Nut free, Paleo,Whole 30 flax crackers

Ingredients:
1 cup ground flax meal
4 TBL chia seeds
2 TBL apple cider vinegar
2 TBL +/- warm water

1 cup raw sunflower seeds
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

sesame seeds, kosher salt, sunflowers seeds for topping

Mix first 4 ingredients in a small bowl until a ball forms. Let sit 2 hours to overnight.

In a food processor, combine next three ingredients and pulse until seeds are ground. Add remaining ingredients and pulse, adding water slowly if needed to make cohesive.

Preheat oven to 350 and oil a baking sheet with olive oil.

Roll out dough on baking sheet, being sure to oil top as the dough is sticky. Top , then roll over toppings. Bake for 20 minutes, then turn off heat and crack oven door. Allow to cool, then cut into desired shapes.

If you're not doing a Whole 30, you can add about a TBL of honey and they will taste like granola bars!

Happy Fasnacht Day!

It's not often I find myself thinking, "What I really need right now is half a dozen allergy friendly mini donuts." OK, I do, but I usually don't feel strongly enough to do something about it, especially since I'm REALLY trying to avoid sugar. However, today is Fasnacht Day , I decided to indulge. This indulgence was, of course, influenced by Turbo making untold numbers of mini doughnuts in his mini doughnuts iron.

Ratio-wise, these are a variation on my brownie for 2.

Mix together:
1/4 cup mochiko (sweet white rice flour)
1 egg
2 TBL sugar
1 TBL rice milk
1/4 tsp baking powder
dash cinnamon (optional)

Mix together, and fry in your fat of choice (I used olive oil) and dust with powdered sugar.

Happy Fasnacht Day!

Vegan nectarine ice cream and Lemon Angel Food Cake

Last week was hot here in the Pacific Northwest, and I found myself craving peach ice cream. I have never had it before, but it sounded like the best idea. Since my best friend's son is heading back east for his last year of college soon, I decided to make it a celebration.
When I went shopping, it turned out that peaches were $2.49/lb, and nectarines 99 cents/lb, so I altered my goals a little.
I modified and doubled this peach ice cream recipe .

1 33 oz container coconut CREAM, chilled
3 pounds nectarines, pitted and sliced (weighed after pitting)
1 1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 TBL vanilla
2 TBL coconut oil
juice of one lemon

Blend nectarines with sugar and enough coconut milk to emulsify. Place all ingredients in your ice cream maker's tub and process according to manufacturer's directions. It was delicious, but there is no doubt that if I'd sprung for the Pence peaches, it would have been better by an order of magnitude.

I based my angel food cake recipe on the one from Jaques Pepin's Simple and Healthy Cooking . Even though the original recipe has TWO ingredients I cannot eat ( flour and almond extract) the mods were easy and it turned out beautifully!

Oven 350

10 cold egg whites
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 cup mochiko (sweet rice flour)
1 tsp vanilla extract
zest of one lemon

Beat egg whites on high until soft peaks form. Add granulated sugar and vanilla and continue beating until shiny. Sift the powdered sugar,  and mochiko over the egg whites, toss in the lemon zest, and GENTLY fold into the eggs whites until just incorporated. Gently ladle into a cake pan greased with coconut oil, and bake for 15-35 minutes.
This is incredibly tender and not tough at all, as grocery store angel food cakes tend to be. My BFF suggested the mochiko might help; it's way too easy to over work gluten. I think that whether you use gluten or not, two methods are important to keep your angel food cake from getting tough: don't overbeat your egg whites, and don't fold the flour in any more than you have to. Future mods I might try with this would be using orange zest, and replacing some or all of the mochiko with flaked coconut .

Dairy Free Nutella recipes, via ravelry

200-400 grams chocolate bars of your choice - I use 1/2 dark and 1/2 milk
(for dairy free use Lindt 99% chocolate or plain cocoa and sugar to taste.)
Walnut oil
200-400 grams ground hazelnuts or almonds - your choice

break up the chocolate into a pan (or glass container if using the microwave) and add about 1/4 cup walnut oil. slowly melt over low heat, stirring constantly (micro - med heat & stir every 30 seconds). Do not let ANY water get into the mixture. When the chocolate is melted, it should be a thick fluid - about the consistency of fluid honey or a tad thinner. If too thick, add a bit more oil. Amount of oil needed will vary on what kind of chocolate you use.

Stir in nuts until it makes a thick paste - about the same weight of nuts as chocolate. This will keep @ room temperature for several months. I know it will keep in a cool cellar for 8 months or more - because I hid a jar and forgot about it. The DH was thrilled when I found it!! Usually it doesn’t hang around that long. Europeans use it as a spread on bread for breakfast or snacks. this version also makes a fabulous filling for cakes, or ‘glue’ for pairs of cookies. It will stiffen up when cool, but should still be spreadable. If you find it’s not, warm briefly to use, and use more oil in the next batch.

Nut free, dairy free:
500 gram jar of spun honey (the spreadable kind, not runny-honey)
3-5 heaping tablespoons of dark (NOT Hershey’s) Cocoa

Warm the honey for just a very few seconds in the microwave. just enough to warm it so you can stir it - but not enough to melt it.

Carefully stir the cocoa powder into the honey. Stir until completely blended.

Why do you want to make these instead of buying Nutella? If you have food allergies, the answer may be obvious. But even if you don't modern Nutella isn't real food.
Also via Hillary: Nutella these days is: 13% hazelnuts, with the rest being hydrogenated vegetable fats and chocolate.
OK folks: I'm hungry now!