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Okay, I know I already did a bunch of tater tots, but I had to do a chili head version. Seriously, you expected that I’d just leave it alone? I often use Sriracha (my homemade version, as I no longer can use the commercial version, sob, sob, although mine’s pretty close) instead of ketchup on fries or home fries. So why not put the Sriracha straight into the tater tot? It’s sweet and hot and yummy all at the same time. I didn’t take as many pictures this time, because there’s two other tater tot posts out there you can look at (Roasted Garlic and Pesto DIY Tater Tots and Chimichurri Spiced DIY Tater Tots) for reference, and mostly because I forgot. Oops.
Sriracha Sweet Potato DIY Tater Tots
3 large or 4 medium sweet potatoes
2-4 Tablespoon(s) of Sriracha, depending on your spice tolerance (use a safe version for you, I ferment my own at home, since I don’t have a safe version)
2 Tablespoons of olive oil, or other safe for you oil, and some to put in a oil mister
1/4 teaspoon of salt
Preheat your oven to 400°F. Peel and wash your potatoes. Place the potatoes on a small baking sheet. Bake the potatoes for about an hour.
When the potatoes are ready to come out of the oven, remove the potatoes and turn the temperature on the oven to 425°F. If you’re using a large hand grater, you need to wait until the potatoes are cool so you don’t burn your fingers. Since I was using the grating blade on my food processor to grate the potatoes, I grated them while they were still hot. I sliced them lengthwise just enough to get them in the food processor, and grated them up.
Grated potatoes after baking
Some of the grated pieces may be too long, Feel free to chop them up a bit either with a knife or a potato masher. When the pieces are small enough for you, mix the Sriracha, salt, and the 2 Tablespoons of your safe oil into the potatoes until they are well combined.
Spray your baking sheet with your safe oil in a mister. I used a small cookie scoop to portion out the tater tots, but you could use two teaspoons to drop the mixture on your baking sheet.
Use your oil mister to mist the top of the tater tots, and place the baking sheet in the oven for 25-30 minutes. Use some tongs or a spatula to turn them over, and then bake them for another 25-30 minutes. You want to watch them closely, as you’ll notice mine were a little on the brown side.
Sriracha Sweet Potato DIY Tater Tots
Take them out of the oven, salt to taste, and enjoy!
In attempting to use up my glut of apples (they are finally all gone!!!), I wanted to do a chutney of some sort. But most of the recipes call for raisins, and at the moment, I don’t have safe raisins I can buy at the store because most of them have sunflower oil all over them. I thought about it, but I drew the line at dehydrating some grapes so I could have chutney. So I considered other options. I found an apple habanero hot sauce recipe, but I also wanted another flavor in it. I had some cranberries in the freezer, so I decided they’d be good. This hot sauce is lovely, but really vicious. I used six fairly large habanero peppers, but you can switch them out for milder peppers or cut the number back a bit. This recipe makes about 3 cups, so depending on your hot sauce usage, you may want to cut the recipe in half.
Apple Cranberry Habanero Hot Sauce
2 large cloves of garlic, diced
1 shallot or small onion, diced
1 Tablespoon of fresh ginger, diced
3 cups of peeled, cored and chopped apples (I used a mix from my apple trees out back, mostly McIntosh and Galas.)
1 cup of fresh or frozen cranberries
1 cup of apple cider vinegar (I used Bragg’s as it is generally safest for people with corn allergies)
2/3 cup of white sugar
2/3 cup of brown sugar
6 large habanero peppers, destemmed, deseeded and chopped
2 teaspoons of salt
a small amount of safe for you oil to cook with (I used grape seed oil)
In a large saucepan, over medium high heat, sauté the garlic, shallot/onion, and in ginger in your safe oil until soft.
Garlic, ginger, and onion cooked until soft
Add the apples and cranberries and cook for another 5 minutes.
Add the vinegar and bring the mixture to a boil. Then add the white and brown sugar and stir until it dissolves.
Add the habanero peppers and simmer over medium low heat for 30 minutes.
Cooking complete
Put the mixture in a blender and puree it until smooth.
Apple Cranberry Habanero Hot Sauce pureed until smooth
At this point, you can use the sauce as it is, or you can strain it to remove any seeds, pepper and cranberry skins that haven’t been broken down. You may need to use a spatula to press the sauce through the strainer.
Straining Apple Cranberry Habanero Hot SauceStraining Apple Cranberry Habanero Hot Sauce
Refrigerate the sauce and use often. You can also freeze it if you think you won’t use it soon enough.
You guys are noticing a trend, right? It’s apparently a bumper crop year for apples. When I was trying to figure out how to use up apples, my friend Erika sent me a link for this recipe for Mom’s Apple Cake from Smitten Kitchen. For obvious reasons, I had to change the original, and I tried making it more like an upside down cake. It took a couple of tries, but I have it where I like it now.
Apple Cake, Vegan and Gluten-Free
Apple mixture:
6 large apples or 7 medium apples (I used a mix from my apple trees out back, mostly McIntosh and Galas.)
1 Tablespoon of ground cinnamon
5 Tablespoons of brown sugar
Cake batter:
2 and 3/4 cups of all purpose gluten-free flour mix (I used Cara Reed’s mix from her blog, Fork and Beans)
1 Tablespoon of baking powder (For corn free baking powder you can use this recipe.)
1 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of safe for you oil (I used olive oil and grape seed oil, mostly because I ran out of olive oil and had to top it off with grape seed oil.)
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of brown sugar
1/4 cup of orange juice (I don’t have a safe orange juice so I squeezed mine myself.)
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract (Here’s a bunch of recipes for vanilla extract, make sure to use safe alcohol if corn or wheat are an issue for you. I used a vodka made only from potatoes, be careful as some vodkas may also use grain or corn.)
1/2 cup of applesauce (I used my home canned but use any safe applesauce you have.)
1/4 cup of aquafaba(The liquid from a can of garbanzo beans or chick peas. I used my home canned garbanzo bean liquid.)
1 Tablespoon of ground chia seed
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease an 8 inch by 8 inch baking pan with some safe for you oil.
Peel, core and slice apples. Place them in a bowl and toss them with the 5 tablespoons of brown sugar and the cinnamon. Set the apple mixture aside for now.
Apple mixture
Stir gluten-free flour mix, baking powder and salt together in a bowl.
In a separate bowl, mix together the oil, orange juice, sugar, the remaining brown sugar, vanilla, applesauce, aquafaba and ground chia seed. I use a stand mixer with flat beater to do this.
Wet mixture
Once these ingredients are fully incorporated together, add the flour mixture slowly to your wet mixture, with the mixer speed on low. You could also mix this manually, but the stand mixer makes my life a lot easier.
Cake batter after mixing wet and dry ingredients
Pour half of the apple mixture into your greased baking pan, spreading them evenly across the bottom of the pan.
Pouring half apples in bottom of baking pan
Pour half of the cake batter over the apples, spreading it evenly across the pan.
First layer of batter over apples
Then pour the remaining apple mixture over the batter evenly.
Second layer of apples over first layer of batter
Cover the apple mixture with the remaining cake batter.
Second layer of batter over second layer of apples
Bake for about an hour and half or until a tooth pick comes out clean.
Apple Cake after baking
Cool in pan on wire rack for 5 minutes. Loosen edges around the pan with a butter knife, and then invert the baking pan onto platter. Don’t let it cool too long or it will stick and be harder to remove from the pan (which you can tell mine did because I got distracted.)
The problem with chocolate chip cookies? Everyone likes them differently. Some people like them soft, others chewy, some crunchy. This is why there are a billion recipes out there. And when your recipe no longer works for you, you might try 5 recipes and still be disappointed. Because “just like Mom made” may not be YOUR mom’s recipe. Or YOUR perfect recipe.
So I’ll tell you what I was aiming for in this recipe and you can decide if that’s what you’re looking for before you start measuring.
The Ryan perfect chocolate chip cookie should be crunchy on the edges, softer and puffier in the middle, but not underdone or actually soft. SoftER, but still with a good crumb. I believe my mother’s cookie recipe was an altered version of the classic Tollhouse recipe, tweaked until it was perfect for our family — or, rather, perfect for my dad. The man used to eat about a dozen cookies as they came out of the oven, usually burning his mouth at least a few times. These cookies are great for dunking, and another thing I learned from my dad (after “don’t eat hot cookies if you don’t want to burn yourself”) is that cookies dunked in coffee are an excellent morning treat. These don’t spread out as much as my mother’s did, but they do get the texture right.
Key to getting this texture is a trick I learned from my friend Corianne who runs a vegan bakery in Phoenix, Arizona: Treehouse. If you’re in Phoenix, check it out. Anyway, the trick is to freeze the cookie balls before baking. It adds another 30-45 minutes to the process but it is so worth it in terms of payoff.
Dough, Prep for Freezing, Prep for Baking.
NOTES ON INGREDIENTS:
Since I’ve fussed with this recipe more than almost any other recipe on this blog, I have some very specific notes on what has worked and what hasn’t.
The two major ingredients are measured by weight — I hope you have a kitchen scale if you’re trying to do gluten-free baking. It really is necessary, and you can get a decent one for under $20.
For ALL of your ingredients, I hope it goes without saying that you need to source what’s safe for you.
For “shortening,” I’ve used Spectrum shortening. Feel free to use a vegan shortening, vegan butter, or, if you aren’t vegan, another fat or shortening of your choice. I’ve done these with soy-free Earth Balance, but because if it’s really low melting point (it’s really soft at room temperature), the cookies are flatter and crispier, so reduce the baking time by a few minutes. Actually, if you mess with anything, watch your baking time. If you really like a buttery flavor, I’d suggest half margarine and half shortening as a compromise.
For the flour mix, I’m using Cara’s Gluten-Free Flour Mix. Still. Nothing else I’ve tried has worked as well. Sorghum flour is great — I am particular about sourcing, and I buy Authentic Foods sorghum flour and super-fine brown rice flour.
Sugar. I know my mom’s recipe used both white and brown sugars. I ran out of brown sugar while trying this recipe and subbed in the molasses and white sugar and I liked the flavor better, so I kept it.
Last, but not least, chocolate chips. I’ve used Enjoy Life chocolate chips for a while now, but I can never find regular-sized chips and don’t always want mini chips. I did use the mini-chips here, and I use a scant measurement of the mini chips so that they spread out better. I also recently discovered Equal Exchange chocolate chips and I’m a fan. I used this in a lot of the test versions of this recipe, but I’m out at the moment. As far as I know, neither of these brands is corn-safe, as corn is used the processing of the chips and generally isn’t on the label. If you have corn allergies and have a safe chocolate brand, tell us in the comments?
1 cup (or just under, if mini chips) chocolate chips
With a mixer, cream the shortening, sugar, and molasses. When it’s nice and creamy, add the aquafaba and the vanilla and mix well.
Separately, mix the flour, salt, soda, powder.
Add the flour mix to the shortening mix slowly, and mix well. The dough will be pretty stiff, pulling together and way from the sides of the bowl.
Mix in the chocolate chips by hand. I find a rubber or silicone spatula works best for this.
Now portion out the cookies on a tray lined with parchment or a silicone baking sheet and pop it in the freezer. Since I don’t have room in my freezer for two trays, I just put the cookie balls close together to freeze, and then space them out onto two trays for baking.
Pre-heat the oven to 375ºF.
When the cookies are frozen (30-45 minutes in my freezer), space them out to give about 2 inches of space around each cookie ball, on the lined baking sheet, and bake 15-20 minutes, until golden brown. Cool completely — I tend to just drag the liner from the tray to the rack and leave it. This is me being lazy, but it’s also a good way to deal with the fragility of gluten-free, vegan baked goods.
My friend Laurie sent me the sample packet of Anti-Grain flours for my birthday, and the first thing that came to mind for apple flour (which is literally just dehydrated apples — an easy ingredient list to tackle) was pancakes. I love pancakes. Denise did pancakes a while back, but I thought pancakes with an apple flour base would be a nice change of pace.
I also wondered if aquafaba (chickpea brine) as an egg replacer might make a lighter, fluffier pancake, than chia or flax eggs. I tried it, but wasn’t thrilled with the results — I mean, it tasted great, but the texture wasn’t what I wanted. So I whipped the brine, which made all the difference. Admittedly, this adds an extra step and an extra bowl to your pancake adventure. As much as I hate dishes (and I don’t own a dishwasher), this extra bowl is worth it.
I’ve used a mix of oat flour and sorghum flour. If you cannot tolerate gluten-free oats, use all sorghum.
Apple Cinnamon Gluten-Free Vegan Pancakes
serves 4
1/2 cup gluten-free oat flour (can sub sorghum, if you can’t tolerate oats)
1/4 cup apple flour
1/4 cup sorghum flour
1 Tablespoon tapioca starch
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 Tablespoons brown sugar
2 Tablespoons oil (I prefer the flavor of coconut, but use what works for you)
1 cup non-dairy milk (I generally use almond)
1/2 cup of whipped aquafaba foam (chickpea brine whipped into an airy foam)
Oil for the skillet or pan
Whisk the dry ingredients together.
Add the oil and non-dairy milk and whisk.
Fold in the aquafaba foam.
Heat the skillet or pan over medium heat and lightly oil it. Pour batter in , about 2 Tablespoons at a time. About like this:
(That’s a 12-inch cast iron skillet, for reference).
When the pancake is slightly dry at the edges, that is usually when you can flip it. I’d give you cooking times, but it seems to vary so much from batch to bath that it’s better to look for doneness. If you want to make all the pancakes and keep them warm, put them in a pan in a low (200ºF) oven to keep them warm.
This makes about 4 servings, depending on how hungry you are. I’m really not sure what a “proper” serving of pancakes is — enough that you’re not hungry when you’re done, I suppose. Top with whatever butter or margarine is safe for you, and maple syrup, if you can have it. Jam is also quite nice on pancakes.
IF you have leftover pancakes, these reheat well, and also taste pretty great cold.
As some of you know, I bought a house in January with a lot of fruit trees. So now I have a lot of apples. I may very well drown in them. Besides the massive amounts of canning I’ve been doing, I thought I’d looking into using them in a savory dish too. And since I needed to use my DIY Curry Powder in something, I figured why not shoot two birds with one stone. After looking at a few different recipes I decided I wanted less of a soup feel and more of a bisque feel, so I decided to use the homemade cashew milk I had in the freezer. If you have a safe commercial dairy replacement product, feel free to use it (I don’t) or if you can have coconut milk (I can’t) that might also work well. Free feel to make it work for you.
Curried Apple Bisque
I medium onion, finely diced
2 Tablespoons of olive oil (or other safe for you oil)
1 1/2 cups of homemade cashew milk or other replacement dairy product (for cashew milk, I use this recipe, except I leave everything out except the cashews and water)
a bit of cinnamon to garnish if you wish
Peel, core and slice your apples. I have this lovely apple peeler, corer, and slicer, that makes it really easy to do, but a knife works fine too.
Peeling and coring apples
Peeled, cored and sliced apples
In a small saucepan, saute the onion in the olive oil, until tender and it starts to look translucent.
Sauteed onions
Once the onions are sauteed, add the curry powder, cinnamon, salt, cayenne pepper, and ground clove to the onions. Mix the spices in well and cook for a minute or so. It’s going to smell amazing.
Onion and spice mixure
Add the apples and the vegetable stock to the broth.
Apples and vegetable stock added to the onion and spice mixture
Bring the mixture to a boil and then reduce the heat and simmer. Simmer until the apples are tender and soft.
Apples cooked until tender and soft
Add your cashew milk and either place the bisque into a blender and puree, or use a stick blender to puree the apples in the pot. I used a stick blender. If you used a blender, return the pureed mixture to the pot. In either case, once you’ve blended the apples, bring the bisque back to a simmer and then serve.
You can garnish with a shake of cinnamon if you like.
I occasionally want to use rice milk in cooking, but I really dislike all the commercial rice milks that I’ve tried. I find them thin and flavorless. But in trying to use up some leftover rice, I discovered that by adjusting the amount of water (and using really good rice, I could make a thick, almost cream-like rice milk that worked pretty well in baking. I still don’t really like rice milk for drinking — there’s something sort of “dry” about the flavor. That’s odd, I know, but that’s the best description I can come up with.
Anyway, any time I’m making rice and think I’ll have time for rice milk later in the week, I make a cup or two extra. It doesn’t take that much longer in the rice cooker. I’ll take the leftover rice and let it soak in mason jars overnight, and then blend it up the next day. If you strain it, it’s nice and smooth (depending on what you want to use it for, consider not straining it. It seems to add some bulk to bread and cake unstrained, but none of those recipes are blog-ready, I’m still playing.) But I hate throwing out the pulp and wondered if I could season it and make crackers out of it.
It worked! But they really have more of a chip texture than a cracker, so I’m calling these chips. I did these in the dehydrator, but if you don’t have one, I’m guessing that doing this on low in the oven would work. The times I’ve given will be wrong, though. I didn’t try this because I’ve not made them yet this summer when it was cool enough to want to use the oven. You can also use whatever seasoning you like, but I don’t really recommend a salt-free one. Those turned out really bland. I tried a bunch of the seasonings in my kitchen, and I’ve listed what I liked best.
On rice: I use a brown jasmine rice I buy in large bags at the Asian market in Nashua. Brown jasmine is my “all-purpose” rice at this point in time. It’s likely that the brown rice adds to the leftover pulp, so I would suggest using brown rice for this. But if you try it with a white rice — or something else, please let us know in the comments. You do get rice cream (which is easily thinned down to rice milk) and crackers out of this, so it’s a 2-for-1 recipe.
I did not give an exact number of chips, as it’s come out a little different each time for me, despite all attempts to create stringent measurements. Since this is basically a way to use up something you’d throw out otherwise, maybe a little uncertainty is okay?
Fill a quart mason jar with the rice, lightly packing it in. Fill the jar with water. Put it in the fridge overnight. I’m not 100% sure it needs to be refrigerated, but better safe than sorry. The rice will soak up a lot of this water, and I think it makes a smoother milk.
Empty the water and about half the rice from the jar into your blender. Add a cup of water and blend. If you need more water, add it, but your goal is to blend the smoothest rice milk with the least amount of water here. You will need more, but add it gradually
Repeat with the other half of the rice, but add about 1 1/2 cups of water to begin, as you don’t have leftover soaking water.
Now strain the rice milk through a fine sieve. Keep stirring the mush to drain as much milk as possible out of the rice pulp.
I usually get about a quart of rice cream out of this.
With the leftover pulp, drop in about 1 Tablespoon blobs onto the fruit roll trays of your dehydrator (or onto a cookie sheet if you’re trying the oven). Sprinkle generously with seasoning.
Run the dehydrator at 155ºF for 9 hours, and check to see if your chips are crispy. They may need a little more time when it’s humid out. Lock these up in an airtight container to keep.
Besides the fact that I have a spice obsession (as outlined in my post, WW Kitchen Stories: Rosemary or Denise’s Spice Issues) and it seems dumb to pay for blends when you already have all the stuff to make the blend, I’m getting to the point after the cumin scare that I’m going to try to make as much stuff from whole spices as I can, so that there’s less chance for adulteration with undisclosed allergens, anti-caking agents, or cross contamination. There’s only a few ground spices in here, but my plan is to eventually only buy whole spices and grind all my own stuff.
I tried to keep it reasonable for non-fire breathers, but you control how much curry powder you add to stuff. Start small and then taste, you can always add more, but you can’t really subtract easily. Also, if you want to make it a bit hotter, add 3 or 4 more dried chiles to the mix. Be aware that you will need a blender or a coffee/spice grinder to make this.
DIY Curry Powder
Makes about 1 cup.
6-8 dried chiles (I used Sanaam, but Arbol or Japones would work fine)
5 Tablespoons of coriander seed
4 Tablespoons of cumin seeds
2 Tablespoons of fennel seeds
2 teaspoons of black mustard seed
4 green cardamom pods
1/2 teaspoon of whole cloves
1/4 teaspoon of black peppercorns
1″ piece of cinnamon stick
1 Tablespoon of ground Turmeric
1 teaspoon of ground ginger
1 teaspoon of ground fenugreek seed
1/4 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
Destem the chiles if necessary. Place the chiles, coriander seed, cumin seeds, fennel seeds, black mustard seed, green cardamom pods, cloves, black peppercorns, and cinnamon stick in a skillet over medium heat.
Seeds, spices, and chiles in skillet before toasting
Move the skillet around constantly to shift the seeds, spices and chiles until you smell the cumin seed toasting, some of the seeds popping and the spices darken.
Seeds, spices, and chiles in bowl after toasting
Remove the spices, seeds, and chiles from the skillet, and allow them to cool completely.
Once cool, place the spices, seeds, and chiles from the skillet and the ground turmeric, ginger, fenugreek, and nutmeg into a blender, and blend until you have a fine powder. Before opening the blender, let the powder settle for a few minutes so that you don’t gas yourself.
If you are using a coffee/spice grinder, place the ground turmeric, ginger, fenugreek, and nutmeg into a bowl. Grind the spices, seeds, and chiles from the skillet in coffee/spice grinder in batches, adding the batches to the bowl until you have ground all of the spices, seeds, and chiles. Using a wire whisk, mix well so that the ground turmeric, ginger, fenugreek, and nutmeg are fully incorporated into the newly ground spices, seeds, and chiles from the skillet.
Store in an air-tight container and use where you would use curry powder. Stay tuned for some recipes using it in the coming weeks.
