LUNCHBOX BENTO: Even a Kid Could Do It

Carrots and Ranch Dip, 1 mini flower-shaped Coconut Mochi, Flower and Leaf shaped ham sandwiches, Strawberries and Grapes

Sometimes we wish our kids would stay babies forever.  I was never one of those adults who fawned over newborns though (except mine lol!)

I always looked forward to the day my kids would grow up and be independent.   This year as Bebe (for my food blog she keeps the baby nickname ok?) turned 10 I have consistently pushed her to do more on her own.  Along the way, 6 yo Bib (her alias sure tells you how long I've had my food blog!) kind of started doing things her older sister has to do too.  

These beans were grown from one bean seed Bib planted in Kindergarten.  She brought home the little plant and we plunked it in our backyard veggie garden.  Bib actually ate her beans too!

Gradually, along with tidying up their own rooms and picking up after their toys everyday, I've added more chores.  Right after swim lessons both do the laundry.  I taught Bebe how to operate the washing machine and dryer and she does the towels.  Bib washes the swimsuits in Zero by hand and hangs them to dry.  Yes, Bib isn't strong enough to wring the suits dry enough so that sometimes the next morning they are too damp, but a mom's got to let go of things, right?

After watching me make their lunches in the lunchbot quad containers, they were able to make their own lunches today.  Yay!  Happy dance!  I intend to get them involved in the new school year with making more of their own lunches and snacks. Bebe already uses the microwave and can cook basic things supervised.  Hopefully this will pave the way for even more independence and teach them some mindfulness about food, responsibilities and to not take things for granted! 

I chuckled out loud in the past in the lunchtime hallways when I saw my high school students' freshly made lunches delivered hot to the school doors on ceramic plates covered with foil by their stay-at-home moms.  [OK, I'll come clean:  I'll still laugh and razz 18 yo boys who have their moms deliver their lunches to them!]  This will never be me or my kids.  I wonder about whether or not the values I am teaching my kids are getting through to them and am awestruck by how parents' love can be shown in such diverse and divergent ways.  There's no denying we love 'em.

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Lunchbots Quad Bento Lunchbox: Floral Fun

Ham sandwich flowers, baby carrots with ranch dip (in round container), blueberries,cantaloupe flowers watermelon flowers and a pineapple skewer.




Ok. Just practicing to see how long it would take to make a kind of healthy bento lunch for the kids.  Not bad.  everything was put together fast because I used the same cutter and foods were compartmentalized.  With the Lunchbox Quad it seems easier because I don't have to worry too much about variety.  The quad forces me to put in different things.

I used my metal flower cookie cutter to cut out the sandwich and fruit shapes.  That feels somewhat good because I haven't been baking much >.< and my bakeware has been sitting unused for a while.

I am thinking about making some other mini foods for the quad.  The gurlz love mini foods and I think making bento could re-invigorate my lack of passion for baking since going GF.

On my to do list:  mochi cakes, mini shortbread lavender cookies, mini scones, mini frittattas...

I'm getting excited thinking about it :)
Hope I can keep it up through crazy September!

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CAKE WALK: CHOCOLATE QUINOA CUPCAKES WITH LAVENDER BUTTERCREAM

Chocolate Quinoa Cupcakes with Lavender Buttercream

These beauties are for my daughter's school Fun Fair.  They run something called a Cake Walk.  Parents donate baked cakes and the people buy tickets to play this game somewhat like musical chairs. The people who play the game walk in a circle to music and when the music stops and they land on a certain number on the playground floor they win the cake.

Bebe won a cake last year.  Her little 4 year old arms could barely carry the huge chocolate cake she won.  She insisted on carrying it home herself.

This year, I'm baking these cupcakes for the Cake Walk.  In order to transport them I devised a cheapie, effective system whereby the cupcakes do not topple all over the place.  It'll soon be obvious how I did this in the pictures below.

First, I decided to decorate the cupcakes naturally so I went into my backyard looking for flowers.  See my bay tree?  It's huge!  There were thyme flowers, chive flowers...nah. nah.

I wanted something prettier.  Those little plants to the right are edamame we're trying to grow.

My 3 year old fig cutting to the left.  Pretty healthy!  The lavender looked lovely this morning so I chose some as cupcake decorations.

I used my trusty chocolate quinoa cupcake recipe and a simple buttercream.  I rarely use cookbooks anymore...I use my iPad and just search my blog's archives.  It's so convenient!

I like using disposable piping bags.  I have a 1M Wilton tip here.  The buttercream was tinted with a violet food colouring to get a lovely light lavender colour

4 cupcakes fit into this paper plate cupcake holder I built to transport my cupcakes to school. I stapled two plates together at the rims, cut 4 X's with a serrated knife, lined each hole with tissue paper and wedged a cupcake into each pocket.  

A candied violet and lavender sprinkles adorn some cupcakes

This looks like a little cupcake bouquet...you could add more flowers to get that effect.  But for me, it'll do.  In all, from a batch of 12 cupcakes, I have 3 of these cupcake bouquets. 

For the Chocolate Quinoa Cupcakes recipe...click HERE

For the Simple Buttercream  (want to eat now can't wait) recipe...click HERE

For an over-the-top Swiss Meringue Buttercream (I have a stand mixer and patience) recipe...click HERE

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PASTA SALAD AND FOOD HANGUPS

fusilli, tuna, corn and egg salad

I'm not even going to suggest to you that you MUST put anything green (scallions!) or red (peppers!) to pep up the colour and flavour.  This pasta salad would be so much more pretty but my kiddies would just pick out all the peppers and scallions anyway.  When I make a batch of potato or pasta salad, I always keep the kids' portions free of greenery because they inevitably don't eat it.  I think I'll just have to keep plying them with the green stuff in other ways.  They do like Caesar Salad, carrots, broccoli and cauliflower.  The little one even eats gai lan, green beans, snap peas and bok choy.  

I remember being scarred for life as a youngster eating fried rice for lunch.  You'd think that going home, you'd have a decent homemade meal that was yummy and these would make for good memories.  Not so with me.  As a youngster in the 70's, coming home from school to eat lunch was about being nagged to eat the whole plate of fried rice because people were starving in China.  A quick retort about how we should then send the fried rice to China usually just got me into more trouble.  The thing about my mother's fried rice was that it had disgusting frozen peas in it.  The peas were overcooked, shrivelled and tasted like muddy green bombs of grossness.  There were chopped onions in there too, and I would pick away all the onions, peas and any other such matter from the fried rice; eating only the parts that didn't offend my delicate senses.  I'd eat the rice, the fried egg, the Chinese sausage and that's about it.  

One lunch hour when I was dawdling and moving my fried rice about the plate to try to make it seem as if I had eaten a lot, my mother became particularly angry at me about my pickiness.  She told me I couldn't get out of my seat until the whole plate was finished.  Every last rice kernel.  I was mortified.  Ick!  I wanted to gag.  She left me with some lame Chinese anecdote ringing in my ears about how people who don't finish every kernel of rice in their bowl would marry people who had complexions that looked like the leftovers.  Fortunately for me, she had to hoof it downstairs to deal with some motel matter.  You see when I was in elementary school, my parents owned and operated a motel.  24/7, they had to be at the beck and call of people who would buzz the office door for service.   We lived in the office, upstairs.  It was quite a colourful life, but those stories for later.

Left alone with my plate of fried rice, I realized that no matter how much I distributed the food around my plate, any food left on it would result in some sort of discipline.   For those of you familiar with bamboo feather dusters, you know what I mean.  The warm sun streamed through the green-trimmed windows.  I pushed open the window to look down on Kimmy, our black German Shepherd below.  

When my mother came back upstairs, I was sitting with my plate scraped clean.  She opened her eyes in surprise and I quickly took off to school before she could figure it out.   

Today, I eat pretty much everything except offal (I mean think of the word! very punny!)  and weird animal body parts...especially innards.  I love peas in my restaurant fried rice.  Still won't touch my mother's fried rice... I am still averse to certain preparations and textures of food.  For instance, I hate raisins in baked goods.  They are disgusting shrivelly hard lumps of yuckiness.  However, exchange those for craisins, and I'm all over it. I also don't like chopped nuts or desiccated coconut on some baked goods.  But I can joyfully eat a whole bowl of nuts or even a package of raisins and as you can see in my recipes, I love the flavour of coconut.   I even like to eat large chunks of dried young coconut.  Very yummy!

Today, I do eat onions and peas and I love veggies; especially roasted brussel sprouts and all sorts of lovely cruciferous veggies and dark leafy greens--although I didn't eat much of these when I was a kid.  I have always loved spicy food and I am pretty adventurous when it comes to ethnic eats.  I'll try most things at least once.   It is with this hope that my daughters will grow up to be veggie eating adults later on that I had decided early on not to bother with making a huge issue of them not eating veggies.  As every year passes, they are incorporating more variety in their diets.  It's slow but steady and I think not making a big deal of it and just consistently keeping it on the table for them to try will enable them to develop a healthy attitude about food and eating.  I mean, really...they're not going to starve to death.  We're not living in a third world country where they would appreciate what they have.  I just don't want them to have these negative memories about certain foods stuck in their heads from their formative years.

So, do you have some foods that you still absolutely refuse to eat today?  Are you still reeling from some childhood psychological food trauma?  Were you scarred for life?  Tell me about it!

a kiddie favourite in the lunch box

PASTA SALAD 

*this pasta salad should be served cold.  Packed in a thermos or bento box with an ice-pack, it is a kiddie favourite as part of a healthy school lunch supplemented by fresh fruit.  This is best made the night before and refrigerated.  All the ingredients should be pantry staples.

• 2 cups fusilli (uncooked) [I used Catelli Smart Pasta]
• 1 small can tuna [I used oil-packed, drained]
• 1 can corn niblets [I used Green Giant, drained]
• 2 boiled eggs, chopped
• 1/4 cup reduced fat mayonnaise (or more to taste)
• very optional:  chopped red peppers, chopped sundried tomatoes, shredded carrot, sliced scallions, chopped parsley
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Bring a large pot of water to boil and add salt, cooking as per manufacturer's instructions. [I used Catelli Smart pasta that is supposed to have the same amount of fibre as whole wheat pasta].
2. Drain pasta in a colander and rinse with cold water.  Allow to sit in colander to dry as you prepare the rest of the salad
3. Into a large mixing bowl toss the pasta with the rest of the ingredients:  the flaked drained tuna,  the corn, chopped egg and any other chopped vegetables you wish.  Season with salt and pepper.
4. Mix in 1/4 cup mayonnaise and thoroughly combine.  Add more mayonnaise to moisten if the salad looks too dry.
5. Refrigerate in a sealed container. Serve cold.

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CHOCOLATE CHIP RICE KRISPIES SQUARES

chocolate chip rice krispies squares!

                             

                                     butter your baking dish well and your life will be made a lot easier later on...

everything with be sticky, including your hands!
spray pam on your spatula to smoosh the rice krispies down into the dish

unlike me, you will wait an appropriate amount of time to cut your squares so that they come out with clean edges

 impatience is delicious nonetheless!

For a tried and true Rice Krispies Cereal Square recipe, try this classic one HERE if you don't like chocolate chips *horrors!*

What a perfect snack for the kids' lunch boxes!  When you add in some other healthy optional mix-ins (ground flaxseed is my favourite), you can alleviate the sugar-guilt by rationalizing that you've added something healthy in there!

Cakebrain's Chocolate Chip Rice Krispies Squares

makes a LOT of squares! This is a double-batch to fit my large rectangular pyrex baking dish.

• 1/2 cup margarine
• 8 cups marshmallows
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 12 cups rice krispies cereal (get the brown rice, gluten free cereal!)
• 1 cup dark mini chocolate chips
• optional: nuts, sprinkles, more mini marshmallows, chocolate-covered candies, other types of cereal  [evil mommy idea: mix in ground flax! i do it all the time!  ;p]

1. Melt margarine in a large microwave-safe container (I used a pyrex bowl) along with the marshmallows for 2 minutes.   Continue to heat for one minute intervals until you see the marshmallows start to puff up slightly.   Using a rubber spatula, test the marshmallows by stirring them.  Continue to heat in short spurts until the marshmallows are melted and can be stirred smooth.   Remove from microwave. Stir in vanilla.


2. In a large mixing bowl, add the cereal.  Stir in the melted marshmallow mixture, incorporating the cereal.  Continue stirring until coated well.  Toss in the mini chocolate chips.  If your marshmallow mixture is still hot, you will see some of your chocolate morsels melt.  It's okay...just carry on!  If you would like to add any other optional mix-ins, do it now!


3. Press into a large rectangular buttered baking pan (or sprayed with non-stick spray). Allow to cool; cut into squares.

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JELLY BELLY FACTORY, FAIRFIELD, CALIFORNIA

Belly Flops, from the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield, California

Each visitor to the factory tour receives a bag of jelly bellies upon leaving the factory.  The factory requires you to wear their little paper hats during the tour and does not allow photography of the factory facilities.  You can take pictures of the shop and surrounding area though.

In the Jelly Belly shop, I found these interesting jelly beans.  They’re like those energy drinks, except they’re in jelly belly form.  How cool is that?  I bought a few to see if they’d give me “quick energy”.  I imagine the sugar would be doing that anyway, right?

I was tempted to purchase a whole whack of useless jelly belly paraphernalia, but the nagging thought of my bursting luggage made me reconsider.  I settled on something useful:  Jelly Belly hand sanitizing gel.  I also purchased Chocolate covered jelly bellies (not chocolate flavoured but coated in real dark chocolate!), 1/2 a pound of "birthday cake" flavoured jelly bellies (which taste like frosting) and a pound of pink jelly bellies that I hand-selected because the girls always want only pink jelly bellies and leave the rest to me. Apparently, the favourite flavour is buttered popcorn.  I figured I’d be getting some of those in my bag of Belly Flops.  The Belly Flops are just jelly belly rejects that have been bagged for purchase and they’re all mixed up depending on what flops were produced.

We used our GPS to get to the Jelly Belly Factory.  Boy was that thing useful on our trip.  I highly recommend you use one if you travel to parts unknown. 

In front of the factory was a cute VW bug with Jelly Belly decor all over it.  Several transport vehicles also had the Jelly Belly characters and logos plastered all over them too.  We thought they were cool.

Inside the factory, there is a cafeteria where you can order Jelly Belly shaped pizza. 

If you look up while you’re in the huge lineup for the factory tours…and believe me, you’ll be waiting for a while, you’ll notice Jelly Belly decor and mosaic pictures created by jelly bellies being glued together onto a canvas to create an image.  The best ones are the images of Ronald Reagan and Elvis, I think.

These are actual individual jelly bellies of different colours/flavours glued down in a mosaic to create the image.  Neat, eh?

At the Sample Bar, you can try any of the flavours you are interested in before you buy. 

I saw this cute cupcake made of jelly bellies and couldn’t resist taking a pic of it.

The Jelly Belly Factory Tour is a great activity for kids.  The tour is about 40 minutes long.  The lineup for the tour is just about as long.  You can purchase Belly Flops, unique flavours, mix and match or buy case lots of one flavour only.  It truly is an amazing place.  It smells of sugar and fun and is a definite must see if you are in the area.  On a previous trip to the Jelly Belly Factory, I also went on a Beer Factory Tour.  It’s good if you don’t have kids tagging along in that case and this was B.C. (Before Children).    There’s a Budweiser Factory in Fairfield that gives tours and tastings and that was a good excursion too.

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GLUTEN FREE TASTY TEENY TINY CHOCOLATE LAYER CAKE

Yeehah!  Gluten Free Cake Ecstasy!

Lookit me ma, I CAN bake a really good Gluten Free cake that doesn’t even taste Gluten Free!

Tasty Teeny Tiny Chocolate Layer Cake:  gluten free and  nut free


…and I think I can make it food porn-worthy too!  macro lens here it is!


I haven’t been too excited about the prospects of having to go GF until very recently.  This amazing tiny chocolate layer cake has instilled me with enthusiasm that all things will not be so dire in the world of GF cake-baking.

This recipe makes a cake meant for one really hungry cake lover (GF or non-GF!) or can serve two good-sized portions. In my family though, my kiddies, who happen to be wheat-flour carb loving girlies, like to cut this into tiny little pieces and serve them on tiny little china plates and have a tiny little tea party.  Bebe exclaimed that on a scale of 10, this tiny cake was an 11!

You can bake this for someone special.  It’s bigger than a cupcake and makes that GF person in your life feel super special.  You MUST decorate with buttercream if you don’t have a dairy issue (which I don’t) because that puts it over the top.  If you need to do dairy-free, you could make a dairy free “buttercream” with veg shortening.  Adapt it to suit your needs and sub in ingredients so that you can meet your dietary restrictions.  It’s so good just the way I made it today. 

I decided to make the recipe for the actual cake layers dairy-free so I used coconut milk.  If you don’t have that, use regular milk or soy milk.  I used organic cane sugar and coconut sugar together as well as the Sweet Rice Flour Blend (from Simply…Gluten Free Desserts) that I premixed in a bin and have been testing in my own recipes.

Because this is considered “Small Batch Baking”, and though I have read you can use clean tomato sauce cans, I’m really into pans and bakeware.  I found the smallest straight-edged pans I could find and used them instead.  They are actually nonstick springform pans that would be perfect for small cheesecakes.  I like it that they can do double duty.  Just spray with Pam and line the bottom anyway (I always do just to make sure I don’t encounter problems).  I didn’t have any leakage issues but stuck a sheet pan on the bottom rack under the baking cakes just to make sure I wouldn’t have a mess.  They didn’t leak at all but you never know.  Better safe than sorry.  When I divided the batter between the two cake tins, I didn’t really accurately halve the batter.  One cake was bigger than the other.  Oh well.  You’ll do better. 

Because I was making a layer cake, I sliced off the pointed cake tops and ate those pieces with the kids.  They were tender, full of chocolatey flavour and tasted like real good ol’ Chocolate Cake!   Yay!  Not squidgy, not dense, not gelatinous or dry.  I ended up with 3 layers because of my lazy attitude about meting out equal portions between the cake pans, but if you weighed the batter out and you’re daring, you could try to split both of the baked cake layers and make 4 layers!



If you want to get nice even layers for your cake, use a long serrated bread knife. 

Use a Wilton 1M piping tip to swirl buttercream on each layer from the outside in.

Stack the layers and end with the buttercream swirl on the top as seen in the picture.





















If you would like the “Miette” cake decorating technique with the simple unadorned sides, you have to ensure your cake layers are clean of crumbs. You can brush those off with a pastry brush. I didn’t bother.



In order to get the delicate swirl on the top layer of buttercream, I used a small offset metal spatula and a turntable.  If you don’t have a turntable, you can perhaps place the cake on a square of parchment and use one hand to rotate the parchment while the other hand holds steady the spatula.  I tried that technique at first, but it wasn’t as smooth and easy as with a turntable.  Swirl the buttercream flat from the outside in.

Then decorate with a candied flower.

Today, I decided to pick some fresh flowers from my garden.  

It’s much nicer I think.  So pretty.  So simple.

The proportion of buttercream to cake was perfect.   This slice of cake was perfect for me.  I know.  It’s about the size of the dessert fork.  But that’s really all I need. 

Each of my girls had a slice about the same size.  They begged for more, but it was almost dinner time and I didn’t want them to ruin their appetite for the Japanese food we were going out to have later on.

I said they could have more for dessert. 

Here’s a measuring tape to let you see how tiny the tiny chocolate layer cake is.

Here’s my slice.  For sure, it makes you appreciate every bite all the more.

I think that this tiny layer cake would make a wonderful birthday cake.  Or it would be a great pick-me-up for someone down in the dumps (like I was about finding out about having to go GF).  I am so excited with my bin of GF flour, I’m going to experiment more with other things too.  There’s so much territory to cover!  Ah the possibilities!  I’ll be documenting my experiments with other GF flours…coconut flour soon.  It’s sittin’ in my cupboard ready for some action. 

CAKEBRAIN’S TEENY TINY GLUTEN FREE CHOCOLATE LAYER CAKE
Inspired by Debbie Maughan’s Small-Batch Baking for Chocolate Lovers and incorporating a GF flour blend from Simply…Gluten Free Desserts by Carol Kicinski.

• 1/4 cup coconut milk (So Delicious brand, from the refrigerated section in the supermarket at Whole Foods; not from a can.  Use regular milk if you want.)
• 1 whole free range egg, at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons Sweet Rice Flour Blend (or a commercial GF flour blend)
• 1/3 cup organic cane sugar
• 1 tablespoon coconut sugar (if you don’t have coconut sugar, just use more cane sugar)
• 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 3 tablespoons organic coconut oil (I purchased mine from Whole Foods.  If you don’t have this, you can sub in butter or shortening)

1. Preheat oven to 350degrees F.   Prepare cake pans by spraying with Pam and lining the bottoms with parchment paper rounds.
2. Combine the egg, coconut milk and vanilla in a small bowl and whisk together until mixed thoroughly.
3. In a deep bowl, sift in the GF flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  Add the coconut oil and combine until crumbly but incorporated.  If you have a hand-held mixer, you can use it to mix the ingredients better.  I don’t.  I used a wooden spoon.
4. Add the milk mixture into the bowl and with a hand-held mixer, beat all the ingredients until smooth.  Don’t worry about over-beating because there’s no gluten to worry about.  Because I don’t have a hand-held mixer, but a huge Kitchen Aid instead—which is too big to mix such a small amount of batter properly, I used my Braun hand-held immersion blender.  It did the job well.  Just pulse the hand blender until the batter is smooth and lighter in colour…about 30 seconds.  I think for small-batch GF baking, an immersion blender would in fact be quite a good substitute for hand-held mixer.  Remember to scrape down the bowl occasionally.
5. Divide the batter evenly between the 2 prepared pans. 
6. Bake until a toothpick tests done, approximately 20-25 minutes.
7. Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes.
8. Loosen the cake from the edges of the pan.  Remove from pans to cool completely on racks.  Because I used springform pans, this step was easy.
9. Using a serrated bread knife, split the cake layers and frost with buttercream.
10. Decorate with edible or sugar flowers.

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GF EGGBALL WAFFLES! (GAI DAAN JAI)

The BEST Eggball Waffle recipe yet!  AND it’s Gluten Free!  Guten Tag!  Oh Joy!

As you may recall, I have been feeling a whole bunch of self-pity as I have recently learned that I may need to go Gluten Free for life.  I have had this food blog for approximately 4 years (my blog bday is my daughter’s bday!  July 27, 2007) and I have been blogging about my quest for the best darned cake recipes and best places to eat in Vancouver consistently without any heed to watching my intake of gluten.   Since my first posted recipes, which were really meant to be an online archive where recipes are devoid of the detritus of my stream-of-consciousness (a good thing probably because I know I'm verbose), I have received over 1,000,000 page loads on my blog.  Aiya! That's amazing to me.

I'd like to take a minute to thank all my faithful "followers" and readers right now.  I particularly wish I could take all my fellow food-bloggin' friends out for some good ol' Dim Sum (many dishes are GF! hee hee!) in Vancouver to thank them for their encouraging comments over the years; but I know that would seem awfully weird.  So I won't.   Unexpectedly, I have connected with so many fellow foodies who are just as passionate about cake, desserts, eating well and anything food related and have made some really good friends.  I really appreciate all your comments over the years.  It truly is the only reward for all the hard work I've put into trying to make my blog better.  It's not as if I've gotten paid anything for blogging! I haven't even garnered enough hits to get my first $100 cheque from Google Ads. That may have something to do with me shoving the ads way at the bottom where you can't see it! har har!  It was compromising the "look" of my blog!  My first statcounter, identified by "Cakelicks", located way at the bottom too, shows my pageloads are right now at over a million.  1,022,583 to be exact at the moment of this post. That's not too shabby.  I average about 1,000 page loads a day.  Even if I don't post anything new.     Thank you all for sticking with me this long! I won't let you down and will continue to strive for the best darned dessert recipes; even if some will be GF now!  I will continue to use wheat flours in baking at home because I will bake these for bdays and my kids sometimes.  No one in the family, including me, has Celiac (Coeliac) disease.


But I digress.  Again.  Hey, you're used to it now.

Anyhoo...sure, I’ve been trying to be carb-careful and have been also trying really hard to maintain a healthy balance by running and exercising too.  However, a drastic dietary change like going Gluten Free kind of hit me like the force of a dump truck. 

Well, the self-pity lasted a couple of days and then I started to do what I usually do when confronted with a problem.  I researched it.  

Then, I bought two new GF books on my Kindle…Artisanal Gluten Free Cooking and Simply…Gluten Free Desserts. My goal was to find a decent utilitarian flour blend recipe for my baked goods.  Though the Quinoa Chocolate Cake I made recently was tasty, it failed miserably for lightness.  It was squidgy.  Because nobody else wanted to eat it in my household, I was left picking at it for the next week.  I think as a result of this, I’ll have to start making Small Batch GF recipes.  The more I think about it, the more likely I’ll have to go in this direction if I don’t want to weigh 200 pounds by the end of the summer.  Gluten Free certainly does not mean fat or sugar free!  Rice flour is just as “fattening” as eating refined wheat flour.  In fact, I can kind of see the danger of GF recipe testing…thinking that it’s okay to eat it, you can easily overindulge.  So look forward to small batch (i.e. 2 small cupcakes) GF baking recipes in the future.  I’ll be working hard on developing that. 

Remember also, that I do not have Celiac disease.  I am just being cautious with my thyroid condition (Hashimoto's thyroiditis) and want to prevent further damage.  I have even cut out my fave cruciferous veggies (they're goitrogenic) and soy products (sob!) from my diet.   Ah woe is me!

I feel that this could very likely be like some sort of rebound love affair, where you get dumped by one boyfriend (gluten) and run to someone new (rice flour, sugar, trans fats, etc.)…someone just as bad for you!

Well, I’m going to attempt to do the moderation thing and see how far that’ll get me.  As well, I am going to try to refrain from buying too many GF books.  I find that some of them tend towards Celiac patients and [knock on wood] I don’t think I have to be so wary as to worry about things like wheat-contaminated oatmeal and such.  I love my steel-cut oats and I’m not giving that up if I can help it.  I don’t want to go all healthy on you or something! don’t worry!   If  it doesn’t taste as good or better than the REAL GLUTEN-FULL stuff, I’ll let you know.  I mean, it isn’t as if I haven’t had a lifetime of experiencing what the real good stuff should taste like.  Besides, Celiac patients are so smart about going GF that they’ll know how to adapt my recipes so that they’ll “feel safe”.  It's primarily about the brands you buy and being vigilant at reading labels and researching.

From Simply…Gluten Free Desserts, I found a fabulous GF Flour Blend that seems to work well for refined flour-type baked goods and desserts.  It employs ASIAN white rice flour and sweet rice flours (because of the extremely fine grind).  I had purchased brown rice flour from Whole Foods, but am reluctant to try that in the recipe first because it might taste too healthy and make me really unhappy about the prospects of ever finding excellent-tasting GF desserts.  So I chose this highly refined blend and followed her specific instruction to use the Asian flours.  Besides, they’re WAY cheaper!  Just get the Thai brands from an Asian supermarket.    I don’t think it wise to use the grittier “western” grinds of rice flour if you want to mimic the real thing.  The coarse texture, the fact that there’s sometimes that all-too-healthy rice bran in there.  Ick. 

Have you seen any of my cake recipes on this site ever posted with whole wheat or whole grain flours?  No.  So you probably won’t find the brown rice too often.  Maybe once in a while because I accidentally purchased 2 bags of it…but not after I betcha. 

So before you think this is going to be super easy, it has to be a little finicky first.  Buy a whole bunch of these flours (white rice flour, glutinous rice flour, potato starch, tapioca starch and xanthum gum) and then measure them out into a big air-tight container.  Label it as your Sweet Rice Flour Blend.  Use this in place of your all-purpose flour or cake and pastry flour for baking.  After all the buying and mixing, it gets pretty easy afterwards.

The very first thing I tested this Sweet Rice Flour Blend on was not one of the recipes from her book, but one that I recently made with AP Wheat flour.  I figured I have enough good recipes kicking around and a blend can only be rated good or excellent by me if it mimics the same texture and taste as the original.  So my Eggball Recipe passed with flying colours!  It seemed even better than the wheat flour recipe; mostly because I am aware that Chinese people do rely a lot on rice flours and various starches in their baking and desserts  (unless you're up in Northern China!) so most likely eggball vendors probably use recipes that incorporate rice flours too.

You must make up a batch of the flour blend before you proceed with the recipe.  Go buy her book like I did if you want the recipe or you can even buy her flour blend online.  She put some hard work into making the blend.

GLUTEN FREE EGGBALL WAFFLES
(highly modified and adapted from Christine’s Recipes and Simply…Gluten Free Recipes)

140 grams Sweet Rice Flour Blend (from Simply...Gluten Free Recipes)

7.5 grams baking powder [I used Magic Baking Powder, a Canadian brand]

1 tablespoon custard powder [I used Bird’s Custard Powder]

28 grams tapioca starch

2 eggs

140 grams white sugar

28 grams evaporated milk

140 ml still water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

28 grams grapeseed oil, for making the egg batter

extra grapeseed oil in a little custard cup and a small pastry brush to oil the waffle iron mould.

NOTES:  I highly recommend that you weigh all your ingredients as indicated above.   I used my Williams Sonoma Eggball Waffle Iron. Yes, all the brands I used are GF though they don’t advertise that they are. I did research that.  If you're Celiac and wary (don't blame you) do re-check for yourself.

1. Sift the Sweet Rice Flour blend, baking powder, custard powder and tapioca starch together in a small mixing bowl.
2. In a 4 cup measuring cup, combine the eggs, sugar, evaporated milk water, grapeseed oil and extract. Mix thoroughly until combined.
3. Add the sifted flour mixture into the measuring cup that has the egg mixture and whisk until there are no more lumps.
4. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest in the refrigerator for at least one hour.
5. Preheat your waffle iron on the stove.   Oil both sides with an oil-dipped pastry brush, place it on the smallest gas element on “medium” heat and wait 30 sec.  Then flip the iron to heat the other side and wait a further 20 sec.
6. Stir the batter well and pour the batter into the centre of one side of the waffle iron, being careful not to overfill.  Leave one row around the perimeter empty of batter.
7. Close the iron and quickly flip the iron. Then set your timer for 2 min and 20 seconds.  Ensure your flame is on Medium and no higher. 
8. After the timer buzzes, flip the iron again and place it back on the flame.  Time it for another 2 min and 20 seconds.
9. Hopefully your batch turned out golden brown like mine.  If not, you’ll have to adjust from 2 minutes to 2 1/2 minutes and monitor your flame for subsequent batches.  Carefully, using chopsticks or tongs, pull the eggball waffle from the iron and allow to cool on a wire rack. 
10. Fan the waffle to crisp it up and cool it down a bit. (Get the kiddies to do this while you make subsequent batches!]
11. Eat the waffle while warm.  If you leave it to sit for longer than an hour, it’ll get soggy just like eggballs you’d get in the street market. Stale eggballs are not good eggballs. Eat them fresh. Or keep the raw batter in the refrigerator if you think you can't eat all the cooked eggballs at once.
12. When making subsequent waffles after the first test batch, ensure that you preheat both sides of the iron (10 sec is okay because it’s already warmed up) and remember to re-oil each side too.

More about → GF EGGBALL WAFFLES! (GAI DAAN JAI)