A Recipe (or two) for Happiness

Sometimes, you just have to shut up and bake.  Well, I do, anyway.  I find solace in the methodical art of measuring flour (well, methodically chaotic when I am doing my experiments).  I like playing the part of a mad scientist as I add a bit of this, a dash of that.  I find calm in mixing it all together and dolloping it onto a sheet of crisp parchment paper.  I find satisfaction in converting a shapeless blob of dough into a shapely scone or muffin or tea cake.

Baking is something I do for myself.  It rejuvenates me.  It brings me back to myself.  It quiets my mind.  It is also unlike the other activities that might provide this kind of retreat in one very very favorable way:  you end up with treats to share with others.  So it doesn't appear to be as self-serving as just chucking it all and going for a bike ride while dinner remains uncooked, blogs remain unwritten, and the house stays dirty.

So, the same person who might roll their eyes at your yoga habit (a solitary endeavor) or wonder why you have to go out with those same friends all the time (without them) will gladly encourage your baking habit.  There's something in it for them, you see.  And that's the beauty of it.  You get to do your thing, they get to enjoy the end result.  So everyone is happy.  Like, actually happy.  Not smiling-but-secretly-gritting-your-teeth in annoyance "happy."  Not sure-I'd-love-to-come-along-and-listen-to-girl-talk-while-I-gauge-my-eye-out "happy."  Not no-of-course-I-didn't-want-you-to-spend-any-time-with-me-when-I-haven't-seen-you-all-day "happy."

Try it.  Schedule a date with yourself and your kitchen.  Even if you don't fancy yourself a baker or a cook or any of that.  In fact, especially in that case - just look at it as trying something new.  A new activity, approached one ingredient at a time.  Even if the end result tastes terrible, you have something to giggle about with your husband or girlfriend.  Something funny to talk about, something to analyze, to figure out what went wrong.  Or, you have something delicious and fulfilling to share, in more ways than one.

Here are a few recipes to try.  Let me know how it goes.  Yes, there are quite a few ingredients, and several steps.  But that's the point to today's post - take some time to yourself.  And take your time.  Pour a glass of wine and enjoy the process.


Almond Flour Drop Biscuits

Ingredients
2 1/2 c. almond flour
1 TBSP sugar
1 TSP baking powder
1/2 TSP salt
1/4 cup coconut oil (in liquid state) or nut oil (something more neutral tasting than olive oil)
2 eggs
1/4 TSP middle eastern 7 spice, or cinnamon (optional)
dash of lemon juice (optional)

Instructions
Preheat your oven to 350 and situate a rack in the center of the oven.
Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Mix together all the dry ingredients thoroughly, including the spices if you are using them.
Add the eggs and incorporate fully, then add the oil and lemon juice.
Mix the dough for about a minute with a wooden spoon until everything is fully mixed together.
If you are using coconut oil, and you had your almond flour in the freezer, you might notice the oil hardening slightly as it cools.  If this happens, just knead the dough a bit with your hands to emulsify everything.  The dough will be very sticky, so kneading is messy, but it's the best way to make sure all the ingredients are distributed.
Using two spoons or one spoon and your finger, scoop balls of dough about 1 1/2 to 2 inches wide onto your prepared baking sheet.
You should end up with 7 or 8.
Flatten them slightly, if you wish.
Bake for 7 minutes, then rotate the pan and bake for another 7-10 minutes, or until the spring back when pressed lightly in the center, AND the edges are getting a little bit golden brown.
Enjoy fresh out of the oven with some butter slathered on, or have them as a snack the next morning, or both!

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Lemon Coconut Tea Bread
(adapted from bake! by Nick Malgieri)

Ingredients
1/2 c. almond flour
1 c. sorghum flour
1/4 c. potato starch
1/4 c. arrowroot
1/2 c. sugar, heaping
2 1/2 TSP baking powder
1/2 TSP salt
1 TSP guar gum (I forgot to add this and mine came out fine.  A bit crumbly, but tasty for sure.)
1 2/3 c. sweetened coconut - If you get shredded coconut, you'll need to make it into more of a powder.  I used a 3 c. food processor and pulsed the "chop" button until the pieces were more like small squares as opposed to long strings.  If you absolutely don't feel like doing this, use about 1/3 c. LESS coconut, and the recipe will work just fine.
2 large eggs
1/2 c. heavy cream
3 TBSP unsalted butter, melted + 3 TBSP coconut oil OR 6 TBSP unsalted butter melted
2 TBSP lemon juice

Instructions
Preheat your oven to 350 and set a rack in the middle.
Grease a 9x5x3 or other size loaf pan.  My grease of choice is shortening.
Stir together all the dry ingredients, including the coconut.
In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs, then add the cream, butter/oil mixture, and lemon juice.
Pour the wet mixture into the dry, incorporating fully using a spatula and a folding motion.
Scrape your batter into your loaf pan and shimmy the pan on the counter to level out the batter.
Bake for about 50-60 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through baking.
The bread will puff up then deflate slightly as it cooks through.
Your  masterpiece is done when the center springs back when touched AND it appears to be golden brown around the edges AND a paring knife or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Enjoy!

~S

Freeze! Keep those pizza crusts where I can see them!

I make slightly illegal pizza crusts.  I get paid for them in food.  More like a barter.  So, I don't technically sell them.  If I did, then they would be more than slightly illegal.  The crusts themselves are not the culprit.  They don't contain any controlled substances or anything not found in your local natural foods grocery store.  The problem, you see, is that I have no official approval for making and distributing baked goods to the public.  In this day and age, you need a piece of paper that says you are allowed to do this kind of thing.  Or you need to do it in a place that has been pre-approved for such carryings on. A place with blanket approval, if you will.  Which is quite hilarious when you think about it:  you take a test online showing knowledge of safe food practices, then you can bring your ingredients to Appointed Pre-Approved Place X (henceforth to be known as APAPX), make your stuff, and distribute at will, labeling it according to standards based on where and to whom you are distributing.  What if your car has nuclear sludge smeared on the backseat?  What if your dog pooped in your favorite mixing bowl right before you left so you had to transport the dirty bowl next to all your other ingredients, only cleaning it when you got to APAPX?  What if you have a nose picking habit?  Don't laugh.  These are serious considerations.  All of these things are possible.  Well, perhaps not the nuclear sludge thing...unless you're an aspiring baker whose day job is as a researcher at Los Alamos!

What I'm getting at here is that there are all these regulations with baking and selling and anything to do with food movement.  A lot of it is purely for show in my opinion.  I understand the need for standards.  I appreciate that contamination is a very real concern. I bake, for Pete's sake.  If there is (a little too much) leftover arrowroot in my 1/2 c. measuring cup and it affects the amount of almond flour that goes into the recipe, well, that could be disastrous.  I know all about contamination and the serious repercussions.  Most people who bake or prepare food on a large scale do, whether or not they have any desire to sell their goods.  It's not the type of thing you wake up one day and start doing randomly after never having done it before.  It's not for the faint of heart or completely compulsive - it takes way too much time and attention.  Many if not most people who have any desire to do these things for a living or part of a living are not casual about it.  They are driven to create food and they do it with gusto and want to share it.  They certainly don't want to poison anyone or even give them indigestion.  They want to share deliciousness far and wide.  If even the flavor of something is a little off it just won't do.  I am speaking for myself here, but I'm not unusual in this regard, I'm sure of it.  We are a self-policing bunch.  We have to be.  But we also tend to be people who are wired that way.

And, seriously, if someone is going to go to the trouble of baking for other people, don't you think they want it to be not only good, but safe to eat, if only to keep and expand the potential eaters of the creations?  If you kill off your potential customers, you'll never make a living at this business.  I guarantee us individual baking aspirants have more of a stake in that than any governing body.

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Illegal Pizza Crusts
Makes about 8 6" thin crusts or 2 10 inch thin crusts...or whatever combination works for you
Adapted from Joy of Cooking


No need to preheat the oven when you first start putting ingredients together.  The crusts will need to rise for 20 minutes, so that's the perfect time to preheat the oven.

Ingredients
1/2 c. brown rice flour
1/2 c. sorghum
1 c. white rice flour
1 c. tapioca flour
1/2 c. arrowroot starch
1/2 c. potato starch
1 tbsp. xanthan gum
1 tbsp sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 tbsp active dry yeast (Note:  Those yeast packets only contain 2 1/4 TEASPOONS of yeast.  It's more cost efficient and less annoying to buy a jar of yeast because you can measure it out.)
1 c. buttermilk
3 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons rice or apple cider vinegar
2 large eggs
1 large egg white
1/4 c. very warm (115 - 125 degrees) water

Instructions
Mix together all the dry ingredients.  Be sure to break apart any clumps.
Add all the wet ingredients and mix on low to medium speed for a few minutes if using an electric mixer, or stir with a wooden spoon (old school!) for about 5 minutes, being sure to turn the dough over itself to get everything mixed in.  The dough will be a bit sticky but will want to stick more to itself than to other things.
Wet your hands lightly, and form the dough into as many equal-sized balls as you'd like to have crusts.  Grease 1-3 cookie sheets (again, depends how many crusts you're making) using shortening.  Place up to three balls on each cookie sheet, leaving as much room between them as possible, as you'll be flattening them down.
Wet your hands again and whenever dough starts sticking or becoming hard to maneuver, and using a flat hand, press down on each ball twice, making sort of a cross on it to flatten it.  Then go back through and flatten them all down again using your palm or the heel of your hand until you have crusts that are about 1/4 - 1/2" thick.  Another option for this step is to place plastic wrap over them and flatten that way.  Sometimes the wrap will stick horribly, sometimes it won't, even if you grease it.  I've tried both ways and have come to prefer just using my hands.
Cover the crusts with a clean towel or kitchen cloth and let rise for 20 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 400.  Position your oven racks so they are both approximately in the middle of the oven, or as close as possible.
Prick the crusts multiple times with a fork.
When the oven is fully preheated, it's time to bake the crusts!
If you can fit all your baking sheets on the top of the 2 racks, great.  If not, put 2 there, and 1 on the bottom.  Set your timer for 4 minutes, and swap the sheets, so you'll now have 2 on the bottom and one on the top.  Bake for another 4 minutes.
The bottom of the crusts should be golden brown, the tops will spring mostly back when pressed in.
At this point, the crusts are cooked enough for storage, but will need to go in for another 8-10 minutes to be cooked through.
Top as desired, or store as desired and finish baking later.
(I sometimes sneak one as a snack at this point.  I call it sample testing.  Even though they're not completely done...they are lusciously chewy at this point, and butter melts nicely on them when they're fresh out of the oven.)

Enjoy!
<S