Classic White Gluten-Free Cupcakes

We had Dylan's birthday party today.  While Mom made a beautiful teddy bear cake for Dylan, it had wheat in it, so I made a few gluten-free cupcakes for the rest of us.  And, they turned out pretty darn well.  I used a half batch of the Chocolate Honey Beet Cake recipe (with 2 eggs) for one set (made 10 cupcakes) and this recipe for the other.  I was going to make cream cheese frosting but there was enough chocolate butter cream frosting leftover from the teddy bear that I just used that.  It also worked pretty well to cool the cupcakes, freeze them in a Ziploc without the frosting and then defrost them the day before and frost the day of.

Classic White Gluten-Free Cupcakes


1/2 c butter, at room temperature
3/4 c sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 c (or more accurately 7.5 oz) gluten-free flour blend
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 c milk


Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line your cupcake pan with paper liners.  Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Stir in the vanilla.  Sift together the dry ingredients and add to the butter mixture one third at a time, alternating with the milk.  Pour into the prepared cupcake pan (approx. 1/4 c batter per cupcake).  Bake for 18-24 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.  Makes 12 cupcakes.

Variations on a Theme...Chocolate Drop Cookies

I've had fun adapting another couple of recipes to come up with this one.  They are quick and easy.   Just be patient with them though and don't let your butter get too soft or they will spread.  But, they eat either way!

Chocolate Drop Cookies

1/2 c butter

3/4 c brown sugar

1/4 c honey

1 T vanilla

1 tsp hazelnut extract

1 T finely, finely ground decaf coffee beans(or go for the full monty and use caffeinated)

1 3/4 c easy gluten-free flour blend

1/4 c cocoa

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 -1/2 tsp salt (smoked salt is good if you have it)

2 T sugar for rolling the cookies in

Blend butter, sugar and honey.  Scrap it down and make sure the honey is fully incorporated.  Add the vanilla, hazelnut extract, and coffee beans.  Mix well.  Add flour, cocoa, soda and salt.  Blend until everything comes together. Scoop into balls (approx. 1 T) and roll in sugar.  Put on greased cookie sheet, leaving some space between them in case they spread.  Cook at 375 degrees for 8 minutes.  Let cool on the cookie sheet for about 5 minutes and then finish cooling them on a wire rack.  Watch them disappear.  Makes between 18 and 24 depending on size and how much of the dough you eat!

Find more at Slightly Indulgent Tuesday! 

Additional variation (March 10, 2012)

Chocolate Drop Cookies

1/2 c shortening

1 c white sugar
1 egg

1 T hazelnut extract

1 T finely, finely ground decaf coffee beans(or go for the full monty and use caffeinated)

1 3/4 c easy gluten-free flour blend

1/4 c cocoa

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 -1/2 tsp salt (smoked salt is good if you have it)

Basically, mix and bake as directed above.

Chocolate Honey Beet Cake (GF)

This is the year to conquer some of those harder to eat vegetables in our community supported agriculture (CSA) box.  And, by harder to eat, I mean those that I can't stand like swiss chard (will cover in another post) and beets.  The fennel still hasn't been conquered.  Now, it's probably not too kosher to cover up taste with chocolate but hey, it worked!  This cake is moist and yummy and I can't taste the beets.  Better than putting them in the compost.  Since we have a bit of honey around here I adapted it to use that in place of sugar (original recipe).  Andrew didn't think it was sweet enough.  I liked it.  A compromise would be frosting or a glaze instead of just the powered sugar.  

Chocolate Honey Beet Cake

3/4 c. butter, divided (or use melted coconut oil if you want it dairy-free)

1 c. honey (spray the measuring cup with a little non-stick, makes it a lot easier to pour out) (or 1 1/2 c brown sugar + 2 T water)

3 eggs

3 oz. baking chocolate (or 1/2 cocoa + 3 T butter/coconut oil)

5 medium beets (2 c. pureed)

1 T vanilla

2 c. gluten-free flour blend (mine was 3 c. white rice flour, 1.5 c. tapioca flour, 3/4 c. cornstarch, 1 1/2 tsp salt, 1 T xanthan gum)

2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

powdered sugar for dusting

To make beet puree, trim stems and roots off beets and quarter them.  Place in heavy sauce pan filled with water.  Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer for 50 mins or until the beets are tender.  Drain off remaining liquid and rinse beets in cold water as they’ll be too hot to handle otherwise.  Slide skins off and place beets in blender.  Process until a smooth puree forms.  Let cool slightly before using in cake.  

In a mixing bowl, mix 1/2 c. butter and honey (this is where you use 1/2 c coconut oil plus the brown sugar and water if you don't use the butter and/or don't have the honey). Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Melt chocolate with remaining butter in the microwave on high in 20 second intervals, stirring each time until smooth. (Or use the melted butter/coconut oil and cocoa powder here).  Cool slightly. Blend chocolate mixture, beets and vanilla into the creamed mixture.  

Combine flour, baking soda , salt, cinnamon and nutmeg; add to the above mixture and mix well. Pour into a greased and floured bundt pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 50-60 minutes  or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in pan 15 minutes before removing to a wire rack. Cool completely and dust with confectioners’ sugar.

Proud Mama...of a Bunch of Girls

As some of you know, this was the first year that bees joined the Jones Cottage.  And, what a year it was!  We had some crazy swarming behavior in June.  Still not sure what exactly happened there other than the Girls made a new queen. At least we are pretty sure they did...either way they have continued to produce more bees (need a queen for that) and honey.

Sunday was the day that we "robbed" the hive.  Our hive consists of two deeps or hive bodies and a super.  A super is like a deep other than it's not as deep.  Between the super and one of the hive bodies we had a screen called a queen excluder.  Basically, queens are too big to fit through the queen excluder and therefore, she doesn't lay any eggs in the super.  So, the worker bees store honey in the super and that's what we "rob."  Boy did they do a good job.  It is likely we could have added a second super had we realized just how good our hive was doing.  We are new and since the spring was so wet, we never anticipated a brand new hive doing as well as ours has done this year.  

Turns out the top deep was full of honey too.  The bottom deep appears to have mostly brood.  So, we think the Girls are set for the winter.  We pulled the super, scraped all of the honey and wax off of the frames (10 frames hang down in each box for the bees to make their wax, brood, honey, etc), and put the super back on the hive.  The Girls will clean the honey off that we couldn't get and may even start making more...so we'll see if we get any more between now and the end of September when we pull the super off for the winter.  

Andrew has been working with all of that for the last couple of days.  The final count is approximately 9.5 quarts of honey and 1.5 cups of beeswax.  The honey tastes great and the wax smells amazing.  But then again, I'm the proud mama...I might just be a little biased!

Photos kindly taken by my friend Kathleen Thorpe

Click on the picture for a better look!  And, no, they haven't started making maternity beekeeping suits :)

GF Pumpkin Biscuits

Not bad for a first try. I might try a little less sweet rice flour or no xanthan gum next time but otherwise these were pretty good.  I adapted the Spiced Pumpkin Biscuits recipe from Cooking Light.

GF/CF Pumpkin Biscuits

1/3 c rice flour

1/3 c white teff flour

1/3 c tapioca starch flour 

1/3 c sweet rice flour

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp salt

1/3 c shortening

1/3 c coconut milk, full fat

3/4 c canned pumpkin

3 T honey (I actually did about 1 T honey and 2 T agave syrup since I ran out of honey)

1. Preheat oven to 400°.

2. Combine flour, baking powder, spices, and salt in a large bowl; cut in shortening until mixture resembles coarse meal. Chill 10 minutes.

3. Combine coconut milk and honey, stirring with a whisk until well blended; add canned pumpkin. Add coconut milk mixture to flour mixture; stir just until moist and all of the flour has been incorporated.

4. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface (tapioca starch flour); knead lightly 4 times or until you can pat it out to about 3/4" thick. Cut into biscuits.  Place biscuits, 1 inch apart, on a baking sheet sprayed with non-stick spray. Bake at 400° for 14 minutes or until golden. Remove from pan; cool 2 minutes on wire racks. Serve warm.

Submitted to Slightly Indulgent Mondays at Simply Sugar & Gluten-Free.

Is it all it's cracked up to be?

I have a love/hate relationship with the whole notion of eating local. I like the idea. I think there are many benefits, some of which can include getting to know the farmer, less transportation of the food, and fresher food. But, I love things that cannot and do not grow here. I will never get an avocado grown in Oregon. If I did it would have to be grown in such an artificial environment that it would defeat the purpose of not being from California or Mexico. So, eat local or eat those things I like that aren't local or do a bit of both. I do a bit of both. Such a wide variety of tasty foods are grown in Oregon/Washington that I can usually, without trying too hard, find something in season that is relatively local (there's a lot of debate about what is local...that's not the point today).

A few things I eat just naturally seem to be local. Honey is one of them. It's readily available and I like to buy in bulk. Doesn't hurt that my in-laws gave us a gallon jar of honey. We're starting in on year two with that big boy. The fact that we don't eat large quantities plays a role as well. Today, I read an article that reminded me of another reason I like eating local. Adulteration. This can happen anywhere but it seems that more and more, food from other countries - finger pointing at China - are not all they seem. This article from the Seattle PI shows the great lengths that exporters in China have gone to export honey that is tainted with animal antibiotics (super bug anyone). Does it make sense that Singapore is now a major exporter of honey to the US and they don't have any bees?

So, while I am not a fanatic about eating local, I would like to encourage you to think about where your food is produced. Is it all it's cracked up to be? If not, you might want to consider making some changes...for your health! And read that article above. We all need to start paying attention to where our food comes from...and no, the right answer is not McDonalds!