How much do you really know about your partner?

My husband and I have been married for, like, a million years. I cook nearly everything he eats. He doesn’t even open the refrigerator most days, ’cause he eats what I give him and isn’t home enough during the week to wonder about anything else.

I know he doesn’t care for cucumbers or watermelon (who doesn’t like watermelon? *he doesn’t*). He has preternatural affection for zucchini. In the summer, he has a long history of growing it all over the place & imposes it on me every single day for months. How much can you really do with zucchini in overabundance?

I did not know that Lemon Poppyseed Muffins were his favorite.

Since he’s a man of few words, I have to read his body language like tea leaves. When he really likes something, he stares at the food in between bites.

So I did not know about his love of lemon poppyseed muffins. Until I made him—lemon poppyseed muffins.

These muffins are lightly sweet, lemony masterpieces. They’re a little crusty on the outside, and soft & moist inside. And they just say ‘spring’ to me, even though I’m not sure why. It’s not like I have a lemon tree in my backyard or anything. Oh how I wish I had a lemon tree in the backyard. I’d make lemon poppyseed muffins and Lemon Bars all the livelong day.

Try making this recipe. You never know. Someone you love might secretly be hoping against hope that you’re going to whip up a batch.

Love,
Me

P.S. If you like the blog, why not pick up a copy of My Cookbook? Your support really means so much to me. In fact, I simply couldn’t do this without you.

You know that feeling, when you just think to yourself, “Gee, I really wish I could give beer to my impossibly small, wildly underage children”? Polite society can be so restrictive.

Blah blah blah brain development. Blah blah blah alcoholism rates and early experimentation contributing greatly to an increase. Blah blah blah bladdy blah.

Well, happy day! Problem. Solved.

My kids love this bread. And, yes, they’re well aware that the alcohol bakes off entirely. We’ve got the subject of drug and alcohol consumption wide open in my house. Along with every other taboo subject. Including how babies are made, the dangers of cigarette smoke and what happens when you die.

Wow did we ever jump into the deep end or what?

Let’s get back to the shallow end of the pool. Which is filled with Better Batter gluten-free flour, egg whites, butter, apple cider vinegar, just a touch of light brown sugar and your favorite gluten-free beer.

Hey, what is your favorite gluten-free beer?

I’ve had a sampling (Redbridge, Bard’s, Estrella), but far from all of them. Estrella seems to be the most authentic. And it makes a really nice beer bread. And since I’d generally rather eat than drink, that matters to me.

Oh, and I added finely chopped fresh oregano. It really complements the brown sugar and beer.

A word about measuring 6 ounces of beer (which is all the recipe calls for). To get an accurate volume measurement, use a glass measuring cup if you have one, and pour the beer slowly down the side of the glass while tilting it to avoid most of the foam. It’s impossible to measure the actual volume when there’s a tall head of foam.

The dough is soft and shaggy. Not dense at all.

Add the chopped herbs, and scrape the dough into a greased loaf pan. Smooth the top with very wet fingers and a wet spatula.

Tent the pan loosely with foil, and bake for 25 minutes. Then cut a shallow slice in the top, rub some unsalted butter on the top, rotate the pan, and finish baking. Around that 25 minute mark, the bread will begin to smell so rich and buttery, you’ll be in danger of losing your mind. Be sure to let it finish baking, and to cool completely before slicing it.

Love,
Me

P.S. No children were harmed in the baking or eating of this bread. My kids know that alcohol is to be enjoyed in moderation, when you are of age. And by “of age,” I mean 39.

P.P.S. Still on tap for this week, The Great Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour Test rounds out the cake category with Tom Sawyer Gluten Free Flour. Next, back to the beginning with the Pastry Crust competition.

We seem to have moved waaaaaay beyond the whole “A is for Apple… J is for Jacks” jingle. I’m not even going to link to the website for Kellogg’s Apple Jacks. It’s suuuuuuper annoying. And not really at all cute. Or nostalgic. And it turns out—Apple Jacks are now red and green.

Not cool, Jack.

These little beauties taste just like I remember old school Apple Jacks to taste. I haven’t had them in years, so I really don’t know what in the world they have done with the cereal. But if they’ve done anything with the taste, it’s not what I’d call a brilliant move.

No Toucan Sam, like in Froot Loops. Which reminds me: If you haven’t yet, you should totally see my recipe for Gluten-Free “Froot Loops.” That’s some good stuff.

Speaking of good stuff, these “cinnamon toasty apple jacks” are, indeed, good stuff. They’re sweet and tasty, and almost taste like crunchy little apple pies. But they’re for your milk!

And part … of this complete breakfast.

Firstly, you’ll need some freeze-dried apples. I used this brand, but I wish I had had a better option. They annoying insist upon coming in these little single-serve packs. And, in my ongoing quest to take personally every inanimate with which I interact, I found that offensive.

I’m sure there are better freeze-dried apple options. I just didn’t know about them. Perhaps you know about them. Tell us all about them in the comments. It’s only fair. To share.

So, yeah. I also added some ground freeze-dried strawberries. I did it for the color! It didn’t add any real strawberry taste. It just kinda brought out the taste of the apples.

Freeze-dried fruit is such a happy mystery. If I were a better person, I’d buy some sort of freeze-drying contraption and freeze-dry everything.

I really really really really really want to make gluten-free freeze-dried astronaut food. If I win the lottery (which is highly unlikely since I don’t actually play the lottery and any darn fool knows you gotta be in it to win it), that’s the very first thing I’m going to do. Buy a freeze-dry-inator.

Moving right along, you cut out the shapes, and then create holes in the centers.

Then sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top.

Toss in some chopped freeze-dried (read: astronaut) apples. And bake. This time, we bake it low (250 degrees F) and slow (about 20 minutes).

Love,
Me

P.S. We have plenty more testing and scoring to come in the Great Gluten-Free Flour Test. So far, I’ve tested both Better Batter and Cup4Cup in a Devil’s Food Layer Cake. Tom Sawyer and Jules Gluten-Free are still to come, same cake, same method, same me. I’ll be the same as I am now. I’m not a variable. It’s an experiment!

P.P.S. I really need to make gluten-free astronaut food. In the worst way. Send help.

This is it. The Great Gluten-Free Flour Test. I’m throwing down the gauntlet. It’s on!

If you’re familiar with this blog, or you know me from my first cookbook, you know that I’m all about the all-purpose gluten-free flour. I don’t use a bevy of complicated ingredients in my recipes. Using lots of complicated flours in complex combinations seems scary and, frankly, not ‘normal’ enough.

When you learn to bake conventional, gluten-containing foods, you do it with an all-purpose flour. It’s good for all your purposes. It might be that a bread flour is great for bread, and a self-rising flour is just right for that one cake. But all-purpose flour is good enough for starters. And, around here, ‘good enough’ is pretty darn good.

My all-purpose flour of choice is Better Batter all-purpose gluten-free flour. But it’s not the only one out there, by a mile. So I decided to dig in, and finally do a side-by-side comparison of 4 popular all-purpose commercially prepared blends. 4 flours in each of 4 recipes, one by one by one.

And, not for nothing, but the blends I chose and the scoring method? All recommended to me by Naomi Poe of Better Batter. She’s not afraid of a little competition.

The Blends
The 4 all-purpose blends I will use in each recipe category are:

1. Better Batter Gluten Free Flour
2. Cup4Cup Gluten Free Flour
3. Jules Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
4. Tom Sawyer Gluten Free Flour

The Recipe Categories
The categories of recipes that I will be testing are:

1. Cake (today’s recipe)
2. Pastry
3. Yeast bread
4. Cookies

Scoring
I’ll score the performance of each flour (on a 1-10 scale) in each recipe in each of 10 separate attribute categories:

1. Cost: per cup, in bulk (taking into account any additional required ingredients)
2. Cup for cup replacement claim of each flour
3. Cup for cup replacement result of each finished product
4. Ease of use of each flour
5. Raw texture of each flour by touch
6. Cooked texture of each flour by touch
7. Appearance of finished baked product made with each flour
8. Taste of finished baked product made with each flour
9. Mouth feel of each finished baked product made with each flour (noting any grittiness)
10. Smell of each finished baked product made with each flour

This, the first round, is a Devil’s Food Layer Cake, made with Better Batter. The results are posted after the recipe. I indicated the price/cup of flour, but didn’t score the price yet since it’s going to be relative. I will score the price/cup of each flour at the end of this first round of the series.

I made mini layer cakes by using this USA Pans mini cake panel pan.

But you could use separate mini cake pans. Or just make one large 9″ round cake.

Trim the rounded tops off the cooled cakes. For this one, I even trimmed the sides of the top cake so the final cake has a tapered look. But the side trimming is optional.

Place the large cake, cut side down on parchment paper, then cover with a generous amount of your favorite frosting. Cover with the tapered cake, cut side down. Then cover the top and sides with a thin and tight crumb coat, and freeze the cake until the crumb coat is firm. It will seal in the crumbs.

Then frost generously, all over. Serve chilled or at room temperature.

Here’s the printable recipe for the cake, followed by Better Batter’s cake report card. The first set of results is in!

 

Cake Challenge Attributes	Better Batter Score (1-10)
Cost	93¢/cup
Cup for cup replacement claim	10
Cup for cup replacement result	9
Ease of use	10
Raw texture	9
Cooked texture	10
Finished appearance	10
Finished taste	10
Mouth feel	10
Smell	10

Love,
Me

P.S. Keep coming back for the whole series.. It’s so suspenseful!! Who will come out on top? Only time will tell. And me. I’ll tell. No secrets here.

P.P.S. C4C in a cake tomorrow. I should have Jules and Tom Sawyer in hand soon, and they’ll follow. Yikes!

P.P.P.S. Are you scared? ‘Cause I am. A little. I have no idea why. I’m just like this. That’s all.

Have you noticed all the Paleo stuff out there these days? If you look on Amazon at the bestselling “gluten-free” cookbooks, you’ll find that most of the tippity top sellers are actually Paleo.

If that’s what makes people feel healthy and happy, and they’re not hurting anyone else, then I don’t want to stand in their way.

But I won’t be partaking.

‘Cause you know what you can’t Paleo-ize?

Gluten-free Won Ton Wrappers. Which lead directly to my recipe for Gluten Free Crab Rangoon. Then my Egg Rolls. And … ooh … wait … what’s that up top? Fried won ton noodles?!

Chinese take-out? Chinese take in.

Oh, and if gluten-free Fortune Cookies are what you’re missing, miss them no more. It’s all right here.

You see, this blog … and my book (plus my bookling-to-be)? Not Paleo.

I may not know much, but even I know that rice flour is pretty darn good at making a really nice “normal” all-purpose blend, like Better Batter. And normal is what I’m after.

By the way, this is a recipe from my cookbook that I got permission from the publisher to reprint here. So generous of them, right? It’s a good recipe to have.

You see, when you have a well-balanced rice-flour based blend, all you have to do is add a couple other ingredients to it (and one of those ‘ingredients’ is water!) in the right proportions. You get some pretty wet dough, but if you sprinkle it with more flour and knead it in, good things happen.

Like this. It starts to look like the smooth dough on the left. Just dust the top with more flour, and roll — and try doing it without parchment paper (really? really). I’ve learned that when you use parchment paper on this dough, you may not realize that your dough is becoming too sticky … before it’s sticking to the paper.

So sprinkle, and roll a bit. Easy does it. Pick up the dough, flip it over and turn it around. Sprinkle, and then roll again.

Keep sprinkling and rolling until it’s very thin. You might be surprised about how strong this dough is, in the end. In the photo on the left, I’m actually holding up the rolled out dough with one hand. And I’m not being super gentle or anything either.

Then slice as you like. Here I sliced thick ribbons to make fried wonton skins. Like you used to get with takeout at a Chinese restaurant. You know…

In the waxed bag! And they couldn’t be easier. Just fry the strips in at least 2 inches of hot neutral frying oil until they’re crispy (about 30 seconds per side), pull them out and drain on paper towels.

Paleo Schmaleo. I’m just trying to get to ‘normal’ so my little boy feels normal. Sometimes, a young man just needs a won ton.

Love,
Me

P.S. Thank you for supporting me over this last year since my first cookbook came out. It’s been a year! You bought the book, you told your friends. You bought a copy for your mother-in-law. You bought a copy for my mother-in-law (okay, not really, but I bet you would have). You’re the bestest friends a girl could ever hope for.  And you look adorable today, by the way.

P.P.S. If you make fried won ton skins, strain the oil and set it aside. It won’t be real dirty, and it’s going to come in handy later this week. Trust me.

Have you ever tried my recipe for Maple Almond Granola? Oh, it’s good. I make it — a lot. And usually, I hoard it.

Hey, a girl’s gotta eat, and my children and my husband eat, like, everything else. The granola is mostly for dear ol’ mom.

But then I realized something. I make lots and lots of granola bar type creations for my kids. They’re a fabulous grab-n-go breakfast, especially for those days that I get a bit of a late start and I just can’t manage much of anything else for them.

And I’m a lunatic about the kids not leaving the house without having breakfast. You gotta have a good breakfast.

When I was a latchkey kid (*sob.story.alert*), nobody made sure I ate anything at all before I trotted off to school. You could have scraped me off the floor by lunchtime. Oh the learning opportunities missed!!

Okay, save the drama for your mama. I know. But breakfast is a must around Casa Hunn.

If vegan isn’t your thing, try this slightly sweeter, dairy-containing variety of Gluten-Free Granola Bars.

Here’s how you & your kids can be sure to have a good breakfast every weekday – and pronto (betcha didn’t know I spoke Spanish).

Melt some no-stir natural nut butter in a small saucepan.

Puree some prunes. Or I guess they call them “dried plums” now, since prunes sounds grody. But just puree them with a splash of water.

Add that — and some cocoa powder — to all of the Maple Almond Granola ingredients.

Line a rimmed 10 inch x 15 inch(or thereabouts) baking sheet with unbleached parchment paper.

Here’s a tip: See the corners? A nice way to get the paper into the corners of the baking sheet without crumbling them and making for some craggy corners in your baked granola bars is to cut a slit right into the paper at the point. Like so. I know. Bonus, right? You heard it here first. (say you did, even if you didn’t?)

Then press the granola into the prepared baking sheet. Press it hard! In one even layer.

Then bake it. I know I know it totally looks the same baked as it did before it was baked. Except it kind of doesn’t. It gets a little puffy when you bake it, and even though it has no eggs and is held together with l-o-v-e, prunes and oil, it sets up really nicely when it’s baked.

Then cool completely, slice and serve. I even freeze it a bit to make slicing easier.

Love,
Me

P.S. Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day! I’ve got you covered. With Grasshopper Brownies and Shamrock Shake Cupcakes. May it be lucky!

 

Do you celebrate lots of holidays in your house? My children insist upon celebrating every single solitary holiday, no matter what. Ask me if we have any connection to St. Patrick’s Day.

Zero connection.

They’re totally just in it for the food.

Can you blame them? Every time I look at this overhead shot, I wanna take out a straw and drink it like a McDonald’s Shamrock Shake.

Take that, McDonald’s.

The cupcakes are mint-flavored. You make mint sugar much the same as we made lavender sugar with the Lavender Cupcakes from the other day.

Then bake the cupcakes. See the flecks of mint? I also added some peppermint oil to the batter, to boost the mint flavor. But use that sparingly. It’s strong stuff. You could also leave it out altogether.

You’re the boss, Boss.

Okay, let’s talk Whipped Cream Frosting. You can make fresh whipped cream and pipe it on there like frosting, but within a couple hours, it’ll begin to separate. You need something to stabilize it. We could use gelatin, like we did in our Gluten-Free Ho-Hos, but I wanted something to give it a little heft. A little bite.

Enter mascarpone cheese, an Italian cream cheese. It makes the frosting, well, frosting. It’s the woman behind the man. The wing beneath whipped cream’s wings.

You could also use an equal amount standard cream cheese, but the frosting will be kinda tangy.

Look at all these pretty things from our sponsor, Primp My Cupcake. Primp My Shamrock Shake!

They tell you which of their products are gluten-free. They’ve researched the heck out of their stuff, and they know what’s what. I trust them. That’s big. And they carry the best gel-based food colorings – and greaseproof cupcake liners. They peel right off, and they keep their color during baking.

You could also take my recipe for Gluten-Free Red Velvet Cupcakes and use green, instead of red, food coloring. Celebrate with green!

I wish, for you, the luck o’ the Irish, and all good things. Including these light & fluffy cupcakes.

Love,
Me

 

Can you hear me out? Consider it a favor of the personal sort.

Now, I’m nobody’s snob. Clearly. I wrote a book about being cheap, so, you know. But if you think NoThankYou for coconut because the shredded stuff is your guidepost, would you at least hear me out? That means no clicking away until we reach the end of the post.

Pinky promise?

And then maybe until one of these ‘cakes lands in your mouth.

Here’s the rub: Coconut is not properly represented by the stringy sweetened stuff in those paper-thin bags in the supermarket baking section.

Coconut chips made their debut around here in Maple Almond Granola. If you missed them there, you’re going to want to consider apologizing to them here.

I love the overhead-cooling-cupcake shot. Do you like to take pictures? We can talk about it, if you like. Or we can just stick to the food. Up to you.

The fluffy frosting in these babies is a really nice complement to the toasted chips.

The cupcakes are flavored with virgin coconut oil (it’s good for you!) and coconut chips ground up with the sugar to make … coconut sugar!

Pile on the frosting.

Then press it down to spread it around and make little fancy peaks. So easy! Way less work than piping on frosting.

Top with toasted coconut chips. I know, I know. Stop saying ‘coconut chips,’ Nicole. We get it. :/

Love,
Me

P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for the new blog newsletter! It’s on the left side of your screen. Over <—– there.

Are you afraid of baking with yeast? It’s okay. This is a safe place. You can tell me anything.

Have you ever done it? If not, start by reading my advice about getting your yeasted dough to rise. Or invest in a home bread proofer by my sponsor, Brod & Taylor. I am continually amazed by the consistently even rise I get in that little box of magic.

Whatever you do, though, don’t miss out. It’s such a nice way to pass the time. It’s romantic!

And then there’s the eating. These crispy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside little gluten-free snacks really hit the spot.

Oh, and be sure to subscribe to my blog posts on the left of your screen. You can pick daily emails, which come whenever I post something new on the blog, or a weekly round-up if daily emails are kinda, well, annoying to you. And you’ll get my newsletter-to-be, with exclusive subscriber recipes and chats. It’s free! Unsubscribe any time. No hard feelings. We’re cool.

Hey, remember a while back, when we made Gluten-Free Pretzel Rolls? These bites use the very same dough, so go ahead and use that recipe. We’ll talk all about how to jury-rig it into these little gluten-free pretzel bite snacks.

The dough is kinda wet, especially since you shape these bites after the dough has risen. Just dust the outside liberally with extra flour, and flour your hands, too, while you’re at it. Make a cylinder.

And cut into bite-sized pieces.

Score the tops (not too deep now).

Then boil in a baking soda bath.

Sprinkle with coarse salt. Lots of coarse salt.

Bake until brown. Gorgeous. Are you worried? I know how that goes. I get worried too. But I’m here. We’ll hold hands and braid each others’ hair (mine will be a challenge, but you’ll persevere), make each other coffee just how we like it, and wait for our dough to rise.

Love,
Me