Frankenpizza

I miss pizza. I really do. I have been "off' pizza for a few years now. I decided to totally eliminate dairy from my diet and then cut out gluten- which basically eliminates 2/3rds of a pizza. Pizza requiers a soft, stretchy dough. This consistency really, really needs gluten and i haven't found anything that can duplicate the texture. I've tried three different kinds of pizza mix: King Arthur, Bob's Red Mill, and Pamela's. I do not recommend any of them.

Here's the Frankenpizza that came from King Arthur

The taste was okay, but it didn't reheat well at all. The texture was the closest to real pizza I've had so far but the dough was really wierd.

I didn't take a photo of the Bob's pizza. it was flat, sour and soggy.

Tonight I tried making Pamela's.

This brand came highly recommended by two non-GF eaters. It was AWFUL. The dough was pretty easy to handle and it looked really good, but it was just terrible. I think the sauce was too thin and soaked the crust, or maybe it just didn't cook through. The crust was sweet at first and ended sour.

The Yankee couldn't really stomach it, poor guy.

He gave it a fair chance and in the end, here was his dinner (looks a lot like Pizza Hut stuffed crust pizza, doesn't it)?

Delightful Chocolate Cake

This cake is absolutely and undeniably delicious. Two layers of chocolate, raspberry filling, chocolate frosting. Here are my lessons learned from this gem:

GF can be pretty expensive. This cake has 4 cups of almond flour and a few cups of agave syrup. Those two ingredients, in those amounts, cost over $15. This cake is for special occasions.

Do not buy generic frosting! I used Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines for this cake. A few weeks ago I bought store-brand frosting that had wheat in it and I was sick for about a week.

Cakes this dense should be made into layer cakes. Even in small discs, the middle collapsed- probably because of the liquids that the agave adds.

Take this cake when I really want to impress people. Because it totally does.

Oatmeal - Raisin - Cranberry Cookies

Energized by the pumpkin bars, I went back into the kitchen the next day to try another new flour. This blend is by a brand called Namaste and it's called the "Perfet Flour Blend." On the back of the package there is a recipe for these cookies.

The problem with flour blends when you're eating GF is that when there is a off-taste, it can be hard to detect what's making it taste wierd. This blend has rice flour, potatoe starch, tapioca, and xanthan gum, among other ingredients. How in the world would I know what makes it taste bad?

So here are the cookies:

The look pretty nice huh? I'm quite proud of my ability to make cookies approximately the same size. Symmetry makes me happy, what can I say? They were overall pretty good. While they were fresh and warm, thee was this kind of sourness to them. That's a pretty common complaint from GF foods- either a gritty, dry texture or a sour kind of taste. Once they cooled, they tasted even better. Here's my face, contemplating the taste of the cookies:

And here's me, thinking they taste okay. Not great, but not bad either. All in all, I was pretty happy with the cookies. I added cranberries, instead of just raisins to add some antioxidants. I used oil instead of butter, too.

Overall, I'm a pretty happy girl.

Pumpkin Bars

After the amaranth disaster, I got pissed. Pissed at Gluten. Screw gluten. I don't begrudge any person I know the opportunity to eat gluten-y things, not even the Yankee. But I am NOT going to eat things that make me sick and I am certainly NOT going to eat gross things either! Forget that business! Surely the fools at Bob's Red Mill tasted that recipe and surely someone commented how it tasted like the bottom of a boot!

So I went back into the kitchen and made Pumpkin Bars. These bars have almond flour and agave nectar in them- making them quite pricey per bite. When I took them out of the oven and let them cool, I kept dancing around the dish, waiting to taste them. I cut off a tiny square and I got goosebumps and tears- this time because the bars were like cake! Cake is literallly my favorite food. I ate it at my wedding and got really sick right after. Before that, it had been months since I'd had cake.

I ate most of the rest of the pan pretty quickly, except for the pieces I gave the Yankee and my parents. Here's a photo of a remnant of the bars:

And here is a vey happy Mrs. V:

These bars were completely delicisious. And now I am a happy girl.

Amaranth Flour

Tonight I tried making Carrot-Raisin cookies. I found this recipe on the back of a package of Amaranth Flour that I received from my mother for Christmas. It's been pretty hard to find recipes in which to use this kind of flour; since this recipe was on the back of the package, I gave the goons at Bob's Red Mill the benefit of the doubt and tried it.

Preparing for this recipe involved two trips to Sun Harvest for arrowroot flour (I couldn't find this at five HEB's OR Whole Foods) and an investment in a small bottle of agave nectar. Please allow me to digress and say that EVERYTIME I went to HEB for about a month I looked for arrowroot and I made two trips to Wholoe Foods, assuming I'd surely find arrowroot there. I bought the agave and ended up getting organic agave because I figured I should at least buy the douchiest version of the douchiest food I've ever purchased.

So I made the cookies. The flour smelled funny and I should have taken then as a sign of things to come. The batter blended well and scooped nicely. The cookies made the apartment smell like carrot cake, which is officially deemed Delightful in my book. Here's what the cookies looked like after taking them out of the oven:

And here's what my face looked like after tasting the cookie:

Pretty pricey mistake. This failure made me cry big alligator tears and then I sobbed into the Yankee's shoulder for a bit. I'll write a little more about that once I've managed to bake something tasty.