chocolate shorties

so, back to baking and it looks like almond flour will be my new best friend. though, i do doubt that i’ll ever be able to give up butter. i saw a nice looking gluten free shortbread on the king arthur flour website and decided to see what variations i could make. i figured i’d start with an chocolate almond shortbread cookie and have my cookies and cut my carbs, as well. it’s a really simple dough and comes together quickly. i think the raw dough will freeze well and come in handy for last minute entertaining. i plan to just freeze the dough balls in doubled freezer bags.

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white bean chicken chili

so, you may have noticed that I’ve not been posting for a while. recently, i’ve been consumed with some health concerns, but i’m on the mend and it’s time to get back to cooking and blogging.

going forward, you will also notice some “subtle” changes to the content. the focus will still be gluten free, but I’m inching toward lighter, less carb heavy fare, with less saturated fats. don’t panic, i plan to keep things fun and flavorful. Continue reading →

bacon stuffed buttermilk biscuits

it’s kiss my gluten free buns’ second anniversary and we’re celebrating with biscuits crammed full of bacon! IMG_0102

i know, it sounds crazy, but it’s really only decadent. it was just one of those filled with errands and crap you just don’t want to do. as evening rolled around, i decided that i deserved a treat, something savory but fun and that might pass for dinner under a blurry microscope. Continue reading →

mrs cathy’s sorghum spice cookies

So, these are officially my favorite cookies, in the world, made by one of my favorite people! My dear friend Cathy (aka: mrs cathy), without whom I wouldn’t have my sweet kitteh Callie, made these awesome cookies gluten free for a brunch celebrating Callie’s 5th year living with me. These cookies are melt in your mouth great, beautifully crisp and have a gorgeous depth of flavor from the combination of brown sugars and a lovely warm bite of spice.  I asked Cathy to share the recipe here and a little of the cookie’s background. Here’s Cathy…

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More than a sweet treat for me, these are the cookies of my people. Everyone in my family adores them. I’ve tinkered with the basic recipe for years, so when my sister went gluten-free I couldn’t wait to bake her a batch, thanks to Cup 4 Cup flour and the encouragement of my favorite GF blogger. They were terrific, with a melt-in-your-mouth quality that demands you eat another. I brought some to Lisa of KMGFB, who agreed and invited me to share them with you.

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cherries & cream coffee cake

i was racking my brain and then the interwebs for some new toppings for a buttermilk coffeecake base. in the past, i have always topped coffee cake very simply with some streusel crumb, but i came across a blueberry coffee cake with a cream cheese center. still wanting a sort of simple cake and one that wasn’t too wet or too sweet, i started to fiddle with combining the two recipes. cherries are my all-time favorite fruit and i figured cherry preserves would be less wet and sweet than a pie style cornstarch thickened filling. i still wanted my streusel topping, but with some extra punch, so i added almond flour to the mix. My dear friend Brenda calls this the SuperNova Cake.

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Masala Roasted Cauliflower

i overbought veggies this week and was worried that i wouldn’t get to everything in time, so i figured i could just start roasting stuff and then use it over the weekend. roasting stuff started to get boring and by the time i dug a head of cauliflower out of the back of the crisper, i really wanted to do something different. IMG_7930 Continue reading →

apple flaugnarde

this recipe is exciting to me for two reasons, I get to use up some apples (I had crispins and pippins) IMG_7201 that I had totally forgotten about and I get to use my new vitamix blender. flaugnarde is a french custardy cake similar to a claufotis (claufotis is usually filled with cherries, while flaugnarde are usually filled with apples, pears or other fruits.), it’s also a southern dessert and my grandmother from south carolina made a similar baked custard cake filled with peaches or prunes.

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soft pretzel bites

i always like to do a bread project for the New Year and this year i had a hankering for pretzels, but I didn’t have the energy to roll and shape pretzels. i had tried to make gluten free soft pretzels once before, but i found they mostly tasted of the baking soda. as it turns out, i had forgotten to add sugar  to my dough, but i also realized that white sugar might not cut it in terms of depth of flavor and balancing the salt and baking soda, so this time i used turbinado (raw sugar) and i was very pleased with the flavor of the finished pretzel bites. IMG_7111IMG_7112IMG_7113 Continue reading →

focaccia

so far, i’ve been very pleased with the versatility of the ciabatta bread dough recipe, i posted a couple of weeks ago. this weekend, i used it to make two types of focaccia. it’s pretty simple just follow the ciabatta recipe in the link right through to the step of putting it into the pan and for the amount of dough in the recipe you can use a quarter sheet pan or two eighth sized sheet pans (sometimes called mini-sheet pans).

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