gluten-free eats

Bakerita: 100+ No-Fuss Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, and Refined Sugar-Free Recipes for the Modern Baker, by Rachel Conners

All the recipes in this book are gluten free, dairy free (or, when using ghee, lactose free), soy free, and refined sugar free. Many are vegan, and most are paleo. Each recipe indicates up top what it's free of and what diet(s) it meets. Headnotes are chatty, but describe the item's taste and texture in addition to its personal significance.

This covers breakfast and dessert, so no savory bakes like breads or crackers, just an everything bagel scone that looks like a lot of fun. This is mostly sweet stuff: muffins, scones, granolas, quick breads, baked donuts, cakes, cupcakes, pies, tarts, no-bake no-cheese cheesecakes, crumbles, cookies, brownies and bars, and a final chapter with candies, chocolates, sweet sauces, and nut butters. There's a lovely photograph for almost every recipe. Measurements are in US volume and metric (grams), and there's storage advice for nearly everything.

Main ingredients are almond flour, coconut flour, tapioca starch, and arrowroot starch, but there are a few recipes with oats. Coconut sugar, honey, and maple syrup are used as sweeteners, nothing you'd have to go out of your way to find. Other ingredients include: coconut oil, coconut butter, nut butters, ghee, olive oil, coconut milk and cream, dairy-free milk, cacao (or cocoa) powder, chocolate, cocoa butter, eggs, and flax eggs. There's coconut or almond in nearly everything, but no gums, and most recipes use flax eggs instead of eggs.

If you're not interested in Conners's personal journey skip the "My Story" part of the introduction where she talks about "healthy" eating and her and her family's health issues, but the second part where she discusses the ingredients she uses is more neutral in tone.

In the back, a thorough index includes entries for major ingredients, always a nice touch.

You can check out Conners's food blog at Bakerita, which includes savory dishes, though be aware the oldest recipes aren't gluten free.

Our prompt for this month is paleo friendly!

A paleo diet is based on foods that could have been obtained by hunting and gathering back in the old days and typically includes lean meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, but there's some variation in how people observe it. If you share a food or recipe that you consider paleo, let us know so we can tag it properly.

To fill this prompt, you can:

1. Slide into the comments of this post and share a link to a recipe or product and why you like it.
2. Write up a favorite recipe and post it to the comm.
3. Post a review of a related product or cookbook to the comm.
4. Try someone's recipe and reply to their post (or comment) with any changes you made and how it turned out.

This prompt lasts all month, but it's only for inspiration and not a requirement. You can post anything you like during this time as long as it meets the comm guidelines.

I'd eaten my last popsicle, needed something cold, then remembered I had a bag of Trader Joe's mango chunks in the freezer and a recipe for mango sorbet! Adapted from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop.

Ingredients:

24 oz frozen mango chunks, thawed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon lime or lemon juice
1 tablespoon vodka or dark rum (optional)
pinch of salt

( recipe )

Questions? Ask 'em!

A cookbook that is all almond flour (almost) all the time. No gums, no refined sugars, and only a little starch.

( The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook: Breakfasts, Entrées, and More, by Elana Amsterdam )

If you want to check out Amsterdam's recipes, Elana's Pantry has many of the things in this book plus a lot more. There's a huge back catalogue of paleo recipes, while her most recent recipes are keto.

This review appeared on my journal in a different form.

This date-sweetened chocolate frosting doesn't taste like your standard frosting with all the fat and refined sugar, but if you can't have that—or don't want it—this is a fair replacement. It's thick and smooth, spreads easily, and has the texture and feel you'd expect from frosting. It's great on brownies.

Ingredients:

100 grams pitted dates (~1/2 cup)
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
60 mL warm water (1/4 cup)
85 grams unsalted natural nut butter (1/3 cup)
25 grams cacao powder or unsweetened cocoa powder (1/4 cup)
1 pinch fine salt (optional)
15 mL oil (1 tablespoon, or sub water or nut butter)

( recipe )

Questions? Ask 'em!

These crisp but tender cassava flour crackers have a dry, powdery Cheez-It-esque nature that almost fools you into thinking there's cheese in there—an illusion helped along by their orangey color—but they're dairy free and vegan. They're also surprisingly easy to make and stay crisp for weeks.

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups (180g) cassava flour
1/4 cup (24g) golden flaxseed meal (optional)
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1/2 cup (108g) water
6 tablespoons (78g) olive oil
1 tablespoon (20g) tomato paste (optional)

( recipe )

Questions? Ask 'em!

I had some leftover dates and a dream, so I whipped these up. Tastes like a Larabar Lemon Bar, but better. Tastes like lemon candy. Low effort and based on these no bake lemon bliss balls.

Ingredients:

120 grams dates, pitted—I used deglet noor ~15 dates
1/2 cup raw nuts—something mild: almonds, cashews, Brazil nuts
1 Tablespoon lemon zest
1-2 Tablespoons lemon juice
pinch of kosher salt

( recipe )

Questions? Ask 'em!