a bit of baking

Baking Dairy and Egg Free is more fun than I deserve!

Although, to be honest, I have learned so many new things to cook and new ways to cook old family favorites that this has been more fun than not.  And we have found a fantastic book, The Chemical Maze to help us find the food additives that affect Simon so badly so when my friend Missy said on Facebook that our house sounds like The Little House On The Prarie, she was spot on.  There are no more food shortcuts for us, EVERYTHING we used to use has things that Simon cannot have so back to basics we go.

Flour, sugar, yeast (although I am about to try sourdough to save that money) single item canned goods like tomatoes and corn and organic, soy free, livestock feed is about all we buy anymore.  Oh, and 15-pound bags of organic juicing carrots as carrots can bulk out anything.  

I will admit, the first recipe is neither egg nor dairy free but is so good that I had to add it.  Remember, ORGANIC all the way!!!  If we are what we eat, do you want to eat ANYTHING contaminated with the chemical cocktail that is contaminating the so-called "conventional" food supply?

I don't have a picture of each thing listed below but as I cook each one I will try to get pictures to post but as my locusts attack the food before it is even off the heat, it's hard to nip in to snap a picture.

Some indeed of the following recipes are from google searches over the years but most of them are either invented by me or are family recipes that go back gods only know how many years, most likely several hundred, at least.


Gooey Chocolate Brownie Cake


one package dark chocolate chips
one can sweetened condensed milk
two eggs
one and a half cup flour
one rounded teaspoon baking powder
one teaspoon vanilla
one quarter teaspoon salt

Melt chocolate and condensed milk together in a pan over a VERY LOW heat, until just melted. Add the eggs one at a time, beating really well. Add the vanilla. Add the flour which you have stirred the baking powder into.


Either bake it in the pan you have mixed it all up in or pour it into a baking dish.


Bake at 350 until the edges spring back when pressed but the middle is still gooey. The gooier the better.

This is very rich and yummy!






Crispy, Crunchy, Crackers

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt - you can reduce this amount to suit your taste
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar


Enough water to make a thick batter

Mix and spoon onto a well olive oiled cookie sheet, bake at 350 until crisp. They will be crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside.

No two the same size but all of them lovely and crunchy.

From start to finish these take only about 20 min.

You can also add seasonings to these before you bake them, we like them either plain or spicy.


Crumpet Muffins

Use the same batter as above, put two tablespoons of the batter into a well-greased muffin tin and bake either plain or with a spoonful of jam dotted into the middle.  Baking at 325 f to prevent them being claggy.

Done this way they are like a cross between an English Muffin and a Crumpet, really, they are!

And oh yeh, you can also fry this same batter and it turns into really nice - and EASY - pancake alternative for the dairy and egg allergic person in your life.


Egg and Dairy Free Cake

Using the same recipe as for the crackers, add a full cup of sugar when mixing the dry ingredients and an extra tablespoon of vinegar and bake really slow - 300 f - until fully done.

This makes a really good and simple cake with no eggs or dairy. 

As my first frosted cake, it was none too pretty but it got eaten in a hurry so no harm!

Chocolate frosting


1 can coconut milk with the thin clear slimy stuff poured into the pig pan
1 and a half cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder

Whip coconut, then whip sugar into it, then whip cocoa into that. Done!

If you are worried about the coconut milk properly separating, a few days before you make this warm the cans up a bit (not a lot, like, put them on the porch out of the sun for a few hours) and then put them on the shelf and don't move them, the contents will separate just fine.





Barbecue sauce 

2 cups catsup
1 cup sugar
1 dash Worcestershire sauce
½ cup pineapple juice
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar - or more if you like it tangy

Your choice of spices, we use…
Ginger
Garlic
Paprika
Black pepper
White pepper

Simmer it all until it thickens to your liking. Use hot or cold.






Chocolate ice cream - dairy free

One can organic coconut milk
One cup sugar
One half cup cocoa powder

Blend until sugar dissolves and freeze. It will stay soft serve hardness and is very good, add more or less cocoa to taste.



Totally simple cottage loaf

As you can see, bread does not care what shape it is.  This dough was a bit softer than usual so I used a roasting pan lid for the loaves and for the rolls, I just made them a bit smaller, 24 instead of the usual 15. The kids have already hit the rolls pretty hard.

2 cups of warm water

1 rounded tablespoon sugar

1 scant tablespoon salt

1 tablespoon yeast

First three into a bowl, stir to dissolve and sprinkle the yeast over the water.  It will bubble up in less than 5 min.  When it looks like a foamy scum start adding flour.

This is the bit that, with organic flour, you can NOT go by the cup as each time you make it, you will use a different amount of flour.

Start with about 3 cups and mix really well and then add, a cup at a time, more flour until you have a firm but still sticky dough.

Cover with a towel or lid and place in a warm place.  If it is cold I put the oven on for about two minutes and then turn it off.  That heats it up enough to prove the dough.  If it is hot just put the oven light on, that is enough to make a warm place.  Or here in Florida, the porch is fine as long as it is covered against the flies.

When the dough is big and bubbly looking, scoop half of it out and put it onto a pile of flour on your counter and knead it really well.  Don't worry, it really only takes about two minutes and then put into a loaf pan that you have rubbed really well with either olive oil or melted butter.  Smear the dough with it really well.  Do the same thing with the rest of the dough and let them rise.

When they are fat, turn the oven on - 350f - and bake until golden brown.

Worry not if you have no loaf pan, you can bake bread in anything.  A cookie sheet will give you a flatter loaf, a frying pan will give you a round loaf, if coffee cans still were made of metal, you could even bake in them.

The bread does not care what shape it is lol.

You can even tear off small handfuls and knead them into ball shapes and gosh darn if they don't bake up into hamburger buns!

Pasta

A large bowl full of flour 

Add and mix in about a teaspoon of salt - more if you don't salt the cooking water

Add enough really warm water to make a stiff dough, it is the heat of the water that makes this work so nice and warm.
I run the hot tap until it is full heat and put the bowl under the tap and spin as I mix, just pushing the bowl under or out, depending on if I need more water or not.  It always takes more water than expected.

Turn onto a pile of flour and knead hard for about 3 min.  

Put it back into the bowl and put a lid on and leave on the counter for about 20 minutes, or more.  Wet the lid a little bit to help it to be nice and humid for the dough.

Roll the dough in more flour, cut into about 6 pieces, roll each piece in flour and replace into the bowl.

Take them one at a time and roll really flat and use a pizza cutter to cut them into strips.  When all are done put them into boiling salted water and this bit is IMPORTANT!!!

Cook for 4 minutes!!!  While watching it like a hawk to stop it boiling over!

If you pan is not big enough to cook it all at once lift the first batch out of the boiling water and put the second in.  The water gets really thick so if you have pigs or chickens, let it cool and feed it to them.

If you can't have butter, put olive oil over it with a sprinkling of your favorite seasoning.  We LOVE Jamaican Jerk Spice Mix, Mum sends it to us.  Love you, Mum!!!

Spag Bol Sauce, A.K.A Spaghetti Sauce

Two BIG cans crushed tomatoes - Publix brand seems to be the most consistent for flavor.

Two regular sized cans diced tomatoes

One large onion or two small ones, or more if you like it oniony

Two cans mushrooms

Mediterranean herbs, garlic, oregano, basil, rosemary, thyme, you get the idea.  We add pepper as well as the Jerk seasoning as we like it spicy and we leave out the basil as we none of us like it much.  Season to your taste but when adding dry spices add LOTS, the longer you cook the sauce the more it blends and mellows so it is really hard to use too much.

You can add a few spoonfuls of sugar as well if the toms are tart.

Cook onions in the mushroom juice in a deep saucepan until done, then add all the rest and simmer for a few hours.

You can, of course, add meat, either raw at the beginning of cooking or cooked meat at the end, any meat works as does meat-free.  With dairy allergies in the house now, no cheese is added anymore but you know what?  It is really good without it.

When you have lots of bread in the house, it's a good idea to have a vintage meat grinder, it turns stale bread into perfect breadcrumbs.  Saves lots of time when making stuffing and it makes the best crunching noise, like something you would hear on Doctor Who.

Roasted quail and stuffing with baby beetroots.  Only the lettuce is store bought but it was organic so I don't mind.

Biscuit topped multi-meat pie with deep gravy.  OMG it was good!!!

Home raised, home-cured, oak smoked bacon.  It has to soak in fresh water for about 15 min to get some of the salt out and then fried crisp.  It is a fiddly thing to make and takes several weeks to get to this stage but well worth the work.

Braised Celtuce stalks, fried Celtuce leaves, fresh made cranberry sauce, homemade pasta boiling on the back of the stove and turkey roasting in the oven, just about to come out and be served up.  Yeh, it was ALL good!