Date-Hazelnut Balls Dipped in Chocolate

Better (way) late than never.

For a holiday that's infamous for a week without bread, Passover sure involves a heck of a lot of food that contains matzo. Everyone has an odd favorite food to eat while being afflicted--matzo brie, for instance--and there are whole cookbooks devoted to soaking, pounding, and grinding matzo into food that's meant to be more interesting than plain buttered matzo. During Passover this year, I watched a mom spend a half hour turning matzo into pancakes in hopes that her son wouldn't beg for Cherrios. The result? Kid wrinkles his nose and says "they taste like matzo." Well, yeah.

The most ironic concoction I've come across this year is matzo cake meal--flour that's been baked into matzo then ground into flour. Oh I understand why the process is necessary (you might unintentionally consume something leavened if the "flour" you use isn't made from matzo, which has only been baked for a short amount of time and is certified by a rabbi). But if you really think about it, matzo cake meal isn't ironic at all. Passover is all about recreating the Exodus story and revising it to be relevant to our lives year after year. That's why we always list modern plagues (like hunger) alongside the ancient plagues (murrain, anyone?).

While Passover should be a gluten-free smorgasbord, you still have to be really careful. Matzo shows up in just about as many things as flour does during the rest of the year, though there do tend to be more meringues around than usual. This year, I took chocolate-dipped dried pineapple, dates, and apricots to my first seder. While I was dipping the dates, I slit a few, dabbed hazelnut butter into the cavity, closed it up, and dipped them in chocolate. Wow, yum. There's a reason why Nutella sells.

So for our seder, I wanted to expand on that idea a bit. I soaked dried dates in hot water then pureed them in the blender, added ground hazelnuts, and tasted. The concoction lacked the intense hazelnut flavor that I wanted so I add a big spoonful of hazelnut butter and a little salt. That really did the trick so if you're experimenting, definitely add some nut butter. I mixed it all up, rolled the glob into balls, dipped the balls in melted chocolate, and had dessert. Eat your heart out Ferrero Rocher. These are even good for you.

Date-Hazelnut Balls Dipped in Chocolate
Makes 18-20.

1/2 lb dried dates
1 c. ground toasted hazelnuts
2-3 tbsp. hazelnut butter
1/8 tsp. salt
3/4-1 c. chopped chocolate for melting

Soak the dates in hot water (especially if, like me, you don't own a Vitamix--I've already killed one mini chopper this year) for 10-15 min. Puree them in a food processor. Scrap into a bowl. Add the ground hazelnuts, salt, and hazelnut butter. Mix it all into a paste and roll into golf ball-sized balls.

Melt the chocolate (I generally microwave the chocolate for 30 sec., stir, then microwave for 15 sec. at a time, stirring in between, until the chocolate is fully melted). Coat the balls in chocolate by dropping each ball into the melted chocolate, rolling it around until fully covered, and lifting it out with a fork, allowing the excess to drip off. You can thin the chocolate with a little milk (cow, soy, coconut, whatever's your pleasure) if it's too thick by itself. Allow the balls to cool fully on wax paper.

Enjoy!

Gluten-Free Chocolate Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Icing

I'm back after a two-week hiatus! I've just started a new part-time job and am still juggling my old part-time job (as well as my full-time+ job as a stay-at-home mommy). All of that has led to not as much cooking experimentation. We've been eating some old favorites and emptying out the freezer--after all, it's almost blueberry season here, and I need to make room!

As some of you might remember, I went to my cousin's wedding two weeks ago. I felt pretty good about how my gustatory experiences panned out: I think all the food I ate was safe, and I managed to eat more than just the salad (though I'm definitely going to take Sally's advice next time and take salad add-ins for a more substantial dish!).

I couldn't eat the dessert at the wedding, of course. They served cupcakes that you ice yourself. Apparently, the caterer thought allowing guests to ice their own cupcakes was a terrible idea. My opinion is that you can do what you want at your own wedding and that it's no better or worse of an idea than the current trend in wedding appetizers: the mashed potato bar. Think ice cream sundae meets mashed potatoes, chives, and bacon. There were even sundae-style dishes. Suspecting lurking gluten, I skipped it.

Missing out on ice-your-own-cupcake fun wasn't a terrible hardship. I've never been much of a dessert person when I eat out. Not that I don't love dessert. I once attempted to fast for Lent (don't ask me why) only to fail when I encountered a chocolate chip cookie for the first time in months at Bohemia Bagel in Prague. But I have found that my waistline and my general well-being both appreciate it when I consume very moderate amounts of high-sugar desserts. I'm much more likely to eat a small piece of dark chocolate or a few spoonfuls of ice cream partnered with squishy Medjool date than a whole piece of cheesecake.

Enter mini-cupcakes. I bought two mini-cupcake pans last summer when I was experimenting with gluten-free cake recipes and didn't want to have to eat a whole piece of cake just to try out the recipe. I'd get to try a few bites of a new recipe and not have to feel like I was splurging. So all summer, I made cupcakes, tried them out, and then took them to picnics to share with my friends.

This is the beauty of the cupcake. Think about it: when you make a whole cake, there are no "tastings." You bake the cake, you ice the cake, you refrigerate the cake until serving time. With cupcakes, you bake the cupcakes, you ice the cupcakes, and if one or two get eaten between then and the party, no one's the wiser.

I tried a few of Brendan's recipes at Something in Season before he decided to stop blogging: the caradmom-date cake and the ginger cake with dark chocolate glaze stand out. I wish he still maintained his archive so that I could link to them. I hadn't tried a chocolate cake, though.

Having a solid chocolate cake recipe in your repertoire is key. The flourless chocolate cake--a blessing to us gluten-free folks--is not what I'm talking about here. Don't get me wrong, the flourless cake is heavenly--smooth, decadent, and super-chocolaty. But it's also expensive, relying on lots of eggs, butter, and good-quality melted chocolate, and fancier than what I have in mind.

I'm talking about an old-fashioned, layer cake type of recipe. With that, you can always make a great birthday cake. Before going gluten-free, I used the thrifty Moosewood chocolate cake with no eggs or butter (it uses oil and is leavened by a reaction between baking soda and vinegar--remember those volcano demonstrations in elementary school science?).

Making a gluten-free version turned out to be easy. I started with the Moosewood, threw in a pinch of Brendan's ginger cake and some cinnamon, and voila! Chocolate cake, or rather, mini cupcakes. I iced them with an old-fashioned caramel icing that my grandmother taught me how to make. The only substantial change I made to her icing was to add sea salt for a salted caramel taste. Yum!

Gluten-Free Chocolate Cake with Salted Caramel Icing
This recipe will make 1 8-in cake, 12 cupcakes, or 24 mini cupcakes (plus a ramekin of batter for the cupcakes).

1 1/2 c. brown rice flour
1/3 c. cocoa powder
1 c. dark brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. xanthum gum
1/4-1/2 tsp. salt
a generous pinch of cinnamon
2 eggs
1/4 c. oil
1/4 c. pureed prunes
1 tsp. vanilla
10 tbsp. brewed coffee (or water)

As simple as it gets. Mix the dry ingredients. Mix the wet ingredients. Mix them together. Spoon into your prepared pan of choice. Bake at 350 for 15 min. (mini cupcakes), 20-25 min. (cupcakes), or 30-35 min. (8-in cake), until a knife comes out smooth.

Salted Caramel Icing

1 c. brown sugar
2 tbsp. butter
1/2 c. milk (any kind)
1/4-1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1 3/4-2 c. powdered sugar

Mix the sugar, butter, milk, and salt in a heavy pot. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for about 5 min. Add the vanilla. Cool the mixture to room temperature and beat in the powdered sugar a bit at a time with your mixer. (The cooler the caramel when you add the powdered sugar, the less you'll have to add to get it to a spreadable consistancy. Alternatively, you can mix in the powdered sugar and refrigerate it--the icing will stiffen as it sits.) Ice your cupcakes and refrigerate!

Quinoa-Almond Butter Cookies (Kosher for Passover)

Passover's almost over, and I'm surrounded by people who are sighing over their matzo and guiltily buying non-kosher-for-Passover food because they're starving and can't find any other food. I could feel bitter. After all, when Passover ends, I don't get to return to wheat, barley, oats, rye, and spelt. Instead, I listen with bemused detachment and a smidge of pity.

Every year those eschewing chametz spend a week in gluten-free boot camp. They're never there long enough to become accustomed to always carrying food they can eat and to not feel somewhat deprived without gluten (given, there are other foods restricted by Passover, such as legumes, but giving up black beans for a week isn't the same for most people as not eating bread).

Having been gluten-free for a year and a half, I also know that life without wheat isn't that bad. It's not bad at all, in fact. When the Science Teacher told me that he and his friends used to eat matzo pizza in desperation, I thought Who needs matzo pizza when you've got a quinoa crust? I made quinoa porridge this morning for breakfast, which very few non-gluten-free people would think of eating, and it was delicious. Nutty and a bit sweet with cinnamon and nutmeg. I have a huge advantage because I have all of this culinary know-how at my disposal. I think of trying quinoa for breakfast as a part of my endless search for new great breakfast cereals whereas it probably wouldn't occur to a gluten-eating person. Of course, part of the point of Passover might be feeling some deprivation. If so, I guess the gluten-free folks get an easy out for once!

In any case, it's great to be able to share some goodies, savory or sweet, with those who are feeling deprived without chametz and kitniyot. I whipped these up in moment of anti-macaroon sentiment...

Passover-Friendly Quinoa-Almond Butter Cookies
These cookies are a version of my peanut butter-oatmeal cookies. The banana flavor is pronounced so if you don't like banana just leave it out and add a little more liquid (for the coconut milk to soak up). The almond butter flavor, however, is much less pronounced than the peanut butter flavor is in the original version so you might add either some almond extract (1/2-1 tsp.) or more almond butter.

1 c. quinoa flakes
1/4 c. quinoa flour
1/4 c. coconut flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 c. almond butter
1/3 c. honey
1/3 c. brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 c. mushed banana
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 c. (or more!) chocolate chips

Preheat the over to 350. Mix the flakes, flours, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a small bowl. Mix the almond butter, honey, brown sugar, egg, banana, and vanilla in a large bowl. In several parts, pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix. Stir in the chocolate chips. Spoon tablespoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet. Bake for 12-13 minutes--until the tops just start to brown--for soft cookies. Cool for a minute or two on the baking sheet and transfer to wire racks to cool.

Similar Recipes (not necessarily kosher-for-passover as written)

Gluten-Free Quinoa Almond-Butter Cookies
Monster Qunioa Peanut Butter Cookies
Almond Butter-Chocolate Chip Cookies
Peanut Butter Banana Cake

One Recipe: Gluten-Free Graham Crackers, Cinnamon or Ginger Snaps, and Thin Mints

Last summer was my first summer of gluten-free, s'moreless camping. I was eight months into my gluten-free adventures, though, so I'd progressed past the point where I would have been sitting around the camp fire morosely drooling over everyone else's s'mores. I took my favorite chocolate chip-peanut butter-oatmeal cookies (which I need to get around to posting someday soon), intending to use them as graham cracker replacements. But unlike a conventional s'more, I found the cookie-s'more to be less than the sum of its parts. I tasted chocolate-peanut butter goodness and toasted marshmallow goodness but not as much of either as I wanted. So I ate them separately. No big deal.

But I'd like to be able to make a s'more, if I wanted one. So I started perusing the web for recipes. My problem with most graham cracker recipes, though, is that they contain an incredible amount of fat and sugar. They're more a cookie than the slightly sweet cracker I always ate as snacks growing up. I started tweaking recipes and came up with a whole-grain, no-starch graham cracker like those I remember....and three other variations. The latest turns the graham crackers into Thin Mints, which I've been craving ever since making Karina's Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies last week. Note: all of these recipes have been tested in the middle of the night, as I attempt to bore my 5-month-old into sleep!

Gluten-Free Graham Crackers

This recipe can be easily doubled--it makes a bunch of little crackers but not so many regular- sized ones. These crackers would make a swanky s'more dipped in chocolate with toasted marshmellows...or with homemade marshmellows dipped in chocolate...or both.

2 tbsp. teff flour
2 tbsp. gluten-free oat flour
2 tbsp. brown rice flour
2 tbsp. sorghum flour
1 tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cardamon
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. xanthum gum

1 tbsp. honey
1 tbsp. molasses
2 tsp. canola oil
1/4 tsp. vanilla
water (as needed)

Preheat the oven to 350. Mix the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Mix the wet ingredients in a small bowl. Pour the wet ingredients into the flour mixture and stir until a smooth ball of dough forms. Add flour if the dough seems too sticky or a little water if it is too dry. Chill for 10 min. Divide the dough in half. Flour a surface and roll out one half to 1/8 in. thickness. Cut out in squares or using cookie cutters. Place on a greased baking sheet and bake for 10 min. Let the crackers cool on the tray until they are crisp. Makes about 3 doz. 1.5 inch cookies.

Now for the Variations!

Gluten-Free Cinnamon Snaps
Omit the cardamom and add 1/2 tsp. nutmeg. Increase the sweetener by 1 tbsp. white sugar and 1 tbsp. molasses. If you want a very crisp cookie, bake 1-5 min. longer.

Gluten-Free Ginger Snaps
Omit the cardamom and cinnamon. Add 1 tsp. ginger. Increase the sweetener by 1 tbsp. white sugar and 1 tbsp. molasses. If you want a very crisp cookie, bake 1-5 min. longer.

Gluten-Free Thin Mints
Girl Scout Thin Mints without all of the not-so-healthy ingredients! Omit the cardamom and cinnamon. Increase the sweetener by 1.5 tbsp. white sugar and 1 tbsp. molasses. Add 2-3 tbsp. cocoa (preferable a dark cocoa, like Hershey's Special Dark or Dagoba's). Add 1/2 tsp. peppermint extract with the vanilla extract. When the cookies are cool, melt dark chocolate, stir in 1/2-1 tsp. of peppermint extract, and dip cookies (on one side, or completely coated for an authentic Girl Scout experience).

Gluten-Free Menus: February 11

I just bought a new cookbook at our fabulous new-used bookstore in town--I took in a few old books and turned them into Mark Bittman's (aka The Minimalist's) new cookbook, How To Cook Everything Vegetarian. This comprehensive vegetarian roadmap is quickly becoming the go-to cookbook in our house. All of the recipes this week are found in or were inspired by this 4000-recipe tome. The strength of this cookbook lies not in any individual recipe, though everything I've cooked from it has been tasty, but in its underlying principle. Bittman doesn't say, "Hey, this is what quinoa is and here's a quinoa recipe." Instead, his book is packed with charts called "Improvising Asian-Style Noodle Bowls," lists like "13 Other Fillings for Rolled Kale or Stuffed Grape Leaves," and variations on stock recipes like classic guacamole. I'm sure there will be more great recipes to come, and I'll keep posting my new finds.

Here's what we're eating this week:

Breakfast Bonus! Please check out my recent post on gluten-free breakfasts to see what fiber-and-protein-filled goodness I eat in the mornings.

Sunday: Paella with turkey and shrimp, carrot sticks
Monday: Thai Corn Cakes, Vietnamese spring rolls with a spicy peanut dipping sauce
Tuesday: Monday redux
Wednesday: Coconut Lemongrass Soup with crunchy tempeh
Thursday: We're out of the house
Friday: sushi bowls (brown rice, avocado, scallions, daikon, radishes, smoked salmon with nori to scoop it all up)
Saturday: sushi bowls strike again!

Bonus Dessert: In honor of this week's theme, I'll share this recipe for Dark Chocolate Meringues, which satisfied and continues to satisfy my recent chocolate cravings. These cookies are different than other chocolate meringues I've made in the past, containing both cocoa powder and melted chocolate, which impart a richness and chewiness unusual in meringues. Who cares about gluten with chocolate such as this?

Gluten-Free Gingerbread Cookies

It's not fun being sick over the holidays, especially when your loved ones go out of the way to make gluten-free goodies that you can't eat without feeling nauseous. Sigh. There are, however, baking successes to share, even if I can't eat them. This is my contribution, by the way, to the Gluten-Free Holiday Baking Event sponsored by Gluten-Free Gobsmacked and others. Be sure to check out all of the recipes!


My dessert triumph this year has been gluten-free gingerbread cookies, an adaptation of the cookies I grew up baking with my mom. These cookies were always a major part of our holiday bonding, a recipe whose dough we came to know intimately over dozens of batches and that no one else we knew could make as well.

When I was about eight and, for an unremembered reason, we decided to make gingerbread cookies for the first time, out The Joy Of Cooking came.The 1975 Joy was always the go-to cookbook in our house (I bought the sadly disappointing 1997 edition and immediately reverted to 1975, which this summer still trustily led me through the creation of a perfect lemon meringue pie. I mean, why ditch "The Foods We Eat" sections for a separate part on tofu? Joy isn't exactly my go-to tofu cookbook...The 2006 edition is purported to be a much better revision.). That first time we only baked one gingerbread man at a time to find out whether they should be baked for 7 minutes or 9. We discovered that an 8-minute bake time on insulated baking sheets in our oven was perfect and that the dough doesn't roll out smoothly when the humidity is too high. And, over time, we acquired great seasonal cookie cutters--not the ones with only shapes but ones that imprint pictures of witches, ghosts, Santas, and fir trees on the cookies, too.

The original recipe is about as far from cookie dough in a tube as you can possibly get. The dough and the bake time are pretty finicky, which basically means that a little practice working with the recipe helps a lot. I've made some changes over the years, though, that have helped the dough be more predictable and workable.

Last year at Christmas I tried to make these cookies gluten-free for the first time. I didn't know much about gluten-free baking yet, so I just substituted Bob's Red Mill All-Purpose Gluten-Free Flour, which of course has a garbanzo bean base, for the wheat flour. The rolling out was difficult, though not impossible. Predictably, they came out crumbly and tasting somewhat like chickpeas. Yum.

I tried again this summer, substituting sorghum flour for the flour, adding xanthum gum, and mixing a little canned pumpkin into the dough to make it roll out more easily. The flavor was great, but the consistency was lacking--they still tasted slightly powdery instead of chewy. The dough rolled out more smoothly than they ever had before, so the pumpkin was a keeper.

A few weeks ago, I tried yet again. This time I used a mix of flours: sorghum, corn (I got the idea from Shauna's post about the baked goods she ate in Italy), brown rice, teff, and tapioca flours. I also chilled the dough, which I'd never done before. The result? Just like mom's...

Gluten-Free Gingerbread Cookies
These are spicy so experiment with the level of spice if you want a more mild cookie. Double the recipe for about 3 dozen cookies.

Blend:
2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup brown sugar

Beat in:
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 tsp vanilla

Sift:
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/2 cup corn flour
1/4 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup teff flour
2 tbsp tapioca flour
2 tsp ginger
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice, cloves, nutmeg
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp xanthum gum
pinch of cayenne pepper

Mix the flour mixture into the with butter mixture in three parts alternating with 2 tbsp of water (begin and end with the flour). Chill for 30 minutes. Roll out the dough 1/4 inch thick and cut out with cookies cutters. Bake for 8 minutes, or until you can lightly touch your finger to the cookie and any indent pops back, at 350. Makes about 20 cookies, and the recipe is easy to double.