Archive for the ‘Desserts’ Category
Several weeks ago I went back to Woodlands Wellness for my annual blood testing. This time, as in years past, I had to fast–no food or anything besides water for 12 hours before the blood is drawn. What does this mean?
GAWD was I hungry. And I let them know about it! I hate them starving blood tests.
Woodlands Wellness’ office (including stationery and all that) is decorated in a peacock theme, with a beautiful teal blue and black color scheme. There are also pictures of peacocks in many places, including the exam rooms.
What do you see when you get that hungry with these peacocks all over the place? One word.
POULTRY.
The followup meeting was on 11/6 to check in with Dr. Davis, and I ‘fessed up about that comment, even though I told everyone, “Don’t tell her I said that!”
Just ’cause I could, I made a couple of things to bring to The Doctor, in keeping with the peacock theme:
The big round fabric bowl is called “Hold Anything” from a book called Pretty Little Presents. LOVE that book, I’ve made at least a dozen of those, I’m sure, and given away many of them. I have six hanging around here holding stuff, and I keep making more to give away. (Hint: projects like this use up fabric, turns it into something useful for someone, and keeps it out of landfills.) This one was special, because it *had* to have peacocks. Both came out great, and I was able to give Dr. Davis a nice useful present.
And look what I saw when I was leaving:
See? They really do hold anything.
Additionally, to use up more fabric (including the peacock prints) I included the Petit Pochet from Pretty Little Pouches and Purses. Again, made many and given them away, although I did keep a couple for myself, and Dr. Davis can keep business cards in that one. (That’s what I’ve got in mine.)
Second place: The Woodlands Mall, as I mentioned recently, for a trip inside Oil & Vinegar, a wonderful little place I’ve written about before. Needless to say, I am still wowed, and appreciate them checking out this space from time to time. And nevermind how much money I spent in there, either.
A trip to The Woodlands would not be complete without a stop at Frost Bake Shoppe, who makes the BEST gluten-free cupcakes ever. And, yes, this chocolate-mint confection is indeed gluten-free. Ahhhh. . .this will hold you over for a while. . . .
There were, ah, pumpkin cupcakes in gluten free, but the one I wanted was the peppermint frosted cake. Oh, YEAH. I ate it with a knife and fork, and they even have their own bottled water! (I refilled that one with some of that good Woodlands water for the trip home.)
I’m not exactly sure how I got the picture that big, but OK..
I also stopped at Trader Joe’s for a few things, and then Sweet Tomatoes for dinner on the way home.
It was a long day, and a nice little short vacation for a while. Maybe after Christmas when things settle I’ll head up there on a Saturday. My doctor visits aren’t until April or May, so I might need to buzz up there for a gluten-free cupcake fix.
Ahhh. . .
Happy Dining!
Trick or treat! Happy Halloween, everybody!
Tonight is the night that all the little monsters will be out prowling and mooching munchies off their respective unsuspecting neighborhoods. Well, not really unsuspecting, just slightly surprised. Mostly, I would be surprised if someone actually came to my door. I don’t know where my Catwoman costume is. Or if I can zip up the jumpsuit part.
Having been an avid participant myself back in the day, I have to say it certainly was enjoyable when someone would drop a little chocolate something in my plastic pumpkin carrier. I did not sew back in the day, and certainly didn’t know enough to make a sophisticated costume. But me and my brother knew how to say, “Trick or Treat!”
We mostly went to my grandmother’s neighborhood in Arabi, La., in St. Bernard Parish (Chalmette is next door) where Katrina left a lot of damage in 2005. I haven’t been back since I evacuated for Hurricane Ike in 2008, so I’m sure it probably looks about the same as it did the day the water receded. You were also treated to stories about Hurricane Betsy, which wreaked havoc in 1965, which people probably talked about up until Katrina. I’m guessing.
So the most sophisticated candy we ever saw was a Three Musketeers, Hershey bars with almonds, Snickers—stuff like that. Today’s Wall Street Journal article talks about the gourmet upscaling of candy in general, particularly Halloween candy. Why? That sort of thing is for adults; gourmet anything is generally lost on kids. (Unless “Mom” is Tyler Florence or Giada de Laurentiis.)
This article explains more. Once again, the comments are hilarious:
I get so tired of these bozos tinkering with basics. Leave the candy, cakes, pies, colas, and grilled cheese sandwiches alone. The vast majority of consumers are happy with the originals and making an M&M that is flavored with mocha latte bacon crème truffle isn’t going to increase your profits.
The next comment: “Can I get that in decaf?”
Last year about this time, one of my many writer friends (I think it was K in West Texas) posted a picture from some period-piece movie or TV show with a knight holding a sword. The caption read: “Brace yourself for everything pumpkin flavored.” And she wasn’t kidding. How many things have you seen with pumpkin in it, or just flavored? You know it will be going away the day after Thanksgiving, in favor of Christmas-y flavors like peppermint chocolate, and pumpkin flavored/scented items will be half off at nearly every store in America.
About a month or so ago, I was prowling in that lovely SuperTarget down in League City on a Sunday afternoon, when I stopped by a demo desk where M&M’s for Halloween were being sampled. They tasted funny. I only ate one little cup, which only held 4 or 5 of the little things. There was no attendant, but when she came back, I asked her what was wrong with the M&M’s. She said, “they’re pumpkin flavored for Halloween.”
EEEEWWWWWW!! Might as well have been eggplant or soybeans in them. YUCK. Never touched them again, and had I known, I wouldn’t have tossed all of them in my mouth expecting rich chocolate goodness that I became accustomed to. (Plus a lot of those flavorings contain no pumpkin.) They really tasted like they were sour or had gone bad.
I don’t *dislike* pumpkin, mind you, I just don’t think it works with chocolate. I mean, don’t mess with the Food of the Gawds, OK? It’s CHOCOLATE, for heaven’s sake, leave it alone and stop messing with it!
Remind me to tell you the story of M&M’s one day. A man I know named John Forde likes to tell the story at Bootcamp and in his newsletter. It’s pretty interesting. M&M’s have had the same successful advertising slogan for a lot of years, and it works.
Of course, there’s Starbucks’s Pumpkin flavored something or other (which contains no actual pumpkin.) The other side of that house, Seattle’s Best, also has a pumpkin flavored something with ORANGE whipped cream on top. Look, just brew me a decaf, OK? Pumpkin and coffee. . .um, no. Unless you like that sort of thing. Just sounds too weird for me, and I’m adventurous about stuff like that.
Pumpkin (in any form) wasn’t something we grew up with. In fact, I only had pumpkin pie when I visited someone else’s place, or when I was an adult, I bought or made it myself. I can’t say that I have a favorite recipe for pumpkin pie, but I do have a pretty darn good pumpkin cheesecake recipe or two that I like. I think there’s a recipe for gluten free in one of my books, too. Since you can buy canned pumpkin all year around, and not just the so-called “pumpkin pie filling,” there’s no reason to wait until the fall to enjoy some of it. Muffins, cheesecakes, whatever, you can have it all year long. It’s just that the fresh pumpkins are ripe in the fall, hence the fall connotation.
And I even have a pumpkin funny—my longtime friend P from elementary/jr. high school was once given a pumpkin for her and her sister to carve. Being little kids, they paid no attention to what they were doing, and just dumped the seeds in the backyard. About a year later, all these weird little things started growing. P’s father started asking questions, like, “What the heck is growing in my backyard?” To which P enthusiastically answered, “They’re little pumpkins, Daddy!” P was thrilled, Dad was not.
If I’m ever lucky enough to get me a rural property, I’ll have a pumpkin pickin’ for anyone who wants one. Except M, who left a mysterious Halloween pumpkin on my doorstep last year. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to grow one the size of a Mack truck and win a prize or something. Think of it—“Winner of this year’s giant pumpkin award, the entry from the Heat Cage Kitchen!”
OK, just a dream. But you never know.
I have to admit I’ve never cooked fresh pumpkin, but I understand it’s wonderful. Can’t go wrong with it, but cooking fresh pumpkin is a long, laborious process. Maybe one day if/when I retire. <snicker>
Pumpkin can be incorporated into a number of desserts, and even non-desserts, if you’re a real fan of it. Again, I like it, but don’t love it, so I gotta have a good recipe for myself before I attempt to do anything with it. You can experiment and tell me about it. I do know that we in Texas can buy Central Market brand frozen pumpkin tortellini in most HEB stores, but since I’m now wheat/gluten-free, I won’t be trying it unless I can figure out how to make it myself.
Oh, and sometimes vets will recommend adding pumpkin to cat food for different reasons, like getting medicine into a cat. Good luck with that! That was the fastest way to get Catmandu to run away from his food. Dogs will eat anything. . .cats, not so much, although Jezebel the step-kitty did try to much on a rice cake last night. (That was funny.)
Well, anyway, enjoy whatever kind of candy you like tonight, and remember, if they don’t come a knockin’, it’s all yours. Tomorrow, it all goes 50% off, so stock that freezer if you have regular costumed visitors.
Enjoy!
Good evening:
Regular readers of this humble blog may remember the chocolate-laden, gluten free post I re-blogged last week from fellow foodie writer Sophie James, who writes a very elegant blog called Stories from the Stove. Of course, that’s where the similarity ends, because mine is. . .less elegantly written. But that’s OK, I get my point across, and that’s a nice gluten-free cake she’s got there.
I’m going to tell you about another chocolate cake in a minute, and the story that’s attached. In a minute. Because, it was my BIRTHDAY.
This week marks a number of starts. First, I have switched phone companies and now have an iPhone 4s. I really didn’t want a Smartphone, because I see how dumb it makes people. But I was missing too much important email; people and companies assume everyone has one, so it became a necessity. I’ve loaded it up with lots of cool apps, including one from east coast grocery chain Publix, which includes a nice grocery list function. It’s free and really handy, although it can be a little fussy. And you don’t have to go to Publix to use it! My local HEB used to have a similar thing on their website, but not anymore—and the only apps HEB has are all for HEB Mexico.) There are a number of free grocery list apps available for the iPhone, but I’ve been using the Publix grocery list for a couple of years on the PC, so I decided to stick with that one.
Once in a while, I actually make a real, live phone call with my iPhone. Go figure!
I also take comfort in the fact that people who are considered geniuses have very messy desks. That’s why you’re not seeing pictures of mine. Ever.
Also this week for my music fans, Def Leppard’s CD/DVD set of their Viva Hysteria concerts in Las Vegas earlier this year was released this week. If you buy it from Amazon, they also have something called “AutoRip” where you can download the audio for free, right away, and import it directly into iTunes before your hard copy arrives. Mostly I want to see the concert video, since I couldn’t get to Vegas to see these five handsome UK males (and they didn’t come to Houston this year) so that will be next week. I also have their previous live CD Mirrorball, and kept up with their shows on Facebook, so I kind of know what to expect. If you’re a fan—and yes, I am—you can read more on DefLeppard.com.
Yeah, I know, it’s not foodie related. But it’s new. And it’s Def Leppard. RAOW.
The current diet phase is over, and I’ve lost ten pounds. Woo hoo! Should have been more, I tell myself, but if you don’t sleep 8 hours or so a night, and you sneak some chocolate now and again, you won’t lose as much weight. I know this because I’ve seen it myself on the daily diet charts. On the mornings where I slept less than 6 or 7 hours, I either stall or gain a bit. When I sleep enough and more or less follow the program, I drop it. Mostly I sleep in on the weekends, because there is too much to do when I get home at night. My evening task lists always start with, “feed cat. Feed big cat.” You can guess which one is the big cat.
I also ordered a case of 12 cans of Somersweet two weeks ago to stock up for a while. There was a free gift with purchase, travel sizes of some of her exclusive toxin-free hair care products. The day the box arrived, I got an email from SS’s website telling me that “Somersweet is 25% off!” Had I waited a week, I would have saved about $22.50. AAAAHHH!!! But that’s kind of the way my luck goes sometimes; I didn’t know that was coming. Darnit.
Last week was the annual Bootcamp for American Writers & Artists, Inc. (AWAI), where I’ve been for the last three years, twice on my birthday. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it this year, but will try again next year. It’s like missing the family reunion to me, but I wasn’t able to go for a handful of reasons. Keep your fingers crossed for next year. Last year they not only baked my cake, I also had 325 copywriters sing me Happy Birthday.
This year, I’m on my own. But that’s OK too.
It was also at last year’s Bootcamp that my friend Akinnyi from London, a very nice man, said to me, “well, why don’t you write a food blog?” On the way home, the ideas started to gel, and I got on WordPress a few days later. In fact, when I logged on tonight to start this blog post, WordPress had a message for me: Happy Anniversary! It was one year ago, October 29th, that I started this blog.
Foodies have been rolling their eyes ever since. Including Sophie James, I bet.
This one’s for you, Akinnyi. Thanks for the idea. I ran with it.
Since I didn’t go to Bootcamp this year, I had to bake my own birthday cake. I already knew which one it would be, because I baked it many times before. It’s the Chocolate Ganache Cake from Suzanne Somers’ original 2002 Desserts book, incorporating her newly released Somersweet in to the recipes so that delicious desserts were available to make and not give you sugar crashes or toxins from aspartame. It was a while before I tried Somersweet, but eventually I was won over, and I still buy it today, in it’s updated form.
So this cake is, indeed, gluten free, because there is absolutely no flour of any kind, no sugar, and made from basic ingredients (and Somersweet). But since Suzanne Somers Desserts was published in 2002, most people hadn’t heard the term “gluten free” unless they were suffering with celiac disease or some other reaction from wheat. In this book, it’s considered “low carb,” because that’s primarily what SS’s books were about. Sugar manifests in many forms, wheat included, since most carbs turn to sugar in your bloodstream. That sugar then stimulates the insulin response, and that’s where things can go awry, particularly with continued intake of sugar.
You may not realize this is happening until your doctor starts talking about “options for managing your diabetes.” I know this because my Dad continually ate what he was told by his doctors that would “improve his heart health,” only to later find out the hard way that none of it was true. Didn’t help his heart and didn’t prevent diabetes.
Anyway, enough of the Wheat Belly lecture.
This book was published just after Somersweet first came out in 2001, and the entire book, plus another called Chocolate, are all healthier versions of various desserts (although some may have small amounts of sugar for the times you can handle it.) This particular cake calls for a small amount, since the original Somersweet was 5x sweeter than regular sugar. Today, Somersweet is cup for cup like sugar, so I did a little reconfiguring to make it come out right.
The actual cake part is made by beating 8 eggs for several minutes with some baking soda and getting so much air into them that they bake up and come out baked as a cake. I haven’t made this one in 3 years, but it’s pretty simple to make, and works every time.
Beating eggs for 8 minutes fluffs them up for a perfect cake
You bake the cake for longer than the 15 minutes in the book. I think the new Somersweet changes that part, since it used to be just 15 minutes. But that’s OK. What you get out of the oven (using a 9 inch springform pan) looks like this:
It got a bit browner than I planned
Then you cut it into three layers, not the two I used to do:
Oops. But we can fix it
This is an extremely delicate matter, because one wrong move and the whole thing falls apart. It’s heavy and dense, so you have to have a big spatula or two to move the bottom over to the cake plate.
A trick I learned from the Barefoot Contessa recently is to put a small dollop of buttercream under the bottom layer so the cake sticks to the cake plate. I did that, and later regretted it when I put squares of wax paper underneath so I could make it without a mess. Uh, right. . .
So, I grabbed my offset spatula and got busy with it:
Filling the first layer
Filling, or repairing, the top layer
Starting the ganache process. It didn’t go well
See the wax paper squares? That was intended to keep the ganache from dripping all down the shelves of my fridge. Unfortunately, it not only facilitated dripping chocolate, it made the ganache drip outside the confines of the baking pan I put the cake plate to to contain the mess. So it made a bigger mess than it was designed to contain. It figures.
That’s what’s known as irony, if you didn’t know that before.
After that last picture, I stuck the whole thing, plus the dishes of buttercream and ganache, in the fridge to chill and thicken up a bit, hence the drips on the top shelf.
This cake recipe includes a rich chocolate buttercream filling and a very nice ganache that is poured over the whole cake. Trust me when I tell you that I do not waste a drop of it. One of the benefits of being in your own kitchen is that YOU get to lick the beaters. If you have kids around, then you have to bake when they’re not around or are otherwise occupied.
Simple chocolate ganache. Yes, thank you.
Chocolate Buttercream. Is there anything more perfect?
The finished product, ready to eat
In the end, it all worked, and while it doesn’t look quite the same as the picture in the book, it’s pretty tasty looking.
I picked up some raspberries at Kroger, and decided to up the ante a bit, because, well, I love raspberries with chocolate to begin with.
Just a little something extra to make it all mine!
Four years ago I also bought that ceramic cake plate because putting it on a dinner plate wasn’t working. Of course, on this one it’s a bit, um, earthy, so the chocolate doesn’t exactly stand out. DUH. But that’s what was available at Hobby Lobby the day I went over there. It has been collecting dust, because I’ve gone to Bootcamp the last three years and didn’t bake my own cake.
Of course, the kitchen suffered and boy did I work to get that taken care of:
The remains of the cake (after filling and frosting)
Chocolate ganache everywhere!
So, here’s what my favorite gluten free, sugar free, low-carb Somersweet chocolate birthday cake looks like when you cut a slice:
Rich. Thick. Chocolate. Any questions?
And to serve it:
OK, OK, so I flopped it on its side. It’s edible.
I did share with one of my neighbors and one of my Buddhist friends I visited the next morning. I would have shared with two of my neighbors, but the other one had surgery around her mouth and can’t chew. She got some delicious Tuscan White Bean and Garlic Soup. She didn’t want all of it, so naturally, I ate the rest this week. I gotta make me some more of that soup soon–it’s so good, and takes just about 20 minutes.
Now, it was indeed my birthday, so I headed out first to Starbucks for my free birthday drink. Want to guess what that was? Well, if you read my blog earlier this year, you’ll probably figure it was a Hazelnut Macchiato, and you’d be right. And because it was a splurge, it was my free one, and it was my birthday, I got a big one, and it went on my Starbucks card. I watched someone ring up a $4.65 cup of coffee and it went to “no charge.” However, I only do that once a year, when it’s offered. And check out the artwork on my coffee cup:
Isn’t that cool?
I then went to Denny’s for a free gluten-free Grand Slam. Well, almost free:
![IMG_0028[1]](http://heatcagekitchen.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/img_00281.jpg)
OK, so there’s the seasonal fruit cup off-camera that was 49 cents, and then the blueberries for the oatmeal was another 49 cents, and one more thing, I think, for a total of $1.61. Maybe it was the milk for the oatmeal; but still, it was pretty darn good.
Now for dinner, I decided on pizza–home made, gluten free pizza. I took out the Wheat Belly Cookbook and got to work. However, I also used a canned pizza sauce without sugar in it, as well as some delish sausages bought on sale at Cost Plus World Market. (Because it was my birthday, I had a $10 off coupon, plus they allowed me to use a 10% off purchase coupon I got in the mail. Cool!) Not bad, not bad, and I had plenty left for breakfast.
Pizza! (And half the Mango Mojito with Somersweet)
Overall, it was a pretty good day, and I even got a new shirt nearly completed too. The weather was good, the sun was out, the sky was a beautiful blue, and fortunately, everything was pretty good.
Sunday brought an old friend for dinner, and he was wowed with not only the cake but a delicious salad from Giada de Laurentiis and one of Nigella’s delicious dishes from her last book. More on that later.
Of course Monday came along, and I now live for next weekend, where I am promising myself I will not drive anywhere for anything and stay home for 48 hours. I hope so.
Enjoy!
Ok, so I realize this is cheating, but in the interest of getting good gluten-free info to my readers, I want to pass along Sophie James delicious post she uploaded today. Sophie is very correct. . .chocolate and hazelnut are a delicious combination. If you eat mixed nuts with hazelnuts in it, you get a smoke flavor that stands alone when you bite into one.
Remind me to reblog that recipe for home made Nutella later.
Happy Monday!
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you, the original, newly repackaged–TWINKIE!! Yes, ahead of their originally scheduled July 15th release date, HeatCageKitchen is proud to announce that Kroger has them now, in a separate kiosk area in the back by the milk. Well, that’s where they are in my neighborhood, anyway. No kidding, I bought a box:
The new Twinkies box. Pretty much like the old one.
I read today that Wal-Mart has them now, and when I dropped in on Kroger on the way home, I saw a handwritten sign on the front door that said, “Hostess is back!” Oh, I had to go investigate. In addition to Twinkies, they have cupcakes, Donettes, Zingers, and I think I saw Ding Dongs.
Yes, Miss Gluten-Free Health Food Nut bought Twinkies. I will admit to being an occasional hypocrite, but I don’t plan to eat the entire box myself. I do intend to share, and never buy them again.
I was under the impression that they were packets of two, as they are in convenience stores; but no, in the box, they they are individually wrapped. You see how savvy I am with these things:
One lonely wrapped Twinkie. . .
So after an accidental dinner from Carl’s Jr. (because the Chick-Fil-A I was going to has closed up, thanks for the coupon, guys), I decided to have a new, freshly baked Twinkie.
It was pretty good–cotton-soft, light, airy, creamy, and not heavily sweet. This Twinkie tastes exactly as my distant memory recalls them. They look and smell the same, too, so Twinkie and junk-food aficionados shouldn’t have anything to complain about.
Bite into it!
Seriously, I only bought some because they are kind of a big deal. Especially when the company went bankrupt and sugar addicts went bonkers over them.
The new company will have a much leaner operation, with trucks bringing all of the products to the customer’s warehouse. The outlet stores have been eliminated, and a number of other processes have been streamlined to make what is now called Hostess a more competitive company. Instead of 11 bakeries operating at 50% capacity, they have four bakeries at 85% to 90% capacity. They are also now non-union, meaning the issues that broke the last company won’t exist. For now, anyway.
And for all my IT friends, here’s a little story on how the new Hostess Brands LLC’s IT infrastructure. . .well, read the story and you’ll see how they pulled it off. THAT part is interesting, even by itself.
Fifty million Twinkies, folks. They put out 50,000,000 Twinkies, with a completely new IT infrastructure and company in six months. And some stores even got them out for sale early.
I’ll say it again–IS THIS A GREAT COUNTRY, OR WHAT??? (Not everyone gets this. And for that, we’re a proud country.)
Now, we all must pay the proverbial piper, and so I’ll be a) watching my diet all weekend, and b) hopping on the Nordic Track or gettin’ my Pilates on tonight after taking out trash, watering the HeatCageKitchen garden, and maybe tidying up a bit.
If you’re wondering what the nutrition information says, have a go at this:
You knew this was coming, right?
Two cakes are 270 calories, with 80 of them from fat. How else do they taste so good? And yes, there are three fill holes on the bottom, just like the old ones. Not too bad for junk food; candy bars are about 180 to 200 calories each, and even my favorite Larabars are about 200 calories apiece.
Granted, there is a tiny warning on the ingredient list that says it contains. . .nevermind, you read it at your own risk. And one day, we just might get those gluten-free versions. I’ll be on it and give everyone a full report.
That’s all for now, and more to come.
Happy Twinkies Friday–enjoy!!
