The Easy Coconut Banana Bread with Chocolate

 Here's the link.

Ingredients

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• ▢4 medium overly ripe bananas, mashed (about 1 1/4 cup mashed)
• ▢1/2 cup melted coconut oil
• ▢1/4 cup honey
• ▢2 eggs
• ▢2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• ▢1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• ▢1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• ▢1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)
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• ▢1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• ▢1/2 cup shredded sweetened or unsweetened coconut flakes

Chocolate Fudge Frosting

• ▢2 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
• ▢1 stick (8 tablespoons) salted butter, at room temperature
• ▢1 cup powdered sugar
• ▢1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• ▢2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• ▢1/4 cup canned coconut milk

US Customary – Metric

Instructions

• 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan. Line with parchment paper.

  2. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the mashed bananas, coconut oil, honey, eggs, and vanilla until combined. Add the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt, mix until just combined. Fold in the coconut flakes. Pour the batter into the prepared bread pan. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until center is just set. Remove and let cool for at least 30 minutes before frosting.

  3. To make the frosting, add the cream cheese and butter to a large mixing bowl. Using an electric mixer beat until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and vanilla. Beat another 2-4 minutes or until the frosting is light and fluffy. Beat in the coconut cream until combined. 

  3. Spread the frosting over cake. Slice, snack, and enjoy!

Notes

To Make Gluten Free: Use an equal amount of your favorite gluten free flour blend in place of the all-purpose flour. I recommend Cup4Cup gluten free flour. 

To Replace Coconut Oil: use an equal amount of olive oil, melted butter, or canola oil.

Storing: this cake keeps well for 3-4 days at room temperature. 

To cool cake quickly for frosting: place in freezer for 15 minutes. Remove and frost.

Gluten Free French Crepe Recipe

Makes 6-8 crepes about 9 inches in diameter. The original recipe is double this amount below.

So, I just tried out this recipe here making some substitutions. I also left out the sugar and the crepe batter cooked up with a good solid structure.

1 C Bob's Red Mill Baking Flour 1 to 1 (in the blue bag)*. 

2 eggs

2 cups of whole milk

1/4 C melted butter

pinch of salt

I grew up eating crepes for Shrove Tuesday aka Fat Tuesday. We mostly ate them with jam and white sugar and could eat quite a few per person. My friend Geneve insisted that the "real" way to eat them was with sugar and lemon juice. But I've not made savory ones in a long time, and it seemed like something my mom could eat though she doesn't have that many teeth anymore.

Put the flour in a bowl, whisk in the salt. Make a well in the flour and add the two eggs. Whisk the eggs in the middle, and slowly add the milk while you keep whisking the eggs. Slowly incorporate the flour from the sides of the bowl until you have a really smooth mixture. Slowly stream in the melted butter. 

The recipe says to allow it to stand for 30-60 minutes until bubbles form. This is standard with all crepe batter, but I'm not gonna lie, my mother was hungry and we're on a kind of a serious routine, so I just made three to see, and they came out fine. We ate them for dinner with some Gruyere/Swiss cheese melted and mushrooms sauteed in olive oil and a little pat of butter inside. Miam.

Enjoy!

*Note: I've tried to use other gluten free flours for crepes and they are pretty close to rice pancakes from Asian cuisine, but with an even more delicate structure (read: fell apart in multiple places) so I'm happy this one worked so well.

Very Best Gluten Free Pie Crust

Just as an experiment I used this GF flour mix to make a pie crust and it came out amazingly good--like it reminded me of a Crisco flaky crust for a fruit pie from when I was a kid. As a person who eats GF, not because they like it, but for their health, this was a revelation!

1 cup + 2 T set aside of Bob's Red Mill Biscuit and Baking Mix

1 stick butter unsalted

pinch of salt

1 t apple cider vinegar

1/3 C chilled water

half a beaten egg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and get out a glass or ceramic pie plate

1. Put baking mix, salt, and stick of butter in a medium mixing bowl. Chop the butter up with a pastry cutter or two knives that you're using to slice all the butter into smaller and smaller pieces. Once the butter pieces are down to smaller chunks, start mixing the butter through with your hands, making the butter globs about the size of peas surrounded by the floury mix--don't keep pressing your fingers on the bare butter (it will get too soft). Keep rolling the little butter bits through your fingers (as if you are actually trying to get dough off your fingers by rubbing your thumb on the rest of your fingers), until the mix looks like coarse meal and none of the butter bits are bigger than say a pea.

2. Stir this mix up with a fork while pouring in the vinegar, mix it up, then add the half an egg, mix it up. Take the chilled water and pour a little bit of it in streams over the flour mixture, stirring after maybe every teaspoon or so, keeping the mealy texture but getting things damp. If the dough is clumping partly together, stop adding water and see if you can get it to be mostly a clump with some crumbs: if you can, you're really finished with the water, even if the dough seems too crumby to you.

3. Dump all this dough into the pie plate. No need to grease. Spread it out as much as you can and if it's sticking to you (too much water) sprinkle a little of that extra 2 T of biscuit and baking mix on top so you can shape it to the pan. There is no rolling out here. That's just the path of sadness. Make sure the dough goes up the sides of the pan as much as you can. Use the heel of your palm to smoosh the dough from the center to the edge, then turn the plate and smoosh the dough from the center to the edge. You get the idea.

4. Bake for seven minutes. If you do the foil thing, or the foil and bean thing, cool, but I do not.

5. After the seven minutes at 350 degrees F, put the par-cooked crust on a rack to cool while you make your filling.

6. This crust lasts pretty well through a baking time until about 40-45 minutes and then you probably need to make a little collar of foil to put around the pie to keep the showing crust from burning.

ENJOY! I haven't made a double crusted pie with this (like a lattice topped pie or an apple pie). It could work, but you'd have to be patient.

Tips on eating in Iceland Written 082117

I headed to Iceland for an artist residency this past summer for a whole month and then camped along the Ring Road with my boyfriend for a week. I knew Iceland´s tourist influx had doubled since 2016 but wasn´t prepared for the news that the Reykjavík airport had a million people pass through it in July.

I knew tourists had been exhibiting bad behavior, some of it caused by the fact that Iceland doesn´t have an infrastructure for this amount of people coming in, and a nature tax and steep fines for littering are being debated. Who throws a pizza box on a lava field? Seriously, I´m going to some northern territory of Canada next time I need to camp and let Iceland have a rest. All regular cultural, artistic, and educational efforts in Iceland are battling with and losing space to tourism. If you´re already going, here are some ideas for how to shop for food and minimize any negative effects your presence may have on Iceland.

1. Buy from Icelandic groceries. This article by Foodie Baker saved our life. As did a kilo of Whole Earth peanut butter from Krónan, a grocery store slightly more expensive than Bónus but also very comparable to prices at home, probably even less expensive. Krónan has a lot of special foods for people with allergies. (Why would you shop at Costco when they are eating into Icelandic profits?)

2. Buy from local fisheries, mutton jerky makers, dry fish and cod. Smoked fish, mutton jerky and dried fish are all items that keep without refrigeration for at least a day or two which is great for camping or sightseeing. Here´s a favorite smoker of trout in the Golden Circle, Reykhúsið Útey. To get to this smokery, start in Laugarvatn, head south on 37 (on the circle road or roundabout intersection, follow the sign toward Selfoss). You´ll see a sign for Útey 500 meters further down the road...don´t forget that means almost 1500 feet or half a kilometer...turn left. 

3. Enjoy local restaurants. If you´re broke, it´s fine to share a soup and have fries. A lot of restaurants give you free bread and butter with the soups. I found it so fascinating in Reykjavík to see people in fancy cars (locals) eating Dominoes, which is at least 25 or 30 per pie.

4. Picnic areas...the humor of seeing a picnic table on a sign and showing up to a gravel circle with no table and no trash can! It´s a great way to make sure tourists take their garbage with them and don´t litter. If there is a table, take the opportunity to chat with people from either Iceland or some other travelers. Or learn how to balance food on your knees as you sit partway out of your car or attempt to sit on a rock without touching bird poop.

5. A closet with a heart on it...this sign means there will be a port o potty and may be a bit new on the N1 route, but how glad we were to take advantage of this whenever we saw it so we wouldn´t have to do anything drastic. You also might just take some ziplocks with you in case of a real emergency. 

6. Pack a garbage bag. I mean, it´s that easy.

Keto Pizza from Quitters Lose on YouTube

 INGREDIENTS:

3/4 to 1 Cup Almond Flour (90g) (replace little with coconut flour for more crisp) 1 Cup Mozzarella Cheese 1 Egg 3 tbsp Cream Cheese 1 tsp Italian Seasoning (optional) 1/2 tsp Baking powder 1/2 tsp Salt DIRECTIONS: 1. Place dry ingredients together in a bowl (almond flour, mozzarella cheese, seasoning). 2. Microwave dry mix for 32 seconds just to soften the cheese. 3. Lightly mix the egg and room temperature cream cheese together. Cream cheese chunks are ok. 4. Mix both dry and wet ingredients together to form a dough ball. 5. On parchment paper apply a thin layer of olive oil big about 12 inches in diameter and place your dough ball on it. 6. Place another sheet of parchment paper (or heavy freezer paper for wrinkle-free rolling pin action), and press down with your hand on the dough before using the rolling pin to get it started. Lightly press with a rolling pin to spread the dough. 7. If you want a nice round shape, use a frying pan lid to shape it 8. Remove the top sheet of paper and place the dough into the oven at 390º F for 10 minutes. Keep in mind we don't want to fully cook the crust because we still need to add the sauce and toppings. 9. Remove from oven and add sauce, cheese, and toppings.

Pear Pie

3 perfectly ripe pears, peeled and sliced thinly 

3 eggs, beaten with a splash of oat milk

candied ginger

prunes

2-3 pats of butter

pie crust

pie plate/8 by 8 inch baking dish

*

Put one pie crust into a plate and bake 7 minutes at 350 degrees.

Remove from oven. While it's cooling, keep oven on.

Cover 3-6 prunes with plastic and smash very thinly with a can, lay over bottom of pie crust.

Layer in slices of pear as tightly as possible. Instead of fanning them out so the pie is more of a tart, pack them in, thin end of the wedges pointed down at the crust.

Put small pieces of candied ginger between the pear slices.

Gently pour the egg and milk custard between the slices.

Bake at 350 until bubbly and golden 30-45 minutes (depends on...a lot of things).

Enjoy!

Vegan Cabbage Rolls, Easy!

This is adapted from Jenny Jones' recipe for Cabbage Rolls. I made them without a few of the ingredients (thanks coronavirus) and they still turned out delicious! She has a youtube of herself making this recipe, a great help if you're not sure how to trim the stems or roll the leaves.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Get out a glass 9 by 13 pan.

Make sure you have foil or a way to tightly seal the pan while it's baking.

Ingredients:

1 can crushed tomato puree
1/2 veggie boullion cube
1 head of cabbage, cored
3/4 cup jasmine/basmati rice
1 can lentils
2 carrots
sage
oregano/basil
one clove minced raw garlic (the garlic had started to go bad...but this one still good clove made the house smell great nevertheless)
salt
pepper

(we didn't have mushrooms, parsley, or onion...some other day)

Put entire head of cabbage in Dutch oven of boiling salted water and let simmer for 10 minutes. (The head of cabbage was so huge, I just let it in the water for 5-7 minutes, peeled the outer leaves off, and let them boil without the rest of the huge head of cabbage for another 3-5 minutes...I'm saving the rest of the head of cabbage for another batch in a few days...only one glass pan).

Pour one cup tomato puree into 2 cup measuring cup. Add half a cup water and half a vegetable broth bouillon cube, crumbled.

In a bowl, put two very thinly sliced carrots, 3/4 cup uncooked jasmine rice, lentils and spices. Mix.

Let cabbage cool in a colander. Peel off outer leaves carefully so as not to tear them. Flip over and cut the thick part of the stem with a sharp knife so that the stem part that sticks up and is bumpy has been shaved away.

Mix up the tomato sauce and put about half a cup in the bottom of the pan and spread it out a little.

Put 2 T (heaping) of the mix into the center of a cabbage leaf and fold over, just like an egg roll, but don't seal it.

Put in glass pan seam side down.

Tuck the rolls into the pan until the pan is fill. We ran out of mix so we put already cooked rice in two cabbage rolls and they were fine.

Mixing the tomato sauce carefully, pour it over the finished rolls. Sprinkle/distribute the minced garlic on top of them all.

Put little thin pats of (unsalted or salted) butter/Earth Balance on each roll.

Cover with foil and bake for 50 minutes. Uncover and add some more of the sauce, then let bake 20 more minutes.

I think, honestly, next time I will put more sauce in the bottom of the pan, pour it over the rolls, and *not* pour more sauce on after 50 minutes...I want to see what happens if I allow the tops of the cabbage rolls to be uncovered during the last 20 minutes so that the butter can make the tops of the rolls golden and brown mmm--it started to happen...

Serve with beet salad, or borscht, or whatnot. Jenny Jones browns the leftover rolls in butter and that is amazing!!