R&D: Hacking cake Flour

The other night I was doing a mindless internet crawl and poking about things and came to a realization; almost everything can be jury rigged. That is to say that even if it's not exactly the right thing, you can usually make something stand in for something else. Sometimes, it even does a better job than the original. Prime examples of this are Sugru and Alton Brown. I'm pretty sure if you're looking up food recipes, you don't need to be told who Alton Brown is. The guy pretty much revolutionized the kitchen industry with the idea that you don't have to have a gadget for EVERY single process in your kitchen. He's used ziplocks as piping bags and more. Sugru on the other hand might have slipped past your radar. It's an epoxy like material designed to 'fix' things but it's very moldable and it's actually a lot of fun to play with but the things I've seen this stuff do is amazing. From safeguarding a young'uns camera like they have highlighted on their website currently all the way to holding a dishwasher together or even for product prototypes.

Which of course reminds me, I need to order some.

But the idea is the same, yes, we are a consumer nation and I'm more than guilty of my gadgets and gizmos but not everything has to be the same, especially not when it comes to your health. So I got to thinking and was thinking about how all the GF flours weren't just a single flour so I'd have to come up with my own composite but how to start without practically taking a food science course in addition to the other two degrees I now have finished. My biggest issue with gluten free foods was and is how dense they are and that icky gumminess that seems to coat all of them inside and out. Which basically means I dislike a great deal of gluten free foods (sucks to be me, inoright?) But back to the basic problem. How to start figuring out ratios.

Well, to start, rarely is anything 50/50. Fair is not fair in any world but even more so in something created. So I decided (luckily as it turned out) to go with a 60/40 ratio. The question was what ingredients to use. Most of the GF recipes I've seen have used a combination of six ingredients for their 'flour' mixture. Brown Rice, White Rice, Nut Flours, Tapioca Starch, Potato Starch, and Sweet Rice. Of those, the nut and Brown Rice could be considered proteins while the others were starches. So by their own separations they gave me a simple split. Proteins and Starches, which is what a lot of baked goods already are (have I mentioned lately how much I adore having had food scientists for instructors during Culinary training?).

I could have gone about this in a lot of different ways but I was actually a little silly about it all. I hated the gumminess so I wanted the starches to be the smaller part of the ratio. Even if it meant the heavier (or so I thought) items were in larger ratio. So I decided that with my first batch the starches would be the 40% and the proteins would be the larger portion. I kept hoping it wouldn't be a rock in my mouth but I could always adjust in the next batch. Well, since the starches were 40% and there were 4 of them, might as well just split it evenly the first time, right? Yeah, remember what I said about fair? Throw it out the window...because in this case, fair was me being lazy and having no idea how to tell which one would be better.

So we had the starch ratio, now it was time for the protein. This part I wasn't so lazy on. I like the flavor of nuts but I don't want a nutty cake so I hedged in the favor of the brown rice flour mostly because I had a ton of it, I grind my own nut meals and so on. Again, trying to resist the lazy part of it all by splitting it down the center and still worried about the flavor, I went for a 35/25 ratio of the 60 ratio for the protein half. Then it was just a matter of what recipe to try it out with. I knew just the one. The one I'd missed most. The white cake recipe from my Culinary School. I made this cake so much and still loved it. I had to make it over three times for my wedding cake final and still loved it. (We never did figure out why it kept sinking in the middle but only on the bottom layer sized pan.) So I dug out my recipe books from school and dug it up.

It looks just like the evil cakes I used to make in school

Now here's the thing that occurred to me once I looked at the recipe. Most of my culinary stuff was done in weight (we even had to buy a scale for class) but once I was out, I started measuring again despite it was rarely a consistent product. Don't ask me why; but it was probably laziness on my part. But looking at the recipe, I realized that recipes when converting from metric to standard are often drastically different. Then I got to wondering about how the same size cookie can be a different weight based on the ingredients so I bet flours do as well. This led me on yet another search of the interwebs which led me to a wonderful little converter which made me realize I was right. Which if you just use a cup of almond meal, it's going to have a different volume than a cup of cake flour. So I had to do math. Ick.

So the result is.

360g / .35 (The 35% Brice) = 126g
126g x 1.60 to make up for the difference between 100cake flour and 160g of Brice = 201g of Brown Rice Flour is needed for this particular recipe.

Isn't that a beautiful crumb?

So the weights I used for my cake flour are as follows after multiplying the ratio by the percent difference between cake flour and the current flour. The amounts in parenthesis are how my cake flour which was 360grams turned into for each GF flour. It will be a more weighty cake gram wise.

Brown Rice Flour = 35% x1.60 = (201g)

Almond Flour = 25% x  1.12 = (90g)

Tapioca Starch = 10% x 1.25 =  (45g)

Potato Starch = 10% x 1.70 = (61g)

White Rice Flour = 10% x 1.60 = (57g)

Sweet Rice Flour = 10% x 2.04 = (73g)

Total = 527g

Original cake flour weight was only 360g

Tastes sooooo good!

Now, it is still a bit denser than normal cake but it's hardly noticeable and the layers don't fluff up as much so you won't really cut the top off for even layers as it tends to be rather flat and not fluffy in the middle like most cakes. The main reason I'm not putting up the exact recipe for you to use is that for the whole rest of the recipe, I'm using an ingredient that's only available to bakeries or craft stores and isn't as easy to get a hold of. However, this ratio method seems to work really well for any recipe calling for cake flour.

My only word of caution is to make sure all ingredients are at room temperature and get them as fluffy as possible when making this. My recipe calls for whipping the egg whites into stiff peaks and that helps so much with the lift of this cake. Plus cream of tarter is good with egg whites too.

Anyways, good eats!

Alfredo Ice Cream - Weird but Wonderful

How many times have you craved the wonderful taste of Alfredo sauce but couldn't have it because it was too darned hot?

If I'm honest, probably never and that totally wasn't the inspiration for this dish at all. But it sounded good to say as an opening, right? *puppyeyes* Just go along with it, for my ego's sake if nothing else, okay? Please? T^T

Seriously, what really happened was that I was going to recreate my favorite garlic ice cream that I had with a dear friend at The Stinking Rose. Everything there comes with garlic. It was a stinky but wonderful lunch. And the decor is just a trip. Anyways, we had the garlic ice cream and it was sooo yummy. So when I had some cream and the like left over from my Chocolate Heat Ice cream, I decided to whip it up. However, my recipe called for some more solid flavor material than I really felt comfortable throwing in. I mean...8 oz...yikes. Can you imagine 8oz of garlic?

So I was debating what to do when I realized that garlic goes into Alfredo which is also dairy based...so why not make an Alfredo ice cream. And don't worry too much about my sanity, I figured it'd probably be horrible, but why the heck not!With that in mind, I began getting the ingredients together and it was a blast. And turned out super duper yummy.

Alfredo Ice Cream

Difficulty:  A bit hard like cheddar, but not like Parmesan.
Time: About a hour  + Two hours for temperature adjustments. An hour+ for set up.

Mise en Place

• Pot with Water
• Stainless Steel bowl (needs to fit over the pot for a water bath)
• Hand Blender(or Blender or Food Processor)
• Garlic Press (If you don't have already minced garlic)
• Mixing Bowl (2)
• Plastic Wrap
• Ice Cream Maker(With bowl prefrozen and ready to go)

Ingredients

• 1 Cup of Whole Milk
• garlic powder
• Cajun seasoning
• 5 oz Cream cheese-softened
• 2 Tbsp Pesto (I get premade because Pine nuts are super expensive)
• Garlic to Taste (I put about 2 oz in)
  1 oz Parmesean Cheese
• 1 oz Mozzarella Cheese
• 2 Cups of Cream 1/2 cup of Sugar

First things first, put the water onto boil. While doing that, put the softened cream cheese, the pesto, the garlic, Parmesean and Mozzarella into the mixing bowl. Using the hand blender, or if you don't have one, you can use a blender or food processor (Just make sure to clean them really really well so you get all the 'solids' you need) Make it as smooth as possible.

In another small mixing bowl (microwaveable if you please), put the cream and sugar together, heating for about 20 seconds at a time then stirring until you don't hear the scrap of the sugar which means it's dissolved into the cream. But don't let it boil. Now let the mixture cool.

In the stainless steel bowl, put the milk, cajun seasoning and garlic powder. (I use cajun seasoning because I like a alfredo with a kick). Turn the pot with the boiling water down so it just simmers. Then put the stainless steel bowl over the top so that it acts like a water bath. Let it simmer till it's warm, stirring frequently enough that you don't get a milk skin. (you know, that nasty little film that milk leaves after a while). Once it's nice and warm (About ten minutes) remove it from the water bath and cover with the plastic wrap nice and secure. Let it sit for about an hour to cool down to room temperature.

While that's cooling at room temp, take the 'should be cool by this point' cream and sugar and whisk it into the cream cheese mixture until everything is nice and homogenous (not lumpy and it all looks like the same consistency.) 

Side note: If you're using the food processor or blender bit, you can just add the sugar cream to this mixture while it's still there and blend it that way without putting it in another container. Fewer dirty dishes, the better. 

Now that that's done, put it into the fridge and after the milk is done, do the same to it. All the heat does is kinda...infuse the garlic taste into the milk. You can do this with the minced garlic or even fresh garlic, but this way is a bit more potent and viable. 
Once everything is nice and cool, remove from the fridge and prepare your ice cream maker. Get it started, pour both bowls of ingredients into the ice cream maker and let it do its thing until it's looks like...well...ice cream. Should take about 30 minutes. Put it into a container and freeze. Should be set up in an hour or so after that. Yum Yum.

Bonus: Sweet and Sour Shortcakes (new Style)

I love strawberries and even though they are technically out of season in Louisiana isn't going to stop me from eating them. And I found out today that one of the theme carnival I've wanted to jump on board of was having the theme of strawberries this month, I had to join in. I have no idea what I'm doing but I'm going to try, right?

No form, no fashion but still frakin' fabulous!

So one of the staples of my kitchen is an amazing recipe by Linda of Gluten Free Homemaker. She's also the one who's doing the carnival. It's for a Focaccia bread/hamburger bun and I've been using ever since the first moment I found it. I even commented on it so you can see how long I've been using it and making it. I average at least one batch a week, I believe and use it for everything, sandwiches, pizza dough, etc, etc, etc. This was my first batch ever. Before the Muffin Rings came in the mail from wonderful Amazon. Not very pretty, but oh so very tasty when I hadn't had any kind of bread in about two months.

But the reason for this particular recipe stems from the fact that one of my signature dishes from before I was GF was a Sweet and Sour Shortcake Recipe. I needed a sweet bun, but one that could absorb the flavor of the vinegar and such. Things simmer and stew in the back of my brain forever if I have the time to let it. I mentally cook something about twenty times before it ever reaches the stove if it's not an impulsive thing. The cake I'm planning on for my best friend's wedding has already gone through about four incarnations and she's not even technically engaged yet.

You know how when you're sick, things sit and stew in your brain becoming all sorts of delirium, especially when you're REALLY sick? Well combine that with my generally stew-y nature (Hmm...stew sounds really good right now, but...oh wait, tangent again ) I should either never be allowed to cook while sick, or I should always cook while sick because the fact is, I can't follow a recipe worth a darn when I'm sick but I usually come up with a pretty sick (as in really good) screwup that works amazingly well for what I'm trying.

This is what happened when I brutalized Linda's recipe one steamy March night in Louisiana when I was feeling a bit loopy. See, when I'm sick, my brain remembers more of my culinary training than I do and I don't have any silly hangups about doing things the 'right' way and just do what seems intuitively right. Linda's recipe is amazing but what I wanted that night was a sweet bun designed for yummy fillings that made my sweet tooth happy. I have mentioned the ball of yarn, right? The one that tells me things? I listen to it far too often.

So in listening to that ball of yarn...I present

Sweet and Sour Shortcakes (New and Improved)

Ice cream and Cream Sweet and Sour Shortcakes

Difficulty: Sweetly simple with a Sour Twist (Aka not too hard but a lot of steps in some ways)

Time: 2 Hours total. Most of which is resting and baking.
Feeds: 8 Healthy Portions

Mise en Place

For the Biscuits and cream: 

Mixer (preferably stand) with Paddle and whip attachment

Mixing bowl (No bigger than medium needed)
Bowl Scraper/Spatula
Muffin Rings (For a more rustic look, you don't have to have them)
Double Half Sheet pans (Or a pan with a airpocket to help control uneven heating)
Parchment paper
Ice cream scoop (#3 is my preferred size but can also just spoon it out)
Oven
Optional: Half Sheet pan lid or pan topper ( I'll explain below)
Optional: pot of boiling water
Optional: Pan rack
Optional: Towel
For Sauce:
1 Good sized Sauce Pan
1 Heat Safe Spoon with deep pockets
A gluten Free cooking spray

Ingredients
1 1/3 cup Brown Rice Flour
2/3 cup Sweet/Glutinous Rice Flour (No Wheat Gluten, it has Rice Gluten. Different)
1 cup Tapioca starch though you can sub about half for potato starch (Not flour) for taste
2 tsp Unflavored Gelatin (I've also just thrown in a pack, it doesn't matter too much)
1 Tbsp Xantham or guar gum
1 Tbsp Instant Active Yeast
1/4 cup Sugar
1 1/2 Tsp Baking Soda
1 cup water
1/4 cup water mixed with 1 Tbsp Chia seeds (Black or White, don't matter)
4 Eggs
1/4 cup Olive Oil
1 tsp Vinegar (Don't miss this part. It's pretty important)
~~~
1/2 cup Whipping Cream
2 Tbsp Sugar
Cap of Vanilla
~~~~
~4-6oz Balsamic Vinegar
2-3 Tbsp Sugar
2 lbs Strawberries


First, Add all the dry ingredients together in the mixer bowl and set to slowly mix the flours; The brown rice, sweet Rice and Tapioca plus the gelatin, gum, yeast, salt and sugar and the baking soda. Normally this recipe doesn't have baking soda, its leavening comes from the yeast, but I found that a little bit of baking soda actually gives me more of a crumbly inside that I want to help absorb all the yummy sauce.

Hold its own shape.Very soft dough.

In a separate bowl add the water, the chia water, the eggs, olive oil and vinegar. Mix it up pretty well and turn on the mixing bowl to a bit higher of a speed and add the wet ingredients. Keep it at about half speed for several minutes 2-3 usually works but if it's warmer, maybe 4 until it looks like this below. I actually tried to not add the gum into it because I'm trying to steer away from gum usage but it was just falling apart so I added at the end and mixed for like another minute beyond that. Preheat the oven to 400 F.

Letting the dough rest for a moment or two, it's time to get out the pans. I have NEVER run into an oven outside of a commercial oven that actually cooks evenly so I prefer to double pan all of my pans when it actually matters. Baking biscuits, cakes and breads do matter so they get the double pans. I place a piece of parchment up on it and place the muffin rings on it. I get between 9-10 biscuits for this amount of dough.

Then I place the pan lid over them. This doubled pan is also where the pan rack, boiling water and towel come in. After the lid is over the biscuits, I place the boiling water in a third pan which has a rack in it to place the doubled pans so I can just slide it off come baking time. This helps to control the amount of time I have to let it sit and it's almost a perfect 15 minutes every times for rising just the right amount I need.  Place the towel over the top to keep extra heat in (have I mentioned I'm a control freak yet? I like things to be able to be replicated even in my sick-y mind. I think I'm so much a control freak that it's permeated my entire being and so my sick brain knows I'll beat it up if I can't repeat something it did. *grin* Anyhoose) You don't have to do this, you can just let it rest, I just find this does its job consistently which I like.

Slide just the double pan into the oven and turn down the heat to 375 or 350 depending on how brown you like your top. With the additional sugar in my recipe versus Linda's the bottoms brown kinda easily so you don't want it at quite 400. It should take about 15-20 minutes. Her recipe calls for about 15 minutes, but since our temp is lower, we still need it to cook. At 20 minutes it should be very lightly brown. See?

Just enough to coat the bottom

Let them rest and cool to room temperature fully. This will take about 20-30 minutes. Then it's time to cut up the strawberries. There's no real way to get strawberries the same actual size so I just cut off the top so it's flat, turn the flat side to the cutting board and cut it into slices in a vertical cut. It'll take a while, about ten minutes. Once that's done, I put the vinegar into a pan, (and yes, I know acid to a metal for long term is bad but this won't be long it just cooks the items better.)

Don't want to add too many strawberries

While that's going on, I go ahead and whip the cream, sugar and vanilla together to get a heavy slog as my mum and her dad call it. Letting that sit for just a few moments, I throw a bit of sugar into the vinegar while it's heating up. Just use about a low medium heat (a 3 on an 8 heat stovetop) and stir it using the heat resistant spoon. When you can't hear the sugar scraping along the pan, it's ready. Toss in your strawberries (most pans will only fit about 1 lb at a time but you can reuse the sauce, just adding a bit more vinegar and sugar to re-situate it).

Left with fork edging. Right with knife.

 
Cut open the cooled biscuit bread with a fork for a nice English muffin like texture so it can soak up some of that wonderful sauce as well. The flat is not bad by any stretch. But I love to soak up sauces and rough edges do that better.

If using just the whipped cream, I put some of the strawberries and sauce on the cut biscuits then slap on some slog and voila, all done. But if I'm doing Ice cream like A prefers (him and his sweet tooth), then I put the ice cream on first, then top it with some cream and then slather it in Strawberries with a bit of sauce. Normally we share with our neighbors but they weren't home so our dessert today had a few more strawberries than normal. That's ALL strawberries under the cream in this picture.

Anyways, a great big Thank you out to Linda for the wonderful start to my Living Fully way of life. And I'm sorry for murdering your recipe. Actually, I'm not, it's still awesome...just different.

 This post links to Gluten Free Wednesday Strawberry Carnival

Wine Slushie

 Geez, I come back from China and I've completely forgotten how friggin' warm La is so I knew exactly what I needed. Wine Slushies! And yes, I know that alcohol dehydrates you so just remember to stay inside with the air conditioning.  *grin*

I had my first wine slushie at Sterling Renfest when visiting my friend Rin in upper state New York about two years ago. Or it will be in August...Geez, it's been way too long since I've visited Rin. I'm sorry Rin!!! *cry*

Anyways, my boyfriend, A and I were wandering around, trying tasty treats and just enjoying the day with Rin, her husband EJ, and their son Shrimpy (Not his real name....or is it...bwahaha). They hadn't had a ton of food exposure outside of their respective cultures (Rin is Canadian married American, EJ American but with some below Florida flavor if I remember right. Rin was also the one who introduced me to Poutine...oh god poutine. Such a sinfully wonderful comfort food...tangent, kitty...tangent. *cough* Sorry about that...) or so I'm led to believe considering her 'shock and awe' act every time I make something I consider fairly normal.

Anyways, we were trying to cool off in the unbearable heat and they were handing out samples of slushies....oooh...Then we found out they were wine slushies and Rin and mine's inner LUSH came out. Hehe. We tried both the white wine and the red wine, finding the white wine one superior. The red wine was just tooo much for us even more so than usual. But the white wine one was delicious. So we relaxed, ate our wine and A made silly faces at the baby (He makes silly faces really well.)

So as the Heat Index keeps climbing this year, and this redhaired pastry chef kept frying, I kept thinking about those slushies. I have very fond memories of that Renfaire (It was the first time I got a public kiss from A *grin*) and of those wine slushies. So I decided to recreate it.

Obviously, it has to have wine. But what wine? I debated for a couple of weeks about what wine to use but then it found me. Currently, I'm working as a demolady for a promotion company. But as it's mostly demonstration for alcohol, it gave me a perfect excuse. Since I have to...ya know, try the wine so I can tell people what they're good for.

Sometime last year, I got to try a Moscato wine, which is a really sweet but not too dry wine and it reminded me of the wine slushies again, so I knew I'd found my wine. But earlier experience (aka trying to freeze alcohol for granitas in culinary school instead of remembering my high school chemistry...which I almost failed;The chemistry not the culinary) had shown me that it wasn't just wine. Now anyone who has tried to speed chill alcohol knows that alcohol doesn't freeze too well unless the sugar content is really low. I've exploded wine bottles before (It's not pretty). Two things cause this. Sugar content and alcohol content. Wine has a relatively low alcohol content, so it freezes pretty quickly. But we don't want frozen frozen we have to pick it apart with an ice pick so that means unless we want to alter the actual taste of the wine, we have to increase the sugar content. And we do that by adding grape juice concentrate. So anyways, onto the recipe.

Moscato Wine Slushies

Difficulty: So simple, a slush could do it. And I often do. *laugh*

Mise en Place

• Bowl
• Wooden Spoon
• Ice Cream Maker (Ideally new style with two frozen and ready canisters. Leave one in the freezer until ready for second go round.)
• Freezeable Container with lid or Freezer bag
• Bowl for Keys (Because your guest shouldn't be driving after how much of this they'll devour)
• Wine glasses (Frozen, if possible)

Ingredients

• 1 12oz canister of thawed but previously frozen WHITE grape juice concentrate (Welch's makes an excellent frozen white grape concentrate)
• 1 750 ml bottle of Moscato wine (Beringer is my preferred moscato) Red or white doesn't matter. You won't use all  of it. You'll just barely use half. Edit: Beringer at least, has now come out with little sample bottles at around $1 each and the recipe will only take like two of them for this recipe if you don't want to have to drink/waste the rest of a full bottle. But who would want that, huh? *grin*

That's it. Simple, huh?

Basically, just let your juice defrost inside the bowl so it doesn't drip all over your counters. (I usually open up the top and set it up upside down so I can mix the wine with the juice before throwing it into the ice cream maker). Set up your ice cream maker (ie make sure that it's actually ready to make ice cream or the like such a freezing it the night before) so it's ready to go as soon as you grab the canisters. Once the grape juice is liquid, add it to the ice cream maker. Then add the wine to the bowl until it just to just below the top of the mixing blades in the ice cream maker and mix.

Set up and let it start churning. I'm not including the ice cream maker instructions since there are many different brands. However, it works best with the more modern types of ice cream makers. The ones that use salt aren't as efficient or effective.

Now, if you have a second canister for the ice cream maker, my preference is to use them both. And after the first one has gotten to the 'done' stage where it's not that cold, I dump the contents from the first canister into the second canister and let it go again. After it's done, either once or twice (The second time around makes the ice crystals very smooth but it is by no means absolutely necessary), place the mix into a freezable container and throw it into the freezer for a few hours.

Neat little trick? Throw it into a freezer bag instead and then when it's ready to pour (Do this only if you're going to use the entire bag in one go), snip off one of the bottom tips of the bags and you'll  have an instant pastry bag to give it a kind of style to it all since the slushie will hold a little bit of a shape. Nommy!

Side note: Now, you might be asking why the extra grape? This is your added sugar content, without the extra (and different) alcohol content. This will keep it from freezing solid in your freezer too quickly. Not that I really expect you to keep slushies for too long before they're devoured. But as it is white grape juice, it's a similar enough flavor that it doesn't affect the taste of the wine that much.

However, this is where I believe a problem came in. As yummy as the wine slushies were, that red wine slushie at the fest overwhelmed our taste buds and I believe that was because of the tannins. Tannins is what makes red wines bitter. That strong flavor that most reds finish with. I believe that in their recipe, they used white grape juice concentrate with the white wine slushie and normal grape juice concentrate with the red. But normal grape juice has that SHARP tannis flavor too, and freezing anything concentrates sugars, making the flavor even more sharp. Hence why my recipe goes with frozen white grape concentrate for both. Babies don't like sharp flavors, which is why most babies prefer the white grape juice to regular. I just followed the same logic.

Birthday Strawberries and Things to Come!

Hey, Hey, it's my birthday and what better day to reboot "Just a Sweet Geek" than today (Plus it's easier to remember the anniversary). I have a lot of things in mind for this blog now that I've rebooted it and my life by living Gluten Free. I leave for China in a week but already have backlog recipes to share with whoever stumbles upon this humble blog. I haven't been doing gluten free as long as many people out there who blog about the experience but I'm getting more proactive about it all.

A lot of recipes fill that midpoint of not fancy but not simple that are common for people living GF. I'm going to try to fill in the ends. The super simple stuff that people don't think about like techniques that can still be used with gluten free living and the fancier end things that people think are too hard for gluten free living. That isn't to say I won't do any middle ground. I'm all over the board with my recipes and I hope you'll enjoy them too. Now, I'm not going to say something is Gluten Free, it will be in the labels but the idea of Living Without has never appealed to me. Instead, I try to focus on what other ways I can eat things and be healthily happy so instead I'm just going to list the recipe so that it will seems natural to have it the way it is and there's no sense of deprivation.

Structure is a nebulous thing with me; I love it, but no one else seems to understand the logic but here's the breakdown. I'm going to give you the mise en place; the stuff you need to do what you need to do for the recipe so you can make sure you have it or a close substitute. Then the ingredients so you can have them together. Then the instructions. With my commentary of course. Then I'm going to try and figure out a way I can just link you to the flat recipe so you can print it out easily since that's the hardest thing to do with blog recipes I've found.

This first one though is a simple strawberry recipe. I live in Louisiana and we LOVE our strawberries down here and I've done all sorts of weird but yummy things with them. We're just ending our strawberry season but here's a good idea anyways. So I have a recipe for you that won't take more than about oh....ten or so minutes of active work time.

Deep Fried Strawberries with Chocolate Sauce
Difficulty: Super Easy just need to keep an eye on things
Time: About 10 prep, and 10 active
Makes: About 2lbs if you really WANT to eat that much. Generally you'll have leftover batter.
Mise en Place:

• Deep Fryer or deep cast iron pan with oil (Peanut or Canola is best if you're not allergic)filled up and heating to at LEAST 350 but closer to 360 is preferable.
• Chopsticks
• Medium Mixing Bowl
• Plate lined with paper towels
• Small mixing bowl
• Spoon and/or Fork

Ingredients:

• 1 lb Strawberries (Freeze Fresh ones for at least two hours before hand (Stems removed))
• Alternative: Already frozen and hulled strawberries
• Alternative: Frozen Hulled Strawberries with a little bit of cream cheese inside the hull.
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/3-1/2 cup brown rice flour
• 1/3 cup Soda Water
• 1/6 cup Cornstarch
• 2 TBSP Honey
• 1/2 cup Chocolate
• 1/2 cup heavy cream

While your oil is heating up, take the 1/3 cup of brown rice flour and put it in the medium mixing bowl. Add the cornstarch and stir with a spoon or fork. Add the egg yolk and the Soda Water and continue mixing with the honey. If the mix seems too thin you can add more rice flour. You're wanting the consistency of a slightly thick pancake batter. It will bubble up with the soda water reacting to everything.

For the Chocolate Sauce: Mix the chocolate and the heavy cream together and heat in the microwave for 20 seconds at a time, stirring then reheating until everything is melted and homogenous (mixed to the same throughout). If it still seems too thick, you can add a little more cream and mix. Might need to reheat if you want to use it over the strawberries while still warm but not too much heat at once.

For the Strawberries: Once you have the consistency and the oil is heated, you bring out the frozen strawberries. Throw no more than a few in at a time into the batter, coating them well. Now take the chopsticks and pull the strawberries out being very careful not to drip. (Less cleanup that way). Drop them carefully into the oil and let them fry. If using a deep fryer, be careful and don't let them on the heating coils inside the oil or they'll end up with burn marks. I try to hold onto the strawberries as long as I can with the chopsticks and use a basket between the strawberries and the heating coil. Once it is a nice soft brown (with brown rice flour they'll be a little darker) usually about 2 minutes or so, I use the basket to pull them out and place on the plate with the paper towel to dry. This part will take practice because  how long the strawberries take depends on the size of the strawberry. Sometimes they'll have a cold center or you might have to get the batter darker.

Oh, and don't forget to smile and say "Strawberries" when you get your picture taken. Gets a gorgeous smile every time!

This post links to Gluten Free Wednesday Strawberry Carnival