Gluten/Dairy free awesomeness!!!

Today, feeling somewhat confident in my gluten free abilities, I decided to attempt my first gluten free cupcake. And what resulted was a little piece of heaven. I don't know what the best part was, having created a gluten and dairy free cupcake, or watching my 2 year old gobble it up like it had been years since she had cake (it's been only 2 months really.....).

I took my vanilla cupcake recipe that I have posted before and made only a few alterations.

I substituted the following:
milk - almond milk
butter - Earth's Balance vegan spread
flour - rice flour with xanthan gum

I also cooked them for about 25 minutes, instead of the 15 for my last batch. They turned out slightly dense, but still moist and soft. The taste was awesome! I'm almost thinking that the almond milk adds some nutty flavours to it, making it even more yummy!

For the icing I went with the normal buttercream, not the cooked one like I usually do. I wasn't too sure if the Earth's balance spread would act like butter, and also my electric beater is broken :( On that note, I mixed my whole batter by hand, and I swear the butter got fluffier than normal with the wooden spoon instead of the mixer, hmmmm.... Perhaps the old fashioned way works the best???
But back to the icing... I mushed up almost 1/2 cup of the Earths Balance with a wooden spoon, added about 3 cups of icing sugar and mixed these up. Then I added almond milk till I got to the consistency I liked. I found that I had to add more almond milk than I would usually add cows milk, don't know why though.... I put in about a TBSP at a time...

So, if you need a gluten and dairy free cupcake you have to try these. You wont even be able to tell the difference!

Here is the link again to the recipe I used...
http://tastykitchen.com/recipes/desserts/moist-vanilla-cupcakes/

Papplesauce... (not a typo...)



Ok folks, so we had applesauce a couple of weeks ago, and now papplesauce! However, the reasoning is quite different... I made applesauce to use up the apples on our trees, I made papplesause to fix up the kids coughs... no lie...


Elysabeth had a cold about two months ago, which with came a lingering, come and go, phlegmy type cough. Back when it started I asked my acupuncturist and friend if she had any recommendations, and she suggested to make a applesauce out of asian pears and feed it to Elysabeth for a couple of days, "will clear it up in no time!".
I replied to her, "oh, like a papple?".
And I believe her reply was "ummmm, yes, I guess so if that is what you call it?".
Funny thing is, as I have been telling this story to co-workers and friends lately, they have given me the same response.... Does no one else call this fruit a papple? Seriously people.....!


Anyways, back to the sauce.... Now, I did not heed my friends advice then, as Elysabeth made a temporary recovery from the attack of the phlegm, but a couple of weeks ago both my lovely girls had return of the cough. Every night before bed and all night, we were hearing hacking, phlegmy coughs from both our girls bedrooms. No one was actually sick, they just had the cough, poor kids!
So, my Husband brought home the papples and I whipped up some papplesauce with cinnamon. I had enough so they both had a bowl that night, and another the next morning.
Now, no word of a lie here, the coughing and phlegm has disappeared at my house. I am totally in awe, (not that I doubted you Diana!) But just that something so simple and wonderfully easy can make my children's life that much better. And not only easy, but yummy and healthy for them! Blows my mind, seriously...


So next time you have that lingering, attack of the phlegm, type cough, whip your self up some papplesauce!!

Yorkshire's and Brownies... All in a Days Work!

Brownies!!

To get my Ms. Kayleigh to go to bed the other night I promised her that we would make blueberry muffins the next day. Don't worry, this is NOT about blueberry muffins, you did read the title right! However, before we went to bake the next day I realized that my muffin tray was at my Mom's house from our fabulous prime rib dinner last weekend, where we used it for yorkshires. So we decided to try our first gluten free brownies.


Now that I have my two secret gluten free weapons, rice flour and xanthan gum, I feel that anything is possible! I picked these both up from Thrifty foods and both are made by Bob's Red Mill. Thanks to Bob for creating wonderful things for gluten free folk!


We took my favourite most wonderful brownie recipe and just substituted the regular flour with rice flour, and added some xanthan gum. I also substituted the butter with vegan butter, as we are dairy free around here too for Ms. Kayleigh. This recipe is the very best brownie recipe I have ever made. The brownies end up fudgy and soft, so yummy!

Here it is.


1/2 cup butter (or vegan butter)
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 eggs
1 cup sugar (brown or white, I have used both with success)
1 tsp vanilla
2/3 cup flour (with the rice flour I added 1/4 tsp xanthan gum)
1/2 tsp baking powder


Preheat oven to 350
In a saucepan melt the butter then remove from heat.

Add the cocoa powder and whisk till mixed. Then add the eggs and sugar and beat until shiny and smooth. Add the dry goods and mix again until all blended.

Pour into a greased pan and bake for about 15 minutes.

Don't overbake!! Its ok if its still soft in the middle because after it sets it will be perfect.

I also pour chocolate chips on the top when it comes out the oven, then after they go soft I spread it around. But seeing as we aren't doing dairy, we skipped that step today.
The only difference I noticed with the gluten free was that it didn't rise and wasn't as fluffy as with regular flour. But it was equally as tasty and I don't think anyone around here noticed the difference! After all, chocolate is chocolate, right?

Yorkshires!!

Ahhhhh, the yorkshire.... It's always a gamble. Will it rise? Will they fail? Well, this time my friends we nailed it! They were golden fluffy and scrumptious.
Now, as with the brownies, these were a bit impromptu. My Husband brought home a roast last minute and my Mom made an appearance with my muffin tray (because we were going to do the blueberry muffins...). So as I stared at the roast and they muffin tray on the counter the light bulb went off!


Now we made yorkshires last weekend at my Mom's house under instructions from my Uncle, who just happens to be a chef and creator of most wonderful things! The recipe is similar to what I would normally do except it had one little difference, baking soda. Perhaps the reason for the perfectness??


An important part of yorkshires is to have all ingredients at room temperature. So, plan to make up the batter a couple of hours before you cook them.


1 cup flour
1 cup of milk
4 eggs
pinch of baking soda


Mix up the eggs, flour and about half the milk. Then put your pinch of baking soda in the rest of the milk and whisk up till frothy. Add this to your other ingredients and mix up. It should resemble runny pancake batter. Add more milk or flour as needed to get to that consistency.
Let sit!!  A couple of hours if you can.
Fill your muffin tray with about 1/2 inch of vegetable oil in the bottom of each cup. Preheat oven to 425, when heated pop the muffin tray with the oil in the oven to heat up nice and hot, it took about 10-15 minutes in my oven.
Then take out of the oven and fill up your cups with the batter, each one should be about 3/4 full. Get the pan back in the oven and watch......
After about 20 minutes I turned it down to 375 and from there they cooked another 5-10 minutes.
They should be golden brown and HUGE! (hopefully). In the past I always have pulled them too early, and they would kind of collapse. So thanks to Uncle Terry for telling me about the baking soda and for teaching me to let them stay in the oven longer than I thought!!


Gluten free yorkshires? Not so successful.... I whipped some up for Kayleigh with almond milk and rice flour but they turned out undercooked and not so hot. I kind of just peeled off the cooked outside and served it with her gluten free gravy, and of course she didn't mind! But I will save my detailed blog for when I nail it and can pass my wisdom along!

Best of luck in your yorkshire adventure! Tis the season for roasts, gravy and hot yorkshires, yum!

Applesauce....finally!

Wow, what a busy month! One of the things that has been constantly bumped on my to do list is pick the apples from the apple trees. But alas, I have done it! This is actually our second big pick this season and I ended up with a whole lot of wonderful apples. I am yet to figure out what kind they are but I think 3 of the trees are gala apples (or something similar) and the other one is a mystery to me... Its kind of like a fiji, but with shinier skin, suggestions welcome!

Of course, after I picked the fruit I had to decide what the heck to do with it, and because it's so super easy and quick, (I said I have been busy!) I went with the never fail applesauce.

With my two helpers in tow, and a guest photographer, (thanks my sister from another mister, Shalane) we got to work!

Applesauce is pretty much the easiest thing to create with apples. You just peel them, chop them up and place over low heat on the stove, with the lid on. Stir occasionally and when its all soft I like to use a masher to get the last lumps. I sometimes have to add a bit of honey, but these apples were sweet enough and even caramelized a bit. The final product turned out a nice warm brown colour and tasted nice and sweet!

I now have about 8 jars of yummy applesauce in the freezer and a huge box left for further creations or just snacking. One thing that's great about home grown apples, other than we only have to walk out back to have a fresh one, is that they are not too big and fit perfectly in little hands!



Next on the list? I have a super yummy apple cake, so stay tuned. And if anyone needs some apples, come help yourself, I have a few to spare!