thanksgiving wrap-up -- cranberry breads!

Our internet was out most of the day on Wednesday so instead of telling you about the cranberry breads I planned to make, or telling you that I posted a Thanksgiving article at Gluten-Free Works, I spent the day making a This-Isn't-Really-How-Pilgrims-Dressed dress for Muffin:

So now I will give a summary of my Thanksgiving cooking: Yum.

We were invited to a potluck dinner with some friends and our contribution was rice and cranberry bread. I cheated a bit and had my housekeeper make a rice pilaf (from the Moosewood Restaurant cookbook) while I made the cranberry breads.

Earlier in the week I tried a cranberry apricot nut cake from Anja's Food 4 Thought. There's no flour in it and if you use unsugared dried fruit then it's sugar-free as well. I had to substitute some of the nuts and I used cranberries that I'd brought back from the United States with us last summer. Ocean Spray Craisins can be found here sometimes, but I didn't want the expense and the inconsistent supply chain to keep me from making cranberry bread at Thanksgiving so I've been saving them to use since September. Anja calls for a mix of pecan and hazelnuts, but I haven't seen hazelnuts here in months so I used all pecans -- which hadn't been around for a few weeks and miraculously arrived on the shelves last Sunday. I bought enough to get me through Christmas. You could fool around substituting different fruits and nuts. (I bought some amazing dates this week, too, that would be good.)

Muffin and I ate most of that cake, which was evidence enough that it would be a good Thanksgiving dish. I had chopped and pre-measured the fruits and nuts when I made the first loaf so on Thursday morning I could make a fresh loaf in less time.

For my second bread I went back and forth on whether I should add cranberries to either the Pamela's baking mix banana bread or zucchini bread recipes. I went with the banana bread. I know the recipe by heart so it was quick to make on Thursday morning. I made it as muffins to ensure it cooked evenly and to save time and mess from having to cut it up.

Muffin tossed all breads and muffins aside once she got her first taste of turkey. Last Thanksgiving she was too young for real food. This year she inhaled the turkey off my plate and took a few bites of mashed potatoes, rice pilaf, and broccoli as well. We thought giving her a turkey leg to play with would make a funny photograph and we were surprised to see her bite right into it. She is definitely a Thanksgiving eater.

double chocolate pomegranate cookies

I read this recipe at MADE recently and realized that pomegranates are in season here, too. With a few modifications to make the cookies gluten-free and to allow for local supplies, these cookies were a success in our house.

Here is the recipe as I modified it. If you live in the United States or another country were basic ingredients are easily found, or if by chance you stumbled upon this blog but you are not gluten-free, you can read the original recipe at MADE.

2 cups Pamela's Baking and Pancake Mix
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter (or half cup butter and half cup shortening, if shortening is available to you)
3/4 cup castor sugar (a finely ground white granulated sugar)
3/4 cup demerara sugar (a brown sugar substitute here that I really like -- it has more of a burnt sugar flavor and the large granules provide a nice texture)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I horde this stuff and buy it whenever I'm in an extract-selling country to bring back with me)

2 1/2 cups chocolate chips (or if you're like me and are unsatisfied with your local chocolate chip selection, chop up some chocolate bars; I chopped four 80-gram bars)
1 cup pomegranate arils, or seeds (you can slice a pomegranate in half and whack at it with a wooden spoon to get the arils out)

Do the standard cookie-backing stuff.

Preheat the oven to 350 F / 180 C.

In one bowl blend together the baking mix, cocoa powder, and salt.

In another bowl, cream the butter then add the sugars, eggs, and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar mixture. Then add the chocolate chips and pomegranate.

Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto a baking sheet. I like to line my sheets with parchment paper. Bake the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes then allow them to cool on a wire rack for as long as you can keep your family's paws off of them.

Yum.

If any play group moms are reading this, I froze half the dough and will be making a fresh batch for brunch on Friday.

There were a few shady moments were I wasn't certain these cookies would be completed. I didn't soften enough butter at first and when I grabbed my second box out of the fridge, I opened it up to find mold! I'd never even heard of mold on butter. Of course India could provide that experience for me. We had a small bit of table butter, which has salt in it, but I added it to my unsalted cooking butter in order to save Mike a nighttime walk to the local grocery, which probably wouldn't have had unsalted butter anyway. The cookies turned out not to be too salty, as I feared, but perfectly salted for the chocolate and pomegranate.

I was also dancing around on a cruddy floor. When I was pulling sugar out of the cupboard I was so relieved Muffin was distracted and not trying to help me that I didn't notice at first what distracted her. She'd dumped a box of loose-leaf tea onto the floor and was having fun walking on it in her bare feet. I have yet to get it all swept up. I am not having as much fun stepping on it in my bare feet.

Earlier in the day Muffin had a glue incident. The tea leaves were not spilled anywhere near the faint glue spot still on the floor.

I forgot about all of that when I started eating cookies.

I couldn't get a good photo of the cookies, but if this isn't a good endorsement, I don't know what is:

It's cookies like this that have encouraged me to join the Holiday Bootie Buster Challenge. I run to eat baked goods. At least these cookies have vitamins and antioxidants, right, due to the pomegranates? There's still time to sign up for HBBC. Come join me!

les premièrs macarons

Recently I wrote about my new obsession with macarons and how I was planning to battle the India humidity to make my first batch. I did battle the humidity and the little cookies came out much better than I expected.

Per the book Cecile Cannone's Macarons: Authentic French Cookie Recipes from the MacarOn Cafe I separated my egg whites two days before using them. Early in the morning on baking day, I took my egg whites and other ingredients out of the refrigerator to bring them up to room temperature. I also turned on the oven early and brought the dehumidifier into the kitchen to dry out the room as much as possible.

I had to dry out my almond meal before I started the real baking and that took about thirty minutes in the oven. After that things moved along much more smoothly than I expected. I used the Cuisinart food processor (nearly blowing a fuse but stopping when I could feel the electricity struggling) to grind the almond meal and confectioner's sugar (or icing sugar) into a fine, smooth powder. I had to use an electric handheld mixer rather than my KitchenAid stand mixer to beat the egg whites (because the KitchenAid did blow out a few weeks ago and I haven't been able to get it repaired yet) so it took a long time to get the egg whites and sugar to the stiff peaks they needed to be at but it eventually happened. And I did a little dance of joy because I was so relieved and happy to see them beat properly!

I carefully folded the egg whites with sugar into the almond meal with sugar to complete the batter -- yeah, lots of sugar. So far things had gone by the book but I actually had no idea if my batter consistency was correct. It seemed useable so I kept going.

Getting the batter into the piping sleeves was a tricky, sticky mess and who knows how much I wasted. I had a blocked nozzle once or twice with some almond meal clumps but for the most part the batter flowed just as it was supposed to. I made my little circles on my parchment-paper-lined baking sheet, let the cookies rest for a few minutes, then popped them into the oven.

It's the resting and cooking time that can be difficult. The mixing of stuff is all mechanics, but the resting and cooking is a total crapshoot. The cracked cookies and the ones without the nice little shelf on the bottom are the ones that either did not rest long enough, or rested too long, or were not cooked long enough, or were cooked too long, or the oven wasn't opened enough times to let out steam while they were baking, or they were removed from the tray and parchment too early, or too late. There are lots of factors to worry about.

Although my introductory photograph is purple, I did not use food coloring for this first attempt. The purple is the result of my fooling around with some new photo editing stuff. I wanted to see what the macarons looked like naked, so to speak.

They looked pretty good. Much better than I expected them too. They were shiny on top and not all of them cracked. The cracking is the result of too much moisture but there are a few tricks I can use to combat the moisture next time, especially since we are moving away from the rainy season.

Fresh out of the oven. My first tray, before I got the hang of making perfect circles.

The best macaron from the whole batch.

Lots of them cracked.

They tasted great. They are sweet, that's for sure. But they melted in our mouths just like they were supposed to. We ate most of them plain, but when we had some friends over for dinner I made sandwich cookies, some with chocolate frosting left over from birthday cupcakes a few days earlier and some with cherry preserves.

I'm game to keep trying. I have some colors and flavors in mind to play around with. I've purchased several macaron cookbooks lately and I love the colorful photos. I kind of want to make them just so I can take photos of them, too!

Note: I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you click on the book link and ultimately decide to buy it, I will receive a small amount of money.
All photos taken by me. 

laddu

For Diwali this week, our housekeeper showed me how to make laddu, one of the traditional sweets. They're made with besan, which is lentil flour.

She started with 500 mL ghee, which is clarified butter. She heated it up on the stovetop until it was clear. Then she took small spoonfuls of the ghee and put it in a frying pan with a few spoonfuls of the besan, heating it all up together until it was all incorporated and the mixture was free of clumps. She did this for a long time, until she'd combined the ghee with about half of a kilogram (about one pound) of besan. It takes a while because you have to do such small amounts at once, in order to keep the besan from burning.

Then she put half of a kilogram of sugar in the food processor until it was very fine, and she stirred that into the besan-ghee mixture. She also added a few shakes of ground cardamom.

Once everything is mixed and is the right texture, you pick up small handfuls and form little balls. You can also add chopped nuts to the mixture and our housekeeper did half with cashews and half with pistachios. They sit in a cool room (we had to blast the air conditioner over the dining room table) until they've hardened up enough to not fall apart. Then they are eaten!

I liked them. They are heavy and sweet, but also quite filling because of the lentil flour so I tried to convince myself that one or two with a cup of coffee wasn't the worst treat in the world. Muffin enjoyed them as well.

According to our housekeeper, laddu are also given to women in labor to help ease the pain and they are also given the children who are deemed "too skinny."

These are easy to make, but I probably won't make them again until next Diwali because they are too sweet and heavy to enjoy on a regular basis. Next year Muffin will be old enough to get her hands in the dough and help shape the little balls.

Heating up the ghee.

Heating up the besan with ghee.

After the sugar and cardamom is added, shaping the dough into little balls.

A tray full of laddu.

More laddu pleeeeeeeeease!

labonel fine baking

The people of Hyderabad like their sweets. There is no shortage of chocolate cakes at bakeries, coffee shops, grocery store bakery counters, and restaurants. It's been difficult, being a gluten-free chocoholic and having to face cakes every time I leave the house. Some places offer a chocolate mousse, and I've been eating my way through the mousses of the city, but those are a topic for another post.

A couple weeks ago Mike came home and announced he'd found a gluten-free bakery. They are not specifically gluten-free, but the head baker is familiar with the gluten-free diet and has perfected a few treats with the local flours. For Mother's Day, Mike brought home a chocolate cake from Labonel Fine Baking.

Labonel uses millet flour as the base for their gluten-free cakes. The texture was great, but the flavor was a little off. I loved the chocolate icing, but the millet lends sort of a grassy flavor to the cake. It grew on me, though, and we've been picking away at the cake all week long.

Whether gluten-free, eggless, or "regular," Labonel's treats are only available as custom orders. They are a little tricky to find, being that the office is on the side of a house behind a gate with no sign. It's like a secret society. A secret, chocolate-cake-loving society. You can find their products and directions to the house on their website.

on sale for celiac awareness month

I'm a little late in telling you that May is Celiac Awareness Month, but it's not too late to take advantage of some yummy sales at Amazon.com Groceries. I stocked up on a few things earlier in the month and I'll be going back for round two before the month is over.

Some of my favorites:

It's gross, but Fruity Pebbles one of my favorite cereals from childhood. I'm not quite ready to fill Muffin with so much sugar and artificial color yet, so these will be a special treat for me after she's asleep for the night. Save 15% when you enter code POSTGFO5 at checkout. Plus, save an additional 15% when you combine the instant rebate with your Subscribe and Save order--bringing your total savings to 30%.








KIND bars are my go-to, stuck in the car, didn't get breakfast because the baby didn't nap, snacks. Save 15% when you enter code KINDMAY5 at checkout. Plus, save an additional 15% when you combine the instant rebate with your Subscribe and Save order--bringing your total savings to 30%.










It's too hot to light the oven, but I still want some cookies to snack on every once in a while. I love the Pamela's shortbread. Save 10% when you enter code PAMGFMAY at checkout. Plus, save an additional 15% when you combine the instant rebate with your Subscribe and Save order--bringing your total savings to 25%.









I am an Amazon affiliate. If you purchase from these links or from my store, I will receive a small kickback.

banana date muffins with coconut oil

I'm in love with coconut oil. I'd been hearing about its magical properties in the removal of Holi paints and this morning as I was rubbing it on Muffin's head, hungry from the toasted coconut smell, I started wondering how I can cook with it. I was going to make banana bread today anyway... could I replace the butter with coconut oil?

Before answering that question, I had to make sure the coconut oil I used was marked "edible." Coconut oil is used in women's hair here and the hair oil is a different grade than the cooking oil.

I pulled out my trusty Pamela's baking mix and got to work.

4 tablespoons coconut oil
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups Pamela's baking mix
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup golden syrup (You can also use granulated sugar or honey, but golden syrup is another new obsession of mine.)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup ripe, mashed banana
1/2 cup chopped dates (You can substitute nuts or another dried fruit if you prefer.)

Mix it all up and spoon into oiled or paper-lined muffin tins. Bake at 350 F / 175 C for about fifteen minutes, until edges start to turn golden and a toothpick comes out clean. My yield was about fifteen muffins, but the muffin papers I've found here a a bit smaller than the usual ones found in the United States.

These were soft and tasty-warm-delicious right out of the oven, and they kept their softness and moisture for a couple days. They are oh-so-yummy, rich with the coconut and banana flavors. I'd love to try dried mango for a full-on tropical muffin.

The answer is yes, I can replace butter with coconut oil, at least in this recipe.

Muffin enjoys her muffin.

(Recipe modified from the banana loaf recipe found on the Pamela's baking mix package.)

eat more

I had a consultation with a nutritionist this week. My blood sugar levels have been up and down and my doctor wants them to even out a bit. Not to worry, everything is absolutely fine with the pregnancy. My doctor is just being extra cautious because I’m here rather than in the United States. He found me an American nutritionist who lived in Nairobi for several years, so has a good idea of what kinds of food are and are not available and she knows what life in general is like in this region. She’s also worked with celiac disease and gestational diabetes (ugh, I hate that term, but technically I have it based on a couple unusually high glucose readings).

Basically, I have to eat more. My weight gain has been slow and steady, but she wants to see it increase a bit now that I’m entering the third trimester. I have to stop eating so much dried fruit and stop drinking juice and I have to increase my healthy fats. I should start taking a calcium supplement, since I’m not getting as much dairy here as I would be in the United States. That all sounds reasonable enough. I just have to buckle down and force myself to eat the same foods, day in and day out, until I get back to the States in a few weeks. And see if any other Americans around here have some TUMS I can buy off them, for the calcium.

And the nutritionist knows this, too. She understands that I’ll basically be on a peanut butter and avocado diet for the next month, since they are the easiest of the healthy fats for me to obtain here. She knows I snack on the dried fruit to add a little bit of variety to the limited fresh fruits that are available. And she knows I’ll expand my dietary horizons as soon as possible. It was nice talking to someone who has an understanding of what it’s like here. Other nutritionists I talked to didn’t really understand the living conditions and gave me lists of foods that are impossible to find here, which I can’t really fault someone for if they haven’t been here; but they also didn’t seem to grasp the gluten-free diet, which is troubling.

So, no sugar, no gluten. But eat more. It's hard to do that when your food options keep getting narrower.

day 1 without sugar -- not very successful

I've decided to make a concentrated effort to give up refined sugar for the rest of the pregnancy. (Notice I haven't gone all the way and said "entirely eliminate" yet. Baby steps. Attainable goals.) Just to avert any worrying, it has nothing to do with diabetes or any other pregnancy-related issues. It's something else that I'm trying to manage holistically. (It's a personal thing that I'd rather not spell out specifically.) I've already given up wheat, because of the celiacs. I refuse to give up fruit and dairy to solve this problem, because without them I have few other food groups to choose from. The only thing I can realistically eliminate at this point is refined sugar. And if the problem isn't better after a few months, I'll look into further options.

So this morning my smoothie was nothing but fruit and yogurt, sans juice. I refrained from all chocolate throughout the day. I did not eat the leftover crepes sucre for an afternoon snack. I did fine except for lunch.

I neglected to tell my housekeeper about the new no-sugar rule. And when he served strawberry ice cream for dessert at lunch time, I couldn't help but have some. I ate about half of what I usually would -- my usual amount is about half of what he actually serves. But eat some I did.

I don't feel guilty exactly, but I feel like I really need to reign in on these occasional treats, or else they'll turn out to be not-so occasional.

One thing that should help me manage is the sugar shortage going on in the country right now. If it's not for sale at the markets, it can't be bought and turned into delicious baked goods.