Happy Birthday Matt - Yellow Cake with Dark Chocolate Icing

I made my first gluten free cake this past Friday for Matt's birthday - I think this is the first cake I've actually made from scratch and it turned out really well! :)
I was a little hesitant to try a bread-like recipe after the disaster gluten free pizza, but I made sure to measure all of the ingredients perfectly, and this time the batter turned out just fine.

The recipe includes gluten free all purpose flour, xanthan gum, vanilla, lots of butter (2 sticks!), sugar, and some eggs. It was pretty easy to follow except that I had to beat the butter & sugar for 8 minutes!! When you are holding an egg beater, 8 minutes goes by so so slowly. I only made it to 5 minutes and called it done. Thankfully the recipe still turned out. :)

The recipe called for me to use two round cake pans, but I was short on time and so I decided to go with the McGarity cake classic - the bundt pan. I love me a good bundt cake! It's easy to make (just pour in) and then when it's finished, you have a nice design that looks like it took more effort than it did, and as an added plus it's super easy to ice.

I also made the dark chocolate icing from scratch - I made wayyy too much which is still sitting in our fridge. :) This recipe was also pretty easy to make - another 2 sticks of butter (I just realized I went through an ENTIRE PACKAGE of butter making this cake...) confectioners sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla, semi-sweet chocolate chips, and light cream. Add all ingredients and beat together until it is light and fluffy like icing - easy peasy. :)

Here is a picture of the cake - ready for the candles to be lit!! (All 33 of them!! WOW!)


We celebrated Matt's birthday up in Eagles Mere where there was about 3 inches of snow on the ground - beautiful! We haven't gotten that much snow here this year which is fine by me, but I always love snow at Eagles Mere. It still has that beautiful white color and hasn't turned brown yet from the cars and plows. Though Amara (our dog) did her best to turn some of it yellow. :)

Matt had lots of work to do on a super important paper over the weekend so Ellen and I hung out with her super cool Aunt Lindsay and Uncle Owen. It was a really special visit for us because it was the first time that I really felt like Ellen bonded with them - I think that she's been too young up until now to really enjoy being with her Aunts and Uncles - even at Christmas and New Years she was shy around everyone. I think she is finally done with her separation anxiety (which for Ellen was separation TERROR) and is starting to get to know and enjoy the company of other adults that she doesn't see everyday. She spent a good amount of the weekend cuddled with Lindsay reading books and talking. It was the sweetest thing and made me so happy to see! :) Uncle Owen won her over by flying her in the air which she adored!

Here is Ellen about to take a hike around the lake with Uncle Owen!


While we were at Eagles Mere I started work on a new project in the nursery! The wallpaper, which was adorable and lasted forever (30 years!) was getting old and needed to be replaced. This weekend I tore down the wallpaper - which amazingly took only about 10 minutes - it was put up so well that it came down so easily. Thank goodness! I then sanded and cleaned the walls, and then Owen and Lindsay helped me prime them. Next visit I will put up an adorable animal border with hippos, elephants, cats, monkeys, etc. and above the border I am going to paint blue, and below I'm going to paint green, kind of like the sky and the grass. I think that it will look adorable and I'm really excited to finish!

Here is the room before I started:


Here are the sheep that Ellen adores, I feel kind of bad that I took them down - every time we went in that room she would yell "BAAAAAA" at them!


And here is the room without the wallpaper! I forgot to take a picture of the room after it was primed, but it looks really good.



Wow this was a long post, kudos if you made it this far! I think this is another freezer week for us, I've got a bunch of beet soup stored away and we are still trying to finish tacos I made over the weekend, hopefully I'll get to try another new GF recipe this weekend.

Gluten Free Pizza

I think this was my favorite recipe so far. WOW was it delicious. The gluten free crust was just out of this world. It turned out soft inside and crispy on the outside, and had a great flavor that really complimented the rest of the pizza and toppings. I think that the secret was in the Italian seasoning added to the dough - yum!

So while the finished product turned out amazing... getting there was a nightmare!! I decided to double the recipe and make two pizzas, and maybe this is where I went wrong, it is possible that I didn't double an ingredient or two? I swear I doubled everything but I can't be sure. The directions say to beat the flour, xanthan gum, italian seasoning, yeast, vinegar maybe, I forget the exact ingredients, until the dough forms a nice ball. I'm beating and beating and this dough is not anywhere close to resembling a "ball" of dough. Its wayyy too liquidy.

Here is a picture of what the egg beaters looked like when I was done. They should not have been dripping with dough.


The next instruction was to take the "ball" of dough and knead it on a rice floured surface. I should have stopped to think, hey, this dough is no where near being ready to knead, something went wrong! What I did instead is pour the dough, which actually had the consistency of cake batter onto a floured cutting board. The dough, which was basically in liquid form, starts creeping off the cutting board as I stupidly stick my hands into it and start trying to knead it. Kneading it was a disaster and obviously did nothing to turn this liquidy dough into a ball shape! In desperation I grabbed the bag of rice flour and started dumping large amounts of flour onto the dough, I probably added at least two cups of flour which is pretty significant and supports my theory that I forgot to double something (probably flour!) In the end after adding a ton of flour, I was able to kind of turn the dough in to a ball, at least I was able to get it into a bowl so that it could rise.

After the initial disaster fortunately the rest of the recipe went pretty smoothly. The dough rose for about 30 minutes and then I was able to split it into two pieces for my two pizzas! I baked the dough to set it for about 6 minutes, and then added tomato sauce (Cento's in the yellow can is the best, no added sugar!) cheese, tomato slices, basil, and of course pepperoni!!! It baked for about 15 minutes and was the best pizza that I've had in a long time. I really think that the Italian seasoning in the crust was the secret to a great taste!!

Here is the finished product:



Ellen helped me cook - here she is at the table - she was so good and sat there the entire time playing with a bowl and measuring spoons! She is doing great and learning new words every day - a few of her current favorites are: turtle, purple, hot tea, two, burp, beep and now she can say her friend Emma's name which is so sweet. :)




I highly recommend this pizza, so let me know if you want the recipe!! :)

Freezer Week

So its been a freezer week in the Woodruff household. I was running out of room in our deep freezer and fridge freezer so I decided it was time to take a break from cooking and eat from what we already had. I occasionally make double of whatever I'm making, so we had a good choice of yummy meals stocked away. On Monday we had beet soup, Tuesday and Wednesday turkey taco night, Thursday was meatloaf and butternut squash (which Matt ate Friday as well, I got to go out to eat at Otto's, more on that later!) and then tonight (Saturday) we had Bocca burgers and sweet potato fries. So even though we were eating from the freezer, we didn't do too badly! :)

Friday I had a girls night with a few friends, we went to visit newborn twin baby girls, and then out to dinner. The twins were so so sweet and so small, and made me miss having a newborn so much. I think when Ellen was that size I was just focused on feeding her and sleeping as much as possible, and I didn't stop to just admire how tiny and perfect she was. Its also nice to see newborns and then be able to hand them back and go out to dinner which I definitely could not do when Ellen was first born!! :)

Last weekend Matt and I spent our first night together away from Ellen! My parents came up for the weekend to watch her and we went to Hershey for a night. We stayed in this awesome B&B on a horse farm, it was amazing and so relaxing. We drove to Hershey Saturday morning, did the Chocolate Factory tour stuff, which was awesome, Matt and I (two engineers!) were actually convinced that they were making chocolate and were sad to hear after the tour/ride that it was all a simulation. I guess the talking cows should have given it away. Ellen would LOVE the tour, especially the cows, so we'll have to take her back this summer when the amusement park is open too. After the Chocolate Factory, we checked into our B&B and spent the afternoon drinking wine & beer and playing board games. The B&B had a fridge full of complimentary wine & beer - score! We then found an Italian restaurant with a gluten free menu for dinner! It was a great day.

Here are a few pictures from our weekend:

Our B&B:


Horse Farm!


Chocolate Tasting (Matt and I got our "masters" in Chocolate Tasting)


Yum!



This week I promise to try some new recipes! On the menu is gluten free pizza, and a southwestern chicken & quinoa dish, hopefully quinoa will win me over this time! :)

Quinoa & Roasted Corn

Before making this dish I had never eaten Quinoa...and now that I have... well it doesn't taste bad, and yet it doesn't really taste great. There is something about the texture that weirds me out. Also it kind of comes apart when you cook it.. and then there are these little stringy things all over the dish. This dish happened to have black beans in it, and when the quinoa fell apart onto the black beans, it kind of made it look like the beans had eyes... gross.

So now that I've convinced you that this was the best dish ever... I'm sure you'll run right out and buy some quinoa and corn. :) No seriously it actually did taste good once it was all together. The roasted corn was delicious, as were all of the other ingredients. I was able to hide a head of cabbage from our farm share and some leftover frozen cauliflower in it, so it had that going for it!

Here are the basic steps of the recipe: Cook the quinoa. I added too much water by accident and it came out super soggy. Don't do that. :) Then, saute the veggies: corn (frozen or fresh), green onions, regular onion. Add to quinoa, then add in chopped tomatoes (cherry or plum), black beans, and any other (cooked) veggies you want to add. This is where I added my cabbage and cauliflower. Mix well. Take some lime juice (or balsamic vinegar if you forget limes at the grocery store), olive oil, cumin, a tiny bit of sugar, and black pepper, mix this dressing together. Add the dressing to the quinoa mixture and serve warm or cold!

To make this more of a whole meal, I also chopped up some cooked chicken breasts and added to the final meal. The chicken went really well with the quinoa, so even after all of my complaining, it turned out pretty well. I *might* make it again. :)

Here is the final product:


And one of Ellen today at the park - it was 60 degrees today!!! :):) Early spring??

Sweet Potato Gnocchi

So its come to my attention (thank you Matt) that I probably shouldn't be posting the recipes from my gluten free book online... something about copyright material blah blah blah... Anyway, Matt scared me by saying that if they come after me they could get $100 per PAGE VIEW, not just per recipe.. but per page view!!! (how does my husband know this?) So, I've decided to not post the entire recipe, but if you decide you want it, please comment or email me and I'll gladly send it to you!

So tonight I finally made Sweet Potato Gnocchi and it was amazing. Wow. Its one of those meals that you finish and just feel good inside! Your stomach is happy with you! :) This recipe was not hard, but it did take a good amount of time / preparation. Plus you need to have xanthan gum (see previous post!)

Here is the non-official recipe:

1. Peel Sweet potatoes, chop into medium to small pieces and then roast in a roasting pan until tender.

2. Mash sweet potatoes, and add gluten free flour, xanthan gum, nutmeg, a little sugar, salt, pepper and lemon juice. I didn't have lemon juice, so instead I added orange juice! It didn't seem to make a difference and the gnocchi didn't taste anything like oranges. :) Mix well!

3. Put a generous amount of flour onto a cutting board and your hands, and roll the sweet potato mixture into 1/2-1 inch diameter rolls. Cut the rolls into 1 inch long pieces, mark with a fork (like for peanut butter cookies) and then place on a foil lined cookie sheet. You will need a lot of flour for rolling, as the sweet potato mixture is pretty sticky.

This step takes the LONGEST and you will get flour everywhere! Wear an apron!! I did not and somehow ended up with flour all over my chest that Matt happily pointed out and laughed at me.

4. Freeze, yes freeze the gnocchi for 30 minutes.

5. Heat about 1 tablespoon of oil in a saucepan and cook the gnocchi until they are browned on both sides and heated through. I used medium-high heat which worked well. You'll need to cook them in batches, and each batch will need another tablespoon of oil. If you don't put more oil in, they will stick to each other in the pan which makes them super hard to brown evenly.

6. Drain the gnocchi on paper towels to get some of the oil out

7. Serve on top of steamed spinach. The bland flavor of the spinach goes really well with the sweet potato flavor. Amazing. :)

Here are some pictures:

On the cookie sheet


All done!

Curried Noodles and No-Wheat Brownies

So I was planning to make sweet potato gnocchi as my next GF recipe, but it turns out you need xanthan gum for the recipe, and our grocery store does not sell xanthan gum...when I went to ask customer service if they had any xanthan gum at my nearby Giant, the guy looked at me like I was crazy. He then called someone in charge of inventory maybe? who also knew nothing and had never heard of it. I was told that maybe they have it in their organic / gluten free aisle. While I acknowledge that xanthan gum is really random and most people have never heard of it... why does Giant not have a list in their computer of what items they have in stock? Maybe its just too many items for a supermarket to keep track of? I was at Kohl's the other day and asked if they had a pair of jeans and this woman pulled out a mini touch screen computer and was able to tell me that not only did they not have the jeans, but no store anywhere near us had them either. In like 5 seconds. So why can't a grocery store do that? Wouldn't it be helpful for them?

Anyway, back to the xanthan gum... :) it is going to arrive tomorrow (tues), so in the meantime I made some yummy Curried Noodles for dinner Sunday and Monday nights, and No-Wheat Brownies to take to a friend's house over the weekend.

(In case anyone is wondering, xanthan gum is used mainly in gluten free cooking to give the dough or batter a "stickiness" that would otherwise be achieved with gluten. Thank you wikipedia, so glad you are back up. :))


The No-Wheat Brownies turned out ok: really crumbly on top, in fact the entire top looked like it had caved in, but they tasted really good. I'm realizing that I should be taking some pictures of the food I am making... next recipe I will be better about this! I actually followed all of the directions on this one, and didn't substitute any random ingredients. I even went back to the store to get cornstarch and cocoa powder, braving the 6 inches of snow that we got on Saturday!

Here is the recipe:
1/4 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) margarine or butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs, lightly beaten

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8-inch square baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Combine rice flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl.

2. Melt butter / margarine in a large saucepan over low heat. Add brown sugar; cook and stir about 5 minutes or until sugar is completely dissolved and mixture is smooth. Remove from heat; sift in cocoa and stir until combined. Add flour mixture and stir until smooth. (Mixture will be thick)

3. Stir in chocolate chips and vanilla. Beat in eggs until mixture is smooth. Spoon batter into prepared pan.

Here is where I got a little confused, I think that I understood the directions to mean that I should have added everything to the saucepan. It seemed strange to me though to be adding a bunch of flour and eggs to a pan, especially when it then told me to beat in the eggs... so I just mixed them in a lot with a spoon. I was using a non-stick saucepan and didn't really want to get out my egg beater mixer. I'm just used to making brownies in a bowl! :)

4. Bake 25-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center comes out almost clean.

The baking time was accurate, and they really did taste good, they were just a little strange on top and quite crumbly, though somehow also chewy. I can't explain. Maybe they needed some xanthan gum. :)


Next up is my Curried Noodles! These turned out awesome. And made my house smell like curry for 2 days... not so awesome. They were perfect to add in extra veggies, kind of like you'd do in a stir fry. I even added in some chicken to make the noodles more of a main dish an less of a side dish, this worked great. I had to find some gluten free soy sauce which I thought would be really hard, but in fact was super easy, it turns out that the generic Giant brand of soy sauce doesn't have wheat in it! For Kikkoman's soy sauce wheat is like the first or second ingredient so it is a substantial part of the soy sauce, but Giant's soy sauce doesn't have any! Must be cheaper or something, which works for me! :) We ate this for dinner both Sunday and Monday, and it was delicious both nights. Ellen wasn't really a fan unfortunately... her tastes just haven't matured enough for curry yet I guess!

**for anyone who truly can't eat gluten with celiac's disease, I bet that the giant soy sauce is not completely gluten free, so you might want to find an actual gluten free soy sauce. For me, almost gluten free is good enough.**

Here is the recipe:

7 oz thin rice noodles (rice vermicelli) I used regular gluten free rice spaghetti noodles because that is what we had in our cupboard, but I'm sure the Asian rice noodles would be even better.
1 tablespoon peanut or vegetable oil (I used olive oil)
1 large red bell pepper, cut into short thin strips
2 green onions, cut into 1/2 inch pieces (I just used a whole bunch of green onions)
1 clove garlic, minced (you could use more garlic here too)
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger (I used dried ginger, but only used 1/2 tsp, I think that dried ginger is more concentrated than fresh ginger)
2 teaspoons curry powder (I can still smell it!)
1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (I skipped this, sorry Matt!)
1/2 cup vegetable broth (probably could use water if you don't have this)
2 tablespoons gluten-free soy sauce (try generic!)

1. Place noodles in large bowl, cover with hot water, soak 15 to 20 minutes or until soft. Drain, cut in to 3 inch pieces.
Since I used just regular rice spaghetti noodles, I just followed the cooking directions on the box.

2. Heat oil in wok or large skillet over medium-high heat. Add red pepper strips, stir fry 3 minutes.

3. Add green onions, garlic and ginger, stir fry 1 minute. Add curry powder and red pepper flakes, stir fry 1 minute.

4. Add broth and soy sauce, cook and stir 2 minutes. Add noodles cook and stir 3 minutes or until heated through.

The cooking times do not have to be exact. I was feeding Ellen dinner as I was making this and really didn't watch the clock at all since she was either asking for more food, or to have her hands cleaned off.. or to get down. So... with all of that who knows how long I cooked anything... but it still turned out great. :)


If you made it this far in my long post... here are a few pictures of Ellen from our weekend of snow!! She was not a huge fan but did enjoy being pulled around in her sled. :)



We decided its time for Ellen to start helping out around here:


All done! Good job Ellen! :)


Swinging in the snow!

Crustless Ham & Asparagus Quiche (Substituted Spinach and Cauliflower for Asparagus)

First gluten free recipe made today! And it was a delicious success even though I deviated from the recipe quite a bit! :) I chose this recipe because we have about 2 dozen eggs in the fridge that need to be used up, and I had most of the ingredients at home which was helpful because Ellen was napping, so no time to go to the store! Also quiche is a great dish to hide extra vegetables in, which helped me get to my goal of 3 servings of leafy veggies a day! Unfortunately I didn't have any asparagus... one of the main ingredients in this dish! I went through our deep freezer and found some frozen cauliflower and frozen spinach, a little strange, but it turned out awesome.

First I steamed the frozen spinach, it was one that you can steam in the bag, so that was super easy. Then I microwaved the cauliflower until it was tender. I chopped up a red bell pepper and also microwaved it for about a minute. It was crisp, not tender. I mixed up the gluten free flour, milk, and eggs, and then added the cauliflower, pepper, and spinach. The spinach pretty much took over the mixture which worried me a little, but in the end it turned out fine. The quiche was definitely very spinachy, but not in a bad way! :) I also added salt and ground black pepper, and then I poured the mixture into two 9-inch pie plates. I decided to double the recipe to use up the eggs and because I had so much spinach. And now I have one in my freezer for later! :)

Before putting the quiche in the oven, I shredded some cheese on top. The recipe calls for swiss cheese, but Matt hates swiss cheese and I didn't have any. I substituted monterey jack and it was fine. I imagine any cheese on top of quiche would be good! :)

The quiches baked for about 45 minutes, I was almost late to work because I didn't account for needing extra time to bake two of them. The recipe calls for 35 minutes.

We each had two slices of the very spinachy quiche for dinner and it was delicious and healthy!! I will definitely make this recipe again. Maybe next time I'll try to use asparagus. :)



Here is the recipe:
2 cups sliced asparagus
(I substituted about 1 cup cauliflower, 2 cups spinach)
1 red bell pepper, finely chopped
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons rice flour
3 eggs
1 cup chopped ham
2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon or basil (I skipped b/c I didn't have any)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup finely shredded swiss cheese (any cheese is probably good)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine asparagus, bell pepper and 1 tablespoon water in microwavable bowl. Cover with waxed paper, microwave on HIGH 2 minute or until vegetables are crisp-tender. Drain.

2. Whisk milk and rice flour in large bowl. Whisk in eggs until well blended. Stir in vegetables, ham, tarragon, salt and black pepper. Pour into 9-inch pie plate.

3. Bake 35 minutes. Sprinkle cheese over quiche; bake 5 minutes or until center is set and cheese is melted. Let stand 5 minutes before serving. (I put the cheese on by accident before baking at all. To make sure the cheese didn't over-brown, I mixed the cheese in with the quiche mixture before putting in the oven.)


Enjoy! I'm sure you can substitute in whatever veggies you'd like, that's the beauty of quiches! :) I've decided I like this cook book, at least from this first recipe. The ingredients and directions are simple and easy to follow. Most ingredients I had, I didn't absolutely have to go to the grocery store to get anything, which is helpful since the best time to cook is when Ellen is sleeping! I think next I will try sweet potato gnocchi, I have a few sweet potatoes in the fridge that need to be used up. Yum!