Maple Baked Beans

I decided to try something with my Crock Pot Baked Beans recipe. A really simple switch, I subtracted the sugar and molasses, and added 3/8 cup of Maple Sugar. As you can note in the linked article, and as I found out using Maple Syrup in my Coconut Flour Banana Bread, Maple is about twice as sweet as cane sugar. So I dropped the 3/8 cup each of sugar and molasses, and substituted 3/8 cup of Maple Sugar.  It came out very good!  A hint of maple flavor but not too sweet.  I think you could go to 1/2 cup and not be too sweet. I may try that in the future.

I'm not going to reprint the whole recipe here, if you have some maple sugar or REAL maple syrup and want to give it a try, check the basic recipe using the link above and make the substitution as noted.

I bet you like it!

Quick Rolls

If you saw the picture in yesterday's Easter Dinner post, you may have noticed a strange looking dinner roll on the plate.  I am supposed to avoid wheat, but I gave myself a "cheat day" for the holiday.

I had remembered late in the day that while I was avoiding wheat, others weren't.  So I needed a quick recipe for dinner rolls.  I found a couple "30 minute dinner rolls" recipes on Google (like this one), but they didn't exactly strike my fancy.  So what I did was use them with my own twist.

Be warned, this dough rises fast! I had to punch it down twice, and because of that I didn't have enough time after the final punch down to allow it to fully rise again.  They were still very good tasting, with a texture about halfway between a biscuit and a roll.  Had they been allowed to rise that final time I'm sure they'd have had a good roll texture.

Here's the recipe:

3/4 cup water
2 Tablespoons yeast
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup yogurt
1 egg
3 to 4 cups flour

Mix the yeast and water and allow to sit until the yeast hydrates a little (about 10 mins).  Add the sugar and let it sit another 10 mins and look at how it is going to town!  Add the yogurt and egg and mix well.  Add a cup of flour to start.  I'm a bit old fashioned and I add it with a spoon.  Mix it in, then begin adding 1/2 cup of flour at a time until you can't stir it any longer.  Add another 1/2 cup and begin mixing by hand.  When you've added about 2-1/2 to 3 cups of flour you should be able to turn it out onto a floured board.  Once you're working it on the floured board, add flour 1/4 cup at a time until you have a good textured dough ball. Continue working (kneading) the dough for another 5 minutes.

Here's where I was stuck yesterday.  I had the dough ready but was still about an hour from time to put it in the oven. So I put the dough into an oiled bowl, turning the doughball to get it covered with oil.  Had I been closer ready to cook the rolls, I would have skipped this step and went right to forming the rolls.

As I prepped other items for the dinner, I checked the dough.  It was rising fast!  I punched it down once at about 30 minutes, and again at 1 hour as I was ready to form the rolls.

I oiled my hands and pinched off a piece of dough slightly smaller than a tennis ball (about the size of a medium lemon).  This gave me 7 pieces, which was perfect for the cast iron skillet I planned on using. Spacing 6 around the sides of the oiled skillet and 1 in the middle I covered them with a towel while I finished other items (another 10 minutes).  They hadn't risen the way I would like, but it was time to cook!

I cooked them in a 400*F oven for 20 minutes.  They came out good, I just wish I had been able to allow them to rise a little more before cooking.

The roll in the picture is the center roll, and the others were similar.  While these are ready quickly, I wouldn't start them too far ahead of time in the future!

Easter Lamb...with a "Hat Tip" to Uncle Ray

We're having lamb for Easter dinner.  Not the typical whole leg of lamb, or rack of lamb.  I'm making a recipe that is simple and provided by my late uncle, Raymond Dunning.

There is a recipe he used for family BBQs, and he would tell the story every chance he got.  It goes like this:

In the old days of Russia, as the Cossacks traveled the countryside, they would stop at the farmhouses along the way.  The farmers were required to provide them with lamb, onions and lemons, such as they had.  The Cossack would cut the items into chunks and store them in a leather bag.  At night when the Cossacks would get together, they would spear chunks of lamb on their swords, roast it over the campfire and sing songs of battles and "Mother Russia". (BTW, we aren't Russian, but that was probably a story he picked up during his time as a Merchant Marine during WWII.)

While I'm not sure of the truth of the whole story, parts make sense.  Lemons and onions are both anti-bacterial and could very well have kept meat from going rancid.  So that part makes sense.  Not being a student of Cossack history, I don't know about the rest. 

In the story is the recipe.  A boneless leg of lamb trimmed of fat, cut into chunks (whatever size you want, but I usually go for about 1" to 1-1/2", around that size).  Sliced lemons and onions.  Layer the meat, lemon and onions in a bowl or baking dish, and squeeze the juice from an additional lemon or two over the whole thing.  Let it marinate in the refrigerator for at least one day, preferably two days.  Stir it every 4 hours or so.  Before cooking remove from the fridge and allow to come to room temperature.  Lightly salt & pepper about 30 minutes before cooking.

When I was younger, he had custom made skewers resembling straight bladed swords. He would fill them with chunks of lamb and roast them over the BBQ pit.  As he got older and the number of folks at gatherings became less, he would cook them directly on the grill.  Today, I'm going to broil them in the oven on an old Graniteware broiling pan.  I'm going to combine a little of the old and the new.

The final result:

Ham and Easter?

Ham is a traditional Easter dinner (or supper if you're from the south), served all over the country.  That seems like a contradiction to me, since pork is forbidden by Jewish dietary laws and Jesus was a Jew. In addition, it seems weird to celebrate the Resurrection of The Christ by eating a scavenger.

In looking around the web, I noticed many had tied in the Easter ham with various Pagan rituals, many of which have in fact infiltrated the Christian Faith.  However, I think I found the most likely explanation on a page titled "Traditional Easter Foods" on About.com:

"In the United States, ham is a traditional Easter food. In the early days, meat was slaughtered in the fall. There was no refrigeration, and the fresh pork that wasn't consumed during the winter months before Lent was cured for spring. The curing process took a long time, and the first hams were ready around the time Easter rolled around. Thus, ham was a natural choice for the celebratory Easter dinner."

In addition, a ham can feed a lot of people.  When I was younger, we had large gatherings at my Grandmother's house on all the holidays.  Today, we're scattered all over the country and so a whole ham would be overkill.

We're having lamb today, look for a post on that later.  For the record, I did buy a half ham, it is in the freezer and will be done up in the next week or so.  It will provide several dinners and a nice bone for a pot of ham and beans!

Wishing you a Blessed and Happy Easter Day

Coconut Flour Banana Bread

Be sure to read the updates below!

I haven't been baking much lately, having been too busy with this thing called "life".  So today I found myself with 1/2 dozen ripe bananas, and an urge to make it into banana bread or muffins.  Since I am trying to avoid wheat as much as possible, I perused the web for recipes that used coconut flour.  There are several out there that combine various flours but only a few that used strictly coconut flour.  To be honest, none of them appealed to me, so I did my usual of "a little from this one, a little from that one, a little from experience" to see what I would get.

Now one thing about coconut flour is that it is very dry.  It also has no gluten.  So that means more moisture added and to expect less of a rise that you would get from wheat flours.  We'll see if my memory holds true!

Here is what I did:

I took 2 cups of coconut flour and added a cup of kefir I needed to use to give it some moisture.  The coconut flour sucked that up and asked for more! LOL.  But I left it at that amount.  I let that sit for an hour while I watched the end of the baseball game and then got the remaining stuff together.

I mashed the bananas (6, remember?) with a fork until they were nice and creamy.  Call me old fashioned but I like to do this step by hand.  I can find and squish any chunks that try to hide this way.  Then I got out the hand mixer.  To the bananas I added 1/2 cup pure maple syrup, mix, 4 eggs, mix, 2 teaspoons vanilla, mix, and 3/4 cup flaxseed meal and mixed some more.

I then added the coconut flour and mixed it all very well.  Quite frankly, I'm concerned there is too much batter for my loaf pan.  Oh well, wouldn't be the first kitchen disaster I've ever had.

Speaking of the loaf pan, you need to either line it with parchment paper or grease it very, very well.  I was out of parchment paper, so I greased it well with coconut oil.  Let's keep our fingers crossed.

So the recipe looks like this:
2 cups Coconut Flour
1 cup Kefir
6 Ripe Bananas
1/2 Cup Maple Syrup
4 eggs
2 teaspoons Vanilla
3/4 cup Flaxseed Meal.

Summary instructions:

Mix the kefir and coconut flour together and set aside.

Mash the bananas (or use your mixer) until all squished.  Add remaining ingredients one at a time, mixing after each addition.

Pour into a 9X5 loaf pan that's either been well greased or lined with parchment paper.

Bake @ 325*F for 60 minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean.

This is how it looked from the oven:

Let cool in pan for 15 -20 minutes. (I let it cool for about 15 minutes and should have given it a little longer)

After turning out onto rack:

As you can see from the crack running down the side I should have let it cool a bit more before removing it from the pan.  Another thing with coconut flour is the products lose moisture and firm up as they cool.  So a little longer in the pan would probably would have avoided that crack.  If you look at the rear right, you can also see where a small corner of the loaf fell off while putting it on the rack.  It was delicious!  :-)

Gluten free, Grain Free Banana Bread is possible!

Update:

Some 3 hours later and I decided it had cooled enough to try a slice.  The good news is it is nice and moist, the way I like my Banana Bread.  The bad news it is sweet.  Too sweet!  And I am a guy who likes sweet things!

I think next time I will cut the maple syrup to 1/4 cup and add 1/4 cup water or milk.

Crock Pot Baked Beans

This is a recipe I had originally posted on an old blog, I'm reposting it now because I'm going to try something next week to give it a bit of a twist.  So if you want to compare them, make this one now!

1lb white beans (Great Norther, Navy, etc.)

1/2# bacon, cut into 2" to 3" pieces

1 large onion, diced

3/8 cup molasses

3/8 cup sugar

1/2 tsp ground white pepper

1/2 tsp dry mustard

2 Tbs Worcestershire Sauce

3/4 cup catsup

Sort, rinse and soak the beans overnight.  I put them in a 3qt saucepan so that there's about 1-1/2" water over the beans

the next morning dump the beans and water into the crock pot, add everything else, stir it up.  Make sure you have about an inch of liquid over the beans.  Cook for 8 hours on low setting, checking every now and then to make sure the liquid level is still above the beans.  If you're going to be gone you can add a little extra water. The beans should be done in 8 hrs (they always are in mine), if not let it keep cooking until they're done.

There you have it, a delicious pot of baked beans!  Enjoy!!!