Book of Yum

This month’s Adopt a Gluten-free Blogger Event was a smashing success, and I’d like to offer my heartfelt thanks to all of the participants. I discovered many new and delicious gluten-free recipes thanks to their reviews and can’t wait to try many of them. I hope that you feel the same when you read this roundup!

Amy of Our Peep Show adopted Stephanie O’Dea of A Year of SlowCooking and made her Cream Cheese, Sausage and Rotel Dip. She described the recipe as “very-not-good-for-you-but-insanely-yummy-and-perfect-for-the-big-game”. Well put, Amy!

Recipe:
A Year of SlowCooking Cream Cheese, Sausage and Rotel Dip

Heather of Celiac Family adopted Kate of Gluten Free Gobsmacked and made her Pao de Chejo (aka “Chebe Bread”) and Jalapeno-Popper Dip. She found the chebe bread “much easier to make than [she] thought it would be,” only taking thirty minutes to make and bake. “They smelled fabulous and tasted just as good. My husband ate one of the rolls as they were cooling down on racks. He said he was just going to have a taste, but it was so good had to finish it off.” Don’t you love when that happens? She also loved the dip, but used it on her burger for a fabulous burger. It also tasted great on steamed veggies, and she thought it would go over very well for a Super Bowl Party, too.

Recipes:
Gluten Free Gobsmacked Pao de chejo (aka “Chebe Bread”)
Gluten Free Gobsmacked Jalapeno-Popper Dip

Maggie from She Let Them Eat Cake adopted Heather from Life, Gluten Free and made her Chocolate Fudge with Sunbutter Swirls. She called them a “tasty and healthy treat for all of us” that reminded her of a chocolate bar. Sounds good to me!

Recipe:
Life Gluten-Free Chocolate Fudge with Sunbutter Swirls


Thomas of The GFCF Experience adopted the Celiac Teen and made her Gluten-free Lemon Cake. He told us a little about this mature and inspiring Canadian teen, and then got down to the cake (which he made dairy-free). He found it to be “a moist cake that tastes just as a lemon cake should. And the cream cheese buttercream frosting is the perfect complement to the cake. The kids absolutely loved it – in fact, my son said it is the best cake he has ever had.” It sounds like one very tasty cake!

Recipe:
Celiac Teen Gluten-free Lemon Cake


Karen of the adorably titled blog, The Mini-Chef & His Melting Mom (formerly known as Muffin Fixation), adopted The Baking Beauties and made her Taco Fries and her Easy and Delicious Ranch-Parmesan Chicken. The taco fries actually ended up taco Tater Tots due to an unexpected absence of fries in the house, but it was just as tasty as fries would have been. She found the chicken was perfectly tender and and her son “didn’t even have to be prodded to keep eating”. Great!

Recipes:
Baking Beauties Taco Fries recipe(the photo of the bowl)
Baking Beauties Easy and Delicious Ranch-Parmesan Chicken (the photo with the kid)

She of the mysterious and lovely name and a blog of the same title, Lady Fire-Eyes, adopted Karen over at The Marvellous Adventures of The Mini-Chef & His Melting Mom and made Johny’s Favourite Yellow Cupcakes. Despite initial worries over fallen dough, this recipe won over the whole household with its good light vanilla flavor and absence of an after taste. As she said, “my son ate a third of it before the night was done.” Sounds like a winner!

Recipe:
The Marvellous Adventures of The Mini-Chef & His Melting Mom Johny’s Favourite Yellow Cupcakes

Cheryl of GF Goodness adopted Amy of Simply Gluten and Sugar free and made her Chewy granola bars that were published in an e-book to benefit St. Jude’s. She introduced Amy, a culinary school trained chef, who gives to St. Jude’s regularly and recently walked in St. Jude’s 7th annual “Give thanks. Walk.” Amy has an inspiring voice in the gluten-free community and I’m so glad Cheryl introduced her to us. But how were the granola bars? Happily, they were a big hit. According to Cheryl, they “were study and flavorful . . . kept well for weeks in a sealed container . . . and most importantly, they passed the picky husband test.” The first time she made them Cheryl substituted hazelnuts for walnuts and the second time she used cherries, chopped uncrystallized ginger and orange zest. Sounds great!

Recipe:
Simply Gluten and Sugar Free Chewy Granola Bars

Manda of Asparagus Thin adopted Karina the Gluten-free Goddess and made her Skillet Cornbread with Green Chilis and Cinnamon. She did leave out the jalapeños in order to have a more versatile bread that could be used as a sweet or savory element. Cornbread in a skillet won this adventurous chef over big time- she said she might never make cornbread in anything but a skillet every again, because “it was just that awesome.” Sounds yummy to me!

Recipe:
Gluten-free Goddess Skillet Cornbread with Green Chilies and Cinnamon




And speaking of the Gluten-free Goddess, I adopted her as well, and spent the month experimenting with her various sorghum and millet recipes. I started with her divine Caraway Seed Irish Soda bread that converted me to Irish Soda Bread after years of resistance. Then I moved to her swoon-inspiring and airy whole-grain Gluten-free English Muffins. I sweetened up my breakfasts with her Quinoa Breakfast Bars (spiked with chocolate chips, yum!). And, I tried her flatbread recipe, which didn’t quite work out this time but that I may try again. This was truly a tasty experiment, and thanks to Karina I’m thoroughly enjoying making sorghum, millet, and quinoa the staples of my diet.
PS After my adoption post was written, I also tried her Delicious Sorghum Bread Recipe, and found it was aptly named.

Recipes:
Gluten-free Goddess English Muffins
Gluten-free Goddess Irish Soda Bread
Gluten-free Goddess Quinoa Breakfast Brownies
Gluten-free Goddess Herbed Flatbread
Gluten-free Goddess Delicious Sorghum Bread

This month Thomas of the GFCF Experience will be hosting Adopt-a-gluten-free-Blogger. My hero, Thomas! I hope you will join him in adopting a new gluten-free blogger of your very own for the month of February. You can expect a sign up post to appear on his blog sometime around the 15th of February.

It has been quite a few months since I had the courage to participate in my Adopt-a-gluten-free-Blogger event. I have always been quite devoted to the idea of following my fellow bloggers’ recipes as written the first time around, and my limited ingredient options during the past few months made this difficult to say the least. However, being top eight-allergen free and rice shy at the moment, it occurred to me that the one blogger who might have options for me was our own Allergic goddess, Karina. I’ve always been inordinately fond of rice and rice blends in baking. And, barring that, I like to use bean flour blends. What to do when both are (temporarily) off the menu? Find someone who relishes the challenges of dairy and egg-free baking like Karina, and luxuriates in the stretchy, wholesome goodness of sorghum and millet, or course! Before I began this whole experiment, I had to make sure Baby Yum could tolerate a few fundamental ingredients, largely Hemp Milk, Ener-g Foods Egg Replacer, Sorghum, and baking powder. Happily, all ingredients seemed to work well with her delicate tummy. Because I’m doing potato starch and corn “light” at the moment, I did substitute arrowroot starch for the potato starch in Karina’s recipes, and alternated between coconut milk and hemp milk.

One of the first recipes I tried was Karina’s Vegan Gluten-free Irish Soda Bread recipe. I have never been that appreciative of Irish Soda bread (sorry Bette Hagman), but the Millet-sorghum base in this recipe intrigued me, as well as the inclusion of caraway seed. I never met a caraway seed bread recipe I didn’t like… and this recipe was no exception. I used coconut milk instead of the alternative, and arrowroot starch instead of potato starch. I shaped it, baked it, let it cool (as much as I could bear to wait) and sliced it. Heaven! One of the best quick breads I’ve ever had. It is sweet, yet savory, and each bite is crunchy when toasted yet melts in your mouth at the same time. This will go into my regular rotation!

I also tried Karina’s Vegan Gluten-free English Muffin Recipe. I’m a big fan of any round, yeasty bread product, whether it be Crumpets, English Muffins or buns, and I had high hopes for this recipe. Bette Hagman has spectacular recipes for gluten-free crumpets that I’ve enjoyed for years, and I was hoping Karina could help me make one using sorghum flour as the tasty base. Happily, this recipe did not disappoint in the slightest, even with the substitution of arrowroot starch for the starch flour. The dough was elastic and light, and I knew before I even poured them into the molds that this recipe was going to be a winner. I did make one error when I took them out of the oven- greedily sawing one out of the mold and trying to cut it in half and drizzle it with olive oil right away. Perhaps due to the arrowroot starch, they are delicate and if you rush these beauties by threatening them with a knife right away they may deflate and you may miss out on the optimal light-hole riddled english muffin experience. I found out that if you let them cool entirely and THEN delicately remove them, you can gently saw them in half with no damage to the structure of the muffin. Or if you just can’t wait (understandable, when you smell these lovelies in the oven), you can gently rip them apart (in half, horizontally) without entirely destroying them. These english muffins made me realize I’ve been giving sorghum a bum rap all these years. Just because there are some bad recipes using sorghum doesn’t mean the grain is bad… and these wonderful, faintly nutty, whole-grain flavored muffins are proof. I forced myself to freeze half of the first batch, but happily made another batch the next time sorghum day rolled around. And I’m sorry to say, none of those made it to the freezer. They made an excellent base for a sunbutter and jelly sandwich when I went out for a bachelorette party… and were just as good when i gobbled them with some no-soy margarine and dill. Karina should get a medal for these English Muffins. They are that good. *I also found that if you are greedy like me, you can squeeze 8 muffins out of the recipe. Just be slightly stingy when pouring the batter into your molds.

I also tried one of Karina’s quinoa-based recipes for what she calls a Vegan Breakfast Brownie. I love eating dessert for breakfast, but it is usually a guilty pleasure I don’t share with others. Who, me, eat half a gluten-free apple pie for breakfast? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Honest. But our decadent gluten-free goddess has no such compunctions, brazenly throwing out recipes for brownies that you are SUPPOSED to eat at breakfast time. My heroine. Who could feel guilty about a high protein treat stuffed with quinoa, anyway? I’m sure all that healthy goodness cancels out the chocolate chips, although not in flavor! These breakfast brownies are worthy of the name, and they travel gloriously well. You can also individually wrap them and freeze them. Brilliant! *I take them out of the plastic wrap and either defrost by leaving them out at room temperature or microwave on half-power. Perfect with a steaming Americano!

Of all the recipes I tried from Karina’s site, the only one that didn’t quite work for me was her Vegan gluten-free Herbed Flatbread Recipe. Perhaps the temperature of my liquids was off… but it just didn’t rise and look as lovely as her images. However, since I actually have a vegan gluten-free pizza crust recipe that works for me, I wasn’t too worried about it, especially since every other recipe was a keeper.

The one thing this little experiment taught me is that Karina’s title of “gluten-free goddess” is well deserved. All of us with gluten-intolerance and multiple intolerances can find yummy recipes, inspiration, and a bit of magic over at the Gluten-free Goddess’s Blogspot. What’s your favorite Gluten-free Goddess recipe? Share in the comments!

Recipe Recap:
Gluten-free English Muffins
Gluten-free Irish Soda Bread
Gluten-free Quinoa Breakfast Brownies
Gluten-free Herbed Flatbread

This isn’t the first time I adopted Karina! I also adopted her in 2008 and made her tasty gluten-free Mac-n-Uncheese Recipe.