Oatmeal Pancakes

I love my Johnnycakes, but sometimes it is nice to have a regular, fluffy pancake.  This recipe is similar to the one I used to use when I made waffles.  There is a small bit of baking powder, but it is the separately beaten egg whites that provide most of the lift to these pancakes.

Oatmeal Pancakes (gluten free)

Ingredients

• 4 eggs, separated
• 1/3 cup buttermilk
• 2/3 cup (67 gm) oat flour 
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 tablespoon olive oil

Method

• Weigh out the flour, or spoon it into a measuring cup.  Never scoop oat flour out of the package with a measuring cup.  It will compact, and you will get more flour than you need.  
• Beat together egg yolks, buttermilk, oat flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, vanilla, and olive oil.
• In another bowl, beat egg whites until stiff, but not dry.
• Fold beaten whites gently into the first mixture.
• Drop batter by large spoonfuls onto an oiled skillet or griddle over medium heat.  Flip when the first side is golden brown.
• When done, the pancakes will be golden brown and puffy.

Note:  I have used oat flour, but some other gluten free flours would also work since the lift is due mostly to the beaten egg whites.

I am fortunate enough to have a griddle, but a good cast iron skillet would also work well.  

The tricky part with a recipe like this is folding the egg whites into the batter.  You don't want to beat them together, because that would get rid of some of the lift of the egg whites.  It's hard to know exactly how much is too much.  Usually, I find that there is batter left at the bottom of the bowl which doesn't have much egg white in it.  These will not be quite as puffy, but will still taste delicious.  :) 

I was never really crazy about syrup on pancakes, although real maple syrup is an exception.  Usually I would put butter and homemade jam or preserves on my pancakes - yummy!   This pancake would be great with any of those toppings, but I go for peanut butter and honey - my favourite sandwich filling, when I still ate them.

Gluten-free Brownies - Mini recipe

Have you ever had a desire for brownies, but didn't want a whole pan of them around to tempt you later?  Then this is the recipe for you - it makes 3 delicious chewy brownies.  A perfect amount to satisfy your chocolate craving, and maybe that of a friend or two if you want to share.  :)

Gluten Free Brownies - Mini recipe

Makes 3 brownies or 4 brownie cupcakes

Ingredients

• 3  rounded tablespoons cocoa
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup dehydrated cane sugar
• 1 large egg, slightly beaten
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 rounded tablespoons gluten-free oat flour
• 1/3 cup chopped pecans or ground hazelnuts

Method

• Preheat oven to 350º F.
• Line bottom of a 2 cup loaf pan (5 x 3") with foil.  It's good to have a large enough piece of foil so it will hang over the upper edge of the pan. 
• Butter the foil 
• If you want to make cupcakes instead, use parchment paper lined muffin tins.  If you are only making one recipe (4 cupcakes), put a little water in the unfilled cups of the muffin tin before baking.
• Melt butter, and mix with the cocoa powder.  Stir until smooth.
• Stir in sugar, then the egg and vanilla until just blended.
• Mix in the flour.  Oat flour tends to clump together, so I press the lumps out before using.
• Stir in nuts.
• Spread in the buttered pan and bake for about 30 minutes, depending on your oven.  Brownie is done when a toothpick comes out with a few moist crumbs.
• Lift the brownies out of the pan using the foil, and let cool on a rack.  (Or not, if you can't wait)

Variations:

• As with most brownie recipes, this has very little flour, so you could substitute your flour of choice without affecting the recipe too much.
• Substitute 1 oz unsweetened chocolate for the cocoa.  Change the amount of butter to 2 tablespoons.
• Sprinkle 1/3 cup of chocolate chips on top

Look at the chewy chocolatey goodness....

I've already had one, and put the rest in the freezer.  Truthfully, I don't know how long it will stay there.  In case you didn't know, brownies get even chewier when frozen. - yummy!

flourless.

Since I stopped eating gluten (celiac seems to run in my Dad's side of the family), I have become increasingly interested in how I can make things without it.  Truthfully, I don't really miss bread, which is astounding because I use to love it, and baked a lot of it.  I did a lot of baking, period.  Being gluten free can be a challenge, particularly since most gluten free products use rice flour, and I can't eat rice, either.  So every time I find a new gluten free cookbook, I have to look through it just in case there are recipes with ingredients I can use.  Which is why I was so excited to find flourless (Recipes for Naturally Gluten-free Desserts) by Nicole Spiridakis.

It's one thing for you to eat gluten-free baking, and another thing entirely to feed it to your guests. I used to use wheat flour when I was baking to take someplace else, but now I don't even have wheat flour in my pantry.  This book is a pleasant surprise as none of the recipes use rice flour either.  Instead Nicole concentrates on recipes for delicious cakes, puddings, cookies, etc. that can be made without flour.

For instance - Angel Food Cake.  Most people just use an angel food cake mix, and that is definitely easier.  But if that's not an option for you, it's not difficult to make from scratch, but you do need a dozen eggs for one cake - not exaggerating.  Angel food cake is predominantly composed of egg whites and sugar, with a very small amount of flour.  In this case, Nicole substitutes corn starch which worked perfectly.  My gluten eating taste testers all agreed that it tasted just like regular angel food cake.

I borrowed an angel food cake pan, but it wasn't one that was in two pieces, so I had a little difficulty getting it out of the pan.

So since I used a dozen egg whites, I had to figure out what to do with a dozen egg yolks - they turn to rubber balls if you freeze them.  Back to flourless where I found a recipe called Salted Caramel Pots de Creme - an absolutely decadent custard which used 8 egg yolks.  Gluten eating taste testers again declared this delicious!  I used the rest of the egg yolks to make pastry, which I can freeze for later use.

In addition, I tried the Double Chocolate Brownies, which contain chocolate, butter, sugar, eggs, cocoa, and vanilla - ooey gooey goodness.  And finally,  I made her Oatmeal - Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I brought these cookies to work, where they were scarfed down in one day by my coworkers.  They are a basic oatmeal cookie except that instead of adding flour, the recipes simply uses more oatmeal.  They are simple, and act just like a regular oatmeal cookie recipe does.

These are but a small fraction of the delicious recipes in this book, and it gave me the confidence to try adapting some recipes on my own.  I highly recommend it.

Finally Finished Projects

I don't know about you, but it often takes awhile for me to finish a project.  Starting any new project (knitting, bookbinding, rug hooking, whatever) is all exciting!  Designing your item or looking for a pattern to make, and then choosing the colours, materials.  Usually there is some tweaking involved, and sometimes you change your mind because you see a new pattern, or get a new idea.  All this is fun!  

Then you get started, and that's fun, too, because you imagine how much you are going to enjoy the finished item.  You work hard on it, and then you get to the not-so-fun part - finishing.  There is finishing to be done in anything that you make.  With knitting, there's sewing it together and hiding all the ends.  With rug hooking, you have to bind the unfinished edges, and snip any excess threads.  You get the idea.  So sometimes (or often, depending on the person), the finishing gets put off in favour of starting another new and exciting project.  It's obvious that this is pretty common, because I've heard of knitting shops having UFO (Unfinished Object) nights to make finishing more pleasurable by turning it into a social event.  :)

So here are some of my finally finished projects.  These socks are made from sock yarn I bought while visiting family several years ago.  I did start knitting with it, and the yarn kept splitting - aaargh...  So I put it away.  Actually, I almost gave the yarn away, but this year I tried it again, this time with my newer wooden dp needles.  And it didn't split!  My metal needles were getting fairly sharp at the tips, so that might have been the problem.

Here's another pair of socks I finished this year - I was on a roll this spring....   I got this yarn in a swap, and again it sat in my stash for many years, mostly because it was a variegated yarn with a lot of bright yellow in it.  I like the colour yellow, but not in my clothing.  I had bought some weak acid dyes to use on wool fabric for rug hooking, and decided I might as well over dye this yarn with the maroon at the same time.  The results were wonderful!  Now the yarn was varying shades of red with small bits of yellow - much more my style.  And here are the finished socks:

And finally, here is a knitted felted tote bag I designed years ago (seeing a theme here?).  It originally had a knitted felted handle, too, but I was never happy with it.  I loved the bag but felt the handle was too light weight and might stretch out if I carried anything in the bag.  So I removed the handle, and the bag sat in storage waiting.  This year I finally found a wide leather belt at a thrift shop that I thought would work.  First, I lined the bag with some cotton fabric.  Then I punched holes in the belt, and handsewed it onto the bag and through the lining with thick waxed thread - the kind used for sewing leather, etc.  Now I love the bag, and will use it.  The leather strap is long enough to make it a shoulder bag, and there is a magnetic purse snap that holds the bag shut.

Sometimes it's okay if it takes awhile to do the finishing, because maybe things change and you get an idea that will make you love your creation even more! :)

A Peck of Pretty Peppers

I picked a peck of pretty peppers from my garden - okay maybe not quite a peck (which apparently is 2 gallon jars full), but fairly close if you count both both my hot and sweet peppers.  Look what a gorgeous red they are!  You will note one green guajillo at the back that is looking wrinkly.  I am drying some for use later in chilis and stews, and it has begun the process.

It was a bumper crop this year, in spite of the slug problem.  Apparently they loved the sweet peppers, but not the hot peppers.  They crawled inside the sweet peppers (Yuck!), but only attacked the leaves of the hot pepper plants.  Fortunately, I had all the pepper plants in pots or planters, and moving the planter with the sweet peppers out of the garden helped.

This is the first year in a long time that my peppers have turned red while on the plant.  Usually they are still green when it gets to the end of summer, and it's perfectly okay to use them that way in food.  But I wanted to save some seed, and they need to turn red while still on the plant in order for the seeds to be mature enough to germinate.  This summer, the heat started earlier, and rather than wait till the first weekend in June, I planted my bedding plants a couple of weeks early.  It made a huge difference with both the peppers and tomatoes.  I was very excited because I was able to save seed from each kind of pepper I planted, all heirloom varieties - Yay!  Fresh seed for next year.

I'm also hoping to save seed this year from my 3 varieties of romaine lettuce.  It is quite a process because you have to wait for them to flower, and growing the flower stalk, which makes the plant almost 4 feet tall, takes awhile.  Then you wait for the flowers to bloom, close up, and then reopen with fluffy stuff attached to seeds -  just like dandelions do.  Lettuce is part of the dandelion family - who knew!  You pretty much need to check the plants every day because the flowers bloom at different rates.

And this year I finally grew Calendula, also called Pot Marigold.  I had been given seeds a long time ago, and tried them this year, but they were too old.  I did manage to find some bedding plants grown locally, and they produced an abundance of flowers and seeds.  You can see the cluster of seeds in the bottom right hand corner of the pic.  I'm drying the Calendula petals to use later in making infused oils for handmade soaps and creams.  It is very soothing to dry irritated skin which is why I love it.  And they are such a sunny flower!

Lake Time

As a person who grew up on the farm, there is nothing I find quite as relaxing as getting out of the city for awhile.  My cousin has a cabin at a lake, and I was fortunate enough to be invited there for a few days.  One of the things I miss most about living outside the city is the quiet.  Of course nature is not perfectly quiet, but it beats the constant traffic noise of the city.  Besides the sounds of nature are, well, natural, and often more soothing.  For instance, the sound of wind blowing through tree leaves, or the sound of moving water.  So much easier to fall asleep to, or relax by.

It was lovely, mostly sunny and pleasant weather, and surprisingly mosquito free. Hooray!  The lack of bugs is what makes spring and fall my favourite seasons.  It’s not quite fall yet, but the temps at the lake are usually a little cooler, which made sleeping easier than in the heat of my apartment.

I have to admit that my favourite time of day when at the lake is first thing in the morning, which is when I took this picture of steam rising from the lake.  It was the middle of the week, which meant there were less people around. And early morning is beautifully quiet, which helps you to just stop and enjoy your surroundings - something I rarely do when I am in the city.

Both my cousin and I were in the mood to do very little, which worked well.  We went for a walk every day, spent a lot of time reading, napping, and watching movies in the evening.  We slept as long as we wanted, ate when we wanted, and snacked when we felt like it.  Sometimes in order to relax, you need to be away from home and all the things that “need” doing.  Of course when you get back, there's catching up to do, but there will always be things to do at home, no matter what, and it's good to be reminded that you need to relax, too.  It helps recharge the batteries so you can do the stuff that needs doing.

Johnnycakes

I had heard of johnnycakes, but never tried them.  The original recipes are made with only cornmeal, but I have seen some with flour added.  Of course, since I'm gluten free, I went for the only cornmeal recipes.  I have since found out that not all cornmeal is gluten free.  Like oatmeal, cornmeal doesn't have that irritating gluten in it, but is not necessarily processed in a gluten free building.  Frustrating - but I found some that was gluten free in the Bob's Red Mills line of products.

This recipe is from How it Can be Gluten-Free Cookbook Vol 2 by America's Test Kitchen, and I like it a lot.

 Johnnycakes

 Makes about a dozen 3 inch johnnycakes.

  Ingredients

• 1 cup (5 ounces) stone-ground cornmeal
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• ¼ teaspoon sea salt
• 2 ¾ cups water, plus extra as needed
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Method

• Whisk cornmeal, sugar, and salt together in a bowl.
• Bring water to a boil in a large saucepan.  Slowly whisk in the cornmeal mixture until no lumps remain, and cook until thickened - about 30 seconds.
• Remove from heat, and whisk in butter.  Cover the saucepan with the lid, and let rest at room temperature until slightly firm - about 15 minutes.
• Rewhisk batter until smooth.  Batter should be consistency of mashed potatoes - if not, whisk in 1 to 2 tablespoons of hot water as needed.
• Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a cast iron pan over medium heat until shimmering.
• Grease the inside of a ¼ cup measuring cup, and use that to scoop the batter into the pan.  Greasing the cup helps the batter to slide out easier.
• Cook until edges are crisp and golden brown.   6 - 8 minutes.
• Carefully flip the johnnycakes over, and press with spatula to flatten into 2 ½ - 3 inch rounds.

• Cook until well browned on the second side.  5 - 7 minutes
• Serve immediately, or keep warm in a 200º F oven.
• Repeat with remaining batter, whisking extra hot water into batter if needed.

I am fortunate enough to have a griddle, which is what I used to cook these.  Johnnycakes are not light and fluffy like ordinary pancakes, but I like them better.  They are crispy on the outside, have a creamy interior, and are absolutely yummy with butter, maple syrup, and a side of bacon. The biggest trick is that you must be sure that johnnycakes are set before you flip them over for the second side, or they will fall apart.  But other than that, they are simple, easy to make, and delicious!  They also freeze and reheat well, and are great with savoury dishes such as soup or stew.