Quite possibly the best breakfast ever...

Ontario peaches, the last of the Quebec strawberries, full-fat goat yogurt, and this delicious maple-almond topping...for a joyful morning!

Maple-almond crunch

Handful of raw almonds
Knob of salted butter
2 tablespoons of maple syrup

1.  Heat oven to 400 degrees celsius.  Grossly chop almonds.

2.  Place butter in a ramekin and rub it around a bit.

3.  Add almonds and maple syrup.  Bake until bubbly and sticky.

4.  Remove from oven and cool.  If necessary, use a butter knife to break it up.  Serve with yogurt, fruit, ice cream, cheese, or add to soups and salads.

Clafoutis....and thoughts for a friend.

Hello all.  I don't know about you, but one of the things I missed the most when I first went clean was custardy dessert.  Crème brulée, crème caramel, pudding, fruit tart filling, natas....I still have a hard time passing them up when they pop up on a dessert menu.

This clafoutis (along with my dairy-free crème brulée...just you wait) fills that void...and then some.  It is endlessly adaptable and über-quick to put together.  It can be made with whatever fruit is in season, fresh or frozen, and seasoned a multitude of ways.  Blueberry and cinnamon are dear friends, so I've paired them here, but I usually go with a cardamom accent for clafoutis.  Favourite past combinations include pear-mango-ginger-cardamom, rhubard-mango-lemon zest, plum-cherry-vanilla, cherry-mango-cardamom.  I add more spice or vanilla to play up whatever fruit I am using.  Please play with this recipe and let us know what combinations you try in the comments below.  You can even make savory clafoutis.

Ether way, you will get lots of antioxidants from the grapeseed oil.  I've already waxed poetic about the virtues of cinnamon, so I'll keep it short and tell you that blueberries have one of the highest antioxidant contents of any food.  They have recently been shown to improve cognitive function, more specifically memory, and to delay the onset of cognitive conditions associated with aging.  Berries have the lowest glycemic index of any fruit, so they're great for Paleo folks, as well as those with autoimmune disorders and diabetes.  Finally, recent studies have shown that freezing blueberries does no damage to their antioxidant content, so you can enjoy them all year round.  I recommend organic or wild blueberries, though, because as a thin-skinned fruit they are particularly sensitive to pesticide use.

You can lay out your fruit in a pretty pattern, which will/should  rise  to the top intact, or toss it in a jumble.  Either way, this dessert will impress.  It is perfect for company: throw it together first and let it bake as you prepare the rest of your meal and chat.  Served warm, it is very comforting.

Which is perfect right now as we are all worried about J., whose dear father is very very sick.  Please send your thoughts and prayers J.'s way as you make this, or anything else for that matter, and never forget that cooking is about feeding the people in our lives, without whom we are nothing.

Love you, J.

Téo

Blueberry Clafoutis

4 eggs

1/4 cup agave

1/2 cup light coconut milk

1/2 cup grapeseed oil

1/2 vanilla bean (scraped), or 1 tsp extract

1/3 cup almond flour

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 tbsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp sea salt

2-3 cups blueberries (I used frozen)

- Preheat oven to 325F.  Grease a tart pan, shallow mold, or bowl with coconut or grapeseed oil.

- Beat eggs, coconut milk, grapeseed oil and vanilla together.

- In mixing bowl, combine almond flour, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt.

- Mix wet and dry ingredients and combine well.

- Lay fruit in the bottom of greased pan.  Gently pour mixture over fruit.

- Bake 45 to 55 mins, or until center is set.  Serve warm or chilled.

Squash loaf and baking...and we're live!

I have an absolutely delicious pumpkin bread recipe that I've been trying to make for weeks now.  Soft, spicy, not-too-sweet, delicious crumb and crunchy crust...it's perfect.  After a few weeks of thinking about it and promising it to whomever would listen, I finally found myself in the kitchen with an hour or two to spare.  Actually, they were supposed to be for writing a take-home exam, but you know.  Same thing.

I started mixing up my flours.  I didn't have enough rice flour on hand.  No problem, I threw in some teff and wondered why I hadn't thought of it before...the slight hit of molasses would be perfect for fall.  Then I realized I didn't have any maple syrup, so I ran to the depanneur and paid way too much to disclose here.  We were still on track.  Then I realized that, for lack of xantham gum and cinnamon, I was going to have to really tweak my already-perfected pumpkin bread recipe.  And it's, well...perfect.

Strike that.  I was making carrot cake.  I pulled out Annalise Roberts' carrot cake recipe, tweaked here: maple syrup for sugar, cornstarch and teff for tapioca and some of the brown rice flour.  I was reaching in the fridge for the carrots when I saw some leftover butternut squash.  Why not, right?  Zucchini bread is tasty, and they call it the 'summer' squash...my first blog post was born.

I am telling you this pretty mundane story because it is a good introduction to an important concept in clean eating: substitution.  Substitution is the mother of all invention in gluten-free, dairy-free and clean eating.  And especially in baking.  It is a great place to start for a foodie seeking to eat clean, and a good motivator.

Because when you understand that almost everything in a recipe that you can't eat can be replaced by something that you can eat, the foods you love and miss become available to you again.  It's like looking at this long list of forbidden and much-missed foods, and all of a sudden having it shrink, halve, and maybe even disappear entirely.

I'll bet most of the things on that list are baked goods.  Cake, cookies, cupcakes, bread, brownies, muffins, pie crust, pizza.  Soft, chewy and delicious homemade ones.  From your favourite cookbook or from your grandmother's recipe cards.  Which is why learning how to substitute can really help you out...

Dairy
You can use the same amount of coconut milk for milk in recipes, even savoury ones, with great results.  If substituting for yogurt, use 3/4 of the required amount of full-fat coconut milk instead.  Coconut and grapeseed oils are a perfect substitute for butter.  Cream coconut oil with your sweetener as you would butter for cookies.  Or melt it and mix it in, and then cool your finished dough for 20 mins before baking.  Use grapeseed oil, which gives a very buttery finish and is packed with anti-oxidants, the same way--but no need to melt it.

Sugar
Agave, maple syrup and honey can stand for sugar in any recipe.  If using agave, use 1/2 to 2/3 of the required amount, and cut the liquid by 1/2 the amount of agave used to compensate for the extra liquid in your recipe.  Some people use brown rice syrup, but I don't because it hardens baked goods (it's fine for cookies, though).

Flour
Flour is trickier, but doable.  With time and experimentation, you will learn the different taste profiles of the many gluten-free whole-grain flours and discover which ones you prefer.  Whichever you use, you need a 70% grain (rice, quinoa, gluten-fee oat, millet, sorghum, teff, corn) to 30% starch (tapioca, sweet rice, potato, corn) mixture to replace all-purpose wheat flour in a recipe.  And you need to replace it by weight, not measure.  That is, you cannot replace 1 cup of your chosen mixture for 1 cup of flour, because different grains and starches have different weights.  You need to use 125 grams of mixture per cup of all-purpose wheat.  And there you have it.  Now you're cooking.


That's a lot of information.  I will do all that for you on this blog.  I'll give you precise measures of flours and liquids, in cups, so you can just follow the recipe.  But if you ever find yourself without some of the ingredients listed, feel free to come back to this post and perfect this squash bread recipe.  And if you do, please let me know how it turns out in the comments section below.

In the meantime, welcome to eat joyfully and happy baking!


Téo

Accidental Squash Bread

2/3 c. teff flour

1 1/3 c. brown rice flour

1 c cornstarch

1 tbs. baking powder

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

2 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cardamom (or 2 pods, crushed)

1.5 c. maple syrup

1.5 c. coconut oil (melted), plus a little more for greasing pans

4 large eggs (for tips on egg substitution, check here)

2 tsp. vanilla extract or 1 vanilla pod, scraped

2.5 c. grated butternut (or acorn) squash

1 c. almonds, chopped (or slivered or pieces)

1 c. shredded coconut

1.5 tsp ground flaxseed OR 1.5 tsp xantham flour

Boiling water, if using flaxseed

- Preheat oven to 350C.  Grease two small loaf pans with coconut oil.

- Whisk dry ingredients together (it sifts them without sifting).  If using xantham gum, include in dry ingredients.

- Whisk together maple syrup, coconut oil, eggs and vanilla.

- Mix wet and dry ingredients, beat with wooden spoon.

- Fold in squash, nuts and coconut.  Pour into prepared pans.

- Bake for 45 mins, or until toothpick/fork/skewer comes out clean.