Chocolate Rice Chex Treats

You can make crispy rice treats with Cocoa Krispies, but it just ends up being too sweet.  I prefer to replace some of the butter with unsweetened chocolate.  (Yes, you can use margarine.  It will taste better if you use butter.)

The picture shows a double batch made with the smaller amount of chocolate.  If you want a dark chocolate taste, use 1 oz for every 10 oz. of marshmallows.

You can try different cereals, but avoid cereals that have more than 3 or 4 grams of sugar of per serving.  You get all the sugar you need from the marshmallows.  I sometimes replace 1 c. of the Rice Chex with Crunchy Flax.

3 T salted butter, plus extra for pan
1/2 ~ 1 oz unsweetened chocolate
10 oz. marshmallows
1/2 tsp vanilla (optional)
6 ~ 6 1/2 cups Rice Chex

Butter an 8x8 or 9x9 pan, and save some of the softened butter for finishing.  (I usually leave it sitting on the piece of the wrapper that I cut off.

Melt 3 T of butter and the unsweetened chocolate in a large sauce pan over medium-low heat.  Stir in the marshmallows and continue to heat until fully melted.  If you're using extra vanilla, stir it in before adding the cereal.  Use a folding motion to mix in the cereal until everything is covered with the chocolate marshmallow, and then pour the mixture into the prepared pan.

Use some of the reserved butter to grease either your fingers or the bottom of a clean measuring cup, and press the cereal mixture firmly into the pan.  You'll need to re-butter the fingers or cup 2 or 3 times to keep the cereal from sticking.

Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature before turning it out onto a cutting board and slicing into squares.  Store in a container with a tight lid, or take to a party where they will all be consumed before they go stale.

She can make a cherry pie, gluten-free

We found sour pie cherries at the Traverse City Farmer's Market, so I brought a quart home to make a pie.

The pie crust is best if you make it 4-24 hours before, chill it in the fridge, and let it rest at room temperature for 15-20 minutes before rolling.  But it also worked just fine with a 45 minute chill before rolling.  I think if it had been colder, I might have been able to do a better lattice top, but it was late, and I was tired and gave up easily. Cutting the dough recipe in half and making a crumb topping might work better.

I pitted the cherries while they were cold from the refrigerator, stirred in the sugar, cornstarch, and flavorings and then let it come to room temp, stirring occasionally.  The sugar helped break up the lumps in the cornstarch and bring out the juice from the cherries.


Pie Dough
420 grams 40/ 60 All-Purpose Gluten Free Flour Blend
3/4 t salt
8 T salted butter, cold, cut into 1 T chunks
8 T vegetable shortening, cold, cut into 1 T chunk
Ice water

Filling
4 ~ 4 1/2 c. sour cherries, pitted
3/4 ~ 1 c. sugar
1 T corn starch
a drop of vanilla (< 1/8 tsp)
a drop of almond flavoring (< 1/8 tsp)

Place the flour and salt in a food processor with a metal blade, and pulse until the flour is fluffed up.  Drop the butter and shortening over the flour, spacing out the chunks so they touch as little as possible.  Pulse 10 - 14 times, until the butter is cut in, leaving some larger pieces.  Drizzle the ice water into the chute of the food processor, pulsing until a ball of dough comes together. I make my GF pie dough slightly wetter than a wheat pastry, without gluten you can't make it tough, and it helps soften the grittiness of the flours (especially if you leave it to rest in the refrigerator overnight).

Pit the cherries.  Stir in the sugar, cornstarch, vanilla and almond flavoring.  If the cherries are cold, allow the mixture to come to room temperature, stirring occasionally.

Divide the dough between two pieces of plastic wrap, pat each half into a thick disk, wrap tightly and chill in the refrigerator at least 45 minutes.

Remove one disk from the fridge.  (If it's been refrigerated more than 2 hours, give it 15 minutes to warm up before rolling.)  Unwrap the disk, place it between 2 sheets of parchment paper, and roll it out.  Remove the top parchment paper, and use the bottom sheet to help support the pastry as you transfer it into a glass pie plate.  Tears, breaks, etc can easily be pressed back together.  If you don't have enough dough to make a good edge on one side, trim off a piece from somewhere else and squish it together.  Gluten-free pastry is more like play dough than wheat pastry, and can be treated as such.

Pour the room temperature cherry filling into the pastry.

Roll out the top crust, cut it into strips, and attempt a lattice top.... or just make half batch of pastry and find a crumb topping recipe, substituting your GF blend for the wheat flour.

Line a rimmed cookie sheet with aluminum foil, and place the pie pan in the center.  Bake at 350 F until the filling is bubbling and the pastry is brown and crisp.  Mine took 45 minutes with the convection fan running.  The pastry looks very brown because of the teff flour in my all-purpose blend.

Buckwheat Pancakes - Gluten Free

2 1/2 c. kefir, unsweetened
4 T butter
1/4 c. sugar
2 eggs

125 grams 40/60 all purpose gluten-free flour blend
125 grams buckwheat flour
  15 grams psyllium husk powder
2 t baking powder
2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
Fresh blueberries (optional)
Sliced banana (optional)

Sometimes my weekend shopping trip is to the Natural Foods store, which has a great selection of gluten-free pasta and flours, but doesn't carry buttermilk.   They do carry kefir, and I've found that this makes a good substitute for muffin and cake batters.

If you're only feeding 2 people and don't want leftovers, you may want to cut the recipe in half. We freeze the leftovers and toast them for breakfast sandwiches or snacks.

Preheat a non-stick griddle or skillet over medium heat.

Place 1 c. of the kefir and the butter in a microwave safe container, and microwave on medium power (or in short bursts, stopping to stir every 30 seconds) until the butter is melted.  Pour the butter and kefir into a bowl, and whisk in the rest of the kefir, the eggs, and the sugar.  Add the dry ingredients and stir until everything is well blended.  Remember, you can't make gluten-free pancakes tough by over-developing the gluten.

If your batter is thicker than you like, think it with a little water.

Wipe the skillet with a paper towel soaked in vegetable oil.  Measure out 3 - 4 T of batter for each pancake.  I you wish, you can add banana slices or berries on top of the pancake batter while the first side cooks.  When the edges are set and bubbles are breaking in the center of the pancake, flip and cook until the pancake feels spongy and set when you press on the top.

To freeze, cool the extra pancakes on a wire rack.  Cut strips of wax paper or parchment to layer between the pancakes so you can remove one or two without defrosting the entire package.

Red beans, rice, and sausage

1 lb. fresh Andouille sausage
1 medium onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, diced
1 green bell pepper chopped
4 - 5 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 t. dried thyme
2 t. chili powder
1/4 t. cayenne
2 T. sweet rice flour

1 1/2 t. Penzey's Pork Soup Base
2 c. water
14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes (with celery and onions, if you can get it)
3 c. brown Minute Rice
Two 14.5 oz cans red kidney beans (preferably low sodium), drained and rinsed


Place the sausage links into a non-stick 5 quart Dutch oven over medium-high heat. (Use a couple tablespoons of oil if you don't have a non-stick pan.) Add 1/2 c. of water to the pan.

Boil the water, and stir in the soup base with a small whisk or a fork.  Keep the water near the stove, and stir it occasionally to make sure that soup base is dissolved.
When the sausage links are browned on both sides, remove it to a cutting board and slice, returning the slices to the Dutch oven as you work. (By this point the water should have boiled off.) Cook until the sausage is browned, and then add the chopped vegetables.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables start to brown.
Stir in the garlic, thyme, chili powder, and cayenne and cook until fragrant.  Stir in the sweet rice flour until it's evenly distributed, with no dry white patches. Stir in about 1/2 c. of the broth, scraping up the browned bits from the bottom of the skillet.  Add the rest of the broth and the tomatoes.  When the liquid is boiling, stir in the Minute Rice and beans and reduce the heat to low. Cover and cook for 5 minutes.  Stir, cover, and cook an additional 5 - 10 minutes, until the rice is tender.

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

I make chocolate chip cookies pretty frequently, experimenting with nuts and whole grain flours.  Tonight I just wanted something sweet, so I quickly threw together a batch - and produced the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever made.  They're light and crisp but still chewy.

I think it was the coconut flour....or maybe the butter and coconut oil were warmer and softer than the last time I tried this combination.  In any case, I'll be trying another batch soon, to make sure I can recreate it.

4 oz. salted butter, softened4 oz. virgin coconut oil, room temperature

3/4 c. dark brown sugar

3/4 c. granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 tsp double-strength vanilla

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

25 grams golden flaxseed meal

50 grams coconut flour

50 grams sorghum flour

50 grams teff flour

150 grams 40/60 All Purpose Flour Blend

12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 c. walnuts, toasted (optional)

Cream together butter, coconut oil, and sugars.  Beat in eggs and vanilla.  Scrape down bowl.  Add the dry ingredients and stir on low speed until combined.  Scrape down the bowl, and stir in chocolate chips and nuts.

Scoop onto parchment paper lined baking sheet and bake for 11 minutes at 350F, using the convection setting if you have it.

Spicy Goetta

On Easter, Nick's cousin treated us to a breakfast of goetta and scrambled eggs.  We had never heard of goetta and were immediately smitten.  Tastes like sausage with the creamy mouth feel of oatmeal? And it can be made at home?!

After reviewing various online recipes, I approached the kitchen with the following thoughts:

1.  Despite the whole grain oats, goetta is not health food.  The whole point is using the oats to soak up the fat from the meat.

2. I'm going to start with a "half" batch.  Even if it freezes well, 1 lb of meat and 1 1/4 c. of steel cut oats is a *lot* of food for 2 people to eat, and first attempts are not always tasty.

3.  More spices!  When we have sausage with breakfast, it's Hot Italian Sausage, and so we wanted more spices in our homemade goetta.  Penzey's Italian sausage seasoning is salty, so I reduced the amount of salt I added to the oatmeal.

4.  I'm curious to find out how finely the meat will break up if I just stir it into the cooked oatmeal, but Nick lobbied for the extra flavor of browning the meat separately.

4.  Use a mix of ground beef and ground pork, mainly because that's how goetta was described to us.   Lots of the recipes call for only ground pork, or chunks of pork shoulder and a meat grinder.

So I assembled

8 oz. of ground pork

8 oz. of ground sirloin

1 1/4 c. steel cut oats

4 cups water

1 tsp salt

black pepper - 5 cranks of the mill

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 bay leaves

1 t dried savory

3/4 t Penzey's Italian sausage seasoning
3 shakes of red pepper flakes (optional)
Cooking spray

Season the water with salt and pepper, and bring to a boil over medium heat.  Stir in the oats, cover the pot, and reduce the temperature to low.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened and tender (40-50 minutes).

After about 25 minutes, heat a large skillet over medium high heat and add the pork and sirloin.  Break the meat up with spatula.  Then break it up some more.  Keep on chopping... you want the meat in the teensy, tiny crumbles you see in a cheap taco.  I used a Pampered Chef Mix 'N Chop, and pretty much chopped continuously until the meat was cooked through.  Keep cooking the meat, stirring occasionally, until it's a lovely shade of brown.  Stir in the chopped onion, bay leaves, savory, and Italian sausage seasoning, and cook until the onions are tender (4-5 minutes).  Turn off the burner under the skillet.

When your oatmeal is fully cooked, stir in the seasoned meat.  Continue to cook the mixture over low heat until it can be pulled away from the side of the pan when you stir.  Spray one or two loaf pans with cooking spray.  Spread the goetta in the loaf and and smooth it out with a butter knife or spatula.   Allow to cool on the counter for 30 minutes, and refrigerate overnight.

Loosen the goetta with a spatula, and turn it out onto a clean cutting board.  Cut ins slices a little more than 1/2 an inch thick.  Heat about 1 Tbsp of oil or butter (or some of both) in a frying pan, and fry the slices until crispy and brown on both sides.  Brownier and crispier than the picture below....the goetta looked so tasty that my camera "ate" the pictures I took before plating it.

I divided the goetta between two 8 inch x 4 inch loaf pans, and cut eat 8 inch loaf into 12 slices.

Our conclusion was that the recipe could still use a little more seasoning.  The next time I make it, I plan to add a clove or two of minced garlic and double the amounts of savory, Italian sausage seasoning, and black pepper.

Almost Crustless Kale Quiche

I bought a 4 pound bag of frozen kale at Costco, so I was excited to find  this recipe on Serious Eats.  Since all the rinsing and chopping was done for me, I figured it would be a snap.  I'd read the recipe a couple of times, and planned to substitute the cheese that I had on hand.  However, I'd also read a lot of other kale recipes this week and consulted a friend who subscribes to a CSA that buries her in greens for half the year. Apparently the sauteed onion, garlic and red pepper flakes from another recipe migrated into my image of kale quiche.

The breadcrumb "crust" provided a nice clean release from the pie plate, but there's no pastry to "ruin" when I reheat slices in the microwave.  I rather liked the caraway flavor of the Hearty Whole Grain bread along with the eggs and kale, but any sort of bread crumb would do the job.


1 slice  Bob's Red Mill GF Hearty Whole Grain Bread, frozen
softened butter

3 ~ 4 cups frozen chopped kale
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 ~ 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
~ 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
~ 1/8 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
~ 1/4 tsp turmeric

6 eggs
1/4 c. half and half
3/4 c. milk (I used 2%)
3 pinches coarse sea salt
4-5 cranks of freshly ground white pepper
~ 1/4 c. crumbled feta
~ 2 oz. of Wensleydale, crumbled


Preheat oven to 350 F.  Thaw the kale in the microwave.

Break the bread slice up and pulse it in the food processor until the bread crumbs are quite fine.  I had to open the lid and stir mine a couple times to get the bigger chunks to break up.  Generously butter a glass pie plate, and dump the bread crumbs in.  Carefully spread the bread crumbs over the butter and pat them down.

Saute the onion in olive oil over medium heat until tender.  Add the garlic and spices, and saute until fragrant. Stir in the thawed kale, and set the pan aside to cool.

In a medium sized bowl, beat the eggs.  Add the half and half, milk, salt, and pepper, and beat until thoroughly combined.  Stir in the kale mixture and crumbled cheeses and pour into the prepare pie plate.

Bake 40 - 45 minutes, until the edges are brown, and the center is set.