Thursday, September 29, 2016

Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes, Gluten-free, Dairy-free and all that

Another experiment in making a recipe gluten-free, dairy-free and substituting coconut sugar in place of brown sugar. Normally for Pineapple Upside Down Cake, you just make a regular cake, or maybe use pineapple juice in place of water. Instead of doing that, I used a secret family recipe for Yum Yum cake, which has pineapple in the cake and instead of traditional frosting, it has a warm milk, sugar, butter mixture that you pour over the cake hot from the oven, so that it makes the cake moist and delicious.

Yum Yum Cake should have it's own post, but I don't have a picture of it right now, so I'll just post the recipe and how I altered it for Pineapple Upside Down Cake.

In this picture from the top down, there are mini cupcakes without the upside down-ness "topping,"
in the 2nd and 3rd rows are pineapple tidbits with the honey/molasses mixture,
4th and 5th rows have crushed pineapple with brown sugar (I ran out of the other mixture!)
and the 6th row has the crushed pineapple with the honey/molasses mixture.
What, I don't fill the cups from one end to the other, I start at one end jump to the other and end somewhere in the middle, doesn't everyone?


That's why they don't all look the same, I was using a Tablespoon of the honey/molasses mixture in each muffin cup, but ran out before filling all 24. I also had some batter left over after filling the 24, which is why I ended up with 6 mini muffins with no upside down pineapple honey/molasses goodness.
This pic is from the other angle, see the mini muffins, I mean cupcakes, but cupcakes without frosting are really muffins, anyway, they are at the bottom of this pic.


And now, the part we've all been waiting for: The Recipe(s)!

I used this recipe for the butter&brown sugar per cupcake cup ratio:
Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes from The Girl Who Ate Everything

And really, her blog is beautiful with clearer instructions for the whole thing and pictures actually worthy of sharing.
But, even though mine aren't as pretty, they still got devoured by my hungry family and with compliments from the friends with whom I shared them, (except not by picky eater #2, he wouldn't taste them, because apparently he doesn't like pineapple!)

Yum Yum Cake
2 C all-purpose flour (to make GF, use 1 C buckwheat flour, 1 C oat flour)
2 teaspoons baking soda
3 eggs
1 1/2 C white sugar (or substitute coconut sugar)
2 C crushed pineapple with juice

Stir together and pour in ungreased 9x13" cake pan.
Bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes.

Frosting for Yum Yum Cake: Have ready and hot when cake is done:
1 C sugar
1 C canned milk (note to self: try subbing coconut milk or almond milk, and coconut oil in place of butter)
1/2 C butter (or up to 3/4 C if you really like butter!)

Bring to a boil before cake comes out of the oven, until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and
Add 1 1/2 C nuts (chopped walnuts or pecans are great)
        1 1/2 C coconut flakes
        1 1/2 teaspoons Vanilla
Pour over cake immediately after it is removed from the oven.

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So, for my cupcakes, I used the above cake recipe, but not the frosting.
Here's my GF, DF pineapple upside down topping:
1/2 C coconut oil, melted
1 C coconut sugar
1/4 C honey
1/4 C molasses

I brought this to a rolling boil. I don't know if that was a good idea or not.
For a cake, just pour all of it into a 9x13" cake pan, but for cupcakes spoon 1 Tablespoon of that mixture into each muffin cup, or rather a little less, since I ran out after filling 18, (as I explained above the first picture).
For the remaining six, I just scooped a teaspoon of coconut oil and a Tablespoon of brown sugar. It was good both ways! So, Yes, it totally works to substitute coconut oil in place of butter in pineapple upside down cake to make it dairy free!
No need to grease the cups since the coconut oil is super greasy. It started to solidify into a candy-like creation as I was making the pineapple tidbits into crushed pineapple and making the cake batter, but it all blended together in the oven nicely and didn't turn into crunchy candy once they cooled down. I was worried about that.

On top of the T of oil/sugar/honey/molasses mixture, put pineapple tidbits or crushed pineapple in a layer, then pour cake batter on top of that nearly to the top.
Bake for 30ish minutes in a preheated oven (350F is the magic number).
Let them cool for about five minutes before inverting onto waxed paper.
Enjoy the good times.

Monday, August 1, 2016

Chocolate "Muffins" - Gluten Free

I'm thinking about creating a blog just for food that I make from other recipes as inspiration rather than strict instructions, in case it was delicious and I want to make it again on purpose.

A week ago, I read like five different dairy-free chia seed pudding recipes and then I made up my own and took it to a potluck, because I'm crazy and always feel the need to experiment when I have to take something someplace instead of using a tried and true favorite. It turned out pretty good, my friends liked it and appreciated that it was dairy free. Unfortunately, my kids didn't like it and I had a huge amount left over and had to eat it for every meal for the rest of the week. Okay, that is exaggerating a bit, my husband liked it and ate a little, but he thought it should have been sweeter, which I thought was weird coming from him who waters down juice.

I didn't take any pictures of that concoction, so this post can't be about that, but basically, I used a can of coconut milk, a lot of almond milk and like a half a cup of chia seeds and a whole can of crushed pineapple, but since I didn't measure my pudding wasn't pudding, it was too much like milk, so I added some more chia seeds and a bunch of leftover white rice I had in the fridge, Oh, and of course about a cup of shredded sweetened coconut. It was almost like Tropical Arroz con Leche, except dairy free. It was tasty, but not for every meal.

Anyway, last night, I made muffins without following a recipe! I guess I have been following one recipe enough to have the basic gist of it memorized, maybe that's not the same as not using one, but to back up a little further; like a year ago a friend of mine held a cooking demonstration about how to make gluten-free bread using buckwheat groats. I had never heard of buckwheat groats before then, but they are not wheat at all, they are a seed and good for you and stuff, (feel free to do your own research about that). So, she gave us three pages of bread recipes that all start with:

2 Cups ground Buckwheat groats (she uses her Vitamix, I use a cheap coffee-grinder)
2 Tablespoons ground Flax Seeds (grind these with the buckwheat groats)
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Himalayan Sea Salt
and most of her recipes use 2 Cups of water, because buckwheat flour behaves a lot like whole wheat flour, so it needs more moisture than all-purpose flour. This also makes it easy to find recipes to use it in, just look for whole wheat recipes and use buckwheat flour instead! Of course most of those recipes also want some all-purpose flour, too, so I usually grind some old-fashioned oats in the coffee grinder to replace that.


Buckwheat Groats!


I usually buy the groats in bulk at the expensive healthy food store, (not the health food store, it's a grocery store, but I'm not giving them publicity here).

It just makes for fresher and therefore more full of nutrients flour if you grind it yourself, but if that is a deal breaker for you using buckwheat flour, then go ahead and try it already ground. I have another friend that grinding it herself is the straw that breaks her camel's back, so she buys it as flour.
No judgments here!

My other friend (that gave me the recipes), uses Rapidura in place of sugar, but I haven't found that, yet, and sometimes I use Coconut Sugar instead.

This way of baking gluten-free is much better for you than using recipes (or buying prepackaged junk) that have a lot of starches, like tapioca starch, potato starch, and xantham gum to get them to behave and look like the foods you miss that are made of fluffy white flour. If you want to indulge in them once in a blue moon that's fine, but eating them regularly would just raise your blood sugar. If I search for a gluten-free recipe and it has any of those ingredients, I don't make it. Occasionally, occasionally, I will buy the flour that has those things in it, it's called like gluten-free all purpose flour or something and use that when I want easy substitutions, but not all the time!
Anyway, off my soap box!

Back to last night's cooking adventure... after mixing the above ingredients, I also added a can of pumpkin, because that's what started it all, a kid got the can of pumpkin out of the cabinet and asked, "What's this for?" I told him it was for making muffins.

I also added about half of a brick of cream cheese that had been softening on the table, because we were mixing it with a seaweed salad we had been eating at lunch time. (The seaweed salad was a Costco impulse buy - after tasting a sample, but it was a bit hard on my tongue, so the cream cheese softened the bite.)

Picky Eater #1 refuses to eat pumpkin muffins, so I added two heaping teaspoons of cocoa powder, ha! Fooled him. He couldn't see the orange color of the pumpkin, so he ate them!

I don't usually call my third kid a picky eater, but he's the only one that doesn't like chocolate chips in muffins! The other kids sometimes won't eat pumpkin muffins without chocolate chips, so I usually make kid#3 his own muffin in a four or five inch diameter glass bowl, then add chocolate chips to the rest. And then if I'm really ambitious, I'll reserve some of that batter and add nuts to my own bowl of muffin!

I accidentally forgot to add about a half cup of the buckwheat flour that I left in the coffee grinder and I had already poured the batter into the greased pan. I tried to pour it on and stir it in a little without disturbing the non-stick spray underneath, but that wasn't working very well, so I stopped trying after pouring about half of it in, then I tried to hide my mistake by pouring some chocolate chips on top (I hadn't mixed chocolate chips into the batter), so I left one area without chocolate chips for kid#3.

I also added a couple of tablespoons of Molasses, because that's my new obsession, to put molasses in anything with chocolate chips, it makes chocolate chip cookies extra special!

This post wasn't supposed to be about last night's muffins. I didn't even get a picture of them, because they all got eaten last night! I only got a few nibbles. I thought they turned out kind of wet, probably because I left out some flour, but my husband said they were delicious and they all got eaten, so they must have been.

By the way, I put "muffins" in quotation marks because I don't usually want to bother with making real muffins. I just pour the batter in a cake pan and call it "muffins." I hate scrubbing muffin pans, and worrying about if I have enough paper liners or not. And what is with people who use paper liners and aluminum foil liners on each cupcake? Seems like overkill, but I trust that they are real bakers that know what they are doing.

So, today's "muffins" were inspired by a recipe from Whole Foods for the Whole Family, which is a recipe book made by La Leche League.


The recipe!


I did use 2 C buckwheat flour and the baking soda and powder as described, but I used a full teaspoon of salt.
Even though the recipe doesn't call for eggs, I still added the 2 tablespoons of flax seeds to the coffee-grinder with my buckwheat groats.

Instead of the soy flour, wheat germ and dry milk powder, which together add up to one cup of dry ingredients: I used two packages of instant oatmeal, one each of the Cinnamon Spice and Maple & Brown Sugar flavors (because I had them). I poured them both into a 1 C measuring cup and saw I had a little room left over, so I filled it the rest of the way with old fashioned Oats and blended it in the coffee grinder.
I didn't have any milk, so I used Sour Cream and water instead. I sort of measured a cup and a half.
I did put in the honey and added some molasses to it, eyeballed about 2 tablespoons.
I also added 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder and 1 Cup of chocolate chips, too!
Upon mixing, it looked a little thick, so I added probably about an extra cup of water.

I've been using a slightly lager cake pan than the usual 9x13. Maybe it's 11x14?
That way they aren't so thick and it takes about 25 minutes to cook in my convection oven at 350F.


I'm not the best at food pictures, but here is the finished product!

They were delicious and filling, with a good texture, not too dense, nor too crumbly.


 Documented, so they can be duplicated(!!!), if I happen to have all the same ingredients on hand ever again.