Gluten Free Chocolate Honey Cake

Dusted with powdered sugar and coco powder

We were invited to a Rosh Hashana celebration for dinner tonight, and I asked if I could bring a dessert.  This will be our family's first Rosh Hashana dinner so I did a little research about traditional desserts and quickly found that Honey Cake is the most obvious choice.  After looking over so many recipes this morning I finally found one that I liked and had most of the ingredients for.  I made my exchanges for gluten free flours, and adjusted for the one or two items I didn't have in the house and away we went.  It was really easy to make, and baked up nicely too.  I did sneak a crumb off the bottom of the cake before I turned it out on to the drying rack, and it tasted pretty delicious, hopefully our hosts will think so tonight.  Below you will find the recipe I adapted from the original Chocolate Velvet Honey Cake by Marcy Goldman

After dinner we cut into the cake, and it was amazing!  Ceci had been waiting ALL day to have a few bites of that delicious, moist, chocolate, sweet, treat.  Everyone enjoyed it and was raving about it, in fact I was told that this could be my new passover assignment next year.  I was so pleased that it came out so sweet and moist, and everyone truly liked it.  Hope your family and friends enjoy it too!

GLUTEN FREE CHOCOLATE  HONEY CAKE 1/4 cup Soy flour 1/2 cup Brown Rice flour 1 cup Tapioca Starch 1 cup Sweet Rice flour 1 1/2 teaspoons Xanthan Gum 1/2 cup cocoa 1 tablespoon baking powder 3/4 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt 1-2 teaspoons cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon cloves 1 cup vegetable oil 1 cup honey 1 cup white sugar 1/2 cup brown sugar 3 eggs 2 teaspoons pure vanilla 1 cup Strong Coffee 1/2 cup coarsely chopped semi-sweet chocolate Garnish: confectioner's sugar, cocoa, drizzled melted semi-sweet chocolate,  Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Generously spray a nine- or 10-inch tube pan or angel food cake pan with cooking spray. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together flours, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and cloves. In a stand mixer, add in the oil, honey, white sugar, brown sugar. Blend well about 1 minute. Add in the eggs, vanilla, and Coffee. Blend well for another minute. Fold in the dry ingredients and blend for about two minutes, until smooth, stopping the machine once or twice to ensure that ingredients are all blended and not stuck at the bottom. Fold in chocolate chips. Spoon or pour batter into prepared pan. Place cake on baking sheet and bake until done, about 60-75 minutes, until cake springs back when gently pressed with fingertips. Cool 10 minutes before unmolding from pan. Dust cake with confectioner's sugar, or cocoa. Or, drizzle on melted, semi-sweet chocolate.

3rd Birthday deliciousness

Happy Third Birthday Ceci!

A few weeks ago we celebrated Ceci's 3rd birthday, it was so much fun.  I can't believe how much she has grown and changed in the last year, and how well she has survived all we have been through.  She is speaking so well, running, jumping, dancing, joking, laughing, and enjoying life.  We have also in the last year found that she is allergic to peanuts and tree nuts, and been battling Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis in her left ankle.  Through it all she is cheerful and sweet and loving.  

Now about the party, we decided on a super hero theme for her birthday after we started looking at the invite list and realized there was only one other girl.  All of our friends have sons!  It was obvious that we would have to put princess or fairy parties on hold for at least another year until there are a few more girls participating.  The good news is that Ceci LOVES Super Hero Squad!  She knows all the characters names, and their super powers and whether they are good or naughty.  The show is a kids version of Marvel super heroes and villains and their battles against one another.  

One of the games, to fill a bucket with cups of water

My poor girl, and her silly father

We bought all sorts of Marvel Hero decor, plates, napkins, a pinata and other fun stuff.  I also allowed Tim to write up a fun adventure for the kids to work on during the party, it was great.  He picked a few games and wrote up messages from Iron Man for the kids to read and discover.  The kids LOVED it, the were screaming and yelling about how Iron Man had sent them all a special message just for them, Ceci still likes to look at the message and have Tim read it over and over again to her.  The only problem came when Tim came out in an Iron Man costume, the kids freaked out a little, even Ceci would tell me it was her Dad, but was very afraid.  The worst was when we had a friend come out in the Dr. Doom costume we created, the kids ran screaming, even though he was holding a pinata full of candy.  They eventually got over the fear enough to pull the strings and break the pinata open.  

I was up until 2 am the night before the party decorating super hero cookies, made from my gluten free sugar cookie recipe for everyone to enjoy at dessert.  One of my coworkers had previously purchased these cookie cutters herself and was sweet enough to loan them to me for the party.  My dear friend Sheri made the cupcakes for the party, and they came out great!  She made all the chocolate toppers freehand with with chocolate since she was away from all her equipment and supplies due to the hurricane.  They were so delicious, there was cinnamon in the vanilla cupcakes and a little mint candy in the bottom of the chocolate cupcakes.  I would never have dreamed of such elaborate gluten free cupcakes for a party, let alone for my gluten free, nut free child.  I really love all the possibilities that exist now, we are so fortunate.

Aren't these AMAZING??  Ceci was so pleased with them!

Some parenting scatological humor

I know many people already know that you MUST have a sense of humor to be a parent or you are doomed, but somethings just bring out the 8 year old in me.  It may not be terribly nice and Ceci is going to dislike this post in about 10-12 years, but I just find these things funny.

It seems that Ceci suffers from some amount of motion sickness, we have been on two long car rides and the poor girl has tossed her cookies.  I am currently looking up tips and tricks to keep her from getting sick in the first place, but I would be a fool if I wasn't also hunting down something for her to "throw-out" (her translation of throw-up) into.  I've had more than my fair share of rides on the porcelain bus, so I figure I'm allowed to laugh at all this, long and hard if I must.  And now that I have my own little girl getting sick from time to time, if I don't laugh, I will be in tears.

I just had to share some of the emesis bags I have found over the course of the day because some of these are far to funny to keep to myself.  Apparently the people who make these things have a fantastic sense of humor too!

The first and my most favorite had me laughing so hard I cried.  You have to watch the little 5 minute video, and please while you are watching it imagine a little kid with this thing strapped onto them.  You will laugh too, I just can't imagine how the host talks about it with a straight face for the entire 5 minutes, he is very dedicated to his product.

www.hurl-e.com

The next one, is all sorts of cute and funny.  Who knew barf bags could be this interesting.  There are over 115 different designs to choose from and they can be used for so much more than puke.

www.barfboutique.com

Another one with a different target audience in mind, but still entertaining to me was,

http://www.morningchicnessbags.com/

Last and certainly not least were the ones we ended up buying, since they are carried at a local pharmacy.  The image on the box alone cracks me up.  It's horrible!



http://www.traveljohn.com/

I hope this at least reached the 8 year old in you and made you chuckle.  I didn't realize there was such humor surrounding this touchy subject, I still thought it was a bit taboo, but it seems it certainly is not.  I'm happy to see that we can laugh and poke fun at all this because laughing is about the only way to survive the clean up.

Check your Gluten Free Medication

Today I Ceci and I went to one of her Drs and she mentioned I should check out a website to be sure that our medications are gluten free.  It was something I had NEVER considered before!  I felt better after reading the website, it turns out gluten in medication is not a common occurance.  All of mine and Ceci's medications were thankfully on the list.  Please double check your medications too.

http://glutenfreedrugs.com/

How I survived school lunch time

Brings back so many memories!

I had the good fortune of finding out I had Celiac disease at a very young age (under two years old), and was more than fortunate to have parents who took immaculate care of my digestive system.  Being able to eat a school lunch was a very rare occurrence for me growing up, my mom packed my lunch everyday of my elementary and some of my middle school years.  At least until my preteen hormones kicked in and talked back to her about what she was packing, from that day on I was on my own (big mistake).

I remember vividly one of my favorite "sandwiches" to find, a plain Quaker rice cake smeared with Adams crunchy peanut butter, topped with banana or apple slices to keep the Pb from sticking to the sandwich bag, and to add extra fruit.  I can't tell you the thousands upon thousands of strange looks I got over the years, but to this day I sometimes make it for myself for lunch.  Now I just have to substitute sun butter for the peanut butter when Ceci is around.

If you are looking for different lunch ideas for yourself or your kids try this one, and if you need more inspiration take a look at the list Kim of Cook it Allergy free made of, PRINTABLE LIST OF 50+ ALLERGY-FRIENDLY LUNCHBOX IDEAS.  It's really inspiring!  Makes me rethink my own lunches for those days I feel in a rut.

In progress, pretty simple to make.

Gluten Free Chinese Spring Rolls

Gluten Free Chinese Spring Rolls with Rice Paper wrappers

We made these the other night for dinner and I asked my husband, Tim to write a guest post for me since he cooked the filling and fried them up.  You may have noticed I love to bake but I actually struggle with cooking, the whole seasoning thing drives me wild, I just get frustrated with that kind of creativity.  Tim is great with seasoning things and tweaking so that the meals taste amazing.  We worked together to make these, I cut the stuff because Tim is down right dangerous with a knife, and when he rolled the spring rolls they came out looking like, well, poos.  I stepped in and helped roll, and they came out a lot better, of course.  Here is what Tim has to say about our experience.


I'm of Chinese descent. (Not sure if you knew that.) Being raised on authentic Chinese food, it's a requirement to know how to make authentic Chinese food at home. Quite simply, it's not always that practical to dine at an authentic Chinese restaurant for every meal. But there's also a lot of dishes that are extremely difficult to make at home. When I married Andrea, I saw that she couldn't enjoy a lot of my favorites, because they were glutinous. And not just glutinous rice, which is a misnomer, but actually contain gluten. One particular dish is the authentic Chinese spring roll. So, for the years I have known Andrea, she's never really been able to enjoy a crisp spring roll shell, with crunchy vegetable, and tender, juicy pork inside. This guest blog post will discuss something that falls into all the categories: authentic Chinese, hard to make at home, and usually glutinous.

One day, Andrea saw these rice roll wrappers in the store, and so I just had to use them to make spring rolls.

Gluten Free Rice Wrappers

So here's what I did. I marinated pork tenderloin in mushroom infused dark soy sauce and rice wine. I cut them into thin shreds (by "I", I actually mean "Andrea", who has much better knife skills than I). I then heated up two tablespoons of canola oil in a non-stick pan, and put in a teaspoon of garlic powder. (I didn't want to use fresh or minced, because the chunks would be too big.) I stir-fried the pork, tossed in some chopped scallions, and after cooking them through, transferred it to a separate plate.

Then, I sliced mushrooms, and sauteed them in canola oil, kosher salt, and white pepper, and removed them to another plate.

Then, I sauteed bean sprouts in canola oil, until slightly warm, threw in the cabbage, and then tossed it slightly, so it was still crunchy. I then added the pork and the mushrooms, and stir-fried them all together.

I then dipped the rice wrappers into water, just enough to make it pliable, put in about a teaspoon of the mixture, and rolled it up. (Again, "I" as in "Andrea".)


















I contemporaneously heated up oil in another pan, until it was very hot, and then shallow fried the rolls. Unlike the wheat wrappers, the rice wrappers don't brown up as much, but the crispiness was there!

Gluten Free Oatmeal Cookies with golden raisins

Soft and Chewy Gluten Free Oatmeal Golden Raisin Cookies (extra large size cookies)

A few months ago I had a serious craving for oatmeal raisin cookies, just had to have them kind of craving!  Unfortunately the only recipe I had was one from my mom's childhood that she loves.  Only problem with that is that Mom and I have serious fundamental disagreements on the type of cookies that qualify as perfect.  Mom loves thin, crispy, and crunchy, I prefer soft, chewy, and thick cookies, in fact borderline undercooked is my real preference.  I had to dig through a few cook books to find something I could work with, but I found one and started manipulating away.

I was heading over to Sheri's house for dinner, which usually means I bring dessert, so it was a perfect fit.  I was craving the oatmeal cookies and needed to bring something sweet to eat.  I knew I hit a home run with them when I had just arrived around 3pm and Sheri was already digging into the zip lock bag I had brought.  I was certain I had done really well when she didn't send the left overs home with me.

inside of extra large oatmeal raisin cookies

I couldn't have been happier with the result of the cookies, chewy, soft, sweet, fluffy, down right perfect!!  I would make these everyday if I could I love them!  Ceci loves them now too, the last time I made them she was right there next to me digging into the raw dough.  Maybe she is my daughter after all, sometimes I question, like when she eats ketchup on carrots and quesadillas, then she redeems herself by eating pinches of brown sugar out of the jar, or licking the rubber spatula clean of the brownie batter.

My new secret was to use my Cuisinart stick blender with the food processor attachment to pulverize the golden raisins.  I really enjoyed having the raisins chopped into tiny bits, it gave a beautiful texture to the cookie, and spread that sweetness more evenly throughout the cookie than the traditional whole raisins.  Ceci loved to push the button on the stick blender too, I love hearing that squeal and laugh as she sort of freaks out every time she pulses the button.

I hope you enjoy making and eating these deliciously spicy and sweet cookies as I do.  Unless you think cookies should be thin and crispy in that case I will have to work on converting the recipe from my mom's childhood.

Gluten Free Oatmeal Cookies with Golden Raisins

1    Cup Unsalted Butter
1    Cup Brown Sugar, packed
2    Eggs
2 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
1/4 Cup Soy Flour
1/2 Cup Brown Rice Flour
1/2 Cup Sweet Rice Flour
1/2 Cup Tapioca Starch
1/2 tsp Xanthan Gum
3/4 tsp Baking Soda
3/4 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Salt
1    tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Nutmeg
1    Cup Golden Raisins (finely chopped)
3 1/2 Cups Rolled Oats

In a stand mixer cream butter and brown sugar, add eggs and vanilla, mix until well blended.

In a separate mixing bowl combine all dry ingredients together.  Add dry ingredients into mixer with wet ingredients and slowly mix together, batter will be really wet looking at this point.

Using a food processor or finely chop golden raisins until nearly pulverized.  Fold chopped Raisins and Oats to cookie batter in the mixer and blend together until well combined.

Line a cookie sheet with silpat sheet or parchment paper, scoop cookies onto sheet by the tablespoon full for "normal" size cookies.  Or use a large cookie/cupcake scooper to make extra large cookies.

"normal" size gluten free oatmeal raisin cookies on a parchment lined baking sheet

Bake in a 350 degree (F) oven, 10-12 minutes for "normal" size cookies, or 18 minutes for extra large size cookies.

Place on a wire rack to cool.

"normal" size cookies fresh out of the oven