Rum Based BBQ Sauce

If you ever have looked, almost everything these days has corn syrup in it.  I don't eat corn because of food allergies. So onto the internet I went, looking at various recipes.  I found one by Steven Raichlen on his Barbeque! Bible website titled RumBullion BBQ Sauce. This was last Tuesday. I bookmarked the page so I could return to it closer to the weekend and make the sauce.  I knew I was going to have to tweak it because he uses soy sauce and I would have to either use corn syrup free ketchup or make my own.  No biggie.

So when I went back to his page on Friday, he had redesigned his website and the link took me to his home page. I used his search feature. No Luck.  Went through page after page of recipes on his site. No Luck.

This wasn't working out as planned.

So back to Google I went.  I typed "RumBullion" in the search box and got several results. None on the first page had the recipe.  But on the second page I found a Boston Globe article with an adaptation of the recipe.  It looked close enough to what I remembered of the original that I went with it.

Here is what I came up with:

1/4/cup Dark Rum
1/4 cup Honey
1/4 cup Granulated Sugar
2 Tablespoons Brown Sugar
1 Tablespoon Molasses
3 Tablespoons Worcester Sauce (Lea & Perrin's is gluten free)
Juice of 1 Small Lemon
Juice of 1/2 Small Orange
1 Tablespoon Distilled Vinegar
1/4 Teaspoon Hickory Liquid Smoke
1 Teaspoon Garlic Powder
1 Teaspoon Onion Powder
1/2 Teaspoon Cinnamon
1/2 Teaspoon Nutmeg
1/2 Teaspoon Sea Salt

1 Cup Tomato Sauce

This allowed me to avoid anything with corn syrup in it and avoid the soy sauce in the original recipe.

Directions:

Place everything except the ketchup in a medium saucepan and stir well.  Bring it to a boil and reduce heat to allow it to simmer for about 5 minutes.  Add tomato sauce, stir well and return to a boil.  Reduce heat again and allow it to simmer until desired consistency.

Taste it.  To be honest, I thought it was a bit too sweet but decided to allow it to set overnight to allow the flavors to continue to mingle before changing anything.  So I let it cool down and poured it into a jar to refrigerate overnight. I'm not sure refrigeration is needed as everything that goes in it is stored at room temp, but better safe than sorry.

I was making this as the BBQ sauce to add to my BBQ Beans (recipe upcoming) and to use on the burgers we were going to grill.

The next morning I removed the sauce from the fridge and tasted it.  The flavors had mixed together some and it didn't seem as sweet.  So I decided to use it "as-is".

The beans were very good, as was the sauce added on the burgers after cooking. While I don't know if I would use this recipe on beef again, I think it would be great with pulled pork or shredded chicken.

I may have to go get a pork shoulder and whip up another batch of this to test my theory!

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.