big ups to pizza fusion.

nothing beats a positive gf experience…it just makes your whole day. last weekend i was in santa monica, ca visiting my brother and he took my sister and i, who are both gf, to Pizza Fusion.  this was by far the best gf pizza i’ve ever had in a restaurant. everything was delicious and they are a very conscious company with franchises around the country. check out their website and if you have the time and the money PLEASE buy a franchise and open it in Sonoma County!

OH, and they had delicious Greens gluten free beer!

chocolate brownie cookies.

Chocolate Brownie Cookies
Dense, chocolatey, and ultimately satisfying. Use the best chocolate you can afford to make these cookies…since chocolate is the star in the recipe, it pays to use the good stuff! These make a great base for ice cream sandwiches, or are delicious dipped in caramel, white chocolate or thick icing.

Makes 2 dozen cookies

1 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup almond meal
1/2 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
pinch of salt
1 cup granulated sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 large egg
1 teaspoon GF vanilla extract
1/3 cup chopped semisweet or bittersweet chocolate

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. In a large bowl, combine brown rice flour, almond meal, white rice flour, unsweetened cocoa powder, and salt. Whisk to combine. In a separate large bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add egg and vanilla, stirring to combine, then gradually add dry ingredients until well combined. Gently stir in chopped chocolate.

Form mixture into 1-inch balls, flattening slightly with palm of hand on baking sheet. Bake until set and tops are just beginning to crack, about 10 minutes. Let stand two minutes on baking sheet, then transfer to wire rack to cool.

cocoa-coconut cake

Look what came out of my oven! Tonight is Taco Tuesday here on the compound. My job was to stir up a pitcher of margaritas & come up with something a little sweet. Done and done! The cocoa-coconut cake is an adaptation of the chocolate birthday cake recipe I’m working on (wait’ll you see this recipe…can you say surprise ingredients?), and to give it a latin punch in the face I added a heap of cinnamon, a squirt of Coco Lopez (that super sweet coconutty stuff  you use to make tropical drinks), and topped it off with a cream cheese coconut icing. I think it’ll go down easy. Thanks to the margs.

sticky sticky buckwheat.

I was testing out a loaf of bread the other day & ran out of starch. It was simply not an option to run up to the grocery store seeing as I had a fine dusting of various flours on my brow and a mixture of eggs, butter, molasses, yeast & other goodies working away in the stand mixer. Since buckwheat has inherently sticky properties I thought I’d try using it as a substitute for half of the starch quantity. The other half came from instant mashed potato flakes. [Kids, don't underestimate the value of those instant potato flakes in your cupboard! They're a great add-in to waffle batter – savory or sweet.]

Long story short: it rose, it baked, it cooled, it was delicious with creamy butter & homemade plum jam.

And despite its deceptive moniker, buckwheat is indeed a gluten-free grain, but, like oats, it can easily be contaminated by shared machinery or nearby glutenous crops. To be safe, put a call in to the manufacturer and ask the important questions GFers know to ask: do you share equipment with wheat products? is your product certified gluten-free? And for more information, check out this great resource that discusses in great detail the details of the one humble grain known as buckwheat.