Categotry Archives: Dairy-Free

Flax Coconut Oil Chocolate Cookies

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I love these cookies. Also see excellent vegan and raw versions at the end of this post.

  • 1/3 cup coconut oil
  • 1/3 cup coconut flakes (unsweetened)
  • 2/3 cup flax meal
  • 2/3 cup dextrose (glucose as powder; common baker’s sugar)
  • 2/3 cup cocoa (or 1 cup ground cocoa beans/nibs)
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla (best is Madagascar, Mexican or Dominican Republic)
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Combine. Roll into balls. Place 1″ apart on a cookie sheet. Smash flat. Bake at 350F for 14 minutes.

Upon leaving the oven, the cookies will be moist and fragile. Remove them carefully from the cookie sheet to a cooling rack. After coming to room temperature, the cookies will have a perfect crunchy chew.

Variations: Add chopped walnuts or pecans. Add dark chocolate chips (my favorite is 90%).

My friend Maureen gets the prize for trying this recipe out first. Hers were excellent. Thanks for sharing, Maureen! Friends who bake are the best kind, aren’t they?

March 2014

Vegan Version – Raw or Baked

  • 1/2 cup coconut oil
  • 1/3 cup coconut flakes
  • 2/3 cup flax meal
  • 2/3 cup dextrose (glucose as powder; common baker’s sugar)
  • 2/3 cup cocoa (or 1 cup ground cocoa beans/nibs)
  • 1 scoop chocolate protein power (10g protein)
  • 3 tablespoons rum
  • (baking powder not necessary for raw version)
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla (Madagascar or Dominican Republic)
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder (for baking but fine for raw too)

Roll into balls of 1 heaping tablespoonful. Bake 5 min at 350F (if you prefer) and let sit in cooling oven. Excellent raw too.

Anna came for dinner just because.  What a nice surprise. We  had these for dessert, but I served them blackened. This is how we found out five minutes is enough. – Helen 

April 2016

German Chocolate Cake

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Following are two chocolate cake recipes, a coconut pecan frosting recipe and a dark chocolate frosting recipe.

Ma and I perfected the nutmeal cake recipe in late November 2014 after she had just turned 80. She sat at my counter while I baked, read the ingredients to me, and kept me great company. We talked about how Grandma Montoya, her mother, had not been afraid of baking powder. Neither are we.

Nutmeal Chocolate Cake

  • 1/2 cup dextrose
  • 1/2 cup brown rice syrup
  • 2 tablespoons vanilla
  • 1/4 cup coconut, almond, soy or hemp milk
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 cup coconut fat, melted
  • 1/2 cup cocoa
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons baking powder
  • 1 cup nut/grain/seed meal*

* Grind nuts/grain/seeds together in a mini-blender to a coarse flour. Grinding them all at once prevents the fattier nuts from collecting in the base of the blender. Try a 3-item combination of walnuts, pecans, cashews, hazelnuts, almonds, raw pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, oats, buckwheat and/or barley.

Grain-flour Chocolate Cake

Tried and true. We made this cake for Katie’s 21st birthday celebration with cousins Ben and Sasha.

  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 cup ground cocoa beans
  • 1/2 cup cocoa
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1  1/2 cup dextrose
  • 1 cup oat flakes, oat bran or ground oat groats (if oat flour, 3/4 cup)
  • 1/3 cup espresso or coffee
  • 1/3 cup canola or olive oil
  • 2 eggs

Combine dry ingredients. Combine wet ingredients. Combine dry with wet. Bake in three 6″  or two 8″ diameter shallow pans. Baked goods sweetened with 100% glucose do not rise as high as those containing sucrose.

Coconut Pecan Frosting

  • 2 tablespoons Dominican Republic or Mexican vanilla
  • 1 cup brown rice syrup
  • 1/4 cup coconut cream* from a can of full fat coconut milk
  • 1/2 cup coconut fat (or butter)
  • 1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
  • 1 cup chopped pecans, walnuts or both

Melt coconut fat. Stir in vanilla. Stir in brown rice syrup until heated, but not hot. Remove from heat. Add remaining ingredients.

Dark Chocolate Frosting

  • 100 grams unsweetened chocolate
  • 100 grams coconut cream* from a can of full fat coconut milk
  • 70 grams dextrose

Melt chocolate on low. Stir in dextrose and cream until creamy. Cool.

Assembling the Cake

Spread tops of cake layers with Coconut Pecan Frosting. Stack layers. Spread sides with Dark Chocolate Frosting.

*Upon opening a can of room temperature coconut milk, spoon out as much cream as you can, then measure out the desired amount. Use the coconut water for another purpose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Easy Hummus

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For those of you that want to make hummus easily, this one’s for you.

  • 1 25-oz can of garbanzo beans, drained (save the juice)
  • 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • 1/3 cup tahini
  • around 2/3 cup of bean juice
  • juice of one medium to large lemon
  • 1 large garlic clove
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • pinch of cayenne pepper

(It’s the “third cup, third cup, two thirds cup” and the “1 teaspoon, 1 teaspoon” that makes it easier to remember for me.  If you use the smaller cans of beans, you’ll have to do the arithmetic to figure it out and I’m pretty sure it won’t be as easy to remember.)

Throw everything into a blender and blend it up on the low speed.  You want to make sure enough bean juice has been added so that the hummus has a nice flow in the blender so that you don’t need to keep pushing it down to get mixed up, but not too much juice (but remember that it will thicken up in the refrigerator).

If you want to have smooth(er) hummus you can do one of two things:  either peel each and every garbanzo bean by hand (a very meditative exercise–expect to meditate for 30-40 minutes for a 25-oz can) or do a mostly-effective chemical peel of them by bringing the beans to a quick boil in a solution of water and 1 teaspoon baking soda (followed by rinsing in cold water and sort of squishing them gently to get the skins off).

A few things of note here:

  • if you’re into BPA-free garbanzo beans, make sure you double-check the label because at least one supplier has moved to BPA-free for the smaller cans but not the larger cans (I even verified this by sending them an email to confirm…)
  • if you soak dried garbanzo beans you’ll probably have to figure out if the amounts are still reasonable.  However, do NOT boil them with baking soda–you’ll end up with bad tasting beans that are mushy on the outside and hard on the inside 🙁

 

Tart Lime Coconut Ice Cream

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After 21 years of my life and 19 of my younger sister’s, my mom bought us an ice cream maker. (This was a couple of months ago.) Hallelujah! This all came about because of my mom’s penchant for vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce. Ever since she went “free-fructose-free” she’d been denied this delicacy. So here we are today with an ice cream maker. Who would have known. Funny we’ve yet to make vanilla ice cream or caramel sauce, but oh the ice cream adventures we’ve had!

1 can unsweetened coconut milk

1/3 cup lime juice (we used 4 key limes)

zest of 2 limes

1/3 cup dextrose

1/6 cup water

Throw everything together in a bowl, refrigerate for 2-3 hours and follow the directions on your ice cream maker. Dextrose isn’t grainy at all like table sugar, so it should dissolve easily without heating the coconut milk, but heat it up if you need to. Just make sure to cool the mixture a little longer.

Here’s a review/story from future U.S. ambassador Amanda Oswald:                                                                                                                                   Tart! I, Amanda Oswald, called up Kate after 1 year of not seeing her. She miraculously answered and wasn’t busy! (Win.) Kate impressed Amanda with her churning skills. One suggestion would be to add sugar, and not just a little bit. I gave Kate Swiss chocolate because it’s the best in the world! —31/8/13

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