The Obfuscated Monkey, and the Baking Disaster of the Week

New home

2012-02-09T18:20:00.000-05:00

I have found a new home. Find me at Sum of Sara for a collection of my various interests and reflections; A dash of art and design, a taste of cooking and recipe sharing, yarn crafts, and reflections on a variety of facets of life, love and culture.

Not sure if I will be retiring this blog here for good, but it will definately be a little quieter here while I try some new things. Thanks for reading, hope you will join me to help warm up my new home!

Baking Disaster of the Week - Pumpkin Walnut muffins

2011-04-15T16:10:00.000-04:00

Mini disaster of the week:

Casting my memory back to last year's yummy Quinoa Sweet Potato Muffins

I thought I would attempt this recipe with pumpkin instead of sweet potatoes and walnuts instead of dates. Although edible, it was more like bread than a muffin. In fact it makes for a plain, but tasty, bread. However, I feel it failed in its quest to be a muffin. However, it seems satisfied with being just bread, once it got over its muffin disappointment.

I suggest you experiment with adding a little more maple syrup if you want to try to make these work as muffins with pumpkin and walnut. Let me know how it works out for you!

Definately Not A Disaster: Gluten-Free Vanilla Cornbread

2011-04-13T11:43:00.004-04:00

After a long time away for health reasons, I am recovered, back and looking forward to providing you with more of my baking disasters and experiments as I attempt to learn more about how to cook, bake and enjoy food :) I also hope my bumbling makes you feel less silly in the kitchen, if you, like me are just learning domestic skills.

Yes, I realize I already made a post for this site, she has so many delicious recipes, so here we are again! This Gluten-Free Vanilla Cornbread Recipeis super easy, moist and delicious, but I am pretty sure it would not go well with chili. It is more like a coffee cake, without being sickeningly sweet. I followed the authors suggestion of serving it with plain yogurt and fruit and it was a heavenly desert!

Baking Disaster of the Week - Crustless Vegan Pumpkin Pie

2010-05-23T19:22:00.000-04:00

Ah, this is a tragic tale indeed. It began many moons ago, back in the fall and really has continued on due to my stubborn tenacity. I first tried to make this at Thanksgiving last year. It looked like doggy pooh (although a friend of mine insists that all pumpkin pie looks like baby pooh), and was really bland tasting as well. But, I was desperate to make this work because I absolutely love pumpkin pie and have missed it for so long so I tried this recipe again determined to make it work!

I would like to point out that if you follow the actual recipe, instead of substituting the heck out of it like I do, I am sure this is a quick and easy recipe to make. Unfortunately this disaster took 4 tries to get it right, and still needs further adjustment, especially with the spices! But at least it has reached the stage now where it is enjoyable and gets many guest compliments.

I got this recipe from the Gluten-Free Goddess. I have tried several of her recipes and I find them easy to adjust and easy to follow, not to mention delicious! Make sure you scroll down to the comments under the recipes to read what problems others encountered with the recipe and what the authors suggestions are, or be inspired by things others attempted with the recipe. I found this very helpful in my case.

I had to make some substitutions to this recipe because it would not work for me how it was written. I am sure there is some chemistry there I don't understand, but mostly I found if you substitute coconut milk for the milk, do not add the oil in the recipe, if you are using honey as the sweetener, or it does not seem to cook, and then it does not really set :s This may be more of an issue due to the fact that I use honey instead of cane sugar. I am beginning to experiment with palm sugar, we will see what it does in this recipe!

I also found the spicing rather bland, I like my pumpkin with more ginger, and I found added lots of fresh minced ginger made it very yummy. The other spices I can't seem to get quite right though...This on will be an ongoing disaster until I am satisfied ;)

If you love pumpkin this is in fact a delicious and easy recipe, so you should definitely give it a try and let me know what you think!

Hearty French Lentil Soup

2010-02-11T10:22:00.004-05:00

The other night I was feeling too tired after an afternoon of painting sets at the Peterborough Theatre Guild to venture to the grocery store for fresh ingredients and resorted to searching the cupboards for inspiration. My mother in law had recently sent me a care package of a variety of dried grains and legumes. I discovered therein French Lentils...which I had never heard anything about before and had no idea what to do with.

I of course turned to Google for inspiration and stumbled across the Post Punk Kitchen, which has many delicious looking vegan recipes. My diet is not vegan, however due to my many restrictions vegan cooking can help me avoid ingredients like eggs. I found their yummy French Lentil Soup.

My husband I split the prep and cooking duties to make this less time consuming, and we made a only a couple of changes to the ingredients; canned tomatoes with liquid drained instead of fresh, and a leek instead of garlic. Don't be scared of all the steps, it is actually quite simple :) I found it helps to have your spices pre-measured together into a little cup or bowl. And it is much faster and more fun if you have a friend or family member to share in prep work!

Now, I know the words "yummy" and "lentils" may not usually go together for many of you, but I assure you that this was a super tasty and surprisingly hearty soup. And I definitely recommend following the recipe author Isa's suggestion to eat it with a "good crusty bread". Yum!

Baking Disaster of the Week - Carrot Cake Cupcakes

2010-01-11T18:27:00.001-05:00

carrot cupcakes
Originally uploaded by Sara Manning

Now that we are finally clear of the holiday season, my spouse has been bugging me to figure out how to make a carrot cake we both could eat. I decided to go for cupcakes rather then a cake as I seem to have good luck with items shaped like muffins. Don't ask, there really is no logic there!

I found a recipe online from Rachel's Recipe Box: The Gluten Free Family called Baby'sFirst Birthday Carrot Cupcakes. I substituted honey for the brown sugar, and fresh lemon juice for the vinegar, using rice milk as the milk substitute. They took forever to cook, I had a lot of difficulty due to the amount of liquid. If I was to press the extra liquid out of the carrot and remembered to drain my freshly crushed pineapple (oops!) then it would cook the way it is supposed to. Even though I messed that up, and the order in which to add some of the ingredients (again, oops, too many distractions!) this recipe tastes really yummy. It does take some time to prepare, but it is definitely work it, and I look forward to improving on it for next time :D

Making carrot cupcakes I had to find icing for them! I tried this online recipe from Elana's Pantry called Coconut Cream Frosting. It was way to sweet for the both of us, but if you like intensely sweet icing with a nice mild flavour then give it a shot. I also had some issues with the texture, likely because I screwed up when I was to add the arrowroot starch, and ending up having to bring it to a boil twice instead of the once it instructed. As soon as I completed blending it, it started separating, so was a little chunky and unpleasant looking, but it did not effect taste or texture once it was in your mouth. I am also wondering if I cut the 1 cup of agave in here down to 1/2 or even 1/4 cup if it would work out better for a non sweet-tooth like me.

I also gave one of my wedding presents a try, heart shaped silicon muffin/cupcake pans. I was pretty pleased with the results. I did oil them very slightly to ease removal, and removal was pretty easy, with only a few getting messed up in my clumsy eagerness to get them out.

I am still on the search for icing which is more like cream cheese icing, but without the dairy, or the cane sugar. Let you know when I find a winner! Feel free to share one of yours :D

Quinoa, Sweet Potato and Date Muffins

2009-10-08T16:16:00.005-04:00

I have been lax in my journal over the last 2 months, due to my having relocated from the cold chill of Ottawa. Now, in my new Peterborough home I finally have unpacked enough stuff that I can begin to catch up on some of this back log of journals! This one is from the beginning of August, but is a nice comfort food for the cooler airs of October.

After a dirty 4 days of camping out at an annual music festival we returned with new recipe ideas to develop, or destroy! To begin I will leave you with some muffins I made to bring camping at an annual music festival.

I adapted this recipe from Shirley Plant's book Finally Food I Can Eat (which is a terrific book if you have just been diagnosed with food allergies and sensitivities and are trying to navigate your way through the initial confusion). The recipes are nearly fail proof and lend themselves easily to changing and substituting. The original recipe was called "Banana Muffins".

I am in muffin love, these things turned out awesome for me and I hope you get similar results. I will warn you, they have a slightly odd smell, very, um...earthy I suppose. They also freeze and thaw beautifully without altering taste and texture. You have to eat these babies fast if you don't freeze them because they get stale and moldy in 4-5 days due to lack of preservatives.

Quinoa, Sweet Potato and Date Muffins

Dry Ingredients:
2 cups Quinoa Flour
2tsp baking soda
½ tsp vitamin C crystals
¼ tsp guar gum
2 tsp cinnamon

Wet Ingredients:
¼ - ½ cup water (I usually end up having to add ½ cup, you need this mixture to be moist)
1 can sweet potato
1 tsp vanilla (optional)
½ cup safflower oil (or other oil)
1 tbsp maple syrup (you can use 2tbsp for a sweeter muffin)
1/2 cup chopped dates (could likely substitute raisins or prunes)

Directions:
1. Oil muffin tins and preheat oven to 375C
2. In a bowl add water and sweet potato, oil, syrup and vanilla(optional)
3. Add all dry ingredients and mix well
4. Add dates
5. Bake for 15 minutes (or longer is necessary)
6. Cool in muffin tin for 5 minutes and then remove and enjoy!

Ira's Baked Brie Salmon Steak

2009-09-25T18:00:00.005-04:00

My husband surprised me with this simple healthy recipe the other day and it was so delicious! I think he should definitely cook for me more often :)

Preheat oven to 450, Set rack in middle, oven to broil

Ingredients:

2 Salmon steaks, 1/2 pound each
1/4 cup butter sliced thin
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp ground mustard
2 tsp ground dill
onion, minced (1/3 of onion)
1 red pepper (cut into small chunks)
zucchini (med chopped)
3/4 cup mushrooms (halved)
goat Brie (10gs per piece - we used 2 wedges on each fish)
1 lemon to squeeze

Directions:

1. Drop butter into pan, add salt and pepper, ginger, ground mustard, ground dill and onion. Put mixture in oven until butter is melted.

2. Then add vegetables as follows and stir after each of the following additions:
red pepper, cook 2 minutes, stir,
then add zucchini, cook 2 minutes, stir,
then add mushrooms, cook 2 minutes, stir.
*If it looks dry then add more butter (or add 2tbsp oil – we used safflower - instead if you don't want all that butter).

3. Add salmon in the middle of all of this, pushing vegetables to the sides of the baking pan and lying the salmon flat, pink side up. Dip or brush top of salmon with the sauce the vegetables have been cooking in. Coat the top of the fish with ground dill.

4. Cook for 15 minutes uncovered, longer if needed to cook your salmon(or @ 350 for 20 minutes if your oven broiler sucks like ours does). Once salmon is cooked add Brie, and lemon squeezed over top of Brie and salmon.

5. bake 5-6 more minutes more or until Brie is melted onto salmon.

If you are one of those lucky people who can tolerate dry white wine, it would compliment it nicely. A very nice gin like Hendrich's would also go just fine. I had a wonderfully boring glass of water with mine :)

Why is there sugar in my table salt?

2009-07-16T12:16:00.007-04:00

Seriously, is the thought of having sugar in your table salt not just a little weird? I mean, have you even thought there was anything in your salt, other then, oh, salt? I know I didn't! But seriously, take your granulated table salt out of the cupboard and take a look at the ingredients list.

So why is all that stuff in there? What the heck does it do? I still can't over the fact that there is an ingredients list on my salt at all...I always thought it was just salt(well, with some iodine, yum). According to Simon Quellen Field, who wrote "Ingredients";

"Glucose is a sugar (the main sugar in corn syrup), and is added in small amounts (0.04%) to salt to prevent the potassium iodide from breaking down into iodine, which evaporates away (sublimes). Other potassium iodide stabilizers include sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), sodium carbonate, and sodium thiosulfate. "

Check out the rest of that article.

I won't give any advice on whether people allergic/intolerant/sensitive to sugar cane (plant) should avoid salt containing sugar or not, I mean, the glucose could be from a corn source, or it may not be, I am sure further research or contacting manufacturers could get you some answers. If you are still worried, I would say try sea salt or kosher salt.

Don't fear your food, become informed! Food is pretty fascinating stuff :D

Baking Disaster of the Week - Oatmeal Raisin Squares

2009-07-12T23:52:00.013-04:00

Welcome to our weekly disaster. True, I don't have a disaster every week, but when I do I want to make sure I share it so I can learn from it, and maybe help you not make the same mistake! Remember kids, DON'T DO THIS AT HOME! But please, DO make improvements and tell me about them, and feel free to offer some constructive critisism!

So I decided to be adventurous and convert a non allergy friendly recipe into something more friendly. So I went to my old Betty Crocker's New Cookbook and found a recipe for Oatmeal-Raisin cookies. I changed this recipe to substitute: gluten free flour, gluten free oats, egg replacer, honey for both sugars and 1 whole cup of butter (for the butter and shortening because I don't yet know much about shortening substitutes). I also decided to make squares instead of drop cookies because my other drop cookie recipe (see Sara Safe Cookies) melts together into a sheet as it cooks anyway, so I thought this one might too. See below for the altered recipe!

How did it turn out? Well, it's in my disaster of the week post, so no surprise there :) Too much butter makes it feel very greasy, however, the taste is great! The texture is pleasant, except for the fact that it is a crumbly mess. You have to put these squares into a bowl and eat them with a spoon! I am thinking I will take this recipe and turn it into an apple crisp/apple crumble instead, because it is very tasty.

Obvious screw ups:
1. I think you are supposed to press dough tightly into the pan, which I did not do, I just poured it in.
2. I think that was a ridiculous amount of butter, I definitely need to find out if there exists any shortening I can actually use, or if I will have to somehow create my own.
3. The recipe says you can substitute unsweetened apple sauce for shortening, which means I could likely in the future use banana, or maybe even pumpkin or squash and maybe they would help the ingredients stick together better.
4. Perhaps I need a different egg replacer too, like flax seed?
5. Maybe this recipe could have been helped with more moisture added.

Oatmeal-Raisin Square Disaster!
Wet ingredients
2/3 cups honey
1 cup butter, softened
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
Egg replacer for 2 large eggs
Dry ingredients
3 cups quick cook oats
1 cup all purpose gluten free flour (I used Bob’s Red Mill gluten free all purpose flour
1 cup raisins (or you can use chocolate chips or nuts if you can use either of those)
Directions:
1. Heated oven to 375
2. Mixed all wet ingredients
3. Mixed all dry ingredients together, and then mixed them into wet ingredients.
4. Poured into 9x9 silicon bake pan
5. Baked for 20 minutes

That concludes this weeks tale of disaster!

Ice Cream I Can Eat? Hurrah!

2009-07-10T13:04:00.010-04:00

I thought I was done with the lovely yummy cold sweet creamy heavenly treat called icecream... But then My mother in law, Nancy, found me this little piece of nivana;

Purely Decadent (Dairy free) made with COCONUT MILK

I would eat this stuff even if I didn't have all the food allergies, It's yummy! Obviously a no go for those allergic too coconut, but if you aren't then give it a shot. It tastes like "normal" chocolate dairy icecream, with the same sort of texture, but it has a coconut flavour to it too.

Ingredients: organic coconut milk, organic agave syrup, chicory root extract, cocoa processed with alkali), carob bean gum, guar gum, NATURAL FLAVOR - course I always get slightly worried when encountering "natural flavour" on a label, it's really not at all reasuring to those of us with food sensitivities and allergies, but I had no adverse reations. I want to check into that out of curiousity though.

Yes, perhaps I am getting a little overly excited, but I am a little sick of pretending that dried fruit, as yummy as it is, tastes like candy.

Sara-safe Chocolate Chunk Cookies

2009-07-07T09:53:00.005-04:00

This is still in development, but it is the second edible prototype. It has been adapted from a recipe in the Readers Digest Food Allergy Cookbook by Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne. However, I still could not eat their allergy friendly recipe and had to make multiple adaptations, lol. Still not completely happy with this one, but at least it finally tastes like yummy cookie!!! Comments to help make it better are always appreciated!

½ cup softened butter
1/4 cup and 4 tbsp honey (the original recipe is 1/2 cup and 8tbp of cane sugars, use whatever sweetener you want and sweeten to your taste! Every sweetener makes this taste a little different though…)
Egg replacer for 1 egg
1 tbsp rice milk or goats milk

1 cup all purpose gluten free flour mix
½ cup almond flour (I added this because it drastically improves the taste of this recipe, sometimes I put more in, sometimes less)
1 tsp baking powder (gluten free)
1 tsp salt

3 ounces unsweetened chocolate chopped up – make sure no soy (Lecithin – can be from soy or egg, I can’t have either!) or cane sugars

Cream sweetener and butter together, add egg replacer and milk to that.
Mix together dry ingredients, and then whisk into wet ingredients.

Place blobs on small cookie pan (does not matter where, they will all melt together anyway into one big giant sheet of cookie, I am tempted to put this into a cake pan and see if they make better cookie squares instead)

Bake for 13- 15 minutes at 350, bottoms are very prone to burning so watch! I recommend using a silicon baking sheet to help prevent scorching on the underside, trust me, it's worth it, these guys love to burn!

A Brief Introduction

2009-05-30T21:51:00.007-04:00

I am currently a web designer turned military software tester. This column is part of a creative outlet for me (believe me, I need one at my job!). I'll share weekly posts about recipes, recipe disasters, knitting patterns, various traditional and digital art and craft techniques, product reviews and related resources.

I have a fair number of food sensitivities and allergies which can cause havoc with my health. It has been a fun adventure learning to cook for all these issues, and also a major pain in the %*$ at times. I hope that by sharing these learning experiences, others might learn with me from some of my many mistakes!

As for my food issues I need to avoid; soy, eggs, cane sugar, peanuts, sulphites, and uncooked tomatoes. I have to limit my exposure to other foods as well; wheat (including wheat gluten and gliadin), barley, garlic, spelt, dairy, tomatoes, pineapple. My household also eats kosher, so I need to try to learn and observe those dietary restrictions as well :)

People can have difficulty understanding that food which is healthy for them, can make me very sick. I want to assure all of them that I am not making a comment on the healthiness of their diets, or the goodness of the food they enjoy. I have friends who worry that I could possibly be getting a healthy balanced diet or eating enough with these limitations. I assure them I am indeed eating very healthy (I really should post one of my weekly menus sometime!), in fact I eat more frequently then most of them :) That said, yes, I do miss the taste of certain foods, but not enough to ever eat them again, the days of migraines and weeks of rashes, not to mention other crippling effects, are simply not worth it! I better enjoy being healthier and more able to function day to day :D