Friands my friends

Friands..... For a long time, I was mistaken in thinking that they were just a differently shaped cupcake.
I finally tried them this year, and became hooked.

After eating bought ones for a while, last week I tried to make them.

I made chocolate and lemon ones and since I don't have a friand mold so I just used the firm cupcake cases that don't require a cupcake pan to bake them in.

They came out really great. I used whole eggs although the recipe called for egg whites only. I simply couldn't be bothered trying to find something to do with the egg yolks.

Today I tried converting the recipe to dairy and gluten free.



They are so easy to make, and so delicious!!!

Here is the original recipe.

Below is my converted recipe

Super Easy Chocolate Friands


Ingredients
180g coconut oil (can use butter, NOT copha)
40g gluten free plain flour (regular flour works too)
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
150g coconut sugar
100g almond meal (ground almonds)
3 large eggs lightly beaten


Method

1. Preheat fan forced oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Melt coconut oil and set aside
3. Sift cocoa into a bowl, then add gluten free flour, almond meal and sugar. 
4. Mix thoroughly
5. Add eggs and coconut oil, and mix with a fork until combined.
6. Put mix in cupcake cases and bake in the oven.
7. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
8. Allow to cool and enjoy!!

These can be eaten uniced, with a sprinkle of icing sugar, or with the icing I made below. I don't have an exact recipe because it was simply a fluke that I threw together.

200gms white chocolate

75gms thickened cream
Melt the above in a sauce pan on very low heat, add 2 tablespoons of sifted cocoa (more if you want a darker chocolate). Allow to cool, beat lightly with a fork and pipe on cool friands.

Absolutely delicious!!!

Quesadilla Salvadoreña - Parmesan Buttercake

In the mid to late 80's, I was fortunate to try this delicious cake for the first time. My parents had befriended a Salvadorean family that had moved into the block of flats where we lived.
This cake was often made by Ema, the young family's matriarch.

We lost touch with this family, and no one in our family, had this cake ever again.

Last year I got to thinking about this family, and remembered this cake. I went in search for a recipe.
I found one that was easily converted to metric, and when I was half way through measuring the ingredients, I realised that the ingredients list had missed the sugar component!

I picked another recipe, and then mixed the two.

Because I cannot digest regular wheat well, I decided to try this recipe with a mix of Spelt and Rice flour. I used a Thai rice flour which has the texture of corn flour. I thought that the small amount of rice flour would counteract the heaviness of the spelt flour. It worked well, and the cake turned out delicious!!

This is a tea cake, which can be enjoyed paired with a nice cup of tea or coffee. To be eaten at room temperature. ENJOY!!!

Ingredients
350gms Spelt Flour
130gms Rice Flour
10gms baking powder
380gms white sugar
225gms Pamersan Cheese
250gms unsalted butter melted
240 sour cream
140 mls Milk
3 eggs
3 tbs sesame seeds

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Line a rectangular cake tin with baking paper. (I used a 23cm x 28cm tin).
3. Mix flours, sugar, cheese and baking powder in a bowl. Set aside.
4. Lightly beat eggs with the milk, mix in sour cream and warm melted butter.
5. Add wet ingredients to the dry, and mix until just combined.
6. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.
7. Bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Verdict	Future Tweaks
	Use 4 eggs and less milk. Reduce amount of sugar by 50-100gms

Chocolate Butter Cake Conversion using Spelt Flour

Yesterday the opportunity presented itself, and so I baked.
I am not a big fan of margarine, but unfortunately I was totally out of butter, and with only 2 hours to get this cake baked, I really had to get cracking, and just use what I had available.

I converted this recipe from my How 2 Cakes website.

I am going to use this cake as the base for my nephew Paul's birthday cake. It won't be decorated, apart from maybe a chocolate collar, it will be a dessert cake for tonight.

It is currently sitting in the fridge, so that the chocolate mousse I filled it with will set ;)

Butter Cake

Ingredients
200gms Margarine (I used a dairy free, non GM canola marg)
400gms raw organic sugar
4 eggs (at room temperature)
410gms of plain white spelt flour
20gms gluten free baking powder
90 gms of cocoa
330gmss of Rice Milk (i used what i had in the fridge ;)
 Method

1. Preheat your oven to 170 degrees Celsius.
2. Prepare a 9 inch round tin (3 inch high tin) by greasing and covering in parchment paper. I put a high collar, as the cake does rise a bit.
3. Sift flour, baking powder and cocoa together until well integrated.
4. Beat margarine and sugar until light and creamy.
5. Add eggs, beating well after each addition.
6. Add flour alternating with rice milk. Beat well.
7. Bake in the oven for 1.5 hours, or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.

Chocolate Mousse
Ingredients
600mls Pura thickened cream.
200gms dark chocolate
1 tsp vanilla extract


Method 

1. Weigh 250 grams of cream in a pan, and add chocolate. Heat lightly until chocolate melts. Set aside to cool completely
2. Beat the remainder of the cream with the vanilla until stiff peaks form.
3. Gently fold in cooled chocolate and set aside.

Assembling the cake

Once the cake was cool, I used my trusty Agbay to slice it up. I got 4 layers of cake, the top layer I discarded (read nibbled on until most of it was gone ;) )

It is best to use a spring form cake pan to do this. Line the bottom and sides with baking paper, then place one layer of cake on the bottom. You can use a simple syrup to moisten the cake a little if you like at this stage. Then pour half of the mousse mixture on top, place another layer of cake, and then pour the rest of the mousse mixture. Finish with the final layer of cake, cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge for at least 2 hours to set. I will photograph the cake once we cut into it tonight. The cutoffs I've had so far are moist and delicious!!! Definetly will be making this cake again.

Cake Base Verdict	Future Tweaks
	Use organic unsalted butter instead of margarine.

Chocolate Mousse Verdict	Future Tweaks
	Use a little more chocolate, the mousse was a little bit too soft. However leaving it in the fridge overnight, seemed to fix that problem, and the next day it was even better.

Lemon Coconut Butter Cake

Yesterday my little monkey turned 8 months old. For the whole week I was convinced that her birthday was today. I had somehow calculated the dates and worked out that today (Sunday) was the 10th of September. DOH!!!
It was only on the way home from the market when Boone and I were checking out the signs around the corner from our house, announcing the EID festival, that I realised that her birthday was going past and I had been totally unaware.

I had planned to invite my parents over for lunch today, and bake a little cake. We had bought the food at the market for that purpose, when I got home I decided that I would invite my parents to come to dinner (last night) instead.

I was going to give the Dairy Free Spelt Chocolate cake another go, this time replacing all the sugar with Coconut Sugar.

When I was re-reading the recipe, I realised that since the amount of cocoa the chocolate cake had in was so small, it probably meant that it could replaced with any other flavour. So I set out to make a lemon cake instead. I did some more replacements, and came out with a new recipe. I think it still requires some tweaking, but it was delicious. My mum said it was one of the most delicious cakes she'd had (a slight exaggeration, maybe??). The amount of sugar will need to be reduced quite a bit I think, it was quite sweet, maybe taking it down by 50-80gms may work, we'll see, because sugar does add to the cake structure, it is not only used as a sweetener. I will try it out on cupcakes next month for my nephew's birthday.

Another thing that requires tweaking is the amount of lemon. The amount of lemon juice is fine I think, but maybe it requires a little less lemon rind, cutting it by a third or even half may work better. I will also try this out in the next incarnation of this recipe.

All in all, a very successful try, yummy, and a lot healthier than other cakes around. If you give this cake to anyone out there, there will never know that it is lower GI (due to the use of coconut sugar instead of cane sugar) , high in healthy fats (coconut oil) and goodness knows what else, I'm sure a nutritionist could probably tell you by examining the ingredients used :)

Please note that I have included links to the ingredients used to make it easier for anyone wanting to make this cake to find the "hard to find" ingredients :), or not so common ingredients. I have also posted the recipe exactly as I made it, not with the tweaks I plan to make in future.

Ingredients

205gms white spelt flour
220gms Coconut Sugar
7gms Gluten Free Baking Powder
20gms grated lemon rind (approximately the rind of one lemon)
70gms Coconut Butter/Oil
250gms Rice Milk
20gms Lemon Juice (approximately the juice of half a lemon)


Method

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celcius.
2. Grease and flour a 20cm ring pan (Brush with coconut oil and dust with spelt flour).
3. Place all dry ingredients, including lemon rind in a food processor.
4. Process dry ingredients to remove any lumps, this saves time on sifting :D
5. Melt coconut oil, together with rice milk and lemon juice. You don't want this to become at all hot or warm, you can simply put your coconut oil in a jug or bowl and place it inside another bowl with hot water. It does melt pretty quickly. Mix it thoroughly with the other wet ingredients.
6. Pour wet ingredients over dry ingredients and process until just combined. You may need to scrape the sides with a spatula. Do not over mix.
7. Pour into pan, and bake for approximately 35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.

Verdict	Future Tweaks
	Reduce amount of sugar. Reduce amount of lemon rind.

Dairy Free Spelt Chocolate Cake

Here's a little bit about myself and my family.

I am the oldest of two, however I am a middle child. My older sister passed away when she was barely 5 months old. The thought of this, was always very sad, but since becoming a mum, it is absolutely heartbreaking, and I can never think of her without shedding a few tears for my dear mum, and the hell that it must have been to lose a beautiful child like Gaby.

My younger sister Carolina, has three beautiful children. Two boys and a girl. They are all gifted in their own way (aren't all kids?) and I love them with all my heart.


Recently, after reading "The Unhealthy Truth", I started to suspect that my youngest nephew, may have an intolerance to dairy. His skin has been rough and itchy for as long as I can remember. Years ago, I thought it was that he was simply sensitive to the chemicals in the bath products that we tend to use for babies, but after buying him organic baby products, and that having no effect, I realised that THAT was not what was causing his skin condition.

As I said, after reading that book I started to suspect that he may be intolerant to diary. I suggested to my sister that she try to put in him a dairy free diet for a little while, and see if that improved his condition. Within days, his skin cleared up and he was no longer itchy. Now if he eats anything with dairy in it, he starts to get itchy straight away. He can see the effects right away.

Now his birthday is coming up, and because I have made him cakes for his birthday since he was born (last year I bought him cupcakes, sue me!! I was pregnant ;) ) I need to come up with a dairy free recipe for his cake.

He asked for a Spongebob Squarepants cake, so I was going to make something 3d. For that I needed a cake that was firm, so decided to convert my dark chocolate mud cake into something dairy free. I went totally overboard with the replacements, and replaced almost everything, the chocolate for chocolate liquor, the sugar for Agave, the flour for coconut flour, the butter for coconut oil and the milk for rice milk. Needless to say, it was not a success at all!! The cake came out crumbly, and it wouldn't have been useful for a 3d cake, let alone something that kids would want to eat. It was far too rich too, not overly sweet, but certainly overly chocolatey.

But that failure did not discourage me. I found a recipe on the ALL RECIPES website for a Basic Chocolate cake, which just happens to be vegan. I used half of the recipe, and did some further conversions so I could also eat it, and to replace part of the sugar to make it a little more nutritious.
Here is my version of the recipe.

Ingredients
205gms white spelt flour
100gms coconut sugar
120gms raw organic sugar
15gms cocoa
7gms baking powder (gluten free)
70gms sunflower oil
20gms Apple Cider Vinegar
250gms Rice Milk
1tsp vanilla extract (I used my homemade stuff :) )

Method

• Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
•  Prepare a 20cm ring pan by brushing it with oil, and dusting it with spelt flour or cocoa.
• Whisk together all the dry ingredients, then sift them into another bowl. You may find lumps in your sieve from the coconut sugar, and/or the cocoa. Break these up between your fingers, and continue sifting. Make sure that the only thing left in your sieve are large coconut sugar granules, break up anything else between your fingers. Place the granules into the dry mix, and whisk in.
• Place all wet ingredients in a jug, and whisk together.
• Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and whisk until well combined. Do not over mix.
• Pour into your prepared pan, and bake for approximately 35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. I use wooden skewers, as the metal ones tend to lie about when the cake is cooked. Can't trust those guys!!!!
• Allow cake to cool for about 10 minutes in the pan, and then turn out on to a wire rack to cool completely.
• Ice and enjoy. It is moist and deeeeeeelicious!!!!

Peanut Butter Icing
Ingredients
100gms dairy free chocolate
100gms smooth peanut butter
85gms pure icing sugar

Method

• Chop chocolate and place in a bowl with the peanut butter. I used Macro Organic Peanut butter which you can buy at Woolworths. It is a runny type of peanut butter so it worked really well for this recipe.
• Place your bowl over another bowl with boiling hot water in it. You can start this process when you put your cake in the oven, so you can leave it for a while, (around 15 minutes). When you return your chocolate should be melted. Mix it in with the peanut butter, you will get a ganache of sorts :)
• Sift icing sugar into the chocolate mix, and incorporate completely.
• DO NOT taste this at this stage, or you may find that you will not have enough left over to ice the cake.
• Ice your cake, and only AFTER you've finished, give yourself permission to lick the spoon ;)

ENJOY!!!!

Apologies for the lack of pictures, I forgot to photograph this, and only remembered when there was only crumbs of the cake left. I will take a picture next time I bake this. I am planning on replacing all the sugar with coconut sugar, I didn't do it this time because I only had 150 or so grams left of the stuff ;)

Verdict	Future Tweaks
	Use only coconut sugar Reduce amount of sugar used Increase amount of chocolate Use coconut oil instead of sunflower oil

Getting started

I have decided to start a new blog simply because what I am trying to do, doesn't really fit into the mish mash that is "Nati's Cooking Adventures". I am still going to post there from time to time, when I have recipes that do not fit into this blog.

The purpose of this blog will be to post experimental recipes whether they be hit or misses. I thought it would be good to post the flops as well as the successful recipes so that others could learn from my mistakes.

I'm sure many have wondered what would happen when this ingredient was replaced by this other ingredient, and if it can be done successfully. We'll see eh?

So why am I doing this? Well for some years now I have known that wheat is not my friend. This realisation came to me when I stopped eating wheat as a suggestion by my Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner. After many years of suffering, the terrible symptoms I had been attributing solely to hormonal problems, just disappeared. After a while of eating wheat, the symptoms would return. So I stopped, and was trouble free.

However when I became pregnant in 2010, I started to eat wheat again to satisfy some cravings. I found that wheat seemed to have no effect on my body any more. However that did not last and seven months after giving birth the symptoms returned with a vengeance. I guess that wheat and my hormones combined, were turning against me.

I really have no choice but to stay away from wheat. I am not celiac, I can have some forms of gluten without any problems. I eat spelt bread all the time, and my body is happy with it. It seems that only the highly processed wheat grain is the culprit, not gluten itself.

So here I am, with a new blog, that will document (even if it is only for myself), my dabbling in wheat free, sometimes gluten free, dairy free, and sugar free cooking and baking.



Please note that I have no training in any area which is nutrition related. The opinions and conclusions given in this blog will have been derived from reading which I have done and my own thoughts and observations.