Congratulations!
Hooray and thank you for all who participated in the Free Give-away for the Holiday Menu Planner and Just Desserts for Limited Diets recipe e-book. The winners of the give-away are: Tina, Emily, Michele S, Rebecca and Robin. Congratulations and I hope the book and planner bring a wealth of goodness to you holiday season!
GAPS update:
As for me, I feel like I’ve ran a dessert marathon these past few weeks. I have never baked or created so many sweets in such a short amount of time. I have to say that my enthusiasm, energy and ability to get this done in time is largely due to following the GAPS diet. I have never had so much energy, been so even-minded, centered, happy, and enthusiastic for such long periods of time. Yes, and it is all because I am no longer eating grains, starches, and refined sugars (only honey). I plan to write a lengthy post about all the changes I have been experiencing on GAPS soon!
Thanks Mom!
I also really have to give my mom some credit here because she helped me test/create several of the candy recipes and a cookie recipe. I was a little over-zealous with how many recipes to put in the e-book so it was so great to have her help with this project. She used to make lollipops for us when my sister and I were kids and I still have a vision of her making them over the stove with the star and heart molds.
My flops:
I have to share a few of my flops while testing recipes for the Just Desserts for Limited Diets recipe book. I unfortunately didn’t take pictures of them. I cleaned out the refrigerator tonight and tossed them in the compost.
1st of attempt at Butter Cream Frosting:
I was following a recipe from Nourishing Traditions for Butter Cream Frosting – pretty traditional. It consisted of butter, rapadura (sugar), egg whites and vanilla. Many people can have butter even if they can’t eat other dairy products so I thought I would give the original recipe a try, substituting honey for the rapadura.
It didn’t work! I don’t know if I just didn’t get the butter warm enough, or if this recipe just doesn’t work with honey. Basically what happened is no matter how much I beat the mixture, the butter and the honey and egg white just wouldn’t gel together. When I refrigerated it, it just got worse. It was very runny, even after I tried mixing it again. It tasted good – who doesn’t love sweetened butter? But it was definitely a no go for a cake.
I am suspicious that I was careless with the temperature of the butter and maybe this would still work out. I may have to try it again when I have some extra butter.
I ended up created a whole new recipe with coconut milk and coconut butter that was so yummy! This goes with the Spice Cake recipe in the desserts book.
1st attempt at Almond Brittle with honey:
Unless you like extremely sticky candy that is almost impossible to get off your teeth, this was also a flop. My mom tested this one and I told her just to use honey and almonds to see what would happen. Even when it cooled all the way, it was way too sticky to eat.
I ended up adding coconut oil to the honey and it was much better. Butter worked even better to make it more like almond brittle.
Fortunately, these were the worst of the crew. I had other recipes I had to adjust but I was happy that they most turned out yummy.
More cakes?
I thought I was done making cakes, but my husband’s birthday is this coming Saturday. Actually I knew I was going to have to make another one, but I have to be honest that I am a little “sweeted out”! But I’m looking forward to creating the cake my husband has requested. He wants cake make with coconut flour with a lemon flavor and a cream cheese frosting.
Fortunately, we are all doing great on the homemade goat yogurt I’ve been making every week. And from yogurt, you can make lacto-fermented cream cheese that is not only much better for you than the processed stuff but also tastes much better in my opinion.
I made an extra batch of yogurt yesterday so I’m going to be “dripping” the yogurt through a sieve and cloth tomorrow. It takes several hours but you end up with whey in the jar and the cream cheese in the cloth. I’m going to follow the cream cheese frosting recipe in Nourishing Traditions once I have my cheese.
For dinner we’re going to have Chicken Parmesan and Eggplant Parmesan (some family members are vegetarian and I don’t do well with eggplant). For the breading I am going to use almond flour and for the cheese, I’m going to use Manchego Sheep’s cheese. We’ve been doing well on this cheese. It is aged for several months and so there isn’t any lactose in it.
Anyway, that’s enough updates for now. Stay tuned for a recipe for Almond Rocha!
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