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.

Chocolate Macadamia Muffins

Peanuts make my favorite butter and almonds and chestnuts make my favorite flours, but macadamias make my favorite nuts + chocolate combination. In this case, the final result was muffins. (Or — if you frost the muffins with melted chocolate and butter and pop them into the refrigerator for about 20 minutes to harden your two-ingredient frosting — cupcakes.)

Macadamias are also fabulous in trail mixes. Eat them with raisins, for example, and they’ll taste like a nut-and-fruit version of oatmeal cookies. And here’s a bit of trivia about macadamia nuts that you might not know: the #1 macadamia-growing region of the world isn’t Hawaii. It’s Australia, where the first commercial crop was planted in the late 1800s.

Chocolate-Macadamia Muffins/Cupcakes**

1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup teff OR sorghum flour*
1/2 cup chestnut OR almond flour*
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably non-Dutched
1 T. baking powder
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1/2 cup macadamia nuts, roughly chopped
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows (OR coconut milk)
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 375F. Line a muffin tray with 12 baking cups.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, and nuts. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ones and immediately pour into the muffin cups. Note that aluminum-free baking powder (which is what I use exclusively) reacts very quickly, so speed is of the essence here — no dallying! Get those muffins into the oven lickety-split. That way, you’ll have nicely raised, rounded tops. (Or, in the case of wheat-based muffins, peaked tops.)

Bake for 20 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let muffins cool for about 15 minutes in the tray, then remove from the tray and finish cooling to room temp. (If you leave them in the tray, accumulated condensation can make the bottoms soggy.) If you’re like me, you probably want to eat one of them fresh out of the oven and piping hot.

Let muffins cool completely before storing in an airtight container. Muffins can be refrigerated for a week (but will dry out slightly in the fridge) or left out for four days. Chances are your house is dry and rather chilly in January, so mold shouldn’t be a problem; if you make these or any other muffins during the summer, promptly store them in the fridge.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d prefer to make a wheat-based version, use a total of 1 1/2 cups spelt, kamut, or whole-wheat flour instead.

** To make these muffins into cupcakes, make a simple frosting by melting dark chocolate (at least 75% dark) and unsalted butter (preferably from grass-fed cows) in a small saucepan over the lowest heat setting until chocolate is almost melted. The ratio should be about 2 chocolate squares to about 1 tablespoon of butter.

Remove from heat and stir to finish melting the chocolate — if you leave it on the heat until it’s completely melted, you risk burning the chocolate beyond repair — and get out a small spatula. Drip a dollop onto the center of each muffin top and use the spatula to spread the chocolate slightly out to the sides, giving the frosting a chance to run down slightly. Stash the muffins in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes to harden the frosting. Chances are you’ll only need about 4 squares to do 12 muffins.

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.

Sautéed Kiwi & Manzano Bananas

Yes, when I get on a kick, I get on a kick. My current one is tiny plantains. They’re so cute! And so handily single-portion-sized. (Note: I mean “tiny plantains” as a descriptive term — you’ll find them under guises such as “manzano bananas” and “burro bananas” and any other official label attached to short, squat bananas with hard, ridged skins.) Like full-sized plantains, the tiny versions aren’t sweet until they’re nearly all black on the outside. You can enjoy them non-sweet, too — in that case, think of them more like a potato-y vegetable that you’d treat like a starch — but I prefer them at the very-ripe stage, when they’ve hit their sweet peak and their insides almost melt when you slice and sautée them.

Since I had a kiwi lying in the fruit bowl next to the manzano bananas/tiny plantains, I thought I might as well cook that, too, and make a tropical warm winter fruit sautée. What better way to take a gustatory break from 30F weather? Besides, kiwis are stunningly elegant with their neat rows of black seeds and inner flesh that hovers somewhere between peridot and emerald. (And as a health bonus, kiwi seeds are also a great source of omega-3s.)

Sautéed Kiwi & Manzano Bananas

Manzano OR burro OR any “tiny plantain,” as I call them (see the first paragraph for a description) OR a standard plantain, cut into slices about 1/4″ thick
Kiwis, skins removed, hard inner white core removed, each kiwi cut into about 8 cubes
Coconut oil OR extra-virgin olive oil (the coconut will taste more tropical and will have a slight sweetness that will complement the fruit)

Melt a dab of coconut oil in a medium-small skillet (it should be just large enough to hold the fruit) over medium heat. Add the plantains and cook undisturbed for 3 to 4 minutes. The oil should coat the bottom of the skillet, so if it doesn’t, add a bit more. (This is why it’s best to use the smallest skillet possible — no point in wasting nice coconut oil.) Lay out a sheet of paper towel on a large plate.

Examine the banana slices to see if the edges are browning. If they are, use heat-proof tongs to flip one over to see if the underside is golden brown. If it is, flip over all of the slices and continue to cook for another 2 minutes or until the second side is brown. Slide onto the paper towel and let drain.

Add the kiwis to the same skillet and cook, shaking the skillet occasionally, for 3 minutes or until kiwis are starting to lightly brown. Slip into a bowl and gently toss with the tiny plantain slices. Serve immediately. This would be a great breakfast or dessert as is, or you can top it with plain whole-milk Greek yogurt or coconut ice cream. Try making it again with other tropical fruit in place of the kiwi: mango, papaya, pineapple.

Enjoy!

Cranberry Ice Cream with Cranberry, Apple & Orange Chutney

I don’t have many fancy gadgets in the kitchen — sous-vide cooking and flavored foams just seem like too much work to me — but I consider my ice cream maker to be an indispensable culinary aid. Ditto for my blender. If you have those two kitchen helpers, making ice cream becomes ridiculously easy. Not only can you upgrade your ice cream by using high-quality ingredients (dairy from grass-fed cows, natural sweeteners, etc.), you can let your imagination run wild and you can make whatever flavor you want. Avocado and coconut? Done. Creamed corn with cinnamon? Sure. The scoop is yours.

Seeing as Thanksgiving is just around the corner and ’tis the season for every market to showcase cranberries in all their crimson glory, I thought I’d give cranberry ice cream a shot. And because I had the delicious joy of sampling ice cream made with blackberries and buttermilk when I was in Germany earlier this year, I decided that I’d use a similar approach for this batch. (Tip for travelers: if you are in Konstanz, visit the Aran coffeehouse + ice cream shop!! The Touch of Singapore restaurant is another must-taste destination in Konstanz.)

You can serve the ice cream all on its own or you can serve it with the chutney as I’ve done here. Or serve the chutney all on its own — I originally came up with the chutney because I wanted to serve a tastier and healthier version of the time-honored but sugar-drenched cranberry & orange dish that’s typically offered at the Thanksgiving table. Rather than white sugar, this chutney features apples, ginger, and a touch of honey.

Cranberry Ice Cream with Cranberry, Apple & Orange Chutney

For the ice cream:
1 1/2 cups buttermilk, preferably from grass-fed cows
4 egg yolks that you don’t mind eating raw (I always stick with eggs from pastured hens)
1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp. almond OR vanilla extract

For the chutney:
12 oz. fresh or frozen cranberries
1 large apple, chopped
1 seedless orange, peeled and split into segments
1 tsp. ginger
1 to 2 T. honey or to taste
Apple cider (optional)

To make the ice cream, place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Pour into an ice cream maker and follow manufacturer instructions.

To make the chutney, place all ingredients in a medium pot and simmer over medium-low heat for 20 minutes or until thickened, stirring and smashing the chutney occasionally to help the orange segments release their juice and the apples and cranberries release their pectin. (Pectin thickens as it cooks.) Add another drizzle of honey or a splash of cider if you’d like your chutney to be sweeter. Serve with the ice cream, on its own, or even on a cheese plate or with a helping of turkey or chicken.

Enjoy!

Blueberry Buttermilk Ice Cream

While it may seem odd to be making ice cream when it’s getting cold outside, I say what the heck — damned tasty ice cream is damned tasty any time of the year. And you can always stand over/in front of the heating vent while you’re eating your ice cream. It’s fun to play up the whole hot-vs.-cold concept even more that way.

Ice cream is typically made with cream, of course — and milk — but you can make ice cream with nearly any thicker, higher-fat dairy product: buttermilk, whole-milk yogurt, even sour cream. The higher fat levels are necessary both to provide a rich flavor and to inhibit ice crystals from forming/growing. If the latter happens, your ice cream goes from smooth to crunchy, and it becomes well-high impossible to scoop straight out of the freezer.

Another way to prevent ice crystals from forming is to add a litany of chemical stabilizers, thickeners, gums, fillers, and refined sugar…which is exactly what you’ll see on cheap, low-fat ice cream labels. Needless to say, that is not the kind of ice cream I would recommend making. (Actually, it would be impossible to make that kind of ice cream at home since you won’t find monocalcium phosphate or propylene glycol monostearate on grocery store shelves. [Unless you're looking at the label on Edy's Cookies & Cream ice cream, that is. And that's just one example out of dozens if not hundreds.] Propylene glycol is used for things like antifreeze and hydraulic fracking.) I’ll take my good-quality fat over that, thanks.

Blueberry & Buttermilk Ice Cream

2 cups half-and-half, preferably from grass-fed cows (if you’re in Metro Detroit, check out Calder’s products)
2 cups buttermilk (ditto on the Calder’s)
2 egg yolks that you don’t mind eating raw (preferably from free-range hens)
1 tsp. almond OR vanilla extract
About 1/2 cup honey
16 oz. frozen wild blueberries (I like the ones from Trader Joe’s)

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until velvety smooth. You’ll need a 5-cup or bigger blender to make this since it comes out to about 5 cups total. Taste and see if you’d like it sweeter; if so, add a touch more honey.

Pour into an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer directions. SO simple and SO delicious!!

Enjoy!

Stacked Crepe Torte

Today’s post is more of an ideas post than an actual recipe, but it’s an idea that you can take in uncountable directions, be that sweet or savory or as a main dish or a dessert. Another neat thing about this culinary concept is that you get to play the part of a pastry chef as you spread several layers of filling between stackable crepes. Unlike most pastries, however, a crepe torte is a lot more forgiving of less-than-professional techniques (which, when it comes to making pastries, mine certainly are) than just about any pastry you could name.

What I’m talking about is a stunningly simple — yet elegant! — idea: a layered torte made of stacked crepes with a savory or sweet filling in between them. As long as your chosen filling has a thick, spreadable, and non-runny consistency, you’re golden. (Salsa would obviously escape its crepe layers and spill back onto the plate, but guacamole would not.) From hummus to a thick and chunky tapenade, you can layer away to your heart’s content. If you wanted to go the sweet route, you could whip some fresh cream and alternately layer it into the crepes with some fresh fruit. Or you could make a rich chocolate ganache and layer that in, then top the torte with some crushed nuts and a drizzle of honey mixed with cinnamon.

No matter what kind of filling you choose, just be sure to use a sharp and thin knife to gently cut the torte into pieces — a big and/or dull knife would smash the layers down and make the filling squish out. Also, while you can certainly stack a batch of standard 6″ crepes, you might prefer to use a 9″ pan when you cook the crepes so that you’ll have a larger layer to work with later. This recipe for crepes will work for either size.

Stacked crepe tortes like this one I made with puréed smoked salmon and fromage blanc — the latter reminds me of smooth cottage cheese — will last for up to 4 days in the refrigerator. You can also make the crepes a day or two ahead of time if you like, then stack and serve just before company arrives. (Or just before you get hungry for lunch or dinner.)

Enjoy!

Chocolate Mesquite Cookies

Mesquite: it’s for more than just burning. And providing shade if you’re in the Arizona desert. Turns out that the pods the tree bears are edible (just as the wood is burnable), so if you let the pods dry out and grind them up, you have flour. A fragrant, fine flour that will make you think of caramel and barbecuing at the same time. That kind of hauntingly familiar smoke-edged flavor doesn’t go with everything, but it sure is an ideal companion whenever dark chocolate is involved!

Even if you don’t have mesquite flour on hand (I ordered my latest batch from aptly named Mesquitery in Arizona), these intensely dark chocolate cookies will still be a hit. Combining whole-grain flour with freshly ground almonds means these cookies will be crunchy, crisp, and light-textured — the perfect cookie all around, mesquite or no mesquite.

Chocolate Mesquite Cookies
Makes 60 cookies

1/2 cup mesquite flour* (if you don’t have mesquite, use teff — it has a rich, nutty flavor that also pairs well with chocolate)
1/2 cup almond meal (grind sliced almonds in a food processor or spice grinder, or buy almond meal)
1 cup brown rice flour*
1/4 cup sorghum flour*
1 T. baking powder
1/2 tsp. sea salt

4 T. softened butter, preferably from pastured cows (Kerrygold is my reigning favorite, partially because of its amazing flavor and partially because it’s soft after 5 minutes of standing at room temperature thanks to the fact that it’s made from cream from grass-fed cows — their grassy diet means that their milk has a lot less saturated fat in it than milk from conventional grain-fed cows does)
1 cup sucanat
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1/4 unrefined hazelnut oil OR 1/4 extra-virgin olive oil
2 tsp. vanilla extract

8 oz. dark chocolate (at least 70% dark; I used two 85% Lindt bars), broken into small pieces

Preheat oven to 350F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the flours, almond meal, baking powder, and salt. In a large bowl, beat the butter for 2 minutes or until creamy. Gradually beat in sucanat. Beat in one egg at a time, then beat in oil and vanilla extract.

If you’re using gluten-free flours, add the flour mixture to the creamed butter and beat it in until you have a smooth dough. If you’re using wheat, stir in the flour. (The gluten-free way is quicker since you don’t have to worry about overbeating the gluten present in the wheat.) Either way, stir in the chocolate chunks last.

Shape the dough into small balls about 1″ in diameter and place them in neat rows on the parchment-covered baking sheets. My sheets are rectangular, so I wound up with 4 rows of 5 balls across or 20 cookies per sheet. Since the recipe makes 60 cookies, stash the remaining dough in the fridge until you have a free sheet to use.

Bake cookies for 17 to 18 minutes or until they’re lightly brown on the top and brown on the bottom. (Flip one of them up to peek at its underside.) Let hot baking sheets cool completely before pulling the remaining dough out of the fridge and making the remaining cookies.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you would prefer to make wheat-based cookies, substitute whole-wheat, kamut, or spelt flours for the gluten-free flours.

Mulberry Pie

Soon, July will have come to an end, and with it, the mulberries will, too.  That’s a shame — mulberries are probably the easiest and most satisfying wild food to forage. If you don’t have a mulberry tree in your backyard, odds are you know someone who does. Or you’ve probably walked underneath one and didn’t realize that the smushy dark stuff lying on the pavement underneath it was actually a giant clue that there was an edible treasure hanging over your head. (Always look up! Just not with your mouth open.) As delicious as they are, though, mulberries don’t travel well, so you won’t find them in markets. Mulberry rule #1: eat them within a few hours of picking them. Or make a pie with them.

If you can’t find free mulberries hanging around, you can substitute any kind of smallish berry: raspberries, blackberries, or blueberries. (Strawberries would be too big and watery.) Any of these would pair well with the oat-and-nut crust.

Mulberry Pie (or Raspberry or Blackberry or Blueberry Pie)

For the crust:
3/4 cup ground gluten-free oats (either steel-cut or rolled) or a heaping 2/3 cup pre-ground gluten-free oat flour*
1/2 cup ground almonds*
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1 cup sorghum flour*
1 tsp. sea salt
1 stick chilled butter, preferably from grass-fed cows (Kerrygold is a great choice)
1 egg, preferably from pastured hens
1/3 cup cold water
2 tsp. apple cider vinegar

For the filling:
About 6 cups berries
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup brown rice flour*
2 tsp. cinnamon (or a total of 2 tsp. of cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and/or ginger)

Preheat oven to 375F. Grease a 9″ glass pie pan with a bit of the butter and set aside. Also make sure you have a rolling pin and some plastic wrap handy.

Whisk together oats, almonds, flours, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Use a knife to cut the butter into chunks before plopping it into the flour mixture, then cut the butter into the flour with a pastry cutter or two knives, continuing to work the butter into the flour until your mixture looks like coarse crumbs. (If you try to do this with not-cold butter, the butter will smush and melt rather than cut cleanly into crumbs. Not good.) Make a well in the center of the mixture and add the egg, water, and vinegar to the center. Whisk them together, then whisk in widening circles to mix everything. Finish by gently pressing the dough together with your hands, kneading it in the bowl until you have a smooth and slightly wet dough. If the dough is too wet and is coming apart, add a little more flour and mix again.

Split the dough in half. Refrigerate one half and press the other into your greased pan, pressing in the center and outwards to the edges until the dough covers the bottom and most of the sides. The dough should be uniformly thick, so don’t press too hard in any one area; if a tear develops, pinch off a overly thick part and press it into the tear/thin part.

In another large bowl, gently toss the berries with the remaining ingredients. Remove the dough from the fridge and place it between two sheets of plastic wrap. Gently roll out the dough, pressing evenly on the rolling pin to make a layer that’s evenly thick.

Spoon the filling into the crusted pan. Peel the top piece of plastic wrap off of the just-rolled dough and invert the dough over the filled pie pan before removing the other piece of wrap. Pinch the edges of the two crusts together. Again, if a tear develops, snitch a patch-it piece of dough from a spot that’s too bulky and gently press it into the tear.

Use the tip of a sharp knife to carve several little holes into the top of the crust to allow steam to escape while the pie is baking. Be creative! You can cut fanciful shapes if you like, or you can stick with simple slashes. Or carve your initials into the top of the pie. Historically, bakers had distinctive marks they would cut or stamp into their baked goods as a signature of sorts.

Bake for 1 hour, then check on the pie’s progress. It may take up to 1 hour and 20 minutes to get a nicely browned crust, but better to check early and often than burn your beautiful pie. Let cool for at least 30 minutes before cutting into the pie.

Note: this is not a sweet pie — it’s an opportunity to showcase the flavor of the berries rather than the sweetener. If you’d prefer a sweeter pie, use 1/2 cup date sugar and 1/2 cup sorghum flour rather than 1 full cup sorghum flour. Or you can serve the pie with a splash of maple syrup or a scoop of ice cream. I like to have it for breakfast just the way it is or with a little bit of maple or date sugar on top.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours/ingredients. If you’d prefer to make a wheat-based version, use whole-wheat, kamut, or spelt flour in place of the brown rice and sorghum flours. You can use standard oats if you aren’t making a gluten-free pie (standard oats are grown/processed with gluten-containing grains and flours; gluten-free oats are kept separate). I would keep the almonds and oats, though, since they both pair well with the fruit and they add flavor and nutrition to the pie.

Chocolate Raspberry Ice Cream

It is riDICulously hot! Unless perhaps you’re reading this in Antarctica, in which case I’m a bit jealous. (Although I admit I’d rather be grumping about heat than cold.) Then again, a happy consequence of the heat is that ice cream keeps sounding better and better! Especially when you’re talking cream from pastured cows, tastily sweet maple syrup, and tart-sweet raspberries. Or strawberries or blueberries or whatever kind of chocolate-friendly fruit you’d like to include.

I’m not a big fan of appliances, but ice cream makers are stunningly useful and are fairly inexpensive — mine was $30 with one of those ubiquitous Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons that everyone always seems to get in the mail. (Normal price was $40.) Once you have one and start making your own batches of ice cream — or sherberts or sorbets, for that matter — you’ll wonder why you didn’t buy an ice cream maker last summer. Or the one before that.

And if you have an ice cream maker and access to raw cream, your ice cream will blow away anything that Edy’s or Breyer’s could ever make. Cold Stone, Schmold Stone! I ordered raw cream from my farmer for the first time recently and was amazed. I’d expected it to be extra-rich and naturally thick (commercial cream is thickened with carrageenan) and to be much easier to whip (pasteurizing and whipping are both forms of “cooking” the cream and solidifying it — in essence, pasteurized cream is already halfway cooked and therefore is harder to whip), but the raw cream exceeded even my high expectations. Not only was it far thicker than its purposely thickened commercial counterpart, it whipped so quickly that I almost accidentally had butter instead of whipped cream. It was also so rich that I wound up thinning the cream with water rather than milk when I used it to make ice cream. And then there was the color: a light golden hue. That’s the beta-carotene from the grass showing through. (The green chlorophyll normally hides the orange beta-carotene. The same is true of leaves — in fall, when the chlorophyll starts to dissipate, the leaves turn orange and red and reveal their true colors.) So if you have raw cream within your reach, by all means use it! If not, try for Organic Valley or a local, grass-fed dairy’s cream.

Chocolate Raspberry Ice Cream

1 cup heavy cream, preferably from grass-fed cows or raw cream (see preceding paragraphs)
1/2 cup water IF you use a rich cream; 1/2 cup whole milk otherwise
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 egg yolk, preferably from pastured hens (I would not advise eating raw yolk from a carton of 99-cent eggs; if that’s all you have, leave out the egg)
2 tsp. vanilla extract
6 oz. raspberries

Place all ingredients except raspberries in a blender and blend until smooth. Pour into ice cream maker. Immediately pour raspberries into ice cream maker and proceed to make the ice cream according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Ice cream will be soft-serve consistency when you first make it and then will get a little harder than commercial ice cream after it’s been frozen. Either let it sit out and thaw for a few minutes before scooping, or keep dunking your scoop in hot water to make it easier to portion out your summertime bliss.

Enjoy!

Sheep's-Milk Yogurt with Grapes & Honey

I’ve been on a yogurt kick lately, and there’s a darned good reason for that: I finally found sheep’s-milk yogurt! Old Chatham Sheepherding Company sells their sheep’s-milk yogurt in various grocery stores to the lucky folks on the East Coast and through their website to sheep-curious shoppers who aren’t within shouting distance of New York.

Even though the shipping costs as much as the yogurt — it has to be shipped in cold-packs — it’s worth the splurge. (If anyone knows of a store in Metro Detroit that sells sheep’s-milk yogurt, please let me know!) Sheep milk is richer than milk given by cows or goats, and it strikes a flavor balance between the mildness of cow milk and the grassy, earthy character of goat milk. And the whey doesn’t separate from the solids the way the whey separates with cow milk, so no need to stir sheep’s-milk yogurt back together. (Although herein lies a tip for the lactose-intolerant: since most of the lactose is in the whey, draining it off will leave you with a decreased-lactose yogurt. The cultures gobble up the lactose to live, too, so the more cultured the yogurt/dairy product is, the less lactose it will have.)

Incidentally, most yogurt made in the Mediterranean is from either sheep or goat milk, not cow — cows don’t do well in rocky, hilly terrain where vegetation is sparse. Sheep and goats do. So if you’re having Greek yogurt in Greece, odds are you’ll be eating sheep’s-milk yogurt. But since plenty of the States are dairying areas and since cows give much more milk than sheep and goats do, practically all yogurt in the U.S. is made from cow milk.  Let’s hope those of us who adore sheep’s-milk cheese and yogurt can change that!

[Sheep's-Milk] Yogurt with Grapes & Honey
This recipe is sized for an individual serving, but feel free to make as many servings as you like! Makes a delicious and easy breakfast, snack, or dessert.

1/2 cup whole-milk yogurt, preferably made from sheep milk, but whole-milk yogurt from cow milk works, too (Fage Greek yogurt is a great choice)
Drizzle of honey
Splash of vanilla extract (about 1/4 tsp.)
12 small red grapes

Stir honey and vanilla into yogurt and taste to see if you’d like it to be any sweeter. Be careful about adding too much vanilla — a little bit goes a long way. Start with 1/4 tsp. and work your way up. And remember that the grapes will be sweet, so don’t overshoot with the honey, either. Add grapes and serve promptly.

Rhubarb & Strawberry Crostata

Just as there are open-faced sandwiches, there are open-faced pies, or “free-form pies,” as they’re often called.  Free-form pies are fun to make since the whole idea is to wind up with an irregular, imperfect result.  And whether you’re making a whole-wheat pie or a gluten-free pie, it’s liberating to not have to worry about creating an evenly round crust.  Besides, in terms of food fashion, the rustic look is in!  Ain’t it great when the desired outcome is also the one that takes the least amount of work?  Laziness can occasionally equal brilliance.

Although I’ve opted for spring-fresh rhubarb paired with organic strawberries, you could use any berry along with the rhubarb: blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, even cranberry (although you’d have to sweeten the filling a little more to account for the tartness of the latter).  Since you’re making an unleavened crust, you don’t have to worry about the odd color change that happens when you mix a dark purplish berry with baking soda.

(Note for you food techies out there: the pigments that make the dark purple/red react in an alkaline environment by turning into an odd greenish-blue color.  Not appealing.  Luckily, you can off-set that alkalinity with a strong acid like buttermilk or lemon juice, or you can use baking powder or yeast as leaveners rather than highly alkaline baking soda.)

Rhubarb & Strawberry Crostata

For the crust:
1/2 cup almond flour, preferably freshly ground*
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup coarse- or medium-grind cornmeal
2 T. palm sugar OR sucanat
Pinch of sea salt
1 stick cold butter, preferably from grass-fed cows (Organic Valley or Kerrygold are good choices)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
Dash of whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows

For the filling:
About 4 slender stalks of rhubarb (weighs about 1 lb.)
About 8 oz. ORGANIC strawberries (since strawberries are our #1 most-sprayed crop and you’re eating the whole fruit, it’s worth choosing organic)
1/4 cup palm sugar OR sucanat
1/4 cup brown rice flour*

To make the crust, whisk together the flours, sugar, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the butter, cut it into chunks with a knife, then use a pastry blender (or two knives) to cut the butter into the dry ingredients to make a fine crumbs. Pour in the olive oil and eggs and mix with a wooden spoon. Add a dash of milk and see if the mixture holds together well or is too dry. You should be able to easily form a ball with the crust and not have it fall apart. (If it gets too wet, add more flour.) Cover and refrigerate crust for at least an hour to make it firmer and easier to handle.

In the meantime, make the filling by placing all ingredients in a medium-sized sauce pan. Add just enough water to barely cover the fruit. Simmer uncovered on low for about 10 minutes or until the rhubarb is easily pierced with a knife tip and the mixture has become thick. Remove from heat and let stand while crust is chilling.

Preheat oven to 400F. Cover a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Scoop crust out of bowl and press (or roll, if you’re using wheat flour) the crust into a large and evenly flat circle, going all the way to the edge of the pan — you’re going to be folding the edges back onto the center, so you need to have a pretty large circle to start with. Place cooled filling in center of crust and spread it out to about 2″ from the edges. “Fold” the crust back onto the filling by picking up the edge of the parchment paper and gently encouraging the crust to fall inwards. Keep lifting the paper and nudging the crust over and down until you have a free-form, roundish pie.

Bake for 45 minutes or until crust is brown on the edges and the fruit is gently bubbling. Let cool for at least 10 minutes before cutting into it. Serve with whole-milk Greek yogurt, ice cream, and/or a drizzle of maple syrup.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d like to make a wheat version, use whole-wheat or spelt flour in place of almond and/or brown rice flour. I do think the almond lends the crust a nice nuttiness that compliments the fruit, though, so I would only sub out the brown rice flour. The cornmeal provides a pleasant crunch.

Gingered Mango Crepes

Until I took my first bite of this fruit-filled crepe, I had forgotten about blintzes, but then fond memories of the frozen blintzes from Trader Joe’s came rushing back.  If you haven’t had a blintz, though, don’t worry — you’ll still be amazed by how creamy, rich, and sweet these crepes are.  Happily, they’re a lot easier to make than a blintz (no re-frying needed) and only require four ingredients: frozen mangoes, Greek yogurt, a sprinkling of ginger, and crepes.

Crepes can be kept for up to 5 days in the refrigerator, so you can make a double batch and then have Gingered Mango Crepes whenever you’d like.  If you make neutral crepes — don’t put in any sweetener, and use flours that can go sweet or savory — you can use the same crepes to make dinner, too.  I used the other half of this batch to make savory crepes stuffed with Indian-spiced brown rice, peas, spinach, garlic, onion, and halloumi cheese.

Gingered Mango Crepes

Sliced mangoes, either frozen or fresh
Sprinkling of ground ginger
Crepes (see recipe below)
Sprinkling of sucanat or palm sugar
Whole-milk Greek yogurt

Place mangoes and ginger in a large skillet and simmer over low heat, uncovered, for about 15 minutes to allow the flavors to meld. Do not let it come to a boil. Spoon mango onto crepes, then top with sucanat/palm sugar and yogurt. Fold or roll up crepes and serve immediately. So simple!

To make the crepes:

1/2 cup brown rice flour OR sorghum flour*
1/2 cup millet OR amaranth OR corn flour*
3 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 1/4 cups milk, either dairy, coconut, nut, or grain
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Dash of sea salt

Whisk all ingredients together in a bowl, adding 2 T. sucanat or palm sugar if you’d like your crepes to be more on the sweet side. (I did not since I also wanted to use the crepes for savory dinners.) Note that you can mix the batter up to 24 hours in advance if you’d like and then refrigerate it until you’re ready to make the crepes; the flavor will become richer upon standing.

Place a little pat of butter or a slight drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil into a 6″ crepe pan and place over medium-low heat for 1 minute. Add 1/4 cup batter to the pan and cook for 2 to 3 minutes or until you can see little bubbles forming on the surface. Use a heat-proof spatula to lift up an edge of the crepe to see if the bottom is golden brown. If/when it is, flip the crepe over and continue cooking for another minute or until that side is golden brown, too. Slide the finished crepe onto a cooling rack or large plate. Continue making crepes 1/4 cupful at a time until you’ve run out of batter, adding a little butter or oil to the pan now and then if the crepes are starting to stick.

Note that you may have to turn down the heat as you continue to cook the crepes since the pans will keep getting hotter and hotter. I find that I’ve notched down the heat once or twice by the time I’m on my third crepe. (I usually start at mark 4 out of 10; eventually, I wind up at mark 2 or so.) Also, you can make multiple crepes at the same time if you have multiple 6″ pans. Bear in mind that pans may heat differently, so you may have two different heat levels going on as you proceed. One of my pans, for example, makes perfect crepes on mark 2 with hardly any oil; the other needs mark 4 and a decent drizzling of oil. You can make crepes on larger pans, but they’ll probably be odd-sized with uneven edges. The 6″ pan keeps the edges defined as a perfect circle.

Final note: try to arrange cooling crepes in a non-overlapping way so that they don’t stick to each other. I lay mine out on two cooling racks for at least 20 minutes to let them completely cool before I stack them in a large container or bag. If you’re going to eat them all immediately, then stack them on top of each other with a paper towel in between so that they’ll stay warm and pliable.

Enjoy!

* These are all neutral-tasting flours (as opposed to bean flour, which to me is firmly in the savory, “dinner crepe” category), so you could mix and match them any way you’d like. You could also use whole-wheat, kamut, or spelt flour, although if you want gluten-free crepes, stick with gluten-free flours like the ones listed in the recipe.

Orange Coconut Cake

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 way you’d use powdered sugar).  The more ways you figure out how to use the same ingredient, the less you’ll have to spend on redundant pantry items!  To get back to the first example, one package of raw sliced almonds can be eaten as is, can be toasted and then eaten, or can be ground into flour.  No need to buy three separate items when you can buy one!  Only having to buy one ingredient means you can buy a better-quality version of that ingredient and still save money.

My latest simple ingredient twist is freshly toasted unsweetened coconut flakes.  All you have to do is place enough flakes in the bottom of a nonstick pan to make a thin layer, then toast the flakes over medium-low heat for about 5 minutes, occasionally stirring, until the flakes are turning golden brown and are becoming lusciously fragrant.  Immediately tip them out onto a cool plate so that they’ll stop cooking.  (If you leave them in the hot pan, they could burn.)  You can then use your toasted coconut as a garnish for savory or sweet items or as a topping for yogurt or granola or whatever else would benefit from a rich, nutty-buttery flavor.  You can also stir the toasted coconut into everything from cakes to cookies to custards.  Or roll them into truffles for a truly unique tropical treat!

Orange Coconut Cake

1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup sorghum OR millet flour*
1/3 cup corn flour*
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. sea salt
1 stick softened unsalted butter, preferably from grass-fed cows (bonus point for butter from grass-fed cows: since their milk contains much less saturated fat than conventional milk does, butter from grass-fed cows will soften much more quickly at room temperature than conventional butter will)
1/2 cup + 2 T. powdered sucanat (just run it through a coffee grinder until you have a fine powder), divided
2 eggs, separated, preferably from pastured hens
3/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1 tsp. vanilla
Dash of cream of tartar

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease an 8×8 glass baking pan and set aside.

Place coconut in a large nonstick skillet and toast over medium-low heat for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon, until flakes are golden brown and fragrant. Slide flakes onto cool plate and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In another large bowl, cream the butter with 1/2 cup of the powdered sucanat. Beat in egg yolks one at a time, then beat in orange juice and vanilla. Beat in flour mixture and reserved toasted coconut. (Note: if you’re using wheat flour, stir in the flour to avoid overmixing it and making it tough. Gluten-free bakers don’t have to worry about that.)

Either put in a fresh set of beaters or wash the ones you just used. In a medium bowl, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar at high speed until soft peaks form. Scatter the remaining 2 T. powdered sucanat onto the stiffened whites and beat for another minute.

Fold egg whites into batter and then pour/scoop the batter into the greased baking pan. Bake for 35 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. If you like, you can make a simple icing by powdering more sucanat, then stirring in small amounts of freshly squeezed orange juice until you have a spreadable icing.

Enjoy!

* This is a gluten-free recipe. If you’d rather make a wheat-based version, substitute 1 1/3 cups whole-wheat (or spelt or kamut) flour for the flours stipulated here.

Nut, Seed & Fruit Granola with Palm Sugar

I’m always on the prowl for new unrefined sweeteners — not only are they a healthier alternative to heavily processed white sugar, unrefined sweeteners like maple syrup and honey have flavor instead of just being super-sweet.  It’s fun to play with flavor pairings to see which sweetener you like with what.  (I think honey is a natural fit for cornbread and blueberry muffins; maple syrup is delicious with chocolate.  Date sugar is wonderful sprinkled onto fruit and cobblers.)  And since unrefined sweeteners retain more of their complex nutrients than refined sugar does, unrefined sweeteners contain fewer calories per teaspoon.  Once again, taking the quality approach addresses the quantity one.

My latest unrefined sweetener find is palm sugar.  It’s made from the sap of a palm tree in a process that’s much like making maple syrup: tap the tree, collect the sap, and boil it down to a thick liquid.  The difference is that the palm sugar is more of a gritty, thick paste than a pourable syrup.  Some palm sugars — including coconut sugar — are then poured into molds to dry and wind up being sold in blocks.  (Jaggery is an Indian sweetener typically made of palm sap or sugarcane juice and sold in hardened blocks or swirls.  Latin versions are made from sugarcane and are known by various names, including rapadura and piloncillo. They’re often sold as cones.)

Despite palm sugar having less than a quarter of the calories of white sugar (10 per tablespoon instead of 45), palm sugar is surprisingly sweet!  It also has a very faint caramel flavor.  So far, I’ve stirred it into hot chocolate and made a sweetened granola with it, and I’ve really enjoyed the results.  You could also use it in baked goods that work well with liquid sweeteners, like cakes and muffins and quick breads.  (Cookies would be too thin and would spread out too much if you used a liquid sweetener in them — I use sucanat and date sugar for my cookies.)  I found palm sugar at Whole Foods, but you can probably find it at other natural-foods-oriented groceries as well.  And since palm sugar is often used in Thai cookery and other southeastern Asian cuisines, Asian grocery stores tend to stock it.

Nut, Seed & Fruit Granola with Palm Sugar
You can use any combination of nuts, seeds, dried fruits, grains, or other trail-mix-friendly ingredients in your granola. If you use salted roasted nuts, you don’t need to add any sea salt to the recipe, but if you use unsalted nuts, you might want to sprinkle in some sea salt to taste.

2/3 cups roasted pistachios
1/3 cup roasted peanuts
3/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
2 cups unsweetened puffed brown rice OR puffed millet
1 1/4 cups rolled oats (make sure to get gluten-free oats if you’d like gluten-free granola)
2 T. roasted sesame seeds
1/4 cup cocoa nibs, optional
Pinch of sea salt, optional

3/4 cup palm sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla

Mix all ingredients except for the final three together in a large bowl. Gently heat the palm sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla in a small pot on the stove. It should only take a minute or two of stirring over the low heat to get the palm sugar to fully liquefy.

Drizzle palm sugar over the granola mix and stir well with a wooden spoon. Spread the mixture out on an ungreased baking sheet to dry, then store in an airtight container when cool. (If you’re going to keep it for more than three or four days, refrigerate it.) You can eat the granola as it is for a snack or for breakfast, or you can pour it into a bowl and add your choice of milk to make a traditional bowl of cereal.

Enjoy!