Spiced Cranberry & Apricot Cake
When it comes to dried fruit, all are not equal in the sense that some have a lot more sugar than others. Anything coated with sugar/glucose syrup is obviously a no-go, but once you get past that, it’s worth noting that some fruits simply have more sugar to begin with than others. Anything tropical — bananas, mangos, papayas — is at the high end of the sugar-containing spectrum, for example, while berries — blueberries, strawberries, raspberries — are at the low end, with cranberries being the least sugary. (It’s not a coincidence that dried cranberries are almost always coated with sugar and that cranberry juice is typically mixed with super-sugary juices like grape and apple.) Most other fruits fall somewhere in the middle, like the dried apricots in this cake. I included cranberries, too, but fresh ones since that’s pretty much the only way you can get non-sugared cranberries.
When you use pureed dried fruits in your baked goods, they fall into the “sweeteners” category, so you can use less added sweetener. For this cake, I used a combo of 12 dried apricots and 1/4 cup maple syrup. I also opted for apricots dried without sulfur since many people have issues with sulfites. Sulfur is often added to dried produce to retain color, but I would rather have dark brown, unsulfured apricots than orange, sulfured apricots. It’s easy to find the former — just look for the darker-colored version of any given dried fruit.
Spiced Cranberry & Apricot Cake
Makes an 8″x 8″ cake.
12 dried apricots
1 cup buckwheat flour*
1/2 cup almond flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon**
1 tsp. coriander**
1/2 tsp. ginger**
1/4 tsp. nutmeg**
1/4 tsp. cloves**
6 T. butter
1 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1/4 cup maple syrup
10 oz. fresh or frozen cranberries
Preheat oven to 350F and thoroughly grease an 8″x 8″ glass baking dish.
Place the apricots in a small dish and cover with 1/4 cup very hot water. Let sit at least 10 minutes to soften. While the apricots soak, in a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder and soda, and spices. Melt the butter in a small pot over very low heat.
Place the soaked apricots and their soaking water in a blender and add the milk. Blend well. Add the eggs, maple syrup, and melted butter and blend again. You want a completely smooth batter. Blending well will also whip the eggs and give more lift to your cake. Win-win!
Pour the batter into the dry ingredients and whisk well to blend, then stir in the cranberries. Scoop the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 45 to 50 minutes or until the cake is turning golden brown and an inserted toothpick comes out clean and warm. Let cool on a wire rack for at least 10 minutes before cutting into it.
Leftover cake can be refrigerated for a week. This makes an excellent holiday-themed-but-not-too-sweet dessert or even breakfast.
Enjoy!
* This is a gluten-free flour. If you’d rather make a wheat-based cake, use 1 cup barley, kamut, spelt, or whole-wheat flour.
** Or use 1 T. pumpkin spice mix. It’s not quite the same, but it’s close. (Pumpkin mix typically doesn’t contain coriander.)
Continue reading about Having Your Cake and Your Cranberries, Too: A Not-Too-Sweet Holiday Treat
Double-Chocolate Apricot Cookies
Although I like raisins in general, I’m not a fan of putting raisins in cookies. I think a lot of people are with me on this one. (Oatmeal-raisin or oatmeal-chocolate? Pretty sure the second one would win.) Recently, though, I put chopped dried apricots in my cookie dough and quite liked the result — apricots are softer and have a smoother, more-toned-down flavor than raisins do. Another bonus is that dried apricots have slightly less sugar than raisins. In fact, when you pair apricots with 85% dark chocolate and natural unsweetened cocoa powder, these cookies are a lot less sugary overall. And if you use buckwheat flour, your baked treats will have an even lower glycemic impact than standard wheat-based cookies do. The moral of the story? Happily, dessert doesn’t have to be a massive sugar bomb.
Double-Chocolate Apricot Cookies
Makes about 8 dozen cookies.
1 1/2 cups buckwheat flour*
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably un-Dutched or “natural”
2 tsp. baking powder
Pinch of sea salt
1 cup butter, preferably from grass-fed cows (you’ll note Kerrygold butter is soft enough to cream right out of the fridge)
1/2 cup to 3/4 cup sucanat, depending on how sweet you like your cookies
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
3.5 oz. 85% dark chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup minced dried apricots (if you’re sensitive to sulfates, be sure to choose unsulphured apricots)
Preheat oven to 325 and cover 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter for a full minute to get it nice and fluffy. Add the sucanat and beat for another 30 seconds, then beat in the eggs. Add the flour mixture and beat until well-blended. Beat in the chocolate and apricots.
Using a regular teaspoon, shape the dough into bite-sized balls about 1″ in diameter and arrange them on the cookie sheets, making about 5 rows of 4 cookies each (or the reverse). Lightly press down on each one to flatten it and create a cookie shape. I like to make the first sheet and get it in the oven, then make the second sheet while the first is baking. You’ll need to do a total of 4 sheets. (Use the first sheet for the third batch — the first batch of cookies will be cool enough slide off onto a plate to finish cooling so you can reuse the sheet. Shape the third sheet while the second batch bakes. You can shape the fourth sheet while the third one bakes.)
Bake for 12 to 14 minutes or until the cookies are crisp and lightly browned on the bottom. Cool the cookies on wire racks. Completely cooled cookies can be stored in an airtight container for 2 weeks.
Enjoy!
* You can also use brown rice or sorghum flours, but buckwheat has a lower glycemic load than other flours, including wheat flours. If you want to make wheat-based cookies, use 1 1/2 cups of barley, spelt, kamut, or whole-wheat flour.
Continue reading about Introducing a New Cookie Inclusion: Dried Apricots
Persian-Spiced Lamb Meatballs with Roasted Vegetables
Leftovers make mealtime so much easier! Especially versatile leftovers you can combine with whatever else you have on hand to create different lunches and dinners. Meatballs are ideal candidates for leftovers — you can use them immediately, add them to various dishes for the next several days, or freeze them to use whenever you like. (The fact that they’re small makes them quick to thaw.) And although it does take a bit more time to roll more meatballs, doing a double batch still saves time over making two separate batches since you’re still only mixing them once.
I went with a Persian-style mix of spices in my meatballs (ginger, cinnamon, and mint) and opted for lamb rather than beef, but you can make meatballs with pretty much any ground meat you like. Adding just a small amount of dried chopped apricots to the meatballs gives them a sweet-savory flavor that makes them suitable for serving on their own or pairing them with everything from roasted veggies to salads to scrambled eggs. Maybe you have already have some shrimp? Serve it with meatballs for a surf-and-turf dinner. Got company? Meatballs make great appetizers. In other words, it’s worth a little more rolling time to have so many possibilities.
Persian-Spiced Lamb Meatballs with Roasted Vegetables
Makes about a pound of meatballs to serve with roasted veggies (or whatever you like).
For the veggies (any combination of veggies works):
1 medium bell pepper or several small mini-peppers, cut into evenly thick strips
1 medium onion, sliced
1 bunch broccoli, florets (and also the trimmed “trunks” if you like)
1/4 head of a small cabbage, sliced
1 zucchini, cut into evenly sized matchsticks
For the meatballs:
1 lb. ground lamb
1 medium onion, minced
6 dried apricots, minced
1 egg, preferably from a pastured hen
1/2 cup (plus more as needed) almond flour
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. mint
1/2 tsp. sea salt
Freshly ground pepper
To roast the veggies, stagger your oven racks in the upper and lower thirds of your oven, then preheat to 375F. Cover 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
Place the bell pepper strips in a large bowl and toss well with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Arrange them on one of the baking sheets. Repeat with the remaining veggies one at a time, arranging them on the sheets as you go.
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until the veggies are starting to turn golden brown. Different veggies will take different amounts of time to roast, so if one is done before other, pull that one out of the oven and continue to roast the remaining veggies. Note that you can do this several days in advance since roasted veggies can be refrigerated for up to a week.
To make the meatballs, place all ingredients in a large bowl and mix with your hands. Shape into approximately 1″ balls, placing each on a large plate as you go. If they’re too wet to easily handle, add more almond flour (about 1 tablespoon at a time) until you can easily roll them.
Heat a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat for 1 minute, then add the first batch of meatballs. Don’t overcrowd the pan! You’ll need room to maneuver a spatula, so you’ll probably need to cook the meatballs in three batches. Cook meatballs undisturbed for 3 minutes, then gently flip each one over and cook for another 3 minutes. If the meatballs are browning too fast, reduce heat to medium-low. Gently shake the pan to roll them around and cook for a final 2 minutes or until they’re evenly browned on all “sides” and the thickest meatball is opaque throughout when cut in half.
Place the cooked meatballs on a rack to drain while you make the second and third batches. Note that the successive batches will need less cooking time per “side” since the skillet will be hotter.
Serve immediately atop the roasted veggies or stash in the fridge or freezer for later use (let them cool first). Refrigerated meatballs can be kept for 5 days; frozen meatballs can hang out for 2 months.
Enjoy!
Continue reading about One Batch of Meatballs Makes Many Meals
Apricot-Poppy Seed Ice Cream
Globe-trotting through cuisine is always fun, and it’s even more fun when a friend has recently visited an interesting place and brings back traveling tales and fond food memories. Thanks to a recent trip a friend paid to Hungary, I’ve had goulash and all things paprika-containing on the brain, so I thought I’d come up with my own riff on a sweet dish using typical Hungarian ingredients — in this case, ice cream made with apricots and poppy seeds. Aside from being an instant source of non-watery apricots (fresh apricots would be so juicy that the ice cream would have a tendency to crystallize), the no-sugar-added apricot jam I used had the added benefit of naturally sweetening the ice cream so that I didn’t need to add as much maple syrup as I normally do. Don’t get me wrong — I love maple syrup, especially with chocolate! — but it doesn’t need to be the dominant flavor all the time.
Allowing a mellow apricot flavor to shine through also lets you really taste the poppy seeds. Just be sure to sample a few seeds before using them to make sure that they’re still fresh. If they taste flatly oily or have an unpleasant scent, they’re rancid and need to be thrown out. Any kind of seed is delicate and should be refrigerated to prolong its life, so I always stash my poppy seeds in a glass jar in the fridge. And here’s a hot budgetary tip: you can usually find poppy seeds bagged in bulk sections of produce- or health-focused grocery stores for much less than they cost in the spice aisle.
Apricot-Poppy Seed Ice Cream
Makes about 3 1/2 cups ice cream.
1 1/2 cups heavy cream, preferably from grass-fed cows
1 cup milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
3 egg yolks, preferably from pastured hens
1/4 cup poppy seeds
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup no-sugar-added apricot jam (I used Tree of Life’s apricot jam; lovely stuff!)
2 tsp. vanilla
Place all ingredients EXCEPT the vanilla in a medium-large pot and whisk well over low heat. Increase heat to medium and bring to an almost-simmer, whisking often. This will probably take a few minutes. You really need to keep an eye on the pot and keep whisking it so that the eggs don’t wind up solidifying into chunks. When you can see steam rising up and the surface barely rippling, you’re almost there. Whisk constantly for another 30 seconds.
Pour into a cool large bowl, whisk in the vanilla, and let cool to room temperature. You can transfer it to the fridge as soon as it’s lukewarm to speed up the cooling process. Pour into an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer directions. It’s best to freeze homemade ice cream in containers just big enough to hold the ice cream — the more headroom the ice cream has, the more likely it is to freeze into a not-so-scoopable brick and/or to crystallize. Of course, if that happens, just let the ice cream sit on the counter for 10 to 20 minutes to soften it before serving.
Enjoy!
PB&A (Peanut Butter & Apricot)
Interesting things happen when you have to — or choose to — stay away from traditional (i.e., gluten-oriented) breads and baked goods. First you go through bread withdrawal. Then you start exploring the wide world of non-wheat-containing breads and crackers and cookies and cakes and realize that life is not all about French baguettes. Globally speaking, in most places, life is about corn tortillas or crepes made of rice and lentils (Indian dosas) or fluffy flatbread made from teff (Ethiopian injera).
Then you realize that actually some things that have become bread-oriented in our culture just don’t need to be about bread at all, and in fact taste better when they’re unencumbered by non-essentials like bread. Cheese, for example. Exquisite cheese is best eaten alone at room temperature and perhaps alternated with sweet fruit for contrast. Creamy cheeses like Brie only need a thin cracker (say, a corn tortilla chip) to make them practical to eat. Less bread = a more flavorful cheese = you need less cheese = you can afford to spend a bit more on cheese (plus you save the money you would have spent on bread) = you can buy better-quality cheese = the cheese is so tasty you wouldn’t want to mar its flavor with bread = less bread. Talk about a non-vicious circle!
My latest take-the-bread-away foray was into the world of the classic lunchtime PB&J. In this case, I replaced the “J” part of the equation with a flattened, dried fruit, then sandwiched the PB between the fruit “slices.” Any dried fruit that’s shaped like a slice would work, so probably anything except berries would be a good choice. Dried peaches, dried banana strips, dried pineapple…you have plenty of PB&[fill in the blank] options. Trader Joe’s even carries chili-spiced mango slices — make it a PB&M and kick it up a notch!
Continue reading about Skipping the Bread and Going Directly to Snack-Sized Sandwiches
