Peanut butter bowl cake!

Mug cakes! Made in a bowl!

One Egg + 4 tablespoons PB + a handful of butterscotch chips + 3 tablespoons flour (this is a mix of cornstarch and oat flour because I'm GF) + 1-2 tablespoons sweetener.

Mix up that egg real well.

Add in those scoops.

Mix that up real well!

Mix in the sugar and the flour (which I forgot to take a picture of, but is there).

Throw in the mixins.

Microwave for 1 minute to 1 minute 15 seconds.

Comes out looking about the way it went in, but you can touch the top and see that it's solid now.

Leave it to sit for a few minutes; by the time it's an eat-able temperature, it should also be evenly cooked throughout.

Yum!

For a moister cake, use less flour, or add a little butter or oil. For a fluffier cake, you can add some baking powder, about 1/8th a teaspoon. If you use a flour that has stretch to it, it'll be fluffier, too.

So there you have it! Mostly protein, but it tastes like cake! Not low-fat or low-cal, but fast and yummy and filling.

GF Experiments - All-corn cornbread!

Hey, look how these are not TOTALLY horrible pictures! I'm learning, little by little, to make them better.

Anyway, this is all-corn cornbread! Naturally gluten free and super-simple to make, and totes tasty. I found the recipe here at Plan To Eat, and I made it to a tee--no changes, so I'll not repeat it here in case that's stealing or something. But I AM going to give lots of notes.

The first time I made the CB, I made it in an 8x8 glass baking dish (the same one I used for the Crispies, actually), and I used yellow corn meal because that's what's usually used for cornbread, and it was tasty--but the grind was coarser than something I would strictly call 'flour'. It was much finer than grits, but not so powdery as flour usually is, and the heavier bits of corn sank down to the bottom so that the bottom was denser than the top, a little polenta-y, and the eggs sort of floated to the top and formed, like, a custard skin. It was tasty as all get-out, but it's so not what I intended and it's not at all what the recipe said.

I ate that one with butter and syrup instead of having a waffle when we had Breakfast For Dinner. I think it would be amazing with, like, green chilis and cheese mixed in, and maybe roasted red peppers; they'd sort of float with the eggs and milk and make it like a quiche-cornbread.

This time, I made it with the white corn, because it was a finer mill, and cooked it in a muffin tin. They came out of the oven puffy, but by the time they were cooled enough to come out, they had all sunken down in the middle--and you know what, that's fine. Because now they're like little yum-shells. The same dense, corn flavor, though a little milder with the white corn, and none of the separation that happened with the yellow. These are good with sweet and savory fillings--I did blackberry jam, nutella and cream cheese--are chewy without being weird, warm up beautifully, are dense but not hard or hard to eat, and two or three make a perfect mid-morning mini-meal.

Because they're made of mostly eggs and milk (the recipe is two cups of milk and two eggs), they're loaded with protein and really satisfying.

I used honey the first time, like the recipe says, and brown sugar the second, and didn't detect any difference in sweetness; they're barely sweet at all, really.

There's leavener in here, but no gluten to hold the fluffiness in; I'm thinking of subbing some of the corn flour for, like, brown and sweet rice, maybe, and see if that lightens it up more. Although, being this dense makes it a perfect base for heavier things like chili or stew or ratatouille or something--I think I'll make a batch in the jellyroll pan and see how it comes out baked in a thin slab for putting dinners on. Or I'll bake it in a bread pan and then pan-fry the slices and top THEM.

mmm, saucy things on top of starches...

The recipe says you can make it with water instead of milk to make it vegan, and that has my wondering if I could sub in other liquids. Like, can I make it with juice? I think orange juice with orange zest would be good. Apple juice would probably be good, too, and I could add cinnamon and some chopped nuts. Could I make it with two cups of strong tea and more sugar, and call it a literal tea-cake? I bet lemon and milk would make a sort of lemony buttermilk thing that I could add zest and poppyseeds to, also...

One of my favorite things ever is a simple recipe because of questions like these, questions that boil down to "how versatile can I make this stuff, and in how many different flavors?"

Do you have a favorite cornbread recipe? Share it in the comments! What would you do with this one?

Gluten Free Me - Day 1

Breakfast today was the famous / ubiquitous GF banana pancakes! It was super easy: mash up one banana, mix well with two eggs, add cinnamon, a half teaspoon baking powder, and four tablespoons quick oats and cook like any other pancakes!

As you can see, they came out browner than a regular pancakes, too, and they don't really have exactly a pancake texture, but it's close--remarkably close! And it's tasty, too! This recipe made six (well, five and a weensie one) pancakes and I ate three for breakfast and three for afternoon tea*, both times with a light smear of peanut butter--probably a tbsp total, each time.

They are a little bland; they'd probably had more flavor naturally if my banana was, like, two days riper and if my eggs were free-range and farm-raised and therefore already had more flavor, but those are expensive eggs. I think I'll add a pinch of salt, more cinnamon and maybe just a teaspoon of brown sugar next time.

And this recipe is so simple it feels like it should be wildly customizable-- I want to try it with other fruits instead of bananas, with other grains or none at all, with peanut butter inside or Nutella or almond butter, with a scoop of cocoa, with nuts... 

This is exactly the sort of recipe I love--one so easy it's more of a method than a real recipe and therefore way open for modification. And it's delicious!

First Attempt at GF Cooking = Rousing Success

You guys, this was the best thing I've had in ages. I haven't officially started the Plan until tomorrow, but I wanted to have sort of a dry run, to see if it's as easy as I want it to be--and this was the result:

And it was so good. I mean, I've never fried a tomato OR poached an egg, and both came out exactly how I wanted them to! How often does that happen? Not often, lemme tell you.

Here's what I did:

- While the water was warming up for the egg, I dry-pan-toasted two all-corn tortillas until they had crispy brown bits. When they came out, I spread each one with a little recaito.*

- About this time, the water was at a low simmer, so I made a whirlpool in it and dropped the egg in**, and let it just cook without messing with it for a few.

- When the pan from the tortillas was free, I threw in maybe a tablespoon of olive oil and fried the tomatoes with salt, pepper and oregano until they looked caramelized.I just thick-sliced a whole tomato because I didn't have any plastic wrap to save an uncooked half.

- About halfway through cooking the toms, I pulled the egg out and let it sit in the slotted spoon over the warm water while I finished.

- Then I topped the tortillas with the tomatoes and then the egg, threw a little more salt, pepper and oregano on it, took these pictures, and then literally cleaned my plate in about four minutes.

How had I lived all my life without this? It's so simple, it's fabulous, and it doesn't have a fried egg, which I don't like!

I made it sort of small because I wasn't sure how it'd turn out and if I'd like it, but it was so delicious I wish I'd made double the amount! I think next time I'm going to sautée some peppers and onions for between the tortillas, and maybe add some sour cream or a white-cheese crumble, but that all would just be gravy--this was damned near perfect as is!

Notice where I literally cleaned my plate.

Whether I stay GF or not, this is staying in my rotation.

Notes:

* If you don't know about recaito, you've been seriously missing out. It's a Hispanic wet seasoning mix of garlic, cilantro and piles of other stuff and it makes everything better.

** The second egg, since the first one was dumped out on the counter when I dropped the recaito knife into it and then had to clean it up. You know what's not easy to clean off a counter? Spilled egg! It wobbles and slides and doesn't absorb. Which is why the second tortilla was a little over-toasted. But that just makes it taste more like delicious delicious corn!