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.

Buckwheat Crepes with Chocolate Yogurt

One of the many beauties of crepes is that you can fill them with whatever you like, whether that’s sweet or savory or something in between. And by varying the kind of flour you use to make the crepes themselves, you can tweak their base flavor to suit your mood. Want a nutty, rich-tasting crepe? Use teff, buckwheat, or chestnut flour. How about a mild crepe that would work with any filling? Try brown rice, sorghum, millet, or corn flour. For a decidedly savory crepe, go with chickpea or potato flour. In a chocolate kind of mood? Use unsweetened cocoa powder as one of your flours…and maybe throw in some coconut, too. Mesquite flour lends crepes a caramel flair; plantain has a hint of the tropics. Your options are endless.

Although I often make savory crepes intended for lunch wraps and chutney roll-ups, I made these for breakfast and filled them with chocolate yogurt and some blackberry jam. The whole-grain-ness of the crepe + the protein-rich whole-milk yogurt makes for a deliciously satisfying breakfast…and you can make both elements ahead of time and simply roll them at the last minute. Quick breakfasts can be classy and easy!

Buckwheat Crepes with Chocolate Yogurt
This crepe recipe makes about 12 crepes; the yogurt is enough for 2 servings. Feel free to downsize the crepe portions or upsize the yogurt portions as desired. I like to make a full batch of the crepes so that I have some leftovers to enjoy however I like.

For the crepes:
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup buckwheat flour*
1 1/2 cups whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
Dash of sea salt
Butter or ghee for cooking the crepes, preferably from grass-fed cows

For the chocolate yogurt:
1/2 cup whole-milk plain Greek yogurt (Fage is my favorite)
2 T. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 T. maple syrup

To make the crepes, whisk all of the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Get out a (or two or three) 7″ nonstick crepe pan and place a dab of butter in the pan. Heat over medium heat — I go with mark 4 out of 10 on my electric burners — until butter has melted and is sizzling. Pour in 1/4 cup of the crepe batter and cook for 2-3 minutes or until crepe is set on top and browned on the bottom. Use a heatproof spatula to flip over the crepe and cook the second side for another minute or two or until equally browned. If you’re adventurous, by all means go ahead and flip that sucker up into the air to turn it over. Just don’t do that directly over the burner! It’s much easier to rescue a misdirected crepe from a cool element than a hot burner.

Place the cooked crepe on a wire rack. (If you put it on a plate, it’ll collect condensation and get soggy.) Make a second crepe in the same pan using the same technique. I find that I have to put a fresh dab of butter into my crepe pan every other crepe to keep them from sticking. Leftover crepes can be stacked in a sealed container and refrigerated for a week.

To make the yogurt, use a fork to thoroughly mix the ingredients in a bowl. Leftover yogurt can be kept up until the “expires by” date on the original package.

When you’re ready to assemble your chocolate-filled crepe, just spoon some yogurt onto the center of the crepe, roll up, and enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d prefer to make wheat-based crepes, substitute 1 total cup of spelt, kamut, and/or whole-wheat flours for the brown rice and buckwheat.

Blackberry Surprise Muffins

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

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

Blackberry Surprise Muffins

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy!

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

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.

Tuna & Spinach Pizza

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy!

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

Quick Creamed Spinach Pasta

Seeing as the Big Day is nearly here and everyone is rushing around like mad to get their holiday errands done, I thought I’d post a get-done-quick recipe that you can whip up to impress your guests (or yourself). The ingredients range from non-perishable to not-too-perishable and are simple enough to keep on hand. After all, who doesn’t like cheesy pasta and creamy spinach?

Quick Creamed Spinach Pasta
Figure on using about 2 ounces of pasta, 4 to 8 ounces of spinach (I like a lot of spinach), and about 2 ounces of cheese per person.

Whole-grain spaghetti of your choice
Frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry (I run hot water over mine, squeeze the heck out of it, and let it sit in a colander for a few minutes)
Creamy, spreadable, herbed/garlicky cheese such as Boursin
Dash of ground nutmeg
Dash of sea salt

Cook pasta according to package directions and drain well. Toss pasta with remaining ingredients and place over medium-low heat for a minute or two to heat everything through. Told you it was easy! (Not to mention creamy and lush thanks to the Boursin.) If you’d like to make your pasta look extra-Christmasy, top with halved and bright-red cherry tomatoes.

Enjoy!

Whipped Pumpkin Cream

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy!

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

Triple Chocolate Brownies

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

Holiday bakers, preheat your ovens!

Triple Chocolate Brownies

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy!

Baked Mochi

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy!

Orange, Ginger & Chocolate Biscotti

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

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

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

Orange, Ginger & Chocolate Biscotti

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy!

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

Mandarin-Yogurt Bread

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

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

Mandarin-Yogurt Bread

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy!

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

Pasta with Brussels Sprouts, Pecans & Cheddar

If you grow or make a miniature version of something, people invariably call it cute. Just think of fingernail-sized champagne grapes, baby cherry tomatoes, and the Mini-Cooper. (I’d say the cutest car in the world is the VW Bug, but since it only comes in one size, it doesn’t make the list.) The one jarring exception to this smaller-is-cuter rule seems to be the chronically underappreciated Brussels sprout. It’s gotten a boost lately because nowadays the individual sprouts are being sold on the stalk as a culinary novelty item — it looks a bit like a knobbly wizard’s staff — but the incredibly cute little balls of cabbage still aren’t getting the culinary credit they deserve.

The easiest way to prepare Brussels sprouts is to simmer them for 8 minutes or sautée them for 10, but you can also halve and roast the sprouts for an even more delectable effect. Or you can grate/finely chop them and include them in anything from slaws to stir-frys. To create this recipe, I opted to simmer them into a pasta dish. Their pleasant earthy-buttery nature makes them a natural match with other rich ingredients like nuts and cheese.

Pasta with Brussels Sprouts, Pecans & Cheddar

2 servings whole-grain pasta of your choice (use gluten-free pasta for a gluten-free dish)
About 1/4 cup chopped pecans
8 Brussels sprouts, grated on a cheese grater or finely chopped (grating is much quicker)
Pat of butter, preferably from grass-fed cows
Sprinkling of grated Cheddar cheese, preferably from grass-fed cows
Dash of nutmeg

Get water boiling for the pasta and prepare pasta according to package directions. While the pasta simmers, toast the pecans: place them in a dry nonstick pan and let them sit on medium heat for 5 minutes, occasionally shaking the pan and/or stirring them to make sure they’re toasting evenly. When they suddenly become very fragrant and turn a darker shade of brown, pull them off the heat and slide them onto a cool plate. Do not let them get blackened and burnt!

Add the Brussels sprouts to the pasta during the final 2 minutes of the pasta’s cooking time. Drain both when the pasta is tender-firm to the tooth. Slip the hot drained pasta into a large bowl and toss with a pat of butter. Add nuts and Cheddar, reserving some of the latter to use as a garnish if you like. Be sure to sprinkle a bit of nutmeg onto each portion before serving. Add freshly cracked pepper, too, if you like.

Enjoy!

Squash, Buckwheat & Green Onion Patties

We cut them up and then toss them to the curb uneaten, we use them as home decor, we even make containers and musical instruments out of them…but we don’t eat very many of them. I’m talking about squash. Poor, overlooked squash. It’s relatively easy to prepare — assuming that you have a sharp and heavy knife — and is inexpensive and tastes buttery-sweet. It pairs well with nearly any dish. Squashes come in all shapes and sizes, too, which makes buying them even more fun. And you can eat the seeds! Not many veggies offer that kind of two-for-one deal.

I used buttercup squash for this dish, but you can use whatever winter squash you like: pumpkin, butternut, acorn, etc. I prefer buttercup because it’s easier to cut up. Specifically, its squarish shape gives you nice flat surfaces (pumpkins and butternuts are more rounded), and since it has relatively smooth sides (unlike the fluted edges on an acorn squash), it’s easy to trim away the skin with a sharp knife. The grain is up to you, too — you don’t have to stick with the buckwheat I used. Quinoa, brown rice, millet, or any other medium-sized grain would work. (Amaranth and teff are a bit too diminutive for this recipe.)

Squash, Buckwheat & Green Onion Patties

1 buttercup squash
3/4 cup raw buckwheat (despite the name, this has nothing to do with wheat and is gluten-free)
3 stalks celery, choppped
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
4 green onions, minced
Zest AND juice of 1 orange
2-3 tsp. dried sage (I like a lot of sage, but you might not)
Pinch sea salt
1 egg, preferably from pastured hens

Preheat oven to 375F. Cut the buttercup squash in half and scoop out the seeds, either discarding them or reserving them if you’d like to roast them later on. (Rinse well, drain, toss with unrefined peanut oil and sea salt, and spread them out on a parchment-covered baking sheet. Bake at 325F for about 7 minutes or until golden brown.) Place the squashes on a baking sheet with the cut side facing up. Bake for 30 to 45 minutes or until the flesh is soft enough to be easily pierced with a knife. Remove and let cool enough to handle.

While the squash is baking, prepare the buckwheat: simmer in 1 1/2 cups water for 10 to 12 minutes or until the grains are tender to the tooth. Set aside.

Heat a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil over medium heat and sautée the celery and yellow onion for 5 minutes or until onion is turning translucent. Add remaining ingredients except for the egg and reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer for another 5 minutes, then stir in the cooked buckwheat. Remove from heat.

By now, your squash is probably cool to the touch. Scoop out the flesh with a large spoon, leaving the skin behind, and add to the buckwheat mixture. Add the egg at this point, too. Mix well and form into patties, each one about 4″ across.

Using the same skillet you used to cook the celery and onions, sautée the patties in batches, drizzling in a bit of extra-virgin olive oil and cooking over medium heat for about 3 minutes on each side. The goal is to have the patties turn golden-brown; you may have to cook them for more or less time depending on how hot your stove gets. I always find that the second batch cooks more quickly than the first.

Serve immediately. Leftover patties can be refrigerated for up to a week and eaten either chilled or re-sautéed. If you don’t want to go to the trouble of making patties, you can simply stop one step before the patty-making and serve this as Mashed Buttercup & Buckwheat. See how easy it is to tweak a recipe?

Enjoy!

White Bean & Green Onion Salad

Although I like beans in general, I’ve never been a big fan of the traditional three-bean salad, mostly because red kidney beans are my least favorite bean. I utterly adore Great White Northern beans, though. And small red and black and cranberry and chickpea and really any other bean except lima.

If you’re like me and you always make chili with non-kidney varieties of beans, then you’ll love this salad. The fact that it’s made with just one bean and four ingredients also makes it easier to prepare. This would be an ideal last-minute side dish to take along to a holiday gathering!

White Bean & Green Onion Salad
This can easily be doubled or tripled if you’d like to take a big batch along to a party.

15 oz. can of Great White Northern beans (I prefer the Eden line of beans since they’re made with sea salt and a pinch of seaweed and are sold in BPA-free cans)
3 green onions, green part only, minced
Juice of 1/4 lemon or to taste
2 tsp. tamari/soy sauce (if you’re making a gluten-free dish, be sure to use wheat-free tamari)

Drain the beans, reserving the liquid if you’d like. When I use Eden beans, I always hang onto the leftover bean “drippings” in case I want to add them back in. Place beans in a large bowl and mix well with onions, lemon juice, and tamari. Taste and see if you’d like to make the dish more acidic (add lemon) or more savory (add tamari) or both. If your lemon has more rind than juice, you might wind up using half or even all of its juice. Stir in some of the bean drippings if you’d like to thicken the dressing.

These seasoned beans get even better upon standing, so feel free to make this ahead of time and refrigerate for up to a week. You could even mash the leftover salad to make a dip if you’d like to repurpose your leftovers into a “new” dish. You could also add minced red bell pepper or carrots to create a confetti effect.

Enjoy!