Tag Archives: real food

Grain-free Honey-lemon Ricotta cheesecake …

Does eating well get ANY better than this?  I don’t think so!!!

For some reason I’ve been hankering for goats milk ricotta cheese lately … and one of the advantages of making your own ingredients, is that things like ricotta are just as easy to make with goats milk as they are cows milk!  Goats milk ricotta is a thing of beauty!  lovely and creamy, a small curd, and a slight tang!  I won’t post detailed instructions here, as there are lots of good tutorials online.  For my ricotta, I prefer a mild vinegar or lemon juice as the acid, and find that 1/4 cup acid for each gallon of milk is plenty.

Pro-tip — most instructions will have you use cheescloth, BUT it is really too coarsely textured, and you will find curds get caught in between the layers.  I use a fine mesh sieve or a jelly-bag.

This cheesecake is grain-free and refined sugar-free (if you wanted to make this SCD legal, dry-curd cottage cheese would work equally well)  The goal here was to make something that actually tasted and looked like a proper treat, but still possessed some healing properties :)

The ricotta for this has had almost all of the whey strained out (helps it keep longer in the fridge), with a texture like farmers cheese — this results in a fairly dense cheesecake.  IF you like your cheesecake creamier, reduce the ricotta by 75 grams and add 1/2 cup heavy cream and an extra egg yolk to the mixture (to keep it SCD legal, use coconut cream).

One final tip on the method:  this will bake fine, standing on its own in the oven, but remember that cheesecake is basically a custard, so  baking this in a bain marie will also help create an even creamier texture.

Enjoy this with a variety of fruit compotes –  blueberries are just coming into season here  and pair brilliantly with lemon, but we’ll have a progression of fruits and berries right through to the fall that work equally well with the lemon (switch up the spices in the cheescake to pair depending on what fruit you are using!)

Grain-free ricotta cheesecake …

Yield: makes one 6\" cheesecake (double the recipe to make a 9\" cake)

Grain-free ricotta cheesecake …

Ingredients

  • Crust:
  • 1/4 cup almond flour
  • 1/4 cup coconut flour
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  • 3 T coconut oil, melted and cooled
  • 3 T honey
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla
  • 1 egg white
  • Filling:
  • 500 grams ricotta cheese (I used goats milk ricotta)
  • 120 grams honey (up to 150 grams, to taste)
  • 3 eggs
  • 1/2 tsp sea salt
  • grated zest of 2 lemons
  • 2 T lemon juice
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
  • Compote:
  • 2 cups blueberries
  • 1/2 cup honey
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 1/4 cup lemon juice

Instructions

  1. Combine the dry ingredients for the crust in a medium bowl, and whisk to combine.
  2. Combine the wet ingredients in a small bowl, whisking to combine.
  3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well. Let the mixture stand 5 minutes or so for the coconut flour to absorb moisture.
  4. Press into a springform pan. (You can use this crust for all kinds of pies -- if you need to blind-bake it, bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes.
  5. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
  6. Combine all the filling ingredients in a blender, and blend until smooth and creamy.
  7. Pour the filling into the crust-lined springform pan.
  8. Bake in a bain-marie for 60-70 minutes until the centre is just barely set. It will firm up as it cools.
  9. For the compote, cook the blueberries, honey, lemon juice and water in a saucepan over medium heat for 20-25 minutes until thickened. Let cool (store leftovers in the refrigerator)
http://realfoodmadeeasy.ca/2012/07/grain-free-honey-lemon-ricotta-cheesecake/

Red Velvet cupcakes! (full stop)

Red velvet cupcakes seem to be abounding lately, and certainly are one of those classic comfort desserts that we all remember with a certain nostalgia.  Which is why, when I went in search of a recipe to modify, I was quite surprised at how far afield I had to scrounge for gluten-free, vegan recipes.  With that said, I ended up with this recipe of my own, modified from a wheat-based devils-food recipe I’ve used before.

Classic Red Velvet Cake is one of those desserts that was a happy accident (as Bob the painter used to say!).  The housewives of days gone by would make a light version of a devils food cake, and the acidity of the buttermilk reacted with the cocoa, and turned it a reddish hue.  Many current-day versions of Red Velvet Cake skimp on the cocoa in order to get a Satanically-red hue.  I myself am inclined to keep the cocoa, keeping the cake a little closer to its classic roots, making it more like Terra-Cotta velvet cake.

I am clearly of the camp that is not a huge proponent of the artificial colour, BUT, for Red Velvet Cake I will make an exception, and so, in between test-batches, I hustled down to get some bona fide red food colouring to do this properly!  Gel colouring in the small pots is your best bet, and you will need a lot to get amped up colour — about 1/2 teaspoon or so for a small batch of cake batter.

My other reason for making these was I received a few boxes of King Arthur Flour’s multi-purpose gluten-free flour to try out.  I have a variety of different things on the list to try to see how it fares in a variety of applications, from pies to cakes, to breads, and it felt like Red Velvet cupcakes would make an auspicious start to the week!    This particular flour blend clocks in 30 grams per 3T (or 160 grams per cup). If you are interested in substituting your own flour blend, you will need to calculate the appropriate average for the blend you use.

I have to say these turned out really well!  a great crumb, a little bit of spring, but nice and moist, hence the full-stop!  They are just plain good, never mind that they have no gluten, eggs or dairy in them.   The cream cheese frosting does kind of take it over the edge, but you could substitute  a vegan vanilla icing if you are making them for folks who can’t have dairy or eggs.

In terms of the flour itself, I thought it performed pretty well for an AP flour blend.  It doesn’t quite produce the ethereal texture I get when I use Betty Hagman’s featherweight flour blend, BUT then again, that is a flour blend that I use ONLY for cakes, whereas the King Arthur blend is intended for a number of uses.  Stay tuned to this channel!  We’ll be putting it through its paces with pie crust and breads up next.

Red Velvet cupcakes! (full stop)

Yield: 8 regular size cupcakes or 6 baked in jumbo muffin tins

Red Velvet cupcakes! (full stop)

Ingredients

  • 3/4 c almond milk
  • 1 T cider vinegar
  • 3/4 c granulated sugar
  • 1/3 c coconut oil
  • 1/2 tsp red food colouring (the gel colours)
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 1/2 c King Arthur flour gluten-free multipurpose flour (240 grams)
  • 1/4 c cocoa powder (NOT dutch processed!)
  • 1/2 tsp xantham gum
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 8 oz. cream cheese (NOT reduced fat)
  • 4 T unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla paste
  • 1 1/2 - 2 c confectioners sugar

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
  2. Combine the almond milk and vinegar in a medium bowl and let stand for 15 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients and whisk well until the sugar is well combined.
  3. Combine the dry ingredients in a small bowl and mix with a dry whisk to combine. Add to the wet ingredients in the medium bowl, and mix well. The mixture will thicken slightly as the xantham gum hydrates.
  4. Scoop into muffin tins lined with cupcake papers.
  5. Bake for 22-25 minutes at 350 F. Let cool completely before icing
http://realfoodmadeeasy.ca/2012/06/red-velvet-cupcakes-full-stop/

 

Dislosure:  I am part of the King Arthur Advisory Baking Panel.  As part of their research on Canadian baking patterns, they have provided me product samples for test baking.