Nectarine Crumble

What do you do with a bag full of free nectarines? Make a crumble and take it to the beach to share with your friends!

Be sure to eat it straight from the pan with a giant spoon, that way there's time to pass it around while your friends are still eating their bite. 

Gluten Free Nectarine Crumble

Filling Ingredients

• bag of nectarines (at least six nectarines), peeled, cut into sixths
• 2 tbsp cornstarch
• 2/3 C granulate sugar
• pinch of salt

Crumble Ingredients

• 1.5 C rice and/or almond flour (or regular white flour)
• 1/2 C cold unsalted butter, cut into sixths
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp all spice
• 1/4 tsp ground cayenne pepper
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/3 C brown sugar
• 1/3 C granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 350F. Butter a glass baking dish.

Make the crumble by stirring all of the ingredients except the butter in a medium bowl. Cut in the butter with a couple of butter knives or a pastry cutter until crumble pieces form. Place in the fridge.

Make the filling by combing all ingredients. Scoop into the buttered dish. Pour the crumble topping over the filling. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until the top is golden and the juice is bubbling through.

Beer goes well with this Crumble as a pre-dessert beverage...at least when you're at the beach it does. Any type of beer will do.

Gluten Free Brownies

Here we go, gluten free brownies (take's a bite)- Pretty good, especially while they are still warm!

Ideally I would have tried the gluten free flour mix from the NY Times, but I had to work with what I already had. After comparing a few different flour mix recipes, with varying ratios of ingredients, many of which I didn't event have, I decided to just go for my own basic mix. So, my first gluten free flour mix is:

• 1/2 cup rice flour
• 1/4 cup almond flour (According to the Isa you can use as a substitute for corn flour)
• 1/4 cup tapioca flour
• 1/3 cup brown rice flour

My regular brownie recipe creates cake-like brownies, and the gluten-free version was just as cakey and chocolatey. The texture was only slightly off and after cooling completely where a bit dryer than usual. Over all I would say a success! (The Joy of Cooking actually has a note at the end of their brownie recipe that says 1 1/3 C rice flour can be substituted for the 1 cup flour in the brownie recipe, and this book is from the 1970s before gluten free was talked about.)

Gluten Free Beer and Brownies

Well after a gluten-laden Oregon Brewer's Festival (OBF), it's time to make gluten free brownies (I have no idea how they are going to turn out.)

The 24th Oregon Brewer's Festival did have one gluten free beer from Deschutes Brewery out of Bend, Oregon. The beer had notes of citrus and hops, but, and this breaks my heart to say, kind of sucked. However, I still give them major props for creating a flavorful GF beer.

my dad's & my list of beers to try...& left-over tokens

Straight from the 2011 OBF program, "One of the most asked questions at the festival is, 'are there any gluten free beers available?'- Yes! This hop-forward Northwest pale ale is made of 100% gluten free ingredients: brown rice, sorghum, and dark candy sugar. It's hopped with Nugget Centennial, Cascade, and Citra hops for a Northwest gluten-free experience."

Unfortunately, according to my dad, Whole Foods sells a better GF beer, Estrella Daura out of Barcelona (go figure.) Let's hope my brownies get better reviews from Mr. Lavenberg. GF Brownie review coming soon.

Crepes with Stuff

This morning I went really far from vegan baking and burned through 1/2 dozen eggs (but they came from cage-free, presumably happy chickens) and a lot of cheese.

Here are crepes with cheesy egg whites, cream cheese, and jalapeño jelly (shout out to Jen's mom) . I like my eggs with a lot of cheese and a bit of sweet.

Crepes

(adapted from The Joy of Cooking)

• 3/4 C flour
• 2 tbsp powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tbsp ground flax seed (just for fun)
• 2/3 C plain, unsweetened soy milk (or regular milk)
• 1/3 C water
• 2 eggs

Mix the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Whisk eggs, add liquids and whisk well. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and whisk only a few times (lumps are OK!) Pour some batter onto a hot, lightly oiled pan. swivel the pan around to get a thin layer of batter. When brown on the underneath side, flip.

Vegan Banana Buttercream Frosting

It's been a year since we celebrated my roommates birth with an epic white chocolate banana birthday cake. This year she once again asked for something baked with banana and for the first time I actually had no over-ripe bananas!

Improvising, I tried to incorporate (vegan) banana buttercream filling into (vegan) chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting on top. Adding real banana, or any fruit to buttercream frosting causes it to separate and loose its texture, but it still worked for the filling and no one else seemed to notice ;)

For fun I added a (vegan) hand-rolled Belgium chocolate truffle on top of the peanut butter frosting.

My favorite flavor combination was actually the one cupcake that was dipped in chocolate ganache because I ran out of peanut butter frosting. It reminded me of a Hostess Cupcake but with a fresh, natural, banana, (and better) filling. It looked just like one and had the same texture without the weird sugar film you get in your mouth after eating Hostess products.

These cakes looked totally awesome, but I didn't take pictures except for this crappy one I took with my 3g phone. With this cupcake, I threw everything on it: banana buttercream filling, peanut butter frosting, a tiny chocolate truffle, then all dipped in chocolate ganache... tasty but messy looking.

Gina's (http://ginaespo.blogspot.com/) photo!

I realized I should have taken a picture of the Hostess look-a-like once I had eaten ½ of it, but I really didn’t want to stop to grab the camera. 

I plan to experiment with the banana frosting a couple more times- First with folding finely mashed banana in at the end and then possibly try heating up mashed banana, letting it cool and then folding it in at the end. Once I do all this, I'll update the blog.