THE chocolate chip cookie

Stop the press. I finally found the gluten-free chocolate chip cookie. It's easy to make soy-free, too. I just made a double batch of dough, hoping that this one will yield enough for me to share with friends. Unfortunately, I can't seem to bake enough at a time that there are any available for photos, but luckily Angela of Oh She Glows provided us with the recipe, photos, and an explanation of different ingredients she tried. I usually prefer big, soft oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, but these have an amazing chewy bite, even though they're thin, which provides an almost caramel texture. The flours are oat and almond: common, healthy and well-known (no questions like "What the heck is sorghum?"). The oats, ground in the blender, lend their flavor subtely, while the almonds create richness. Go mix up a batch!

Pumpkin muffin tops with pecans

Just when I thought I couldn't be any more free, I've had to eliminate soy, beans and legumes for the week. Egads! Although I enjoy the vegan and gluten-free challenge, soy was not something I wanted to do without.

My first day, Monday, was a bit painful. I mostly ate single foods, like cherries for a snack and boiled butterball potatoes (with olive oil, smoked sea salt and freshly ground pepper) for lunch. Not enough to fill my belly or satisfy my appetite. So of course I turned to baked goods.

The recipe calls these "pumpkin hermits," but I've never heard that term. As soon as I read the description and ingredients, I knew I had to make them-- and they're more like muffin tops than cookies.

Here are the substitutions you will need:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour: 1 C of Bob's Red Mill All-Purpose Gluten-Free Baking Flour, plus 1/3 C each quinoa flour, coconut flour, and tapioca flour or potato starch, plus 1/4 tsp xanthan gum
  
  You could also use 2/3 C each of the single-source flours.
  
• 1/4 cup butter: 1/4 C soy-free Earth Balance
  
• 1 large egg: 1 Ener-G egg (follow package instructions and whisk til foamy)
  
  You could also try ground flax seed or mashed banana.
  

I left out the dried fruit and added about 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg. They turned out delicious and wonderfully spiced, great for breakfast, a snack or dessert!

Apple pie- crumb cake muffins

We were at Costco when I saw a giant box of my very favorite, short-season apples: honeycrisp. And they were local. But we were leaving town in a few days. What to do?

Well, I bought them with plans to eat one a day (check) and make an apple cake or muffins (check, although I still have eight apples). Turns out the cake involved making applesauce first, which I didn't have time for. So after much internet and cookbook research, I decided to make the temptingly-named apple pie-crumb cake muffins from Vegan with a Vengeance.

To make these gluten free, I saw that the recipe called for a total of 1 3/4 cups of flour. So I mixed 3/4 C of Bob's Red Mill All-Purpose Gluten-Free Baking Flour, plus 1/4 C each quinoa flour, tapioca flour, potato starch, and white rice flour. After thoroughly mixing those, I took out 1/4 C for the crumb topping, then added 1/4 tsp xanthan gum to the rest of the flour, to be used for the muffins.

To make fluffier mufins I used about 2 tbsp of apple cider vinegar in with the 3/4 C apple cider in the recipe. I also used about four times the amount of apple called for-- I just diced two big apples. It seemed overwhelming in the batter, but you can barely taste the apple in the muffins, so I'd use that much again. Although the "crumb" topping was runny at first and seems to have be absorbed back into the muffins, I will definitely make these again-- just using my own crumb topping instead.

Leftovers and quinoa coffee cake

I've been so excited about cooking, with so many ideas running through my head, that the refrigerator is now full to the brim with leftovers. Last night we needed a quick meal before heading off to a meeting, so I took advantage of the ready-made food. We finished off the last of the tomato bisque from Tal Ronen's The Conscious Cook and I made grilled cheese with FYH cheddar, Papa G's BBQ tofu, and spinach. I used the end of the "new French bread" from the previous night-- sliced like a sub roll for maximum filling surface area-- for Erik's sandwich.

The seminar let out early and I still had lots of cooking energy. Since quinoa has been such a success for us, I decided to try the quinoa coffee cake in The Gluten Free Vegan. I had my eye on the recipe when I made quinoa Yumm bowls the other night, but as soon as I read the recipe (trying to do more of that before I start into it!) I saw that it's quinoa flour, not the whole grain. Luckily I am fully stocked on flours.

The recipe was straightforward with minimal steps and quite healthy with quinoa, applesauce, and agave instead of sugar. Except for the topping, which uses brown sugar. I subbed in oats for the nuts, as I love their texture in coffee cake. I also added allspice and freshly grated nutmeg-- always when it's just cinnamon called for.

It was difficult to go to bed without tasting the results, the warm smell of cinnamon wafting up the stairs to taunt us in bed. I even woke up with hunger pangs around 4am. Luckily, the excitement of waking to fresh coffee cake made the morning more welcome, and it was worth the wait. The cake is moist, springy and absolutely delicious. I can't wait to try more recipes from the book.

Chicken noodle soup (and French bread!)

First things first-- I made bread today! This was my first attempt at gluten-free bread after many, many trips to various grocery stores for strange items like vegan gelatin, white rice flour (I only had brown), soy milk powder (found after the dough was already mixed), navy bean flour (never found)... the list goes on.

Partly I was overwhelmed by the desire to try a few different recipes at once, but I finally settled on making "New French Bread" in Bette Hagman's The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread (thank you, Ann!). For all of the recipes I've found so far, you first make batches of custom flour mixes. Only then can you follow the recipe. I am so bad at reading ahead and following directions that I had a really hard time with this. Once I buckled down, wrote out a shopping list, and went to two different stores today for last-minute stray ingredients, it really wasn't difficult.

Gluten-like strands form in the dough during a three minute session in the stand mixer, thanks to the gelatin. You have to hand-form the dough, which doesn't smooth out at all in baking. I used the trick of placing a container with 2 cups of water in the oven and spraying water onto the hot oven walls every 8 minutes or so. The steam helps to crisp up the crust, and it really worked here. The result was a soft, chewy center and a lovely snappy crust-- delicious dipped in an attempt at making homemade Yumm sauce (more on that later).

On to today's recipe. Erik came home from a long day at work not feeling well. It's been a wet and very windy past few days, which can only mean one thing-- time for soup!

Chicken noodle soup

vegan, gluten-free

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp olive oil


• 1 onion, chopped


• 2 carrots, chopped small


• 1 celery stalk, chopped small


• 2 garlic cloves, run through the garlic press or minced


• 1 package of vegan, wheat free chicken nuggets, torn into bite-size pieces
  
  I found Kuan Yin Hsiang Vegetarian Diet Co vegetarian chicken nuggets (see photo here) at my local Asian mega-mart


• 1/2 tsp ground coriander


• 1/2 tsp ground cumin


• 1/2 tsp ground mustard


• 1/2 tsp celery salt


• 1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary


• 1 tsp chopped fresh oregano


• 1 tbsp miso (could be white or red, something mellow)


• 1/4 cup cooking sherry, white wine, or mirin


• 3 cups vegetable stock or broth


• 1/3 cup frozen green peas


• 1/2 cup chickpeas, drained and rinsed (optional)
  
  I only added these because I used half the can in something else, and they were sitting out. You could use any number of other beans here like cannellini, navy or other white beans.


• 1 package of gluten-free spaghetti, roughly broken into 4" lengths (I like the stuff made with quinoa)

Directions

• Heat oil in a big stock pot, add onions and saute til translucent, about 5 minutes.


• Add carrots and celery, saute 2 minutes. Add garlic, saute 1 minute.


• Add faux chicken (or favored protein), turn up the heat, and saute til the bottom of the pot begins to stick and brown a bit.


• Add all of the spices and miso, mix thoroughly.


• Add the sherry/wine/mirin to deglaze (scrape off those brown stuck bits).


• Pour in the stock and add about 3 cups of water. There should be a little more broth-to-chunky ratio than you want in the end product, as the soup will thicken. Mix well.


• Add peas and beans if using, then cover. While soup is coming to a low boil, make the pasta. Be very careful not to overcook pasta-- if anything, slightly undercook it.


• Soup should simmer for about 15 minutes, stirred often. When it thickens a bit and the flavors meld, salt to taste and add drained, rinsed pasta. Serve with a sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper.