Cinnamon & Honey Millet Cakes

I recently prepared these millet cakes for a cooking class, and reactions ranged from “This would make a good breakfast!” to “It kind of reminds me of rice pudding…except crispy.” My thoughts exactly! I also think these cakes would make a great dessert if you topped them with ice cream and/or fresh fruit and an additional drizzle of honey. Or a dollop of whole-milk Greek yogurt with some honey and cinnamon stirred into it.

You could make grain cakes with whatever grain you have on hand: whole-grain rice (brown, red, black, purple), millet, quinoa, amaranth, even wild rice. The key is to overcook your grain of choice just a little so that it becomes stickier and can better hold its shape when formed into a patty. Using two egg whites instead of one whole egg helps the cakes stick together, too — since most of the egg’s protein is in the white, that’s the part that helps things stick together when cooked. (Then again, all of the vitamins and most of the other nutrients are found in the yolk, so it’s better to use the whole egg from a health standpoint.)

Be sure to save your yolks and use them to make ice cream, custard, or even extra-rich scrambled eggs. Fresh yolks can be refrigerated for up to 3 days if you cover them completely with cold water before stashing them on a shelf where they’ll be in prominent, unforgettable, “don’t-forget-about-me!” view.

Cinnamon & Honey Millet Cakes
Makes enough to serve 4. Recipe can be easily doubled or tripled.

2 cups cooked millet (¾ cup will yield about 2 cups cooked)
2 egg whites, preferably from pastured hens
2 T. honey
½ tsp. to 1 tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. vanilla
Dash sea salt

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Heat a dab of butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat until butter is melted and add millet to the pan 1/4 cup at a time, pressing the millet into the cup with your fingers and then tapping the compressed millet gently into the skillet. Press down lightly on the millet patty with a spatula to flatten it (aim for a 3” patty).

Cook for 5 minutes or until golden brown, then very carefully and gently flip over the patties. Cook another 3 minutes or until both sides are golden brown. Leftover patties keep quite deliciously in the fridge for up to 5 days.

Enjoy!

Coconut & Maple Macaroons

Macaroons are the hottest thing in high-end pastry and chocolate shops right now … but when you think “macaroon,” you’re probably thinking of something different. Although classic French macaroons consist of chocolate cream sandwiched between two disks of almond meringue, when the concept was translated to the American dessert lexicon, the recipe changed. Drastically.

Each kind of macaroon has its own charm, and both are irrefutably delightful. The French ganache-and-meringue version is crunchy and creamy at the same time; the American version is based on coconut and is charmingly chewy. Odds are that each will strike your fancy at a different time. When you want to make a quick and easy dessert, for example, you’ll probably have a hankering for the American macaroon. It requires zero heating of any kind and can be made in about two minutes. The French version is considerably more involved. While “project”-style desserts are ideal if you have some time on your hands and curiosity in your nature, sometimes a make-it-in-fewer-than-five-minutes dessert is exactly what you’re looking for.

Coconut & Maple Macaroons
Makes 12 macaroons. Recipe can easily be doubled or tripled.

1/2 cup + 1 T. unsweetened coconut flakes
3 T. unsweetened cocoa powder, plus extra for dusting
2 T. maple syrup
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Sprinkle some cocoa powder on a large plate and have another empty clean plate nearby. Combine all ingredients in a small bowl, mixing well. Use your fingertips to roughly pinch the mixture into 12 equal balls, then roll each ball into a smooth ball on the dry, clean palms of your hands. (Your fingertips will be sticky from having mixed everything together.) Place the macaroons on the clean plate as you go. Wash and dry your hands thoroughly — the idea is to ensure that the macaroons stick to themselves rather than your hands — and then roll each macaroon in the cocoa powder to finish. Alternatively, roll in almond flour or finely ground pistachios or any other finely ground nut.

Macaroons can be refrigerated for up to a week. They’ll dry out slightly and actually improve in texture upon standing. (Although I like them freshly made, too.)

Enjoy!

Orange Segments Topped with Crème Fraîche & Cocoa Nibs

Having just returned from a fascinating — and tasty! — culinary conference in NYC, real food has been very much on my mind. (Although, to be honest, real food is always on my mind. Chalk it up to one of the occupational hazards of being a recipe developer/food writer. In terms of “hazards,” it’s got to be one of the most pleasant.) By “real food,” I’m talking minimally processed foods: grains that are whole, oils that are unrefined, sweeteners that still retain their nutrients, animal products from pastured animals…you get the idea.

Speaking of the pastured animal foods, one of my current favorite dairy products is crème fraîche. It’s still unpopular and un-mainstream enough to be produced by real farms with animals freely grazing. The animals’ state of good health = dairy, egg, and meat products for us that taste damned good and also happen to be the most nutritious. (In case you’re curious about the numbers, pastured animal products have about half the fat of conventional animal products. Pastured also offers higher amounts of anti-inflammatory omega 3 fats and far more vitamins and other micronutrients than conventional products do.)

Along with being produced by great dairyists like Vermont Creamery, crème fraîche is also a cultured dairy product, which means it offers an intriguing tang along with its rich creaminess. It pairs beautifully with everything from fruit to potatoes! The nibs in this recipe add a nice crunch to the juicy orange and creamy/tangy crème fraîche.

Orange Segments Topped with Crème Fraîche & Cocoa Nibs

Peel oranges and gently pull apart into segments. Arrange in a bowl or on a plate and top with a dollop of crème fraîche. Sprinkle with cocoa nibs or broken-up chunks of dark chocolate. (When I say “dark,” I mean at least 75%. The sweetness of the orange is all the sweeter when paired with not-so-sweet chocolate.) Serve immediately for breakfast, dessert, or a snack. If you’d like to experiment with other fruit + crème fraîche combinations, try making Strawberries & Crème.

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Walnut Bread

What’s in your freezer pantry? The space adjoining your fridge is just as useful and important as your cupboard shelves. Stashing away frozen fruits and veggies is a great way to make sure you always have a good stock of otherwise-perishable ingredients on hand, plus it’s far more tasty and economical to freeze your own leftover dinners rather than buying prefabricated frozen meals. (And just think: if you only scrawl the date and not the contents onto your leftovers, you can give yourself a happy culinary surprise at a later date. You’re guaranteed to like what you’re getting because you already enjoyed it the first time around — it’s like going to your favorite restaurant and telling the waiter “Surprise me!”)

One of the best ingredients to keep in the freezer is nuts. While chestnuts and almonds have a relatively low fat content and are therefore less perishable than other nuts, richer nuts like walnuts and pecans and pine nuts can turn rancid in just a month or two when stored at room temp.  The fact that walnuts and pecans are often sold in pieces or halves — i.e., their protective outer skins have been breached — makes them even more prone to rancidity. If you store the more delicate varieties of nuts in the freezer, though, they’ll easily last a year. (Side note: always store nut butters in the fridge! Cool temps will keep them fresher, and they’ll still be spreadable straight out of the fridge.)

This hearty breakfast quick bread takes advantage of the natural affinity pumpkin has for walnuts. If you’d like even more walnut flavor, feel free to dry-toast the walnuts in a pan over medium-low heat for about 4 minutes or until the they’re fragrant and browning before adding them to the batter.

I like to amp up the walnut aspect by drizzling some unrefined walnut oil onto my slices when I enjoy the baked bread. (Since walnut oil is primarily an polyunsaturated fat, it should NOT be heated and is therefore NOT suitable for baking. It is, however, fabulous when whisked into dressings and/or drizzled over finished dishes. It’s also a good source of omega-3 fats.)

Pumpkin Walnut Bread

3/4 cup brown rice flour*
3/4 cup sorghum OR millet flour*
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. allspice
1/4 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. coriander (optional, but a nice background flavor)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (toasted if you like)
1/2 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
3 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 cup puréed pumpkin (either homemade or canned)

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9×5 glass loaf pan by either rubbing its sides with butter or extra-virgin olive oil.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking soda and powder, spices, and walnuts. In another bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients. Pour the liquid mixture into the flour mixture and whisk well to combine.

Pour the batter into the greased loaf pan and bake for 1 hour or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. I usually flip on the oven light to peek at the loaf at the 55-minute mark just to do a quick visual check. If the center still looks soggy and un-set, let it go another 10 minutes before doing a toothpick test. If it’s set and slightly domed, do the toothpick test right away.

Let bread cool on a wire rack for at least 15 minutes before cutting into it. Bread will keep for several days at room temp in the cool winter months, but if it’s summertime or you keep your house toasty warm in the winter, you might want to pop the bread into the fridge to prolong its life. I prefer to leave mine out since the fridge has a tendency to suck the moisture out of baked goods and make them a bit dry. (And I am too thrifty to heat the house past 68F in the winter.)

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, and/or whole-wheat flour.

Crustless Pecan Pie

What do chestnuts, pecans, beech nuts, and hickory nuts all have in common? They’re all native to North America. While beech nuts and hickory nuts are hard to find since they’re usually foraged rather than farmed, chestnuts and pecans are relatively plentiful. Roasted chestnuts are especially findable around the holidays. (Although this Flourless Chocolate Chestnut Cake is delicious any time of the year.) Pecans, on the other hand, are findable year-round.

Where chestnuts are starchy and dry in nature — which makes them excellent in baked goods when dried and ground into flour — pecans are rich and buttery. That satisfying flavor and the high protein/fat content of pecans makes them an ideal ingredient for breakfasts that’ll stick with you all the way to lunch. (As opposed to sugary, refined cereals that will leave you feeling hungry and irritable by mid-morning and will have you reaching for more sugary junk to make it to lunch time. Break the cycle deliciously!)

Soaking the pecans, draining them, and then roasting them overnight will make them insanely buttery-tasting and isn’t very much work seeing as all of those steps are pretty passive: once you have the nuts situated, they can simply do their thing. But you can pan-toast the pecans at the last minute, too, if you want to skip the overnight soak. I think it’s much easier to do hands-off activities like soaking and roasting rather than pay-attention activities like toasting in a pan. (The more oily and buttery the nut, the more likely it is to over-toast and wind up burnt.) How you deal with your nuts is up to you.

Crustless Pecan Pie

8 oz. raw pecan halves (6 oz. or even 4 oz. would also work; I happen to be a nut about pecans and wanted to make a very pecan-y pecan pie)
1 T. sea salt (which sounds like a lot, but you’ll wind up rinsing most of it away)
6 dates, pitted and chopped
1/4 cup maple syrup
4 T. butter (half a stick), preferably from grass-fed cows
3 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
2 tsp. vanilla

The night before, place the pecans and salt in a small bowl and add enough cold water to cover the nuts. Leave them sit out on the counter overnight. The following day, rinse well and let drain for at least 5 minutes. Preheat oven to 200F. Spread the drained pecans out on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes or until the pecans are dry and brittle and break apart easily. (When they start to smell magnificently of roasting nuts, start checking them. This is the most enchanting scent ever — not even baking bread can beat it!) When the pecans are done, increase the heat to 350F.

Get out a 9″ glass pie pan. Place the dates, maple syrup, and butter in a small saucepan and heat over medium-low until the butter is melted. Raise the heat up a notch or two until the mixture is gently bubbling. Let simmer for 3 minutes, then remove from heat and whisk in eggs and vanilla. Whisk in the pecans. You can hand-break them into smaller bits or you can leave them as whole halves. I like the texture and look of the halves, so I do my best to keep them intact.

Pour the batter into the ungreased pie pan and bake for 30 minutes at 350F. Let baked pie cool at least 15 minutes before cutting into it. Leftover pie can be refrigerated for up to 5 days.

Talk about the most lush breakfast imaginable! Especially when you consider that if you serve it in 4 generous portions (one-quarter of the pie makes a lasts-well-until-lunch breakfast), each portion only has 1 T. of maple syrup and 1 T. of butter. It doesn’t take much to play up pecans!

Enjoy!

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!