Mint Chocolate Brownies (Gluten & Dairy Free)

Here is it - my first recipe post that follows my gluten free, dairy free diet.  I would be lying if I said this wasn't difficult.  I have never read so many nutrition labels with such concentration in my entire life nor have I had to pester so many waitresses to make SURE that smoothie has NO DAIRY (not even milk powder) in it.  That's not even the hardest part, I think that titles belongs to having to say no to friends.  To eat at certain restaurants, restrain from diving headfirst into their sandwich (still on the hunt for a good DF/GF bread) or just seeming like the weirdo with the nitpicky dietary concerns. 

Really though, it's not that bad.  I haven't had to deal with this for years, I don't even know if I'll have to deal with much longer (doctor's appointment is on May 5th) and I live in Seattle.  I think out of all cities to be gluten and dairy free in, Seattle must be one of the best.  PCC, Metropolitan Market AND Whole Foods are my meccas now.  Even Trader Joe's does a pretty good job (I'm a big fan of how well they label things).

And you know what's even better?  NO ONE knew these were gluten and dairy free until I told them!  In my book, that's a a huge success on the GF/DF front.  I brought them to the kickball game last week and everyone (the other team, the ref, my teammates) raved over them, asked for seconds and still contested that the fact that they were GF/DF free.

Update

Hello Blogosphere,

I wanted to write a quick note as to while the Ginger Cook has suddenly become more barren than the Eastern Washington desert.  A few weeks ago, my doctor informed be that she suspects I may have a gluten and/or dairy sensitivity.  Her plan of action was to have me do an elimination diet for a month and then go from there.  As all my recipes suggest, my number one lover is cheese, bread and butter.  That's right, I went through a triple break-up at the same time a few weeks ago.  I've been adjusting, but needless to say I've been in a bit of a cooking and baking funk as I've been adjusting what I can eat.  A few days ago, I made some stellar gluten & dairy free chocolate chip cookies (my co-workers ate all of them), but I've been struggling a little bit.  I hope to get up and running again (i.e. give you all some delicious recipes!) ASAP and I will be posting some gluten-loaded ones that I have stockpiled in my computer.

Thank you for being so patient and if you have any gluten/dairy free suggestions, it would be much appreciated!

Love,
The Ginger Cook

Healthier Baked Buffalo Wings

I can't remember the last time I was this sick (fever, chills, sleeping until noon and the like), so I am going to keep this post short & sweet, actually, it's going to be a little more savory this time...

My dad told me I needed some "real food" on my blog.  Silly father, cheese puffs, brownies & cake are real food.  I mean, they may not be the healthiest thing ever, but they are real food!  Especially if you compare them to half of the things in the supermarket today - no artificial color, xanthan gum or Microcrystalline cellulose here!

So dad, here is some real food: Buffalo wings, adapted to be healthy.  They have protein, W sauce, hot sauce, love & deliciousness.  So I better not be getting a phone call later saying that I yet again didn't post real food.

As you probably guessed it, I made these for the Superbowl.  You'd also be correct if you guessed that I took this picture after I let all the vultures swoop in and take part in the wing feast.  I made somewhere in the ball park of 25 wings and 10 minutes later, these are all that were left.

For the actual cooking part, please make sure you have some jellyroll pans.  Aaron and his roommate somehow didn't own a single one and I had to jiffy-rig an aluminum foil covered oven rack in its place.  It worked, but not so well.  The chicken drippings dribbled all over the bottom of the oven, set off the fire alarm a few times (it's not good until the fire alarm goes off, am I right?) and had to crack every window in his apartment.  Even with all that drama, these turned out so well.  Aaron and his roommate made sure I talked them through the recipe and gave them a copy so they could make the wings again & again.

Best part, this was my first time ever making wings.  In the words of Charlie Sheen, WINNING!

Gougères

…And so begins my Elizabeth Taylor marathon.  As I write this post, I skillfully positioned my instant streaming Netflix window in the lower corner of my Macbook as to watch Ms. Taylor in "Cleopatra."  Some might say, "no no, start from the beginning," I say to hell with them.  I want to start off with something big & epic… and it also happened to pop up first on Netflix.  Regardless, RIP Elizabeth T.

It's also nice that such a fancy recipe corresponds to such an opulent movie.  But shhh, I'm going to let you in on a little secret… these cheese puffs, ahem Gougères, aren't hard to make at all.  While it certainly helps if you have a piping bag, you can easily use a sturdy ziplock.

You say you don't have fancy cheese?  Pish posh - I ran to Trader Joe's, stood scared in front of the cheese wall and asked an employee who looked mildly worldly his recommendations.  Gruyere?  Sounds good.  Good Parmesan?  Already got some in the fridge.  No excuses.

Even once I got to the party (yes, this is yet another Superbowl recipe) the comments wouldn't stop flowing in about how they couldn't believe I made from scratch cheese puffs or that they were a nice contrast to the usual Superbowl fare.  Even though football season is over (and might continue to be for a year plus), it is officially soccer season (Go Sounders!).  Why not make these for your next soccer, erm football (as this IS French food), party?

Soft Pretzel Bites

One batch makes a lot of bites!

Have you ever had "one of those weeks?"

I have been having one of those weeks time 5.  I found out I fractured my tailbone and have been utterly wiped out (unrelated to the buttock, I think).  However, there is a plus side to everything.  Now I get to carry around my own cushy pillow and no one can judge me.  Ohhh yeah.  After toting around my cushy pillow, I usually can sleep really well at night, a pretty big plus.  I also found out that I actually really love riding the bus, a big plus that's easy on me & the wallet.  There is nothing better than waking up during my commute to the Eastside by listening to some Stuff You Should Know and This American Life.  Maybe, just maybe, I might start blogging on the bus.  You hear that Ginger Cook followers?  I might have a regular blogging schedule!  Maybe this week hasn't been so bad?

But these pretzels can make any day better.

Small enough to pop in your mouth and no need to feel guilty when you eat 10 of them because you totally didn't eat a whole soft pretzel.  Nope, not at all… 

As I mentioned in the previous post, the next few posts will be food that I made for the Superbowl.  I would consider pretzels to be a quintessential football food (see my earlier argument) and people are usually impressed that soft pretzels can be made outside of a mall.

Chocolate Sugar Cookies

So, Superbowl was how long ago?  A month?  Maybe a month and a half… oh, who really cares.  Better late than never, right?  I've proposed a lot of questions to in the first few sentences, but this is a fact, cookies are cookies and no matter what time of year it is and the only thing that changes is how they are decorated.


As I've already mentioned, the slew of food I made for the Superbowl will be the main focus of the next 6 or 7 posts.  Yes, I made a lot of food but what do you expect?  One of my favorite things to do is to cook for a large crowd and I think I even outdid myself this time.  There were 10 to 15 people crammed into a small Capitol Hill condo and we still had leftovers for the next week.

The reason these sugar cookies are the the typical color of your typical sugar cookies because I made them chocolate in an attempt to provide a decorating shortcut.  However, I realized that they were much darker than actual footballs and I still had to ice the whole thing.  Oh well, maybe it gave them a double dimension of awesomeness?  And yes, I did dye coconut green to make green for the pigskins to rest on.  I'm not an overachiever or ANYTHING... never.  Ever.

However, I thought the chocolate flavor of these was a litter blander than I would have hoped.  Maybe even a little flat.  Next time I make these, I think I am going to adjust the amount of cocoa powder and see if I can get the rick flavor I was striving for.

Lavender Macarons with Honey Dark Chocolate Ganache

These turned out perfectly.  As in, I had not a single issue.  Being that these are macarons we are talking about, I say this with much pleasure and pride.  The first time I made macarons was about year ago and I tried David Lebovitz's safe, trusted and true French chocolate macarons.  I thought those turned out well.  Ohh boy, was I wrong.  They were good, but not compared to these beauties.

As I mentioned in my previous post, it is very important to weigh all of your ingredients when making macarons as the wet to dry ingredient ratio must be perfectly balanced or things could start going tragically awry, i.e. causing the batter to be the incorrect consistency.  Even once you have the right proportions of ingredients, you need to treat them like your favorite child (not like people have them or anything…).  Don't over-beat the egg whites as it could cause the macarons to be all sorts of lumpy, lopsided and misshapen.  But there is a fine line you see because if you don't beat the egg whites enough, the macarons will fail to thrive and there is a good chance you won't get the prized feet.  I am in no way shape or form a master of the macaron, so I recommend you head over to Not So Humble Pie if you have more questions.

I took this picture a few days after I filled the shells because I'm a bad person.  If not a bad person, at least a cookie neglector.  I'm surprised it's not an offense punishable by food blogger law, or if it is and I just don't know it yet, please go easy on me!  I swear, I just got side tracked and I was packing for a trip down to Eugene!

You probably noticed, and if you didn't please make an eye doctors appointment, but the shells are bright purple.  No, there is not that much lavender in them… I just got a little happy with my super fancy, super concentrated food dye.  I was a big girl and bought something other than the squirt bottles you can find at the local Safeway.  Who knew that you only need to use a little bit to achieve the same result as using half a bottle of the supermarket stuff?  Apparently not me…

Now that you're well informed that these are not in fact mutant macarons, they are in my opinion only one notch below Laudree's and 5 notches above the ordinary.  The floral lavender is an unexpected delight to the tongue with the sharp contrast of the extra dark chocolate mellowing everything out.  I would like to note that the chocolate I bought was a smidgen too dark, so I added a little honey to the ganache as I was whipping it up.  Not only do honey and lavender pair wonderfully together, but it made the dark chocolate a little less harsh.

Next time I make these,  I might try a lemon curd filling, lemon, fig, olive oil or vanilla bean filling….hmmmm, suggestions?