into each muffin. Add a little more batter to each cup, enough to cover the jam and fill the cup 3/4 full. If you still have some batter, make another 3 or 4 muffins in the second tin.

Bake for 20 minutes or until the muffins are turning golden on top and a toothpick inserted along the side comes out clean. (If you poke the center of the muffin, you’ll hit the jam and the toothpick will come out sticky.) Let cool for at least 10 minutes before biting into your surprise.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d rather make wheat-based muffins, use a total of 1 1/2 cups spelt, kamut, or whole-wheat flours. You could replace the almond flour with wheat, too, but the nuttiness of the almonds is a nice compliment to the tart-sweetness of the blackberry jam.

Savory Artichoke Custard

If you’re in the mood for an unadorned artichoke, nothing beats a freshly steamed one, but if you want to make a dish featuring artichokes as the main ingredient, the canned route suddenly gets a whole lot more appealing. To make this savory baked custard — which is fantastic for either breakfast or lunch — all you need to do is blend some drained canned artichoke hearts in a food processor with the other four ingredients, pop it in the oven, and wait 25 minutes.

If you’d rather make a soft artichoke dip to accompany crackers or raw sliced veggies, omit the eggs and the baking and simply serve the blended artichokes, cheese, Greek yogurt, and garlic. Talk about an easy appetizer!

Savory Artichoke Custard (or Dip)

5 cloves garlic, chopped
14 oz. can of artichoke hearts, drained
1/2 cup plain whole-milk Greek yogurt
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens*
3 oz. aged hard cheese such as Parmesan, preferably from grass-fed cows, grated (I used Sartori’s basil & olive oil asiago cheese; Sartori is a fantastic American cheesemaker with an impressive array of traditional-Italian-relocated-to-modern-day-Wisconsin selections)

Preheat oven to 400F. Sautée the garlic in a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil over medium-low heat for 3 minutes or until garlic is just beginning to turn golden brown. Immediately transfer to food processor and add remaining ingredients. Process in spurts until well-blended, using a spatula to occasionally scrape down the sides of the bowl.

* Note: if you’d rather make a dip than a custard, omit the eggs, skip the oven preheating, and stop here. Serve dip in a pretty bowl.

Scoop the mixture into a 9″ glass pie pan and bake for 25 minutes or until custard is set and the edges are turning brown. Let cool for at least 5 minutes before serving. Leftover custard can be refrigerated for 5 days…and makes a very satisfying instant breakfast!

Enjoy!

Baked Potato "Cake"

If you have a bit of spare time and a sacrificial kitchen towel*, making a baked potato cake — which can be turned into the world’s tastiest hash browns if you have leftovers! — is a fun way to prepare potatoes. All you need is butter, salt and pepper, and baking/starchy potatoes. (As opposed to waxy potatoes, which aren’t quite starchy enough to do the job here, especially since we’re leaving the skins on.) It’s also quite helpful to have a oven-safe wire rack and a plate that will fit over the top of a 9″ skillet. You can bake the cake directly on a covered baking sheet rather than on a wire rack, but going the rack route will make for a crispier cake.

The flipping part is a little bit tricky, but just remember this: you can’t go wrong with potatoes and butter. Even if you wind up with a smashed cake rather than a flipped one, it’ll still taste delicious.

* I say “sacrificial” because the pigments/antioxidants in the potato will turn the towel black. It’s a fascinating process to watch, actually — when you first squeeze the grated potato in the towel, the towel acquires a brownish hue, but as the pigments oxidize, the brown becomes dark brown and finally almost black. Washing out the towel in running water will turn it grey. Potato-scented grey. So be sure to use a towel you don’t care about…or use one you’ve been wanting to make a potato-scented grey. I’ve designated my sacrificial towel as a potato-twisting towel and plan to re-use it accordingly.

Baked Potato “Cake”

Butter, preferably from grass-fed cows
1 baking potato (the Idaho variety generally works out to be 3/4 to 1 lb. per potato), scrubbed but not peeled
1 sacrificial kitchen towel
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 425F. Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil and top with a wire rack. If you’re going to put the cake directly on the sheet, cover it with parchment paper. Melt about 1 T. butter in a 9″ nonstick skillet over low heat.

Grate the potato with a cheese grater, piling the potato onto the sacrificial towel as you go. Wrap the grated potato securely into the center of the towel, then hold it above the sink and twist it as hard as you can. You should see plenty of juice trickle out. Scrape the grated potato into a large mixing bowl. Stir in melted butter and a generous helping of salt and pepper.

Melt another tablespoon of butter in the 9″ skillet. Add the potato, pressing down gently but firmly with a heat-proof spatula to smooth out your cake. Increase heat to medium-high and cook for 3 minutes or until the underside looks brown when you use the spatula to gently pull up a side so that you can peek underneath.

Take the skillet over to the counter and put a large plate on top of it. Invert the skillet quickly — but securely! — so that the cake drops onto the plate. Slide the cake back into the skillet, return to heat, and cook for another 3 minutes.

Slide the cake onto the wire rack/sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Remove and let cool for at least 5 minutes before shifting/cutting the cake. (The cake will harden into place as it cools.) If you used a rack, place a clean large plate over the cake and flip it over. If the cake sticks to the rack, use your fingers to gently press the cake down and away from the rack, poking your fingers into the space between the bars and gradually working the cake free from the rack. (Starch sticks; that’s why the cake sticks together to begin with.)

Serve immediately, either plain or topped. Yummy pairings include smoked salmon and whole-milk Greek yogurt with a dill garnish (a Russian approach) as well as black beans, corn, and Cheddar cheese (a Mexican approach). Leftover “slices” can be kept for up to 4 days in the fridge. Just sauté them in butter for a few minutes over medium heat, and you’ll have the most amazing hash browns you’ve ever tasted. Even die-hard fast food lovers would have to admit that your potatoes beat the heck outta those McDonald’s fries that people say they like so much.

Incidentally, ever looked at the ingredient list on those fries? Here it is, direct from the McD’s website: “Potatoes, vegetable oil (canola oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef flavor [wheat and milk derivatives]*, citric acid [preservative]), dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate (maintain color), salt. Prepared in vegetable oil (Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness). Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent.” Note the hydrogenated oil (a.k.a. trans fat) and wheat and milk derivatives.

All your potatoes have is potatoes (with skins!), butter, salt, and pepper.

Enjoy!

Breakfast Lemon Squares

Lemons are lovely, especially when you pair them with oats and almonds and eggs and call them breakfast. Baked goods (or leftover pancakes) are my favorite things to have for weekday breakfasts since they require zero work first thing in the morning. Fifteen minutes of effort once or twice a week can provide you with hearty, healthy breakfasts that will make you want to get out of bed so you can enjoy them!

Muffins are my go-to standard — they’re endlessly versatile, and you can make a batch of 12 in less time than it would take to go to the store to buy “enriched” stripped-out bagels that will give you an ill-advised sugar rush and then leave you hungry an hour after you’ve eaten them — but this time I decided to revamp an old sugary favorite to come up with a new lightly sweetened and highly nutritious breakfast: the beloved lemon square. Here, almonds, oats, and sorghum have replaced refined flour, and the tartness of the lemon is offset by a touch of honey. You might just want to double the recipe and make a 9″x13″ rather than an 8″x8″!

Breakfast Lemon Squares
Makes an 8″x8″ pan, or double the recipe for a 9″x13″ pan.

1/2 stick butter, preferably from grass-fed cows, melted (Kerrygold is a great choice)
1/2 cup oat flour (be sure to use gluten-free oats if you want a gluten-free breakfast; I run my g-f rolled oats through my coffee grinder to make my own flour)
1/2 cup almond flour (that same coffee grinder sure comes in handy for turning sliced almonds into fresh almond flour)
2 T. powdered sucanat (the coffee grinder strikes again!)
1/2 cup sorghum OR millet OR brown rice flour*, divided
3 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1/2 cup honey
Zest of 1 lemon, preferably organic since you’re using the zest
1/4 c. lemon juice (1 organic lemon tends to give you 1/4 cup juice)
1/2 tsp. baking soda

Preheat oven to 325F and get out an 8″x8″ glass pan. Melt the butter in a small pot over low heat, then pour into a medium mixing bowl and mix well with the oat and almond flours and the powdered sucanat. Add 1/4 cup sorghum flour and stir until well-blended, using your hands to to mix if you like. (Butter is a great skin moisturizer!) Press into the bottom of the glass pan. Bake for 20 minutes.

While the crust is baking, whisk together the eggs, honey, lemon zest and juice, and the remaining 1/4 cup sorghum flour. When the 20 minutes is up and you pull out the crust, whisk the baking soda into the egg mixture and quickly pour it onto the crust. (The baking soda will start to react with the lemon juice immediately, so you want to wait until the last possible second to complete your topping.)

Put the squares back into the oven and bake for another 25 minutes or until the top is turning a light golden brown and you can see dimples forming on the surface. These lightly sweetened squares make a great breakfast, or serve them with fresh fruit and/or ice cream and a drizzle of honey for dessert.

Enjoy!

* This is a gluten-free flour. If you’d rather make a wheat-based version, use kamut, spelt, or whole-wheat flour in place of the sorghum.

Tuna & Spinach Pizza

Happy New Year, everybody! I thought I’d start off 2012 by breaking an established culinary tradition: pizza toppings. Don’t get me wrong — I love mushroom and (pastured) pepperoni as much as the next guy — but I also enjoy venturing into off-the-spun-dough territory. I first had Thunfisch (tuna fish) pizza in Germany and have been making in my own kitchen ever since.

Before you start thinking that’s just too weird (“Tuna fish on pizza?”), let me remind you about the hallowed American lunch known as the tuna fish melt. This is essentially the same thing, except you’re adding a zesty tomato sauce and are eating the tuna on triangular wedges of crust rather than squared-off toast. And you’re including spinach. All in all, putting tuna fish on pizza makes for a heartier, more satisfying meal. For pizza lovers, it’s a chance to try something new; for folks wanting to upgrade the health quotient of their meals, this is a great way to add natural omega-3s to your dinner in the form of tuna + spinach. (On a whole-grain crust, of course.) I’m a member of both camps — upgraded meals always involve better flavor, too.

Tuna & Spinach Pizza
Makes one 12″ round pizza; feel free to double the recipe to make two pizzas if you have two pans.

For the crust:
1 heaping teaspoon yeast
1/2 cup + 1 T. fairly warm water (not scorching hot, but pretty hot from the tap)
1 1/2 tsp. sea salt
1/2 cup corn flour* (not starch!)
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup chickpea flour*
1/2 cup potato flour* (not starch!)
Up to 1/2 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows

For the toppings:
Pizza or spaghetti sauce, homemade or store-bought (if using store-bought, try to find one that contains extra-virgin olive oil rather than soybean or canola or any other type of oil; the latter will almost certainly be highly refined and probably also GMO)
Canned tuna fish
Baby spinach leaves
Onion, sliced thin
Shredded cheese of your choice (think of what you like with a tuna melt; I prefer Gruyere, Parmesan, or any other hard, aged cheeses)

Preheat oven to 425F. Combine yeast and water in a large mixing bowl and let sit for 5 minutes. The yeast should bubble and create a light foam on top of the water as it comes to life. In another bowl, whisk together the salt and the flours. Use extra-virgin olive oil to thoroughly grease a 12″ round pizza pan. I like to use the type that’s aerated — i.e., has little holes in the bottom. That seems to create a thin, crisp crust. (European pizzas have very thin, crisp crusts, especially compared to doughy American crusts.)

Stir the flours into the yeast. Add the milk, starting with 1/4 cup and adding a bit more if the dough is too dry and crumbly. I find that 1/2 cup works out perfectly if I use the four specific flours I listed. You’ll probably need to mix the dough with your hands towards the end to wind up with a not-too-dry, not-too-wet ball. No need to let your dough rise since you’re going for a thin crust; you’ll still get a pleasantly yeasty taste without the rising time.

Press the dough evenly into the greased pan and bake for 15 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Pull out of the oven, let cool for 5 minutes, and top with your toppings. Begin with the sauce, add everything except the cheese, and end by covering everything in a good layer of cheese. Reduce heat to 375F and bake for 10 minutes or until the cheese is melting and turning golden brown.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you don’t have all four of them, just be sure to use a total of 2 cups of flour. The potato flour is highly absorbent, so if you don’t use any potato flour, only use 1/2 cup of water (omit the tablespoon). If you would prefer to make a wheat-based version, use a total of 2 cups of spelt, kamut, or whole-wheat flour.

Whipped Pumpkin Cream

Nothing adds an easy touch of elegance to holiday desserts like freshly whipped cream. (Skip the aerosol can!) Be sure to chill your beaters and bowl before whipping away, either by putting them in the fridge for a good 30 minutes or by popping them into the freezer for a quick 10. I like to sweeten my cream by drizzling in a little bit of maple syrup before I begin to whip; sometimes I add a bit of vanilla or almond extract for flavor, too.

The key to lush whipped cream is choosing lush cream to begin with. Ideally, you want cream from grass-fed cows — it has a richer, fuller taste and a lighter, fluffier texture — and cream that has not been UHT pasteurized. UHT means “ultra-high temperature,” which in turn means that the cream will be difficult to whip since it’s been thoroughly cooked and in the process has lost a great deal of its natural thickness and ability to hold that thickness when whipped. (Whipping simply incorporates air into the cream. The fat in the cream stiffens around the air pockets and holds itself up to create the fluff effect. Cold fat is stiffer than room-temp fat, which is why using chilled equipment and chilled cream is so important.) Take a look at the ingredient list on UHT whipping cream — you’ll see that it’s been thickened with carrageenan, gums, and other stabilizers to recreate the thick texture the cream has lost through having been overheated. Not exactly an ideal scenario.

I’m in a cowshare program*, which means that I can order fresh raw cream directly from my farmer. It’s a lovely pale yellow color (the cows eat grass and the orange-hued beta carotene in the grass shows through in the milk) and whips to fluffy peaks in less than a minute. If you live in a state like California that allows retail sale of raw dairy products, by all means go for the raw cream. If you live in a state like Michigan that allows cowshare programs, join one! If you simply can’t find raw cream, try to find whipping cream that isn’t UHT.

Note: if you want to whip cream, you need whipping cream! The other types — coffee cream, light cream, even light whipping cream — don’t have enough fat in them to whip, particularly not when they’ve lost so much of their natural texture through pasteurization.

Pumpkin Whipped Cream
This amount is enough to serve 2 people; double, triple, or quadruple as necessary to suit the number of guests.

1/4 cup whipping cream
1 T. maple syrup
1/2 tsp. vanilla OR almond OR hazelnut extract (optional, but adds a nice flavor dimension)
1/4 cup puréed pumpkin (canned is fine, or you can roast your own and then put the cooked flesh through a food processor with a splash or two of water to make your own fresh purée)

Chill your beaters and bowl for at least 30 minutes in the fridge or 10 in the freezer. Pour the cream, syrup, and extract into the chilled bowl and whip at the highest speed until the cream has gone from liquid to a fluffy consistency. If you’re lucky enough to be using raw cream, you’ll be done in less than a minute. If you’re stuck on the opposite end of the spectrum and are using UHT cream, this could take three or four minutes. Either way, if the cream starts to take on a grainy look, STOP! You’re about to make butter.

Fold in the pumpkin with a spatula, occasionally turning the bowl and scraping the sides as you carefully lift and tuck the pumpkin into the cream. Raw whipped cream is very stable and can handle a fair amount of pumpkin; UHT cream collapses quite easily.

Serve the cream atop cake (here I spooned it onto pumpkin bread and had it for breakfast), as a dip for fresh fruit (apples and pears are especially nice), or as a treat all by itself. Feel free to sprinkle on some spices for additional flavor and as a garnish.

Enjoy!

* To find cowshare programs in Metro Detroit, check out my Local Farms & Markets list; to find them across the nation, check out sites like www.eatwild.com and www.localharvest.org.

Triple Chocolate Brownies

The holidays are upon us, so let’s bake some chocolate treats! And when I say chocolate, I mean serious chocolate: choose bars that are at least 75% cocoa, don’t oversweeten your baked goods (traditional recipes are so sugar-shocked that you can typically cut the amount by 50% and get a much tastier result), stick with whole grains (not only are they a better nutritional bet, they compliment the rich flavor of dark chocolate), and feel free to double or triple up on your chocolate by including chocolate in all its glorious forms (nibs, powder, bars, you name it).

Holiday bakers, preheat your ovens!

Triple Chocolate Brownies

About 4 ounces of dark chocolate, at least 75% dark (Lindt comes in 3.5 ounce bars, so I usually use one of those)
1/2 cup sorghum or brown rice flour* (I like to split them 50/50 and use 1/4 cup of each)
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I prefer non-Dutched/non-alkalized, but that’s up to you)
2 tsp. baking powder
Dash of sea salt
1/4 cup cocoa nibs (optional, but does provide a delightful crunch)
4 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
3/4 cup to 1 cup sucanat, depending on how sweet you like your brownies
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 cup unrefined hazelnut OR unrefined almond OR extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup maple syrup (optional)

Grease an 8X8 glass baking pan and set aside. Preheat oven to 350F. Set a small saucepan on the stove and break the chocolate bar(s) into it. Heat over the lowest setting until the chocolate pieces have almost melted, gently tilting the pot back and forth once in a while to facilitate the melting process. Pull it off the stove when there are a few bumps remaining and whisk chocolate until all is melted. (If you leave it on the stove long enough for every bit to melt completely, you might scorch it.)

In a medium bowl, whisk flour(s), cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, and nibs. In a larger bowl, whisk the eggs vigorously until they’re foamy. Whisk in the sucanat, the vanilla, and the oil. Carefully add the melted chocolate and whisk again until smooth. Stir in the flour mixture. At this point, I like to taste the batter to judge its sweetness level. (I start with less sweetener and work my way up.) Disclaimer: I trust my eggs and don’t mind eating them raw. You may or may not feel the same way. If I want my brownies a bit sweeter, I add another 1/4 cup of sucanat and take it from 3/4 of a cup to one full cup.

Scoop batter into prepared glass pan and smooth the top. Another fun way to sweeten your brownies is to use less sucanat off the bat (the 3/4 cup) and then pour 1/4 cup of maple syrup over the tops of the brownies right before you bake them. This results in very moist brownie tops that make for an interesting anti-crust: moist, soft, and sweet rather than hard, crisp, and savory.

Bake brownies 30 to 35 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Serve brownies just as they are or with some fresh fruit. If you’d like to make an easy and elegant sauce for them, gently heat naturally sweetened jam until it’s free-flowing, then drizzle it over individual brownies. I love to do that with local-fruit jams made with cherries and raspberries.

* These are gluten-free flours. If you would prefer to make a wheat-based version, use an equivalent amount of spelt, kamut, or whole-wheat flour.

Enjoy!

Baked Mochi

For all those gluten-free folks who miss puff pastries and croissants and eclairs, baked mochi is a culinary godsend. For wheat-eating folks who love trying new things and are endlessly curious about food, baked mochi is a fun treat. For folks who love mochi in its more common forms — like ice cream and sweet cakes — baked mochi is  a happy discovery.

Baked mochi (or, better said, bake-able mochi; it comes in flat squares that you bake in your own oven) has been on my foodie wishlist ever since I came across a mention of it in Terry Walter’s latest cookbook. I’d given up on finding it, though…but then spotted a package in the freezer section at Natural Food Patch. It’s as wonderful as I’d hoped it would be! Thanks to the natural stickiness of the short-grain brown rice used to make it (also called “sticky rice”), when you cut the mochi into little squares and then bake it, the water in it turns to steam and creates puffy layers as it’s trying to escape from its sticky confines.

This is exactly what happens in flaky wheat-based pastries like croissants: the water content of the butter turns to steam and pushes up against the gluten-containing wheat dough as it escapes, the elastic gluten strands flex upwards (rather than tear apart and fall back down), and the heat of the oven causes a crust to form and locks the pushed-up layers into place. Until I made baked mochi, I’d thought this process couldn’t be replicated without gluten or a mouthful of unpronounceable chemicals. I am so glad I was wrong!

Seeing as mochi is simply rice and water, the resulting puffy squares don’t have a strong taste. (Nor does an unflavored croissant.) But that mildness coupled with a puffy, crispy, pull-apart texture is what makes these little squares ideal for pairing with simple seasonings like unrefined oils and spice blends: one of my favorite things to do with them is dip them into or drizzle them with full-flavored oils like unrefined almond or extra-virgin olive oil. Or you can sprinkle them with a pinch of sea salt and a dash of chili powder for a savory snack. Or dip them into honey with a hint of cinnamon stirred into it for a sweet treat. Or even pull a few squares apart slightly and spoon a little jam or hummus or salsa into them. Serve them alongside a meal in place of bread, use them to make bread puddings, fill them with cream cheese and dip them in marinara sauce to make tiny pizzas. The possibilities are endless!

Can you tell that baked mochi is my new favorite thing? All you have to do is cut the large square of mochi into small 1″ or 2″ squares, then bake on a bare baking sheet for about 12 minutes at 450F. So simple! The hardest part is waiting for the oven to warm up.

Enjoy!

Orange, Ginger & Chocolate Biscotti

‘Tis the season to take a little extra time with your baked goods. Not that biscotti takes a ridiculously long time to make, but the title alone — “twice-baked” in Italian — does set the stage for a few more moments to be spent rearranging baking sheets and dealing with dough. Think of biscotti as a savory, extra-thick cracker: baking it twice makes it crunchy and light-textured, and much like crackers, you can add adornments to your biscotti to flavor it.

For this batch, I used chestnut flour in the dough itself to lend a slightly nutty undertone; the adornment I chose was a chocolate bar embedded with orange zest and candied ginger. The bar itself turned out to be too sweet to eat out of hand (it fell below my 75% dark minimum), but it worked beautifully in the biscotti. You could just as easily include dried fruit or chopped/slivered nuts in your biscotti.

Just one thing to keep in mind: large pieces of anything — especially anything soft, like chocolate or fruit — will make the biscotti a touch more difficult to slice into neat wedges. Soft ingredients tend to make the slices gently fracture; hard ingredients like nuts could shatter the slices as you try to cut through the baked dough. I don’t mind the occasional torn piece, though, seeing as I think of them as the Baker’s Privileged Oopsies. That means I have to eat them on the spot. Don’t mind if I do!

Orange, Ginger & Chocolate Biscotti

2 cups chestnut flour OR sorghum flour*
1 cup brown rice flour*
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
Dash of sea salt
1 bar dark chocolate with orange zest and candied ginger (or whatever elements you prefer; straight chocolate is great, too), broken into small pieces
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil OR unrefined almond oil (almonds are particularly nice in this nut-friendly setting)
2/3 cup sucanat
3 large eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 375F. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, salt, and chocolate pieces. Whisk together the remaining ingredients in another bowl. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ones, stirring until well blended. (This is a fairly dry dough, so the stirring will give you a workout.)

Have some extra brown rice flour at the ready. (I like to scatter mine onto a plate or into a bowl.) Flour your hands well and shape the dough into two equal loaves. They ought to reach across the baking sheet and nearly touch the edges. Space them well apart on the sheet and pop them into the oven. Bake for 25 minutes. Let them cool on a rack for about 5 minutes, then gently slide the baking sheet out from underneath the loaves to let the loaves sit directly on the rack. (This is where the parchment paper comes in handy — hang onto a corner of that while you slide the sheet away, and the loaves will stay on the paper.)

In about 10 more minutes, the loaves should be cool enough to touch comfortably. Cut them into angled slices about 1/2″ thick. Cover two baking sheets with parchment paper and lay the slices out on the sheets. Bake for 8 minutes, then pull the sheets out of the oven and carefully flip each slice over. Bake for another 5 to 8 minutes or until both sides are golden brown.

Let cool completely before storing the biscotti in an airtight container. The whole point of biscotti is to be bracingly crunchy, and if any moisture forms in the container — which it will if the biscotti are warm at all — the crunch will quickly disappear.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d rather make a wheat-based version, use a total of 3 cups of whole-wheat, spelt, or kamut flours.

Mandarin-Yogurt Bread

One of the few nice things about winter is that citrus is in season: grapefruit, tangerines, mandarin oranges, even kumquats. Any and all of those can perk up even the darkest, dreariest day. Usually, I like to just eat them out of hand — especially cute little kumquats with their very sweetly edible skins! — but this time I decided to see what would happen if I stirred fresh mandarin segments into a quick bread batter. Would they just turn to mush upon baking, leaving behind a wet, uncooked blob of batter?

As you can see, the answer is that the segments maintain their shape quite nicely when you bake them. You can’t overload the batter with too many of the juicy segments, but part of the fun of including them is the thrill of the chance of getting a slice with a big wedge of mandarin in it. If you want to be sure that every slice will, you could do some strategic push-and-poke segmenting right before popping the loaf into the oven. I decided to just stir as usual and take my chances.

Mandarin-Yogurt Bread

3/4 cup brown rice flour*
3/4 cup sorghum flour*
1/2 cup milllet or amaranth flour*
1/4 cup granulated honey OR sucanat (or 1/2 cup, if you’re aiming for a sweet bread)
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. sea salt
1 mandarin orange or tangerine, split into its natural segments
3/4 cup whole-milk plain yogurt, Greek or otherwise
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil OR unrefined almond oil (both go well with citrus)
3 eggs, preferably from pastured hens

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a glass loaf pan (about 9″x5″) and set aside. I like to drizzle a bit of the olive oil into the loaf pan, then use my fingertips to spread the oil on the bottom and all of the sides. Any oil left on my hands gets rubbed into them. Why waste a nice hand moisturizer?

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, granulated honey, baking soda and powder, and salt. Gently stir in the mandarin segments.

In another bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients. Add the liquid mixture to the dry mixture and stir well — but gently, for the sake of the segments! — to combine. Pour the batter into the greased loaf pan and bake for about 45 minutes or until the top is lightly brown and an inserted toothpick comes out clean. If the top seems to be browning too fast, tent it with aluminum foil and continue baking until the loaf passes the toothpick test.

Let cool for at least 20 minutes before sliding the loaf out of the pan. I like to let both loaf and pan cool separately until both are completely cool, and then I put the loaf back into the pan for safekeeping. Note that you can only leave this loaf out at room temp for about 3 days — any longer, and the mandarin segments will start to ferment. Store the loaf in the fridge if you don’t finish it within a day or two.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d rather make a wheat-based version, use a total of 2 cups of whole-wheat, kamut, or spelt flours instead.

Baked Veggie Pie with Millet & Amaranth Crust

Although sweet pies typically feature fruit enclosed by crust on both the top and bottom, savory pies are made with veggies and/or meat and often sport only a top deck. Shepherd’s Pie, for example, is made with beef and veggies on the bottom and a “crust” of mashed potato on top. An English version of the Irish classic is made with fish on the bottom and potatoes on top. Caribbean and Latin American cooks like to layer their meat, veggies, and potatoes to create multi-tiered pies. Either way you top  it/layer it, savory pies are as delicious as they are visually appealing.

For this savory pie, I’ve opted to use grains instead of potatoes, giving the dish a thinner, crispier crust that will take a little less prep work on your part. (No mashing of anything required!) If you don’t have millet and/or amaranth on hand, brown rice would be another great choice. Or quinoa — red quinoa would make an especially beautiful presentation.

Baked Veggie Pie with Millet & Amaranth Crust

Total of 3/4 cup amaranth and millet (OR brown rice OR quinoa)
2 cups free-range chicken broth
1/2 cup lentils (brown or green work best; red cooks too quickly)
5 collard leaves, rinsed and chopped
3 carrots, chopped
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 cups frozen corn (sweet or roasted)
1 T. rice wine vinegar
1 T. tamari (make sure it’s wheat-free if you’re making a gluten-free dish)

Preheat oven to 475F.

Place amaranth/millet and the broth on the stove over high heat. As soon as it comes to a boil, stir well and reduce heat to the lowest setting. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes or until grains have absorbed the broth and are soft. If you use brown rice, this will take more like 35 minutes.

While the grains are cooking, simmer the lentils in a pot half-filled with water for 20 minutes or until you like the lentils’ level of softness. Drain.

While both the grains and lentils are simmering away, you can do the hands-on part: sautée the collard leaves, carrots, and onion in a large skillet over medium heat with a pat of ghee or butter for 8 minutes or until all are soft and the onions are turning translucent. Reduce heat to medium-low and stir in the corn, vinegar, and tamari and continue to cook for another 5 minutes. I used frozen roasted corn and really enjoyed the smoky taste it lent the dish, but you could just as easily use frozen non-roasted corn.

By now your grains will be ready and the oven will be preheated. Mix the drained lentils into the collards and spoon the veggies into a glass 11″x7″ pan. Top with the cooked grains and spread out with the back of a spoon to form a smooth crust. Bake for 10 minutes or until crust is golden brown.

This dish is delightful served hot out of the oven, plus it also makes great leftovers — it’ll keep in the refrigerator for up to a week. Talk about the ultimate easy pack-and-go lunch!

Enjoy!

Peanut-Mesquite Muffins

Now that summer has given way to leaf-strewn fall, the idea of going outside to grill something for dinner has gotten a lot less appealing. So much for mesquite-laced, smoky veggies and meats. (And fruits, too. Ever tried grilled pineapple? Sublime!) Seems like that signature mesquite flavor is only available during the summer months.

…Or maybe it isn’t. It turns out that the same tree that yields mesquite wood for the grill also bears a fruit that can be dried out and ground into flour. Like the smoke given off by the burning mesquite wood, mesquite flour carries a hint of caramel smokiness. It hangs somewhere between sweet and earthy and will probably make you think of campfires. The assertive flavor of mesquite fits best with other assertive flavors: chocolate, peanut, coffee. It’s also one of North America’s indigenous edibles — long before European settlers arrived, Native American tribes were enjoying both the culinary and utilitarian aspects of mesquite trees.

The only downside about mesquite flour is that it’s tricky to find unless you live in Arizona or New Mexico. You can order it online, though, from places like http://www.nutsonline.com/ and http://www.mesquiteflour.com/. And if worst comes to worst and you simply don’t have any way to get your hands on mesquite but still want to make these Peanut Muffins, you can use teff or buckwheat flour instead — those are also nutty, dark, rich flours and pair well with peanut. That plus a little maple syrup drizzled onto the muffins before serving would mimic a little bit of mesquite’s caramel-esque tinge.

Peanut-Mesquite Muffins
Makes 12 muffins.

1 cup peanut flour OR 1 cup sorghum flour*
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup mesquite flour OR 1/2 cup buckwheat flour OR 1/2 cup teff flour*
1/2 cup rolled oats (be sure to get gluten-free oats if you’re baking gluten-free muffins)
1 T. baking powder
Dash of sea salt
1/2 cup date sugar
1/2 cup palm sugar OR sucanat
1 1/4 cups whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows (if you live in Metro Detroit, you’re lucky — we have Calder’s)
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 tsp. vanilla
1/3 cup unrefined peanut oil OR extra-virgin olive oil

Two notes before we begin:

- If you don’t have date sugar and/or you want your muffins to be sweeter, use 1 cup sucanat instead of splitting it with date sugar. (Date sugar is less sweet than sucanat; both are granulated, not liquid.) -

- If you don’t have peanut flour, use the sorghum flour instead, and substitute 1/4 cup peanut butter for one of the eggs. Having 1 egg + 1/4 cup peanut butter will give you plenty of peanut flavor in addition to helping the muffins stick together. -

Preheat oven to 375F and line a muffin tin with paper cups.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, oats, baking powder, and salt. In another large bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients. Stir the liquid portion into the flour mixture until well-blended. (I like to use a whisk, although this technique is much more effective for gluten-free batters than wheat-based ones — the wheat is more difficult to stir because of its gluten-thickened texture.)

Quickly spoon the batter into the waiting cups and bake for 22 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you wish to make wheat-based muffins, substitute spelt, kamut, or whole-wheat flour for the peanut/sorghum and brown rice flours.

Chocolate, Cherry & Oat Balls

Imagine chocolate crinkle cookies. Now think about Russian teacakes — you know, those cute little balls covered with powdered sugar that are the mainstay of holiday cookie swaps. Then let your mind flit over to oatmeal-raisin cookies. What do you get when you put them all together? Chocolate, Cherry & Oat Balls. Or, if you prefer, Chocolate, Raisin & Oat Balls. Made with 100% whole-grain and no refined sugar, of course.

I was inspired to come up with this recipe when a friend said that his two favorite cookies were chocolate-chip and oatmeal-raisin. Seeing as I was completely out of my beloved 85% chocolate bars (a crisis that I’ve since remedied by means of restocking), I went with the chocolate crinkle approach of using cocoa powder instead. And since I happened to have oats and dried cherries on hand, I threw those in as well. Necessity is the mother of culinary invention, too!

Chocolate, Cherry & Oat Balls
Makes about 64 cookies.

1/2 cup sorghum flour*
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup teff flour*
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably non-Dutched/non-alkalized (the baking soda will react better if the cocoa is still in its natural acidic state)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
Dash sea salt
1/2 cup rolled oats (be sure to get gluten-free oats if you’re making gluten-free cookies!)
6 T. butter, preferably from grass-fed cows (Kerrygold and Organic Valley are great choices), softened
3/4 cup to 1 cup sucanat
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs, preferably from free-range hens
1 cup dried cherries OR raisins
1/2 cup cocoa nibs (optional)
Powdered sucanat for dusting/rolling (optional)

Preheat oven to 400F and cover 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flours, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, and oats. In another large bowl, cream the softened butter for at least a full minute. Note that if you use butter from grass-fed cows, the butter will soften in about 10 minutes when left at room temperature since the butter naturally contains less saturated fat (which is very stiff when refrigerated). If you use conventional butter, plan on letting the butter sit out in the bowl for at least an hour to soften.

Gradually add sucanat to butter, creaming as you go. If you want not-so-sweet cookies, go with 3/4 sucanat; if you want cookies that approach a more traditional sweetness, use 1 cup. (I used 3/4 cup.) Beat in vanilla and eggs, then beat in flour mixture. If you are using wheat-based flours, stir in the flour rather than using an electric mixer. Either way, finish by stirring in the dried cherries and nibs.

Refrigerate the dough for 20 to 30 minutes to get it hard enough to roll into balls without the dough unduly sticking to your hands. Shape into balls 1″ across and place on parchment-covered sheets. Bake for 11 minutes. You’ll need to do two batches, so while the first one is baking, go ahead and shape the second half into balls and put them on a waiting plate. When the first batch is done, let the sheets cool for about 5 minutes or until you can comfortably touch them, then reload and rebake.

If you’d like to roll the cookies in powdered sucanat as a finishing touch, run some standard sucanat through a spice or coffee grinder while the first batch of cookies is baking. Put the powdered sucanat in a small paper bag. Drop the fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies into the bag 4 at a time, scrunch the bag closed, and gently upend the bag so that the cookies roll around inside and become coated with sucanat. Remove cookies and repeat with the remainder.

Let cool completely before storing the cookies in an airtight container. Warm cookies can be eaten immediately, of course.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d like to make a wheat-based version of this recipe, use equivalent amounts of kamut, spelt, and/or whole-wheat flours instead.

Pizza with Green Tomatoes, Roasted Chicken & Roasted Eggplant

Got some green tomatoes still clinging to the vine? Or maybe you’re like me and you’ve got a bag of them sitting in your kitchen. Now that we’re firmly in fall, we can only pluck the last of what’s in our gardens and hope that whatever still needs to ripen ripens indoors. In my case, that’s mostly tomatoes.

But the good news is that you can use tomatoes when they’re still green. At that point, they’re more like a mild green apple — think a not-so-tart Granny Smith — and can be used in any setting suited to green apples: in pies, in cobblers, or sautéed and spiced. Or you can get away with using green tomatoes in circumstances when you’d normally go for ripe tomatoes, like in a salsa or on a pizza.

When I wanted to throw together a quick pizza last night, I used a few end-of-the-season ingredients from my garden (green tomatoes and the lone remaining eggplant) and some leftover roasted free-range Amish chicken my mother had sent me home with. (When she roasts those Amish chickens, they are UNbelievably good. Rich, flavorful, tender…all the things that chicken usually is not, because usually people cook skinless boneless fatless flavorless might-as-well-be-cardboard conventional breasts instead of a whole bird — skin and all! — that got to run around outside pecking at bugs and living the way a healthy chicken should/does. But I digress…)

You can top your pizza any which way you want, of course, although I would stick with the idea of using green tomatoes if you have a backstock you’re trying to use before they get too soft and start to spoil. If you really want to rip through your green tomatoes, you could roast a batch of them along with the eggplant and then purée them into a chunky sauce that you could also include in your pizza toppings.

Pizza with Green Tomatoes, Roasted Chicken & Roasted Eggplant
Makes a 12″ pizza

1 recipe whole-grain pizza crust, either the gluten-free one described here or one of your own devising
1 medium eggplant, cut into 1/2″ slices
At least 4 green tomatoes, sliced thin (I used 8 since they were smallish)
About 8 oz. roasted chicken, cut into bite-size pieces, preferably from a free-range bird
Roasted garlic chips (optional)
Red pepper flakes (optional)
At least 1 cup grated hard cheese (I used sheep’s-milk Gouda, but any hard aged cheese will do)

To make the pizza crust, follow the directions from the cross-referenced post (or use your own recipe). If you like, you can pre-bake the crust while you roast the eggplant: just spread the eggplant slices out on baking sheets covered with parchment paper and slide into the 425F oven along with the crust. By the time the crust is golden brown (15-20 minutes), the eggplant should be shriveled and golden brown.

Lay the roasted eggplant slices on the pre-baked crust, then add the roasted chicken and the green tomato slices. Sprinkle on some roasted garlic chips and red pepper flakes if desired. Top with cheese. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until cheese is melting and golden brown. Serve immediately. Leftover pizza can be refrigerated for up to 4 days.

Enjoy!