Ratio Rally Tea Breads

I do believe this is my first post of the year. I have written parts of posts, but due to illnesses, surgery and family emergencies I never quite got back to them. My four jobs haven't helped much either. That said, when the idea of tea breads was floated to the Ratio Rally I jumped on it. The Monkey and I are huge lovers of other quick breads, and this seemed the best way to get my feet wet again in the blogging sense.

Quick breads are used for breakfast or for late afternoon tea time or anytime. I have been known to serve them at lunch with a side for fresh fruit and yogurt. The ratio makes it a fairly simple item to put together. The ratio for quick breads is 2 flour: 2 liquid: 1 egg: 1 fat. With that in mind, let's visit the other blogger's take on tea breads.

Heather: Discovering the Extraordinary -- "Figgy" Tea Bread

Adina: Gluten Free Travellette -- Rhubarb Tea Bread

Morri: Meals with Morri -- Oatmeal Raisin Tea Bread

Brooke: B & the boy! -- Scottish Tea Bread

 

Scottish Tea Bread

8 ounces Scottish breakfast tea

4 ounces canola oil

2 large eggs

4 ounces oatmeal cookies, crushed

3 ounces sorghum

1 ounce potato starch

4 ounces dry oatmeal

4 ounces raw sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

Boil water for making the tea. Add to one tea bag in your glass measuring cup. Steep for 30 minutes, and remove bag. Set aside. In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients thoroughly. Add all wet ingredients, and stir until just combined. Bake at 350 degrees F for 60-75 minutes. Remove from oven and cool. Makes one large and one small loaf.

Ratio Rally Bundt Cake

Have you noticed that I have been gone for awhile? I have become a crazy person in the last month or so by deciding to take on a third part-time job in addition to helping my mom with home-schooling and running my home business. Yes, I am insane. What precious little time I have had has been spent with the Monkey or sleeping. However, this past Sunday I got off at noon and was actually able to bake! I nearly swooned I was so excited!

Then disaster struck. Okay, not disaster. Just normal life stuff, and really the Monkey and Boo were pretty well behaved. The prep of the sweet potato and the apple-cranberry sauce took more time than I would have liked, and then....it came out half raw. Sigh. I took pretty pictures of the cake though. It looked fabulous!

Decided I should try again, still using the ratio for a cake using puree from one of the other ralliers, and just cook it longer. More like my granny's carrot cake. The ratio incidentally is 1:2:2:2:3 (fat:sugar:puree:egg:flour). So here I sit waiting for the second cake to come out of the oven while I type and prep to send the Monkey off to Sturbridge Village tomorrow for home school day. The way it smells I am betting it turns out fine. If you are interested in how others cakes turned out, head on over to our host's,  Adina of Gluten Free Travelette, post for her take on bundt cakes and the full list of participants.

Spiced Sweet Potato Bundt Cake with Apple-Cranberry Sauce

100 grams sorghum
60 grams teff
20 grams potato starch
110 grams brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons all-spice
110 grams brown sugar
2 ounces melted coconut oil
4 ounces mashed sweet potato
2 flax eggs
6 ounces apple cider

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease your bundt pan with cooking spray and set aside. In a large bowl, combine sorghum, teff, potato starch, brown sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and all-spice. Add melted coconut oil, mashed sweet potato, and flax eggs. Mix until combined. Add apple cider and ounce or two at a time mixing as you go. The batter will be fairly thick. Scoop out a 1/3 of the batter into your pan and spread evenly along the bottom. Spoon apple-cranberry sauce into the center of the batter all the way around. Reserve a little of the sauce for plate decoration. Scoop small amounts of the remaining batter on top and spread carefully. Don't want any sauce poking out. :) Smooth and pop into the oven for 1 hour 45 minutes. Let cool completely in pan before turning out onto plate. Drizzle glaze over the top and fill center with remaining sauce.

Apple-Cranberry Sauce

1 Cup fresh cranberries
1 small apple, cored, peeled & diced
1/4 Cup apple cider
1 teaspoon orange zest
1 cinnamon stick

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce heat and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until a thick pie-filling like consistency is reached. Set aside.

Glaze

1/2 Cup powdered sugar
5 teaspoons apple cider

Mix together. Spoon or brush over the top of the cake.

Crock Pot Pineapple Cake (Review)

I first found Gingerlemongirl.com when the Monkey was diagnosed with his multiple allergies 2 1/2 years ago, and have used several of her recipes as is and as the basis for some of my creations. Since then we have become friends as well, and I was so pleased when she started testing for her cookbook, Everything Gluten-Free Slow Cooker Cookbook. I got to take a small part in the testing, and then had to wait for the book to come out. 

Now that it has finally come out (I am not a patient person), I have the opportunity to review a recipe for you, and offer you the chance to try it out for yourself. You will so not be disappointed. Not because it is gluten free, which it is, but because it is an amazing collection of recipes for your crock pot. Period. Do you know anybody with a crock pot? Then they need this book. Onto the recipe....

Okay, I volunteered for this gig. I love helping out with cookbooks, and trying out recipes. It may well be an illness. Maybe. Carrie asked me if I wanted sweet or savory, and I told her to surprise me. She did with the perfect recipe, Right Side Up Pineapple Cake. How did she know of my insane love of pineapple cake?! :) It was perfect.

It went together beautifully. The instructions were easy to follow, and I had no problems. Well, unless you count the fact that my pineapple and cherries sank. :) It was all good though. I flipped it out onto a plate, and you can see them under the layer of cake. It was taken and devoured at the bi-annual church picnic and kick ball game. Thumbs up all around. This is the moistest cake I have had in a long time with or without gluten.

Ratio Rally Tortillas

When the Monkey was first diagnosed with his allergies, I was all gung-ho to make everything from scratch, and tortillas were near the top of my list due to his excessive love of the bean burrito. Let me say that my one and only attempt was a failure. Not just any failure, but a huge flop. They couldn't even be cooked it was that bad. Sigh.

So we looked into alternatives and found the brown rice tortillas from Food for Life. These are good, but went bad before we could use them all. So, I just gave in and we dealt with the flour tortillas. His allergy causes behavioral issues, and since we didn't do it often I was okay with this level of exposure. You will find that we make decisions like this a lot around here.Since then those tortillas have become available in the frozen section giving them a longer shelf life, but again I just couldn't see the point given the frequency (say maybe one or two a month?) that we ate them.

Shredded chicken, peppers, adzuki beans, & a bit of mango sauce

Tortillas were on my mind again though when I decided to host the Gluten-Free Ratio Rally. After a little discussion, I was put on the calendar for this month, and I started doing my research. Know what my research shows? That there really isn't a standard ratio for this "baked" item. Rhulman doesn't have one, and every recipe that I have looked at is just enough different that you can't make a generalization. Or at least that is my interpretation of it.

You do need three things. Flour, water and fat. I think at the final hour I finally licked this ratio thing. At least in the sense that I found something that works even if it isn't pretty. The math? You have heard me mention that my math brain doesn't work real good, right? I ended up with roughly (verrrrry roughly) a 2:1:1 ratio of flour:water:fat. It really isn't that clean, but we will leave it at that and you can play with it, right?

Before I get to my recipe, I want to make sure you can go and visit all the amazing bloggers who have participated this month in the tortilla/wraps challenge. Please visit, comment, and re-create their creations. :)

Jenn | Jenn Cuisine	Corn Tortillas
Jonathan | The Canary Files	Vegan Curried Flour Tortillas
Meg | Gluten-Free Boulangerie	Lefse (Norwegian Potato Flatbread)
Pete and Kelli | No Gluten, No Problem	Flour Tortillas
TR | No One Likes Crumbley Cookies	Gluten Free Flour Tortillas - Quesadilla
Heather | Discovering the Extraordinary	Sundried Tomato & Basil Tortillas
Charissa | Zest Bakery	Paleo Grain-Free and Gluten-Free Tortillas
Karen | Cooking Gluten Free!	Gluten Free Healthy Flours Tortillas

Buckwheat Tortillas

100 grams buckwheat flour
60 grams brown rice flour
40 grams potato starch
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 Cup + 2 Tablespoons hot water
1/4 Cup + 2 Tablespoons melted coconut oil

This recipe from Jazibe's Recipes was the one that got this off the ground.

So measure it out and mix it up. Add water and oil to a well in the middle of your flour. Mix it with your extremely clean hands until it comes into a nice ball. If it is still crumbly feel free to add another tablespoon or two of hot water. This is what did the trick for mine.  Roll into 6 fairly equal balls and let rest for 10-20 minutes under a damp cloth. Roll them out one at a time to about a 6 inch diameter. Cook in a warm skillet (Or griddle. oh, how I wish I had one of those) for about 90 seconds on each side. Cool and fill with whatever you like.

Black beans & rice with a bit of guacamole? yes please!

Photo Challenge 2

Better late than never. I went to post and realized I had missed a couple of days. :) Some things were a little more difficult than others to come up with ideas to photograph. Enjoy!

Purple (summer sun butter by Hundred Acre Farm)

Spoon

Simple heaven

Arrow

Ready (for my trip to STRIDE certification)

Food (snack for my certification day)

Faces (blurry at my certification)

Inside (my VUE, Vada)

 Hole

Today

August Photo Challenge

Well, I finally bit the bullet and joined a photo-a-day meme. I had been wanting to for awhile, but hadn't figured I could really commit. Don't know what craziness possessed me, but I blame Ali over at Ali n Son. :) The list of photos is being hosted by Fat Mum Slim, and it has been fun to find the right "subject" for each prompt. At the end of an unspecified amount of time, I will be posting here to put all my photos in one place. Enjoy!

Outside

One :)

Coin

Somewhere you sat

Logos

Writing

8 o'clock

 Glasses

Messy

Ring

Ultimate Reset Journey

I started my journey on the Ultimate Reset full of high hopes and conviction that the only issue would be my addiction to coffee. Oddly enough my coffee addiction only reared its head once or twice, and really as a desire for the comfort a warm cuppa brings and not for the jolt.

The first week was easy. Got used to the schedule of supplements. The food was fabulous and easy to prepare. It took some juggling, but I managed the time even when things didn't go according to plan. I didn't experience any of the mood swings or exhaustion I was counting on. In fact, I was peppy and filled with energy. I figured I had this licked.

Then I missed a supplement on day 8. I figured I would just keep going and get back on track at lunch, which I did. I discovered that this week was not as easy in terms of food preparation, but I made it through the week with the help of my Facebook community and through strength of will. No way was I going to give this up at this point.

At the end of week two and beginning of week three, the exhaustion and mood swings started. When I spoke to my doctor at my follow up appointment to blood work, she mentioned that since hormones are stored in your fat when you lose weight they are released. (Note: this is my interpretation of our conversation.) This made perfect sense to me since at that point I had lost 7 1/2 pounds in two weeks. It wasn't pretty, but the everybody is pissing me off feeling left after a few days. The exhaustion stuck around though through most of week three. This might have been helped by my absolutely insane schedule at work. Other than these two things, week three went well enough. I had to substitute or repeat more meals during this week as I found that making all the aspects of a meal were often to much food. Stayed within that weeks menu plan, though. No straying from the vegan lifestyle.

So here I sit three days post-Reset having successfully eaten dairy and not so much success with a piece of turkey. Wondering where this leaves me in the grand scheme of things. I think that what the Reset did for me was show me where I can be more purposeful in my eating. I wasn't eating badly before, but I have places where I can make changes including in my beloved oatmeal. I have cut way back on my intake and I am actually eating fresh fruit and using natural sugar. I, also, learned that I need to measure more deliberately and not just eyeball things. What I used to think was two tablespoons of dressing really isn't, and honestly I don't need more than the two called a serving.

I am a changed woman in more than the physical ways. It is internal as well. This was a definite growing season for me.