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.

Homemade kombucha is easy!...

... You just have to find someone who will give you a scoby (the paddy of living organisms).

You can actually be pretty lax with ingredient amounts and play around with it until you find a ratio that tastes good. Mine often ends up pretty acidic since I don’t add much sugar.

Mini chemistry lesson: the scoby is alive, similar to how yeast is a living organism and it feeds off of the sugar. The raw apple cider vinegar contains the enzymes that start the fermentation.


Let’s assume you are starting with one scoby.

Ingredients and material:

• 1 large wide mouth jar (I use a large mason jar) but something bigger would be even better
• 1 kombucha scoby
• organic raw apple cider vinegar
• water
• tea (any flavor you prefer, mango has been the yummiest so far)
• sugar

Make sure all of your materials are super clean

Boil the amount of water that fits into the mason jar in a large pot on the stove. Remove from the stove and stir in anywhere from 1-2 cups of sugar. Add anywhere from 3-6 bags of tea. Remove tea bags when cool, stir up the sugar if any is remaining on the bottom. Pour team into the large, clean jar, leaving 3-4 inches at the top. Add ~1/4 cup vinegar. Add the juice that the scoby was sitting in (kombucha enzymes, yum). Put a clean dish towel or washcloth over the top of the jar with a rubber band (it needs to breath!)

Let sit for 2 weeks.

Important notes:

• Keep things super clean otherwise it will grow mold, if anything looks off on the scoby like discoloring (other than turning darker as you re-use the scoby ) or moldy-looking spots, dump it and start over!
• Only use glass containers and don’t let the kombucha touch anything else, like metal, etc.

To bottle it:

Remove scoby and put in a clean glass bowl in a bath with some of the kombucha. I always just use my hands (after washing thoroughly). Cover with a loose glass lid or cloth. Pour kombucha into smaller glass bottles with tight fitting lids. Store in fridge. You can pour out the very bottom if it’s got a layer of sludge or you can drink it….

Yeah, those are cupcakes in the background

Scoby in it's juice (actually ,plus one tiny scoby on the side)

scoby, top-view

Check out how thick they can get: some scoby image from some hippie

Vegan Banana Cupcakes with Fluffy Peanut Butter Frosting

It seems I am working my way through Isa and Terry's Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, similarly to how Julie cooked her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (here is the archived Julie/Julia Project blog), but this is a much smaller task and more enjoyable- I don't have to worry about lobster murder, or even any animal products at all :)

cooling

After one bite my roommate says, "never make banana bread again, just these cupcakes."

I love that this process is happening organically. This past weekend I had no intention of baking but I  ran into the recurring problem of over-ripe bananas in the kitchen and felt the recurring compulsion to make something out of them rather then toss the. So I turned to the book and loosely followed their recipe for Banana Cupcakes. Here it is:

Vegan Banana Cupcakes

Ingredients

• 2 over-ripe bananas (3/4 cup)
• 1 1/4 C flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 C granulated sugar
• 1/3 C canola oil
• 2/3 C unsweetened plain soy, almond or rice milk
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1/4 C chopped chocolate

Preheat oven to 350F and line cupcake pan with liners

Mash bananas until their are no chunks. Sift flour, baking soda, powder, salt and sugar into a large bowl and mix.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the oil, milk, vanilla, almond extract and bananas. Create a well in the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.

Fill cupcake tins 2/3 full. Sprinkle some chocolate pieces into each cupcake and swirl it gently into the batter with 2-3 stirs. Bake for 20-22 minutes until a knife/toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Vegan Peanut Butter Frosting

Ingredients

• 3/4 C Crisco butter flavor shortening
• 2/3 C peanut butter (whatever type you prefer)
• 3 tsp vanilla extract
• 2-2 1/2 C confectioner's sugar
• 3-4 tbsp soy, almond, rice milk or soy creamer

With an electric hand-held mixer, cream the shortening until smooth. Add the peanut butter and vanilla and beat until very smooth (2-3 minutes). Beat in sugar. As the mixture begins to stiffen, add in the milk a tiny bit at a time. Beat until frosting is light in color and super fluffy (around 5 minutes). Make sure cupcakes are cool and frost away!