De Baking Psychopath

My New Year's resolution this year had been to cut down on my hoarding and commit to try to buy smaller amounts of ingredients (particularly baking ingredients), and only when I had a specific application in mind.  I had done a mini-purge of expired ingredients from the pantry, and the guilt over the wasted food/ingredients drove me to strive to do better this year That being said, I knew that there were many ingredients that we did in fact go through consistently, and therefore I felt less guilty continuing to buying in bulk quantities, such as flour, my beloved Ahmed Mango black tea , instant espresso , and oats of various sorts from Bob's Red Mill.   Furthermore, at the beginning of shelter-in-home, I had a realization that we were already pretty well stocked to hunker down for a good long while, with exception of fresh produce and dairy items.  I had still a decent amount of flour left over from holiday time, when I stocked up on a couple extra bags o...

Yes. You read that title correctly. No, I'm not one of those crazy bacon-is-god sort of people.  ...But I do like my breakfast meats sweet and salty. I've always drizzled a little bit of maple syrup on my breakfast sausage or bacon, along with a healthy dose of black pepper. So when I saw this recipe in Joy the Baker's new cookbook , I thought it weird but intriguing...     (stroking imaginary beard in contemplation) Meanwhile, I have been on a mission to use up my insane Costco tubs of peanut butter, and I might not have so much trouble if I keep making these cookies!  When I first tried them, I went "Hmmmm...." (more imaginary beard stroking) The nutmeg flavor packed a big punch fresh out of the oven, and I was a little overwhelmed. My second response was "I am not sure yet what I think about these cookies...but I think I need to eat another cookie to decide!" (which is always an optimistic sign)  Once they had full...

Alright, a break from yeast! First I wanted to highlight a new function on my blog, the Printer-Friendly button down at the bottom of each post. Thanks to the folks at printfriendly.com , you can pick and choose what to print from any website or blog, change the font size, and even save as a pdf. I hope this makes my blog even more user-friendly for my dear readers! Awhile back I made a couple different gluten-free chocolate chip cookies that were both pretty tasty. I got these recipes from some blog browsing a long time ago, but never got around to trying them until recently. So if you have a gluten-sensitive friend or just want to cut a bit of carbs out of your diet, here are a couple of recipes for consideration. Nutty Oatmeal Cookies (Adapted from Cookies for Breakfast by Michael H. Perlman ) Ingredients :  8 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar 3/4 cup sugar 1 large egg 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanil...

This was a dessert created out of necessity but turned out quite delicious in its own right. The task was to come up with something that was dairy free and gluten free. A flash of memory reminded me of the faux cheesecake a high school teacher of mine came up with when she had just moved to Taiwan many years ago and could not get any American cream cheese. So instead, she used fresh tofu. It ended up being a lighter and healthier version of the classic dessert that was so enjoyed by her family and guests, that even after she gained access to cream cheese again, she would substitute half the cream cheese with tofu. So to achieve my goal, I paired an all-tofu version of the recipe with a nut crust and homemade blueberry jam for a very respectable fancy dessert! For even less calories, you can substitute the sugar with Splenda. The softer and silkier your tofu, the less prominent the taste of the tofu will be; I used firm tofu one of the two times and it ended up much firmer and ...

I forgot what I bought the bag of almond flour from Trader Joe's for, but nut products shouldn't sit too long so I decided to find recipes to use it up quickly. As I haven't done enough field testing of macarons to really have the motivation to make those, I decided instead to make some gluten-free type of chocolate chip cookie recipes that feature nut and oat flours. This is the first of a couple I am planning to try. This one has the additional benefit of being egg-free, for those of you who need to worry about multiple allergies in a crowd of youngsters. I ended up having to throw in a few handfuls of all-purpose flour to tighten up the dough (it was too wet at first), but one could just as easily throw in more almond flour, or oat flour, or even rice flour if the same problem is encountered. This may have been due to the fact I used the coarser almond meal rather than the blanched almond flour the recipe directs. These were really well received! The texture...