Black Bean Brownies (lower carb, gluten free)

In my many experiments with lower sugar, lower carb baking, I decided to check out a few cookbooks that were recommended in the Living Without Magazine.  I ended up with one I didn't request, 1,000 Gluten-Free Recipes by Carol Fenster.  Heck, 1,000?  I decided to look through it anyway.  As in a previous cookbook I reviewed, anything bread or dessert related goes back to a basic flour replacement recipe that the author has developed, a combination of sorghum flour, rice flour, and cornstarch.  Those ingredients aren't as lower-carb friendly, so I looked carefully through to find a recipe that would base the flour on something else.  I didn't see quite as many along those lines as I was hoping, for instance I don't think there was a single recipe using chickpea flour, but I did come across a few desserts that had other base ingredients.

One recipe that intrigued me was for black bean brownies.  A co-worker recently had me taste cupcakes she made where garbanzo beans were used in place of flour, and this recipe uses a similar strategy.  I decided to make a tweak of the recipe and this is what I'm posting.  There was a lot of sugar in the original recipe, so I've tried compensating for that.  I also left out the xantham gum, because I thought I had some but didn't.  It must have been discarded in the Great Pantry Purge of 2012, when we threw away everything past its date!  If you have xantham gum powder sitting around, adding a teaspoon to the recipe will probably do a bit for the texture.

I also discovered that my beautiful Cuisinart is broken, but I figured out a way to trick it into thinking it is latched.  Sigh.

These brownies are very cakey.  Please try this recipe!  Tweak it and report back!

Black Bean Brownies

1 15-oz can black beans, drained and rinsed (reduced sodium if you can find it)
3/4 cup brown sugar Splenda for baking
3 eggs
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup chickpea flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp some kind of liquid (the original recipe had 1/4 cup maple syrup) - soy milk, applesauce, banana, etc.

In a food processor, puree black beans, scraping down sides.  Pulse in brown sugar Splenda and eggs until smooth.  Add remaining ingredients and mix.  Pour into prepared 9" pan.  Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes, and cool for another 20.  

(The original recipe from 1,000 Gluten-Free Recipes had 3/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup maple syrup.  If you are only looking for vegan gluten-free but don't need lower sugar, I think I'd go back to that original idea.  Brown sugar Splenda seems much better than the white for aftertaste, but you can still taste it.)

Lower Carb Chocolate Cake for One (soon)

I wish I could shout and say I HAVE FOUND A LOWER CARB CHOCOLATE CAKE AND IT IS DELICIOUS. I'm getting closer, but it isn't there yet.  Honestly this attempt was inspired by another post over at Chocolate Covered Katie, which started as a healthy, vegan microwavable chocolate cake.  I tried using all chickpea flour instead of regular or spelt, and 2 packets of Splenda for the sugar.  Well - 3 tbsp of chickpea flour is not a very dessert-friendly thing.  I did bring home some almond flour tonight, and might try going halvsies of each, to see if that helps.  I also might try another Splenda packet. 

Things that are right - the texture.  It is very cakey!  Yay.  Other things that are right - sugar-free whipped cream.  Sugar-free chocolate syrup?  Ech, skip it.  It has a weird lemony taste.  I'm still learning, and I thought I'd just share a recipe in process with you.  I'm not sure I'll ever believe it to be mine, but rather a variation on Katie's. 

Also - microwavable, one serving cake?  Genius.

Cookbook Review - Home Baked Comfort

Home Baked Comfort (Williams-Sonoma): Featuring Mouthwatering Recipes and Tales of the Sweet Life with Favorites from Bakers Across the Country by Kim Laidlaw
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a beautiful book, and a good combination of traditional recipes alongside recipes with twists to them. I loved the bakery and baking blogger features throughout the book, because it connected the recipes to people who bake every day, some of whom were familiar to me.

Because I purchased some local goat cheese at the farmers market, I jumped at the chance to make the Savory Goat Cheese Souffles.


They were delicious, and I apologize that the picture can't be better because I didn't fully grease the ramekin. My tiny error did not negatively impact the taste!

Other recipes I'll try for sure include Pumpkin-Brandy Bread, Hazelnut Streusel Bread, Apricot Pistachio Tart, Dulce de Leche Cake (this is bookmarked for my birthday!!), Brown Butter Pound Cake with Fresh Fig Compote, and the Figgy Cardamom Bread. The pictures and presentation of the recipes make everything look delicious and appealing.

Cookbook Review - Sticky Fingers' Sweets

Sticky Fingers' Sweets: 100 Super-Secret Vegan Recipes by Doron Petersan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is probably a great cookbook for less confident baking vegans, because the recipes are detailed and made from ingredients most people would be able to find in an organic grocery store. I was turned off by the number of recipes that just seemed to sub in vegan ingredients (heavily relying on vegan margarine and vegan cream cheese), without looking more outside the box and using ingredients that stand alone without trying to be something else. The lack of coconut products makes the recipes feel dated, and everything contains refined sugar, which surprised me as many vegans don't believe in using it.

I know this baker won Cupcake Wars on Food Network, but the recipe I tested (Seoul Choco Balls) resulted in dry and crumbly cookies, after I spent $8 on macadamia nuts, phew. I think I'd focus more on the cake and cupcake recipes, since that is more what she is known for.


(Seoul Choco Balls)

Cake Experiments - Chocolate Beet Cake

Before I introduce you to my latest cake experiment, please take a blog-reading break and enjoy this song. (Trust me, you might need it). Okay, you can push play and then keep reading. Ready?

Kasia, a friend of mine who also has a food blog (Kasia's Kitchen), has raved about Joy the Baker for years.  One day she pointed me to this Chocolate Beet Cake recipe and begged me to try it, to see if it really worked or tasted good.  I bookmarked it (pinned it, really, since I now keep track of recipes I want to try in Pinterest) and then bought beets with no plan at the farmer's market.

I can't be the only person who does that... buys vegetables without a plan.  After all, that pushed me into using fennel for the first time and planting a jalapeno pepper in my garden.  But most of the time, I don't think to add them to cakes.  Okay, except for squash and green tomatoes and carrots.  I take it back.  Vegetables belong in baked goods!

Still, this is my first experience baking with beets.  I'm actually new to liking beets in general.  I had canned pickled beets for years as my only exposure to the vegetable, and wasn't a huge fan.  One year while we still lived in Indiana, we had a nice dinner at the Wolfgang Puck restaurant at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (it appears to have been replaced by something else).  I ordered a roasted beet salad, which ended up being little solitary stacks of roasted beet, goat cheese, and beet chip - and it was delicious.  Ever since, I've been a little more curious about them.  I even make a salad with beets, field peas, and goat cheese.  This is why I bought the beets in the first place!


I am getting way off track here.  Hi.  This is a picture of the chocolate beet cake that I made, and it was delicious - dense in a good way, and very moist.  The recipe lives over at Joy the Baker, so please pay her a visit and try making this amazing cake.  Her pictures are gorgeous, because she also added beets to the icing.  After reading her comment about beet strands, I elected not to do the same, which probably got more people to try the cake, but in the end I think I would have enjoyed the extra flavor layer of beets.

One thing I did wrong, and you can kind of see it in this picture - I used the largest grater I had instead of the smallest.  Since you don't puree the beets, the finer they are grated, the more even in texture the cake will be.  That's something I'll do differently next time.  And there will be a next time.

Book Review: Apron Anxiety by Alyssa Shelansky

Apron Anxiety: My Messy Affairs In and Out of the Kitchen by Alyssa Shelasky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Because I received a copy of this from the publisher, I am reviewing it the same week it comes out! While I was given a copy for free, I wasn't asked for anything (nor did I ask for a copy!), so these are my honest thoughts.

Anyone who knows my feelings on memoirs should understand that four stars is no slight praise for Alyssa Shelasky. After all, I almost gave up in chapter 2, which I will refer to as the "name dropping chapter," where she talks about her days (more often: nights) as a writer for various well-known TV networks and fashion/entertainment magazines in New York. It is shallow, it is silly, and I found her incredibly annoying.

Without that contrast, I think you wouldn't get a chance to understand how she grows. Alyssa had a relationship with a fairly known 'celebrity' chef (I'll let you Google it since in the book she refers to him as Chef), one taking her from her comfort zone and dumping her into a solitary existence in DC as he rode the swell of fame to opening several restaurants. It is an isolation that anyone living with a restaurant person would know well.

She has to go through a journey to find herself, to find happiness but also just a hobby, and food becomes her salvation. The fact that she'd never cooked in her life makes the story more charming, and it helps that she has no problem making public mistakes. It started with her blog, Apron Anxiety, and turned into this book. I don't often laugh when I'm reading, but her description of her first meal for Chef had me giggling.

It isn't just that she learns about food. Any tedious journalism major could go through that journey, and the potential for an inauthentic experience is what I was fearing when I started the book. I felt her personal journey to be far less shallow than she appeared toward the beginning, and she learned to get to know people who she had originally dismissed, and to stand up for what she needed from her life.

There are recipes throughout this that make for a feel-good read, as if the reader could recreate moments that were meaningful for the author. And... yeah, I might need to make that tomato soup.

A few bits from the end:

"You learn that there's nothing bad about feeling safe and there's everything good about inner stillness; and above all, just because you're an extraordinary person who deserves extraordinary love, it can't come at the expense of everything else that makes you whole."

"Everyone cooks for matters of the heart. We're all in the kitchen because it fulfills a longing inside, whether it's for grace, survival, a renewed sense of self, or just the thrill of it all - these are the stories that get us there, keep us there, or sometimes take us away. But without the people who have moved us, pushed us, left us, maybe even hurt us, then really, it's only food."

Basbousa

I'm finally getting back to baking items for my Around the World challenge!  Back in February, I read The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany (you can see my review here).   The main character in this book set in Egypt is the building, but one of the people moving throughout the story is Zaki Bey, who has interesting ideas about women.  One of them includes how they pronounce the S in basbousa!

"All these varied and teeming experiences have made of Zaki el Dessouki a true expert on women, and in 'the science of women,' as he calls it, he has strange and eccentric theories that, whether one accepts or rejects them, definitely deserve consideration... Zaki Bey also believes that how a woman pronounces the letter 's' - specifically - is a clue as to how ardent she will be when making love.  Thus, if a woman says a word such as 'susu' or 'basbusa,' for example, in a tremulous, arousing way, he concludes immediately that she is gifted in bed." - The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany

Basbousa is a relatively simple cake, made with semolina or sometimes farina.  I hunted down farina for this recipe, which is why mine is fairly pale (semolina would be more like a corn bread).  While the cake is still hot, it is covered with a lemon-honey syrup that soaks in.  The cake is dense and not too sweet, but still tasty.  I enjoyed Jessie Oleson's personal basbousa story over on Cakespy, and used her recipe for Brooklyn Basbousa.  Please check it out and whip up a pan!

Rum Cake

If you've ever traveled anywhere in the Caribbean, Florida, or the Bahamas, you will confirm that Tortuga Rum Cakes are everywhere.  Our favorite flavor is Blue Mountain Coffee, and we even tracked another one of those down on our recent trip. 


It is a tradition where I work to bring in a treat from where you have traveled - one of those nice things to do that is in no way an obligation, but we have a bunch of foodies and we seem to enjoy this tradition.  Tortuga Rum Cakes, while delicious, are a little spendy if you want to feed thirty people, besides being bulky to travel with.  I decided to hunt for a recipe to try on my own.  Most recipes I could find were all copied from one source, and while I couldn't identify where it started, it included cake mix and pudding mix.  I'm not against those things, but I wanted to bake from scratch, so I kept hunting.

I stumbled across a recipe from Southern Living, November 2005, and bookmarked it to try.  It seemed like it would have a lot of flavor between the lemon zest, rum, banana liqueur, and soaking syrup, and I was not disappointed.  This is going in my recipe file to bring back again!

Rum Cake

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons grated lemon rind
• 1/2 cup dark rum
• 1/4 cup banana liqueur
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup whipping cream
• Rum Syrup
• Powdered sugar 

Beat butter and granulated sugar at medium speed with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs, egg yolk, and vanilla, beating until blended. Add lemon rind, beating until blended. Gradually add rum and banana liqueur, beating until blended. (Batter will look curdled.)

Stir together flour and next 3 ingredients; add to batter alternately with whipping cream, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat batter at low speed just until blended after each addition. Pour batter into a greased and floured 10-inch Bundt pan.

Bake at 350° for 55 to 60 minutes or until a long wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean.

Cool in pan on a wire rack 15 minutes. Pierce cake multiple times using a metal or wooden skewer. Pour Rum Syrup evenly over cake. Let stand 45 minutes. Remove from pan; cool completely on a wire rack. Sprinkle evenly with powdered sugar before serving.

Bakery Review - Sarafina's - Marigot, St. Martin

Would you believe me if I told you that there is an amazing French bakery in the Caribbean? Technically it is in France, in Marigot, on the French side of Saint Martin/Sint Maarten, and is called Sarafina's.


We were on a three hour island tour with a taxi-van, and the driver said he'd be happy to take us, but that we should know that we may not want to leave after tasting it. There are breads everywhere. An entire case of cakes, another of gelato, and a very long case of pastries and sandwiches. We got croissants and some assorted cookies, and the croissants were a true highlight.


The clientele is clearly a mix of all different nationalities, residents and visitors, and it was very busy. Some of the workers spoke French, others English, and I must have heard four languages just sitting around in the dining area. I would say this is a place not to be missed if you ever find yourself on the island (and seriously, get away from the port, take an island tour, it is such a better way to learn about the place where you are!).

Lower Carb Crepes

When you start cutting out flour and sugar, you would not believe how depressing breakfast can get. Slowly, I've found little tricks that make it bearable again, like this recipe for lower-carb pancakes/crepes. I found a different version online with all egg whites, but my version is so much simpler, and has no waste. Three ingredients.

Lower Carb Crepes

2 eggs
2 tbsp peanut butter
1 Splenda packet (optional)

Directions: Blend everything in a blender or using an immersion blender. Heat pan to medium high, and cook about half the batter at a time for one crepe/pancake (thickness determines whether you want to call it a crepe or pancake!). Delicious served with fresh fruit, like these balsamic-roasted strawberries.

I originally posted this combination in May of 2009, when we were in the middle of strawberry season and I had just discovered balsamic-roasted strawberries.  That was with traditional crepes, but they are just as good with this recipe! (I sprinkled a little Splenda on the berries instead of sugar). 

Daring Bakers April 2012 - Armenian Nutmeg Cake

The Daring Bakers’ April 2012 challenge, hosted by Jason at Daily Candor, were two Armenian standards: nazook and nutmeg cake. Nazook is a layered yeasted dough pastry with a sweet filling, and nutmeg cake is a fragrant, nutty coffee-style cake.

This time around, I barely had time to make the nutmeg cake, but I'm bookmarking the nazook for when I finally get to my pick for Armenia in my Around the World reading challenge - Rise the Euphrates. But that is a post for another day. For this day, let me focus on my delicious disaster.

I learned something new in doing this challenge, actually. One can not simply replace a 9-inch cake pan when a 9-inch springform pan is called for. I imagine I actually know this. But I didn't have one of those other things (secret reference to So I Married an Axe Murderer), so I just tried sticking it into a regular one. So I had to bake it 20 extra minutes. And the crusty part didn't really set up. And I'm not really eating sugar anyway, so I was going to bring this in to my student workers. And now it is ugly and falling apart so I'm not sure I can. Ah well. The nibble I had was absolutely delicious, so I'm adding this to my recipe file of cakey breakfasty goodnesses, and a 9" springform pan to my shopping list.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble (gluten-free, lower carb)

Strawberries are going full throttle, and I still had some of last year's rhubarb in my fridge. I looked up a few low-carb crumble/crisp recipes online but they sounded bad, so I decided to wing it and just mix some things together that I had on hand.

For once, it worked!  The brown sugar Splenda doesn't seem as chemically flavored, or maybe it helped that I didn't use much, and just let the sweetness of the fruit speak for itself.  Since my rhubarb was starting out frozen, I did sprinkle the fruit with 1 tbsp of cornstarch, but I'll list that as optional.  Look, unless you have some arrowroot on hand and know how to use it so it doesn't go gummy on you, that might be a better alternative, but I figured 1 tbsp wouldn't take it over the top. 

JennyBakes.com Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble (lower carb, gluten-free)

(Please credit if you use the recipe, since this is an original for once!)

Fruit:
2 cups rhubarb, fresh or frozen, diced
3 cups strawberries, sliced or quartered
squeeze of citrus juice (I used lime but that's all I had - lemon is probably best!)
1 tbsp cornstarch (optional)
1 tbsp brown sugar Splenda substitute (taste fruit, you may desire more or less depending on sweetness)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom (optional)

Crumble:
1/2 cup slivered or sliced almonds
1/2 cup almond flour
1/4 cup chickpea flour (or other non-gluten flour)
1/4 cup brown sugar Splenda substitute
1 tbsp ground flaxseed
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom (optional)
4 tbsp butter

1. Preheat oven to 375 F.
2. Prepare fruit and mix in citrus juice, optional cornstarch, brown sugar substitute, and spices.
3. For crumble, mix dry ingredients together.  Cut butter into squares and mix with fingertips until incorporated (doesn't need to be at room temperature).  Mix in almonds.
4. Pour fruit into pie plate or other baking pan similar in volume.  Top generously with crumble mixture.
5. Bake for 45 minutes, or until mixture is bubbling.

Let me know if you try it, and what you think!  I'll probably use a similar recipe with fruit throughout the summer and fall.  I can't wait to try it with apples!

Sunday Waffles

We haven't been having our typical scone Sundays, and I've been desperate for something tasty for a lazy weekend breakfast. In hunting around the internet for low-carb breakfasts, I came across the Diabetes Daily forums, and this low-carb, gluten-free waffle recipe. The most impressive part? They actually TASTE GOOD.

The ingredients are a little strange seeming at first - vanilla whey powder (like what you use for protein shakes), ground flaxseed, sugar free coffee syrup (I just used a lesser amount of maple flavoring), baking powder, eggs, and milk. The batter looks runny and disturbing with all the flaxseed, but it bakes up nicely.

I double the original recipe, so the version I'm presenting below makes about 3 Belgian waffles.

5 Tbsp of vanilla whey powder
5 Tbsp of ground flax seed ( I use the golden)
1.5 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
2 tsp oil or melted butter
1 Tbsp flavored extract OR 2 Tbsp sugarfree flavored coffee syrup
2 T of water or coconut, soy milk , etc to thin batter

Mix everything together and bake in a waffle maker.

Sicilian Cassata for Easter

When I was gathering recipes for my Around the World baking challenge, I came across The Italian Baker by Carol Field, probably because a revised edition came out recently. I poured over recipe after recipe, through breads and pizzas, until I ended up in the dessert section. The most interesting cake, the cassata, was explained as a traditional cake for Easter. I knew I needed to save the recipe for Easter week, and to hunt down a book set in Sicily to accompany it.


So here we are, Easter week! There were a few bits in the recipe that made it less appealing; I particularly was not won over by the icing and marzipan, traditional as it was. I dug around the internet and discovered that quite a few bloggers I follow had baked a cassata together in 2008. (You can head over to La Mia Cucina for recipes and pictures of her version.) I liked the sound of their filling - heavier on nuts and chocolate, lighter on candied fruits than the traditional - and I liked their icing - a whipped cream cream cheese frosting. I made the entire cake in one night, from cake baking to syrup simmering to frosting making to assembly. The only thing that waited for morning was the maraschino cherry in the middle.


In the end, the best description of this cake is that it is a cannoli cake! The cake absorbs the rum syrup, making it sweeter. The filling is primarily ricotta with all these flavors and textures mixed in - I just used a food processor to mix the cheese with the pistachios, chocolate chips, cinnamon, orange zest, and extracts. Instead of assembling the cake in a springform pan (as I do not have a 9" springform), I used a trick from my old cake decorating days of making a stormwall circle of the outside icing around the perimeter of each layer before adding the filling inside the circle. I chilled the filled cake about 30 minutes before icing the outside, then let it sit in the fridge overnight. I think you can see from the slice that the final cake did not suffer from this treatment - the layers are even, and firm. The icing didn't weep or slide around. And I thought it was delicious!

In my preparation, I came across a beautiful travel blog entry on Sicily.  Who wouldn't want to visit the land of this delicious cake?

Coconut Macaroons

I made the coconut macaroons recipe from Skinny Taste, based on a recommendation from my friend Kasia.  I've never made macaroons before so I don't know how these are any healthier, but they are tasty just the same!

Lots of holidays coming up for lots of religions - I have a massive Easter cake to post about in the next few days, so I thought I'd post a Passover-friendly recipe first.  Not much to say, too late at night to be very reflective.

More Sugar Substitution - Almond Baby Cakes

Because of our recent commitment to lower carb eating, I'm always on the lookout for recipes that won't suffer from substitution. Take these almond baby cakes from Dorie Greenspan - naturally gluten-free, since so many French baked goods are made of almond flour instead of wheat to begin with (according to her).

After not finding great results baking with Splenda, the taste being too evident, I decided to experiment next with Stevia. Stevia is naturally occurring, in a shrub from the daisy family. The blend I used is similar to the Splenda for baking - somewhat powdery so you can use it cup for cup in a recipe.

I wish I could impart to you that this is the answer! That Stevia tastes like sugar! That this is the easy solution to make all your baked goods lower carb! Oh how I wish that could be true. I found this to have just as bad of a taste as Splenda, if not worse. While the Splenda cheesecake seemed to mellow after a few days in the fridge, these were better warm. I tried one cold this morning and had to just toss it. The chef at the alternative baking class did say we could also just reduce the amount of sugar in a recipe; that may be what I'll have to try next, although I'm not sure it will sufficiently cut back on carbs enough for me. Agave nectar may be another thing to try, but I'm getting mixed information on that ingredient. The Wheat Belly guys and low-carbers say not to use it, but the Glycemic Index people say it is okay. The Wheat Belly guys actually said it is worse than sugar because it is higher in fructose than sugar is. I don't understand enough about the chemistry behind any of it.

In the past, I never used to blog something and urge you not to make it. I just thought my experimentation might teach my readers something too. I don't believe the original Dorie Greenspan recipe to be flawed, and if you were looking for a gluten-free treat that didn't need to be low-carb or low-sugar, I'd try the original recipe as written. Ground almonds make a nice toothsome, slightly crunchy texture to things, and add a lot of flavor. The way the ingredients are blended together, there is nice volume and lightness to these baby cakes.

TWD Baking with Julia - Irish soda bread scones

This TWD Baking with Julia challenge featured the Irish soda bread recipe, which I made for St. Patrick's Day Eve.  I've made soda bread in the past, in fact ruining a pizza stone by throwing chocolate chips into one, haha.  Soda bread is a lot like biscuits but with much less fat, just the wee bit of fat in the buttermilk, so while they are pretty tasty while fresh out of the oven, they turn into rocks later on.

Apparently this also stops any extraneous flour from being absorbed into the surface as it is handled, as evidenced by my photo.  To make these easier to share, I whipped up a batch, added raisins, and made them into sconey sized portions.  I am still partial to cream scones, but it is nice to make a traditional recipe from the isles.  :)

Please do check out the hostess blogs for this recipe - Carla of Chocolate Moosey and Cathleen of My Culinary Mission. 

Healthy Baking Class and Fondant Roses

This morning I went with some of my family to the Spice of Life Food & Fitness Festival at the convention center in Greenville. I was expecting one of those kinds of festivals where you pay money to get in and then pay more money if you want something one of the vendors is offering, but was pleasantly surprised to find actual free things. The best offering of all was a free cooking school (hour-long sessions) offered by the Culinary Institute of the Carolinas. The topic in the time period I was going to be there? "Healthy Baking Recipes and Decorating Ideas." They were set up to have 20 audience members do hands-on and the rest could just watch, so I plopped down 20 minutes before to make sure I'd get to play along!

Chef Alan walked us through how to make a baked good recipe healthier, whether that meant making it vegan, low-fat, gluten-free, or wheat-free.  I also asked him about decreasing the sugar, but he hadn't really prepared to answer that question.  He said we could e-mail him, haha... I plan to!

The second half of class included learning how to make a rose out of fondant. Now, I've tried making my own marshmallow fondant before, but hadn't ever played with official fondant.   The chef also directed us to a local cake supplier that I had no idea existed - CakeSupplies4U.com.  Not the greatest name, but it means I can make an order and pick it up in town!  That's worth the entire price of admission to the festival in itself. 


My rose is not the greatest; clearly I needed slightly smaller fondant marbles and to roll everything tighter, but I took home my bag of leftover fondant to practice on. Apparently the same technique is used with gum paste as fondant, it is just that gum paste dries more quickly. I don't think it is so outside my abilities to learn more about this, so that will be fun.  Honestly I wish I could go through the Culinary Institute of the Carolinas' pastry certificate but last time I checked I'd have to go to class during the day, and well, I have a job.  But sessions like this get me itchy!!

The other part of the decorating was to teach very basic cake decorating strokes like stars and shells.  Since I spent several months as a cake decorator, I didn't learn anything new there, but it is always good to force my brain to do the reverse shells thing since it takes a while to kick it into the right gear. 

If you are in Greenville, SC, and read this before Sunday the 18th, this session will repeat tomorrow at 11:30.  You should go!  It was fun for me, and I look forward to trying some of the recipes that were handed out for alternative baking.  The way the recipes are written, it would be easy to make a standard recipe and then try again with all the versions for comparison.  I might do that on this blog someday; it could be very educational for me!

Coffee Low(er) Carb Cheesecake

I've mentioned that we are eating differently in my house. Suddenly it was pi day (3.14) and I HAD to bake something.  I Skyped my husband and announced that today (yesterday) was the day I would be attempting a cheesecake with Splenda in place of sugar.  He got to pick the flavor, and he picked coffee.

I found a low carb cheesecake nut crust recipe and made the chocolate variety, and topped it with a coffee version of Abbey's (In)famous Cheesecake (the Daring Bakers challenge I hosted), just replacing out sugar for splenda.  The recipe had no flour, so I didn't need to replace any of that.  I made itty bitty ones in a mini cupcake pan, and a 6 incher.  I tried one of the itty bitties before it had chilled overnight and was sorely disappointed - the texture seemed gummy and the tinny taste of the Splenda sang out more than the coffee.  I was bummed.  Tonight I decided I would defeat it with fresh strawberries; luckily the overnight chill in the fridge really makes an incredible texture difference.  So it was creamy but still a bit tinny.  I wish I had tricks to overcome that particular nasty aspect of Splenda.  It doesn't bother me in coffee, but I notice it in pop (soda) and in this.  Maybe it is a hot vs. cold thing?

I'm not really providing an official recipe since I just kind of adapted things.  I also insist on calling it lower carb rather than low, because nuts still have carbs, but really that is the only source in the entire recipe.  Oh yeah and the strawberries but at least they are a real food!  

Hamantaschen

Hamantaschen translates to "Haman's pockets."It has to do with the Jewish holiday of Purim, based on a story int he book of Esther, and I will not attempt to explain it here.  I just don't know enough.  But we should be nomming on these and stealing from Haman's pockets, because he was an evil evil man. 

I had some prune lekvar and some pastry dough leftover from making rugelach, so I made hamantaschen! 

According to Wikipedia, one should drink on Purim until he can no longer distinguish between the phrases arur Haman ("Cursed is Haman") and baruch Mordechai ("Blessed is Mordecai").  Sounds like a fun holiday to me!