White Chocolate Yellow Cake Bars (Low Oxalate/LOD, GFCFSF)

I sure haven't posted on here for a while, gosh! Anyway, if you've paid any mind to my posts you can see my diet has changed, and changed and changed again. This blog will always be gluten free, and as I have learned the hard way, I will always need to be casein & soy free too. As a cooking mama with aspergers & fibromyalgia, it's fate...but certainly never a boring one because I can make interesting things out of just about anything in the kitchen, I can!

So right now we are trying low oxalate, and limiting certain types of phenols such as coniferyl alcohol-this sure seems to be one of my biggest triggers-legumes just don't seem to be my friend right now either. I was trying to do the SCD but my son regressed as we veered into metabolic acidosis, a huge risk we both have due to breastfeeding with antiepileptics. Ketogenic diets are a big no no and with the issues we have with many phenols it was a dangerous sitch. Anyway things are starting to look up again after a massive herxheimer reaction from changing supplements, and I am trying to figure out just how to eat a diet that will keep us sane and nourished with whole foods only prepared right here in my kitchen. Onion, chicken & carrot broth (yes, water dumped first ala the Yahoo oxalate spreadsheet), iceberg lettuce, very very spotty bananas and some baked goodies to get some lovely sulphury eggs into us to ramp up that PST are in the cards for now...and, a lot of hoping.

Anyway, I made this yummy goodness today, it seems to be going over well with me and the little fella (so far-of course I am observing cautiously) and it is fucking NOM so I thought I'd share it with ye all. I have listed some (also low oxalate) suggestions for ingredient substitutions for those with different dietary needs.

Carrot's White Chocolate Yellow Cake Bars

1 Cup +1 tablespoon golden cane sugar (if sugar free you can sub coconut sugar)
4 Large eggs (sub w flax/linseed[NOT chia] "eggs" if egg-free or vegan)
1/2 stick + 1 tbsp softened grassfed butter* (sub w coconut oil if df/vegan)
Heaping, packed 1/2 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour, packed
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2/3 Cups DF white chocolate chips (I use Plamil's white chocolate catering drops, they are organic and made from cocoa butter, rice syrup and cane sugar only.)

Preheat oven to 180c. Line a large cake pan with baking paper (you don't have to but it makes for easier cleanup). In a bowl, beat together butter & 1 cup of the sugar, save the tbsp for later. Beat in eggs. add flours & bicarb and beat again. Stir or beat in the choc chips (I just beat them in on a low setting while stirring w my spatula) and pour the mix into the cake pan. Now, sprinkle the remaining tbsp of sugar on top of the mix and pop it in the oven, mine baked for 30 min but I would check it halfway through...when a fork poked into the center comes out clean, it's done. Garnish with white chocolate chips if desired (I did...yum!)

Slice and enjoy!!!

I hope you like them as much as we do :)

*The butter that I get is from a brand called Rodda's of Cornwall, the butter is highly clarified and contains less than .01 protein for 100mg--less than ghee. Next to no lactose either...but, it is not ghee, it is definitely butter. How they do this IDK but I am very grateful!!!!!

Coniferyl Alcohol - The Evergreen Allergy

...Well.
I have stumbled across something that really doesn't sit well with me...literally. Many of my symptoms and spells of illness have been attributable to a nearly unheard of allergen (although, I suspect it is far more common than is recognised).

Coniferyl alcohol is a phytochemical-a phenolic monolignan, to be specific-that is present many plants. It is derived from the word "conifer" to describe its highest concentration, found in cone-producing trees and shrubs such as pine, spruce, thuja, juniper ect. However, it is also present throughout the world of evergreen plants, in varying concentrations-and in some (not many) seasonal foods, too.

Contact dermatitis and atopic reactions are one most notable symptom of a coniferyl alcohol allergy-as are strong cravings or even addictions to coniferyl foods.

What causes this allergy?
There are several things I suspect..

"In adults up to 60% of all food allergic reactions are due to cross-reactions between foods and inhalative allergens."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_allergy_syndrome

Lignans are phytoestrogens-in other words, estrogen-mimicking phytochemicals in plants...a dominance or I should say excess of estrogen could cause a potential reaction to lignans, as the body reacts in an immunological defense to the potential perpetrator of estrogen toxicity.
Some causes of excess estrogen would be birth control pills-which I was prescribed at the beginning of menses when I suffered severe hormonal distress, and remained prescribed to arbitrarily for 8 years.
Another frequently reported cause are HPV vaccinations-the worst mistake of my life that I made some 5, 6 years ago now?

Another potential is bee stings-yes-coniferyl alcohol is also found in bee pheremones of all things! Indeed, I've had several bee stings..

It is nearly impossible to find one definitive resource for coniferyl foods, in fact the info that can be found is very little and very vague-but I have done much scouring of the internet, and in thus far the foods & substances I have found:

Cinnamon
Maple, maple syrup, pancake syrups
Coconut
Palm i.e. palm oil, jaggery ect
ALL fermented goods-most notably YEAST (this includes brewers yeast & nutritional yeast)
Birch (incl. xylitol)
Olive
Avocadoes
Smoked foods - i.e. cured meat, bacon, smoked salmon, smoked salts, paprika, chipotle
Carob
Flaxseed
Chia
Sesame
Grasses*
Peppercorns/black pepper
Coriander
Brazil Nuts
Pomegranate
Papaya
Pine nuts
Asparagus
Beet
Pineapple
Guava
Lemon
Juniper Berries
Ginko Biloba

*This includes nearly all grains-the coniferyl alcohol is found primarily in the hulls, so if grains are to be consumed, white rice would be preferable to brown rice, ect.

Resources:

http://www.thegardencentregroup.co.uk/plants/Evergreen-Shrubs/5X

Allergen friendly quick and easy to make CHEESE! GFSF vegan, ect etera.

So, would you believe me if I presented you with the above cheese dips/spreads and told you they were totally VEGAN and allergen friendly? How shocked would you be? Well, gasp away, friend. Or not, because you obviously already read the post title.

....but you can wow your friends and your family now! I mean, look at this stuff. Looook at it.

...and the great part is, I'm not going to just give you a recipe, I am going to give you a base and a method, so that you can impart your own custom flavours and textures! Oh yes!
I've been twiddling through pinterest for weeks cooking dairy free cheese recipes and kind of came up with a way of making ones that actually taste like cheese. My husband, who still EATS cheese, has agreed to give up dairy because of these two guys pictured above, so I am pretty happy for all the work.

I will be completely honest and say that there was a recipe who most inspired me in the cooking and that was Chef Chloe's Mac-N-Cheese sauce which I felt was most cheesy of vegan cheese sauces. It was a bit sweeter than I thought cheese should be though, I suppose, and not thick enough for my own liking, and there were various other things I wanted to do differently so it became something quite different, and then I liked the method so much that I made more of them, and you can make them into hard cheeses too!

Alright so enough yammering.

So, roight, what you should do like, is:

* Have a liter of nondairy milk that is NOT sweetened. I like almond milk in this application, it gives it a creamy texture without tasting almond-y. (Gluten-frees, be careful as many DF milks have maltodextrin or cross contamination or other unsavoury issues. In any case.)
*Have some nondairy spread, it needs to be a buttery one I'm afraid although I am sure you could use avocado oil or olive oil (though I haven't tried that and don't blame me if it tastes weird. *shrug*) Pure Spread is what I used, it is a sunflower spread that is free of allergens.
*You also need some flour, up to a cup's worth depending on how thck you want the sauce, I just used my all purpose gluten-free flour mix that I make in my kitchen. You could use plain old amaranth or buckwheat or any high-starch protein flour here, though.
*Have some nutritional yeast,
*sea salt,
*ACV and
*garlic powder at the ready.

Noow, you'll also need a whisk and a strong arm. I like my electric whisk, it gets the job done. A big saucepan/pot, too. Okie dokie, so you want to put about half a cup or so of the spread in the pan/pot and roughly 2/3rdsish cups of flour, so you can make yourself a roux. If you want a thicker cheese then the one I've pictured above, i.e. to make something you could spread like butter on your toast, you could either make more roux (I think I used about double this amount of roux, and the cheese in the picture is rather thick, but it is still liquidic enough that I was able to toss meat and vegetables in it later). Another idea to t thicken is that you can add less dairy milk...or you could try cooking it for longer to boil out more of the liquid. These will all effect the flavour to some degree but this is so nice tasting I can't see it mattering that much. One thing I did try was adding milled chia to one "batch" which thickened it very well. A bit of arrowroot or so could also help. In any case...

Pour the DF milk and other things into your sauce and whisk. As to how much of the other things to put in....start with about 2/3 cup of nutritional yeast, 2 tsp of garlic powder, 2 tsp ACV and 4 tsp of sea salt and thoroughly incorporate them and see how you like this (just the flavour, not the texture as it will be quite liquidic still.)  Adjust anything to taste-if you want it "cheesier", add more nutritional yeast.
My orange sauce has a "bolder" taste, and what I did was add about 4 tablespoons of double concentrated tomato paste, black pepper and more smoked salt.
The white salt has a tangier, garlicky taste. I added about a teaspoon of mustard, extra ACV and some chopped garlic...and quite a bit more nutritional yeast.
But your flavour options are limitless, really.

OK, so now, you boil the sauce. for just a couple of minutes and you want to whisk or stir it continuously. Now turn the heat down and cook it until it is the consistency that you want it to be, still stirring...and just take it off the heat, from there!
If you want a hard cheese, I have seen a lot of recipes do this thing where you simply boil up the sauce you want and whisk it into some gelatine, or whisk gelatine into it and then let it set in a lined pan in the fridge. Or you could do that with carageenan or agar agar I'd imagine too for a vegan option. I'm not really fussed to make it hard, to be honest, I liked cheese gooey anyway so this is perfect.

I hope you enjoy this-leave me a comment and let me know what flavour combos you come up with!

BTW, the containers in the photos are about 1/4 batches. This recipe makes a LOT and I mean a LOT of cheese sauce so be prepared with a big bowl or tupperware! :) This is a very, very satisfying way to dress up your vegetables, might I add.

Marshmallows, Fluffy and Genuine (Free From Gluten, Dairy, Egg, Yeast, Wheat & Soya)

So, funny story about marshmallows, I've been wanting them for so long. I LOVE marshmallows. Loooooove them. I don't love all the crap they contain. Yiiiick! So I had this plan to make some myself. Thing is, every time I looked at a tutorial or recipe it required a candy thermometer and some sort of other equipment that my kitchen did not have so it just didn't happen. I kept browsing, and studying, I felt determined at some point that I was going to experiment and eventually get this right in my own way.

...and I did! I made marshmallows, GOOD marshmallows...no, GREAT, FREAKING AMAZING MARSHMALLOWS, right in my own kitchen, without any fancy bells or whistles. The texture is exactly and I do mean exactly the same as I remember the store bought ones I used to get having, the taste is slightly different but that is because I don't use corn syrup. If you want to use corn syrup, you are welcome to do so and I bet they'll taste exactly like store-bought...but to be honest with you, I like the taste of this a helluva lot better!! It's not that often I get something so spot-on on a first-attempt, but wowee.

I also made gluten-free graham crackers, and we made s'mores. They roast, oh so nicely. They are a little meltier when you roast them than your store bought one but in a good way. Like, slightly caramelized, or something. I dunno, you've just gotta try it for yourself-and then tell me about it!

So, I know the properties of these ingredients very very well, and there are several variants you could make to this marshmallow if you wished to vary the taste to your liking. Here is a basic template for marshmallows, with my recipe as well as subs you can make if you wish to alter the flavour to your liking:

A generous/somewhat heaped 3 1/2 teaspoons powdered gelatine
Sprinkle this over 1/2 cup of cold water in a large heat-safe bowl where you can use an electric mixer and let stand for a few minutes (you don't need to stir it or anything, it'll do its thing on its own), in the meantime grab a medium to large sauce pan and start measuring out some other stuff:

2 Cups coconut crystals (what I used) or unrefined cane sugar
2/3 Cup maple syrup or you may sub honey (using corn syrup or agave here will give you an authentic taste, but...fructose bomb.)
1/4 Cup water.

Now put this on the hob on medium heat and once it's melted stir it all together, then turn the heat up and allow the syrup to rapid boil for slightly over one minute. Timing is very important, don't heat it too long or it will burn and taste pretty gross. The aim here is "hard ball" candy stage, but you don't really need a thermometer, just a timer. Now, turn the heat off. Turn your electric beater on & slowly pour the boiling syrup into the gelatine as you beat at a HIGH speed. Put a timer on for 13 minutes. The high speed is absolutely essential as this is what aerates and gives marshmallows their "fluff". Once the mixture is incorporated, add:

1/4 teaspoon of salt and
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of powdered/ground vanilla (or you could use double the amount of extract if you wanted, I just prefer whole vanillabean )

...as you continue to mix (it's handy to have a second set of hands, but not essential).

                                 

When the timer goes off, you should have a slightly off-white gooey marshmallow fluff. Pour or spoon this mixture into a pan lined with greased or buttered baking paper (yes, it sounds weird, but you'll see why after it sets) and smooth the top as much as you can. Cover and leave to set for several hours, then come back and cut into desired shapes.

Dust your marshmallows, it is important to dust them otherwise they will all clump/stick together. It is easiest to cut them with a greased cookie cutter or greased knife. You can dust them with anything you desire, arrowroot + powdered sugar will give you that store-bought taste or you can use a powdered sweetener. I used a mixture of purple corn flour and lucuma powder (a sweetener ground from fruit) because I wanted mine to be purple and also not-so-junkfoody. Coat them very generously-trust me, it won't give them a chalky mouth feel.

Next? Well, feckin' eat 'em, guy.

Sweet Smoky Mapley (GF/Vegan) Bacony Bread...

OK,
This is now my favourite bread. Ever.

I am so proud because I MADE IT.

It tastes like sweet bacon, I think...it has layered flavours of maple and smoke and salt and aaaaaahhhhhhh. I could BATHE in this bread, it is so tasty.

Not only that, but it's really EASY! So easy my 2 year old helped me make it. He did half the work, really, and had a ton of fun.

OK so, preheat your oven to 200c. Right?

Now. In a biig ole bowl, like, biggest one you've got, stir together:

2 Cups All-purpose GF flour with xanthan (I mix my own out of teff, arrowroot, ect)
+ 2 Tablespoons Arrowroot
+ 1 HEAPING teaspoon of potato or tapioca starch - real gummy stuff - this is to act as an egg replacer.
A pinch of extra xanthan...just a pinch
1 teaspoon of SMOKED salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
& 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar (you can sub with another tsp of baking soda if you want, it might just rise a little differently.)
Aaaannd 1/8 teaspoon or so of cumin. Or a bit more if you want a stronger "bacon" taste.
Optional: 1/8 tsp Pure Vitamin C for leavening.

Now add:
3/4 Cups of either yoghurt or thick nondairy milk.
and, 1/4 Cup maple syrup.

Work it in with your hands. Knead the dough until thoroughly incorporated and form an oval loaf. Place on a lined bread pan and cut several deep indents in the bread to allow for even baking (about 3/4 deep).
Pop this guy in the oven and bake for 27-30 minutes.

Taa-daaaah!

White Vanilla Chocolate & Butterless Butter Pecan Truffles

Yeah; well. Okay. I told you I would add another recipe to tack more onto that last post. To give you more white chocolatey goodness. Why, oh why? Well.
I was so excited when, in the wee hours of Pinteresting (sigh), I had found a recipe for dairy-free white chocolate. How COOL. It looked so easy, too, that I could sub the sugar for something like coconut crystals or lucuma powder and everything would be hunky-dory.
Wrong.

Ehm.

Well, I don't want to insult the author of the recipe, because their chocolate looked absolutely beautiful. Somehow; though, my following of their recipe did not come out very beautiful at all. Nor did it taste very nice, or much at all like white chocolate. It just tasted kind of like a gritty, hard vanillary lump of sweet. Which really isn't terrible, it's kind of nice as a candy, but it's NOT white chocolate. I need smooooooth.

I took a break and made a cute little gingerbread tree.




Aww!

Then I spent most of the day (aside from caring for my son & housework) going crazy making teeny tiny gingerbread trees. Like, a hundred or so of them, plus a few normal-sized cookies.

AND THEN I MADE WHITE CHOCOLATE AND IT WAS DIVINE.

So I did various other stuff, like working on my son's christmas presents...

BUT THEN THE NEXT DAY
I remelted that chocolate and grabbed the huge loaf of caramel in my fridge that I made in October (the stuff keeps for A.G.E.S. and can be used in a CORNUCOPIA of sweets. It's one of the most ingenious things I've made.) and chopped a gob out of it to shape into little balls with some peanut butter that I had sweetened with date syrup and frozen. Oh you better believe, I got cheeky and double dipped those guys in that white chocolate. Yep. White-chocolate snicker ball bombs, and I took those gingerbread trees and I dipped them in white chocolate too.

AND!

I felt a great need to create something elaborate, something...something meaningful...to recreate something special for a few of the people on my list who probably hadn't tasted it for many years.
So; I laboured intensively, and thus was borne....

BUTTERLESS BUTTER PECAN TRUFFLES, DOUBLE DIPPED IN DAIRY-FREE RAW WHITE CHOCOLATE.

Butterless butter-pecan ganache

1/2 to 2/3 Cup Coconut palm sugar (depending on how sweet you want these-I used 1/2 cup and I think it's perfect, but a bit less sweet than your typical truffle.) 

1/2 Cup Non-dairy cream (I use Ecomil's almond cream. You may use something else, but it may change the flavour for all I know.)

1/4 tsp Salt

110g Chocolate (one batch of the aforementioned chocolate works *perfectly*.)

Chopped pecans-as much as desired (I used about 1/3 pecan-to-chocolate ratio)

1 tsp Arrowroot

1/4 tsp additional lecithin

Bring coconut sugar & nondairy cream to a light boil in a pan and add salt, whisking continuously. Turn off heat and add chocolate, and lecithin. Whisk for several minutes and transfer to a bowl. Refrigerate and use a half-teaspoon measuring spoon to shape truffle balls which when thoroughly chilled, you can then dip in another batch of chocolate to coat.

White vanilla chocolate:

Approx. 100g raw cacao butter

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

2/3 cup lucuma powder (I don't recommend subbing. This lends to it's colour, texture, and flavour which is all important for a recreation.)

1/2 tsp arrowroot powder OR FINELY powdered almond flour OR powdered rice milk 

1/4 tsp lecithin

Pinch vanilla powder (optional, but recommended!)

Slow-melt the cacao butter on the lowest heat possible in a metal pot. The lower the temperature, the better as your chocolate will emulsify better. Add the lecithin and vanilla halfway into melting and stir continuously. When the cacao has fully melted, add the arrowroot and whisk. Add lucuma and vanilla and whisk continuously for several minutes and remove from heat. Re-melt on very very low heat as/and when needed, or pour into moulds to be eaten on it's own (it's delicious on it's own!!)

You'll easily have quite a bit of vanilla-chocolate left over after dipping/double dipping your butterless butter-pecan truffles, so, do what you will with that knowledge. Leave me a comment and tell me how you like it!

Raw eggless eggnog cream cacao candy

I made candy. Lots of candy, for the holidays. Phew. It was far too much work, and I tested many mixtures of ingredients for several days straight, but I found a few gems for recipes that were too good not to save. I like them so much in fact, that I might be making a couple of these next year.

The following recipe is one I am extremely thrilled with. Despite not containing eggs, after setting it quite literally tastes as the nogg I love so dearly from younger years before I became aware of my food sensitivities. The Christmassy creamy flavours of eggnogg, coupled with the texture of chocolate-it's a marriage made in heaven!

As I have been cooking for many years, I often do not use measuring utensils; this is a close approximation and I believe for any recipe to have good results a degree of intuition and care is required. I would also like to note here that there are hundreds of variations to eggnogg from the type of alcohol used to the ratio of spices; and this is a recreation of the eggnogg that I remember so fondly in my own childhood. So feel free to taste as you go along (remember, since this is raw it is slow melting-it shouldn't be too hot to taste test).

Raw eggless eggnog cream cacao candy

110-120 grams cacao butter
2-3 tablespoons grassfed, salted butter
4-5 teaspoons strong vanilla extract (a highly alcoholic, flavourful vanilla is preferable-just add a little more if you only have a milder one at hand)
1 teaspoon almond cream (I use Ecomil's-you may sub regular cream or another nondairy if you prefer, though the taste may vary.)
1 slightly heaped teaspoon arrowroot powder
1/3 teaspoon lecithin (this is to keep the chocolate together, basically.)
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground clove
1/8 tsp cinnamon
About 2/3 Cups Lucuma powder (do not sub! This is essential as it is a thickening agent as well as a sweetener!)

If you have a sensitive gas hob like I do-which is ideal for this recipe-ignite a fire and turn it to the lowest possible flame. Ideally it will be on a setting so low that when you dip your finger in the melted chocolate, you won't be burnt. If you do not have such a hob; there are methods of melting raw cacao, one I believe is to have it in a bowl inside of another bowl of very hot water. One should probably research this, as I am not an expert, since I have a fantastic hob on my oven. Place a large pot on the hob and melt together the cacao and butter, stirring all the time. When they have thoroughly melted; one by one, in order, add the other ingredients in very slowly, stirring as you go along. When everything tastes right, turn off the heat and whisk vigorously for about 5 minutes. Pour into moulds or, like me, a pan lined with baking paper and sprinkled with additional nutmeg for decor. If desired, add chopped pecans/walnuts, chocolate chips, whatever to the candy. Leave covered at room temperature to set overnight. With a very very thin knife, slice into pieces-or break it up with your hands-or just have a gigantic bar of chocolate, ALL TO YOURSELF, bwahahahaha. The photo below is my finished product, broken up, which has plain bits, chocolate chunk bits, and pecan-chunk bits.

Enjoy. Happy Holidays.

Stay tuned, I have a completely dairy-free butter pecan truffle recipe coming soon.

xo