Happy birthday Mara! Recipe: Banana Pineapple Cake

I cannot believe my little Mara has turned two years old already! We celebrated her birthday last Friday. It has been such an eventful two years, filled with doctor visits, specialists, and lots of yucky testing. I have such hope for this coming year, as my baby is now thriving and moving on with her life.

I was determined to make my child a delicious birthday cake. I will admit to last year just making a cake using a recipe I had found that worked and not putting too much thought into it. The cake was OK, but I wanted her cake this year to be GREAT! Doesn't every child deserve that?

Mara is not much of a cake and cookie eater. She loves the Enjoy Life snickerdoodle cookies, and the banana muffins that I had made for her. I was tempted to make a carrot cake for her, but decided to go with something that had banana since it is something I know she loves.

I have recently bought two new glutenfree cookbooks in hopes to learn how to bake using all the different glutenfree flours that are out there. You really need to use a combination of them, and deciphering the exact measurements of each has been my downfall. So , I bought these cookbooks, and figured I could find ways to modify the dairy and soy.

To make a long story short, I found a recipe for a Banana Pineapple Cake in "The Gluten-Free Gourmet Cooks Comfort Foods" by Bette Hagman. This recipe does not contain dairy or soy in the original recipe, so I was sold! The only issue I had was that it called for teff flour, and potato flour, neither of which we had and my poor husband drove to three different natural food stores last week and couldn't find it. So I had to improvise. I have found places to order it online, so next time I make it I will try using the suggested flours and let you know the difference! For the recipe below, I am giving the flours we used this time.

Here is the cake. She wanted a puppy dog and as you can see, I am not gifted in cake decorating. But it made her happy, so that is all that should matter :)

I used some all natural sprinkles on the ears, an Enjoy Life cookie for the nose and Enjoy Life chocolate chips for outlining. I also used a Kettle Valley fruit snack for the tongue.

The cake was so good! Mara loved it, my husband loved it...even my inlaws loved it when they came over Sunday. The pineapple makes it really moist. I highly recommend trying it! If you can use wheat flour, go ahead, but reduce the amount of baking powder to one tsp and omit the zanthan gum.


Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Millet Flour
• 1 1/2 cups brown rice flour
• 1/2 cup potato starch flour
• 1/4 cup tapioca flour
• 2 tsp xanthan gum
• 2 tsp Egg Replacer
• 1 tsp gelatin
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp apple pie spice
• 1 cup canola oil
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups diced bananas (about 3 bananas)
• 1 cup chopped pecans (optional- we did not add this)
• one 8-ounce can crushed pineapple with juice

(These instruction are pretty much the same as the book!) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 3 8" round cake pans with wax or parchment paper and grease, or grease a 9 x 13 oblong cake pan.

In a bowl, first combine the brown rice flour, potato starch flour and tapioca flour. Add the millet flour and whisk in the following: xanthan gum, Egg Replacer, gelatin, baking soda, baking powder, salt and apple pie spice.

In a mixing bowl, beat the oil and sugar until light. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. With the mixer on low, slowly add the dry ingredients but do not beat it to hard. Stir in the bananas, pecans, and pineapple with juice until well blended.

Spoon into your prepared pans. Bake round cake pans for about 25 minutes, or the oblong pan for 40-45 minutes (or until tester comes out clean).

Frosting

I found a recipe for "Royal Frosting" here. I added some vanilla extract towards the end. It was really good!

• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
  
• 1 egg white
• 1/3 cup boiling water

1. Mix all ingredients together, adding boiling water last.
2. Beat on high for 6-10 minutes until frosting forms peaks.

Lunch Ideas

I have been having such a hard time finding some computer time these days!

Becky@ BoysRuleMyLife had asked for some simple lunch ideas, and I must admit...I am not that creative when it comes to lunches! Usually I will make extras fro dinner and use that for the next day's lunch.

However, we do not always have that option, or Mara simply refuses to eat it again (like she did today). So here are some things that work for us:

• Peabutter on rice cake. We haven't attempted nuts with Mara yet, so we use peabutter-which is made from golden peas. It is pretty good! We have also used sunbutter, but Mara seems to prefer the creaminess of the peabutter. It is also good on apples and celery for a snack! I usually serve her this with some fruit or veggies.
  
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• "Toddler Salad": I made this for Mara today. I chopped up avocado, lettuce, some leftover steamed asparagus, raisins, thin carrot slices and celery. I added it all onto her plate and sprinkled some leftover white beans. She loved it!
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• Simple casseroles. My husband is not a fan of casseroles for dinner, so I try and make them for our lunches instead. I made a baked spaghetti casserole, which was very easy- cooked corn spaghetti noddles into a casserole dish and I added some dice tomatoes, basil and sprinkled rice crumbs on the top. I cooked it for about 25 minutes at 350 degrees. The girls loved it!
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• I use Chebe bread to make flatbread/tortillas and then brown some ground turkey with some cumin and chili peppers. We add black beans, corn and avocados and it makes a great meal!
  

I hope that has given you some ideas! I will post some more again soon!

Recipe: Fried Chicken Wings

Ok, so frying isn't the healthiest thing to do with your food, but I had such a craving for chicken wings! What I REALLY wanted was the blue cheese dressing to dip them in, but we all know that cannot happen.

We tried this recipe from my new cookbook: Balancing the Bowl, a food allergy cookbook: recipes free of wheat, rice, barley, egg, milk, soy, peanut, tree nuts, shellfish and fish" Remember how excited I was to get this cookbook? I am just getting to try out some of her recipes. Overall, I am happy with the variety of recipes offered in this book, but I must admit that I was sad to see how often oat flour was used. We are tempted to try some gluten-free oats with Mara and see how she does...always a scary thing, isn't it? If your diet allows oats, I would definitely recommend this cookbook! I will post more recipes as we try them out.

Anyway-we followed the recipe exactly and the wings were delicious! The girls could not get enough-even Ms. Picky Analese ate them up with no complaints. I found that I was not even craving my blue cheese dressing, as these really do not need anything! The orange peel makes them very sweet-but not too sweet :)

* The only thing we thought about doing differently next time is having the wings marinate in the seasonings for a few hours before frying.

I hope you enjoys these as much as we did!


Fried Chicken Wings

Ingredients:

• Corn or canola oil for frying
• 5 chicken wings, separated to make 10 pieces
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tblspns fresh ginger, peeled and minced
• 1/4 cup orange peel, minced

Method:

• Preheat oil in deep fryer. Line a plate with two layers of paper towels and set aside.
  
• Clean wings thoroughly and discard wing tips if desired. Pat chicken with a paper towel to drain excess water.
• Combine chicken, sugar, salt, ginger and orange peel in a medium bowl. Blend well to cover chicken with seasonings.
  
• Dip 4-6 chicken pieces into hot oil. Use caution, as oil may splatter.
• Fry until chicken is completely cooked (approximately 4 minutes) Stir frequently to distribute heat.
  
• Remove chicken and place on lined plate to drain excess oil.
• Eat and enjoy!
  

Happy New Year!

I am back and have lots of recipes to post! We have been so busy the past few weeks, but things are calming down so I should be able to get on here again.

Some news first though...I am pregnant with baby #3! I am about 12 weeks along, and am due sometime in July. Morning sickness has been tough this time around, but hopefully it will begin to let up some as I move into the second trimester.

Our holidays went well, just busy, busy, busy! The girls and I are still recovering these days. We survived the holiday gatherings with only one food incident where Mara ate something she shouldn't have. We got home that night and the vomiting began.....not fun. I feel so bad because it is my fault-I swore that Mara would no longer eat anything unless we made it. But then my aunt had made me some chicken and said there was nothing on it.....I don't know for sure if that was it, but I have my suspicions. I really need to stop feeling bad for other people and just stick to the meal I brought. Sigh.

Anyway, I hope you have all had a great and more restful holiday season! I promise to be posting more recipes shortly!

Holiday Cookies

This year I was determined to get some baking done with the girls, and being that things have been stressful and I haven't been feeling well...I decided to cheat a little!

Through my buying club, I bought Cherrybrook Kitchen's Gluten-free Sugar Cookie Mix. Since I had to buy in bulk, I received 6 of them (which ended up being a good thing-lots to practice with!)

Our first batch was done according to the directions on the box, with a few modifications, using canola oil instead of margarine, hemp milk instead of soy milk. The girls have a current obsession with Frosty the Snowman, so our goal was to make snowmen. Once the batter was mixed, I began to add some all purpose gluten-free flour to the mix in order to soak up some of the oil in order to make the dough easier to roll out.

The girls had a blast, and we used Enjoy Life chocolate chips for eyes and some dried fruit and raisins to decorate.

Today we made another batch of cookies, only this time our goal was to make candy cane cookies. I did things a bit differently-I added almost a cup of the all purpose gluten-free flour while mixing the batter, and we also added some peppermint oil for that "candy cane" flavor.

Once the batter was ready, we divided it in half and added red food coloring to half of it. The dough was still pretty oily, so we were not able to really roll it out like traditional candy cane cookies. Instead- I made two long rolls-one white and one red, and then broke off chunks in order to make my candy canes.

The girls really enjoyed this, and made lots of creations on their own.

*The only thing I would do differently next time is add some xanthan gum to the batter when I added the extra flour. I think adding so much extra flour through it off bit, and some of the first batch didn't stick together as well as the second batch (when I sprinkled some in).

Recipe: Vegtable Stir Fry

Here is a quick and simple meal I threw together last night. It went over much better then I expected! You never know how new foods will go over over with little ones, but I did some things to help make it more appealing. I used corn spaghetti noodles-which they love, and I used vegetables they were familiar with. It really is beautiful with all the colors- I really wish I had taken a photo so you could see!

With this stir fry, I gave the girls some tuna fish (made with canola mayo and chopped up celery), and some black beans. For Mara, I just added the black beans into the stir fry and she ate it all up!

Ingredients:

• 1-2 carrots, chopped
• 1/2 cup broccoli
• 1 stalk celery
• 1/4 cup peas
• 1/4 cup green beans
• 1/4 cup corn
• 1-2 tbsp canola oil
• 1/2 tsp basil
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1-2 tbsp alternative bread crumbs (I used Orgran's All Purpose Crumbs)
  
• corn spaghetti, or any other alternative pasta

Cook pasta as directed. In a wok or frying pan, add the canola oil and carrots. Cook for a few minutes to soften the carrots, and then add the rest of the vegetables. As the vegetables begin to soften, add salt and pepper to taste. When pasta is finished cooking, add it into the vegetable mix. Add the basil, and then the bread crumbs. With the bread crumbs, I just added a bit at a time, stirring and adding until noodles were completely coated.

Very simple and delicious!

Sorry

Sorry it has been so long since I have posted! I wish I could say that I was out decking the halls and enjoying the holiday season, but sadly, I have not! I have been having the worst luck, with not feeling well due to allergies flaring up, and then I threw my back out last week which left me unable to do anything at all for awhile.

So again, I am sorry, and I promise I will be back! I have one final paper left to write and turn in tomorrow and then I am completely down with school for awhile. I had my finals last weekend, and am so looking forward to having a break!

I will hopefully post some recipes this weekend. Hope your all enjoying this holiday season!