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 [...]
Continue reading about A Grain Too Useful to Ignore — Especially for Breakfast!
We usually think of cake as an indulgence, but if you make a not-so-sweet cake with whole grains, eggs from pastured hens, dairy from pastured cows, and a touch of naturally sweetened jam, I’d say that cake falls more into the Nutritious Breakfast category than most boxed cereals do. Boxed cereals are, after all, mostly [...]
Continue reading about Reclaiming a Sweet Breakfast Tradition
It’s always fun to discover new ways of using an established ingredient, like toasting almonds before using them (they’ll have a much deeper, nuttier flavor) or running sucanat through a coffee grinder to get a more natural form of powdered sugar (which you can use in chiffon cakes and meringues and icings exactly the same [...]
Continue reading about Toasting & Baking in a Tropical Kind of Way
I admit it: I’m on a chocolate-cake-made-in-a-food-processor kick. It’s just so easy to toss everything into a processor, blend it, pour it into a pan, and bake it! And nuts and dates just seem to lend themselves to being blended, poured, and baked. I have a feeling the chestnut cake I made recently is just [...]
Two observations that would seem to be quite unrelated: chestnuts are in season again (!), and wow, food processors sure are handy! One dish that makes the two connect: flourless chestnut chocolate cake made in a food processor. Ridiculously easy, ridiculously tasty — using steamed chestnuts instead of flour gives the cake a dense, fudgy [...]
Continue reading about Having Your Chestnuts and Your Cake, Too
As a kid, I always liked marbled pound cakes and swirled cheesecakes. And two-toned frozen yogurts. Somehow, seeing two flavors intertwined on one plate (or in one cone) makes both of them doubly delicious. And you know what the best part is? It’s ridiculously easy to make marbled and swirled desserts — doing so usually [...]
Continue reading about Chocolate & Vanilla with a Berry Twist
What started out as a basic chocolate cake became much more fragrant and flavorful with the simple switcheroo of unrefined peanut oil for butter. Using maple syrup instead of sugar intensifies both the chocolate and the peanut, and you can add your choice of spice to provide a different dimension of flavor. In the end, [...]
