Banana Muffins with Gluten Free Flax & Ancient Grains All-Purpose Flour

Lately I haven't had a lot of time for breakfast, my mornings are just to busy to make a good meal, and I know I'm not alone on this.
Breakfast is an important part of the day and shouldn't be forgotten, so what do I do?
I binge bake.
That's right, on a non-super busy day I binge bake, making way more muffins and mini loaves of bread then I need. My favorite to make? Banana bread. Mr beam and I sometimes can't eat all the bananas we get before they start to over ripen, so they go in the freezer until I make banana bread muffins.

Muffin recipes make a dozen or more muffins and even though I might be able to stuff my face full of most of them doesn't mean I should. So I divide them into pairs of 4 and put the extras in plastic freezer bags. I can take a bag out the night before a busy day and Mr. Beam and I have two muffins each for the mornings breakfast. It works our wonderfully.

I've been playing around with different banana bread recipes, none of which are the same, so you don't get a recipe today. But I can share a Gluten Free flour mix that I've discovered and love. It's  Gluten free Flax & Ancient Grains All-Purpose Flour by Flax Premium Gold.  I found it at Costco and have used it in just about everything,  You could say I'm in love with it.

Making banana bread is really easy and there are a ton of recipes out there to get you started, just find one that sounds good to you. Do you like walnuts in your banana bread? How about chocolate chips? Want it more lite and fluffy or dense and squishy? I personally like walnuts AND chocolate chips, and for it to be dense and squishy (I also like adding cinnamon to my mix). Feel free to be creative, as long as it's something you'd want to eat.

It takes me less than 10 minutes to mix up the batter and throw the filled muffin tins into the oven, it's the cooking and cooling that take forever. When its all done I have  some warm muffins to eat and 2 sets of muffins for those busy morning.

Smashed red potatoes

This is quickly becoming my favorite way to have potatoes. It's like combining French Fries and Mashed potatoes into one dish. Who doesn't love that idea?

Start with small red potatoes.

Cover generously with oil, salt, and pepper.

Place on a baking sheet and cook for 10-15 minutes at 350 degrees.

Once soft enough, remove from oven  and smash with a flat object, I used a glass cup.

 Smash each of the potatoes

 Once they are all smashed put them back in the over for another 5-10 minutes, depending on how crunchy you want the edges.

Bad picture, but they are done, and delicious.

A different way

I love keeping hard boiled eggs in the fridge. I grab one when I'm in a hurry, just peel, eat, and go.  It helps that I get a few dozen farm fresh eggs from my parents every two weeks, I'm a little spoiled.

Now with them being fresh from the farm they do not like to peel very easily, there is a protective film between the egg and the shell. I've read that putting baking soda in the water as you boil them makes peeling easier.

Then the other day on pinterest I saw a pin on baking the eggs instead of boiling them. So the next time I need to boil my eggs I baked them instead.

So I arranged the eggs on the oven rack and baked them for 20 minutes, easy.

I then put them in an ice bath to cool them quickly and stopped the cooking process. (my ice is almost completely melted in the photo)

 I peeled one for a snack right after they were cooled, it was so easy to peel and it was cooked perfectly. I was really excited.

I normally keep my 'boiled' eggs in the door of my fridge with the shells still on so I can grab then at leisure,  however I found that with this baking method leaving the shell on is a mistake and the egg is supper hard to peel afterwards (was left to eat only the yolk several times because of how mutilated the white got while trying to peel it).

So if your needing the eggs for a party and will use them right away go ahead and bake them, but if you plan on storing them like I do, boil them or bake them and peel right away (you would then need to seal them in a container for later use) I like that I found another method for getting the perfect 'boiled' egg but I think i'll stick to  boiling in for now...

A simple Loaf

I've had this box in my baking cupboard for a while now, sense the cinnamon raisin bread (which was only half eaten before needing to be tossed) I haven't felt like making bread. And if I did It was going to be used in my smaller loaf pan or even my cupcake pan. But with this meal planning thing I'm finding myself in need of full size slices, so I grabbed the box and began.

 I have to say upfront that I was not impressed with the instructions (unless your using a bread maker, they put more time into explaining that method), but with common sense it's easy enough.

It had to sit and rise so I busied  myself with another cooking project (baking eggs instead of boiling, more on that later)  Once it was baking it made my entire apartment smell like bread-y heaven and when it was done cooking, oh man it looked beautiful, it was so hard not to cut into it right then and there.

Once it cooled I made a sandwich for dinner and paired the rest of the slices, separated them with foil and put them in a freezer bag for later use. The bread was dense and chewy with the crumbly top, it was close to the french bread my mother would make from scratch when I was little.

I used some for toast the other morning, just went from freezer to toaster just fine (it took a bit longer to toast then the store bought GF bread that I used to keep in the freezer). All in all I was happy with the results, next time I'll have to use it as pizza crust and see how it turns out!

Size matters when baking

 I have one of my kitchen cabinets stuffed full of gluten free flours, mixes, and other baking necessities. I realized after making the gluten free raisin cinnamon bread that neither I or Mr. Beam eat a lot of bread anymore.  It's always to much for us to eat before it goes bad or in the case of the cinnamon bread, half eaten then forgotten until it was harder than a rock :(


 It could just be flavored bread that gets this kind of neglect or it's just the fact that I'm getting absent minded in the kitchen as of late. I remember when I would make a loaf of  GF bread and it would be gone  before the next day. I would make sandwiches, toast, bread pudding, croutons and even bread crumbs out of it.



After this wasted cinnamon bread I didn't want to bake anything else, almost like a punishment I guess. I didn't want to waste anymore of my precious  ingredients in the baking cupboard, if you bake gluten free you know that this stuff isn't cheap. Size matters, I now have tiny baking pans for personal loafs of  bread or I use my cupcake pan and don't pull out the big pan unless I need sandwich bread size loaves. It was a hard lesson to learn but one everyone should realize at some point.

P.S. The cinnamon bread was delicious (I'm not a fan of raisins and I even liked it) I will be making this again for Mr. beam but definitely in the smaller pans :)

An Easy Breakfast

Breakfast is supposed to be the most important meal of the day, but lately I'm so sluggish in the morning I don't feel awake enough to make anything and settle for a handful of almonds until I'm extremely hungry  which can happen from 40 minutes to two  hours later. It's bad I know but some days I cannot help it. When I began researching for planning my meals I stumbled on a recipe for making your own breakfast sandwiches and freezing them. http://www.theyummylife.com/Egg_McMuffin

 I got pre-made Gluten free bread for mine and I used blueberry English muffins for Mr. Beams (they smell like heaven). I used cheddar cheese and Canadian bacon and I got extra eggs from my parents (I love farm fresh eggs!)

I did not read the up-date on their website about cooking the eggs, so the first time I made them my eggs were small and a little deformed, but they worked. I made these again recently and used my creme brule containers as well as a few of their other tips and the eggs turned out better.

While my eggs cook in the oven I slice the cheese and toast my bread (if your only going to reheat them in the oven you don't need to toast if before hand, but I suggest it for when reheating in the microwave for the bread to have a better flavor and texture)

When the eggs are done I start assembling them...

(this picture was from my very first batch when the eggs were really small and thick, after using the other pans and breaking the yolk before cooking the eggs fit much better)

When they were all assembled I wrapped them individually in wax paper and stacked them in a cheap foil baking dish and covered them with foil so they would stay nice and tidy in my freezer.
After breaking it down each sandwich cost me roughly $1.27. If I needed to make more than a dozen I could probably buy in bulk and reduce the price even more, but with just me and Mr. Beam 6 sandwiches each is perfect :)

Product reviews

I've been meaning to write this one for a while now, I have two different  brands of noodles that I adore using and then I have 2 bread mixes that I'll go over.


The pasta:

Years ago I was referred to as the pasta queen, I loved making, eating and sharing different pasta dishes. When I would go out to dinner something using pasta was usually what I would order (to the point that I shocked people if I didn't get a pasta dish). When I  first thought about going gluten free I rebelled against the idea because I thought I would have to give up one of my favorite things, I was even getting really good at making homemade pasta, the thought of giving it up was heart breaking. At this point my mother was already gluten free and when we would have spaghetti we would make her rice noodles  while we still had out normal wheat ones. I had tried spaghetti with her rice noodles... it just wasn't the same.

 Scene then I still have yet to find the perfect gluten free spaghetti noodle but I have found some great gluten free noodles that leave me feeling satisfied with my pasta dishes instead of cheated like I thought I would.

 I love these elbow noodles, like it says on the package it tastes like traditional pasta and no wonder because they are made in Italy. Italy actually has one of the highest diagnosis of celiac's disease, before beginning school the kids are tested for celiac's. It's one of the greatest places for a Celiac or gluten intolerant person to visit  because their society is so educated and aware of the disease.  It's pretty cool, anyway back to the noodles. These elbow noodles have a  very mild taste by themselves and there texture is the closest to wheat noodles  that I've found so far.  I love them.

 And a close second in my pantry is....

 These are very yellow in color (they are made from corn flour) I very much enjoy these noodles and find them a little hardier than the elbows. I like these for if I have to cook something a little longer and don't want the noodle to break down to soon or if I'm going to make a cold pasta salad with them.

Both of these I highly recommend  for your general pasta needs. I am just beginning to dabble with making my own gluten free pasta (like ravioli) but I haven't found the perfect recipe yet, I will let you know when I do.





The flour mixes.

I love this all purpose flour so much. Everything I've made using this (Both from a recipe and off the top of my head) has turned out beautifully and tasted amazing.

This bread mix I need to try again. It tastes wonderful after it first cooled and then it was left overnight and I didn't care for it (although that could be because I added a strong cheese and garlic to it before baking  and it didn't taste the best cold) I'm leaning towards It was the cheese's fault because the texture and bread it self were really good. I remember being extremely happy with it at first and then wonder what the hell happened the next day.


I also recently tried Pamela's gluten free bread mix (I have no picture of it) But I LOVED  the loaf it made. We ate it all with in  24 hours I will be getting it again and sharing what I make with it :)

Bisquick biscuits

 I'm beginning to love Gluten free Bisquick. I usually have it in the cupboard to make waffles with but the other night Mr beam wanted biscuits with dinner and instead of mixing my own flour mix I grabbed the Bisquick.

I made cheesy garlic biscuits. I gotta say I was impressed with how they turned out, with a little tweaking they could taste just like the red lobster biscuits.

Gluten nightmares with pleasant results

I recently had a nightmare that  I was consuming all these pastry's, cakes and cookies, mainly cookies. Good things that I dearly missed eating. In the dream I realized I was eating gluten and tried to only chew the delicious treats and spit them out before swallowing them. Needless to say I woke up feeling  guilty and deprived. These past months I've been looking for a gluten free chocolate chip recipe that is at least similar to the one I made all during my childhood and haven't had much luck. I decided that after work that day I needed to make myself some cookies. Once I was home I realized that I didn't have any chocolate chips in the house, my plan needed to change because I wasn't going to the store just for chocolate chips. After searching my saved recipes on pinterest ( I love pinterest if you can't tell) I found one that I could do, and still get my chocolate fix as well. http://delightfulbitefuls.blogspot.com/2011/02/peanut-butter-nutella-swirl-cookies.html

I used the above recipe but I switched out the flour with a gluten free blend.

 I love how easy peanut butter cookies are.

It was a lot of self control not to eat just the dough, it smelled soooo good.

This picture was before they were cooked.... they didn't last long enough after to take additional pictures. I did manage to save two for my mom and sister (but my mother ate both of them before my sister had a chance) I don't know if it was my desperation for a cookie treat or the actual recipe but these things were gone before the next day.

Oatmeal muffins

 This year I began liking oatmeal. I'd don't remember eating it as a child, cream of wheat was my hot breakfast of choice, however I do strongly remember thinking it was nothing but brown mush with sugar. Now that  Cream of wheat is no longer an option  I've expanded my breakfast menu and I love it :)

I found a recipe for crock pot oatmeal a few months ago. http://www.frugalupstate.com/recipes/the-great-oatmeal-experiment-results/     I put these on at night before a busy morning and I leave out an apple, in the morning I peel and chop the apple and saute it with a little butter and add   cinnamon, sugar, and a little water and  cook it down to make a syrup. I fill my bowl with oatmeal, a little milk, my apple mixture and some chopped walnuts and I'm a happy camper for the rest of the day :)  but with doing this I often find myself with left over oatmeal. I found another wonderful recipe a while ago and decided to try it.
http://glutenfreegirl.com/gluten-free-oatmeal-muffins/

Using your left over oatmeal you can make delicious muffins. Now I didn't have everything in her recipe so I used some of the substitutions she mentioned and I mixed my own flour blend from the few flours I had... I don't know if it was my flour mixture or what but when I tasted it before putting it in the oven, I gagged. It was so bitter (I tasted my flours and none of them gave off that flavor, I'm wondering if it was my chia seeds? and I mixed them for too long?) Whatever the reason I threw out the first batch,  and began again. Instead of mixing my own flours this time (as I didn't have many on hand at the time) I used an all purpose mix and I didn't add any chia seeds.


I didn't have any dried fruit either so I used the frozen raspberries I had. This time the batter tasted as I expected  muffin batter would...

The picture isn't the greatest but they were delicious  and  when I would get some of the raspberry  the flavor reminded me of the scones (that I truly miss) sold at the Washington state fair. I am defiantly going to be making these again.

Birthday Cakes

 The past week and a half has been a whirlwind, every February there is a span of 5ish days that always seems to be chaotic, the rest of the time I seem to be recovering from them.  Starting on the 10th is my birthday, this year it landed on a Friday and I had no clue what I wanted to do. At the beginning of the month my cousin Emily was trying to figure out a weekend to come down and visit, we decided my birthday weekend would be awesome and she would stay Saturday through Monday.  I finally decided on having a get together at a bar in Portland the night of my birthday to hang out with friends. With my birthday mostly planned out, my mind turned towards the 14th and 15th. Everyone knows the 14th is valentines day, the most disgustingly  expensive holiday to spend on a loved one. Jesse and I talked and both agreed not to do anything this year that involved spending  money for valentines day.  Now the 15th is my mothers birthday, and usually we try to do a family dinner on a day in between our birthdays to celebrate them together. My dad called me and discussed that my mother wanted a  Gluten free German chocolate cake for her birthday, later that day my mom called and when I let her know Emily would be in town she decided that on Sunday we should have a joint birthday party with the family.  At this point my days were pretty planned out and I needed to make gluten free cake, one for on Sunday for both of us and one just  for my mothers actual birthday.  In reality I made Three cakes, one for my birthday, one for Sunday and one for my mothers birthday. For my birthday and the Sunday party I decided to make Gluten Free Tres leches cakes. Working at the bakery over the summer Sharon would make several of these every week, topped with Pineapple and Mandarin Orange slices, let me tell you they were divine! A tres leches cake basically means three milks in Spanish, this is  because the sponge cake is soaked with a mixture of  cream, evaporated milk, and sweetened condensed milk.  Seeing as I was making  them for two different days I decided to bake all the cakes on Friday and freeze the ones for Sunday.

The first recipe was a success! Once these three rounds cooled I stacked them with wax paper in between them so they wouldn't stick and put them in a bag and into the freezer until Sunday.

After my cake cooled I cut it in half and placed one piece back in the baking dish (now cleaned) and poured the three milk mixture over it and let it soak in. Then came a  layer of sweetened whipping cream and the last piece of cake, more milk mixture and covered in whipping cream.

You can top this with pretty much any fruit you want and seeing as I didn't have any pineapple or mandarin oranges, I had to think of something else.... the only thing I had fresh was pomegranate seeds.

 It was delicious and I had a wonderful birthday :D

On Sunday morning I took the three cakes out of the freezer to thaw and in the afternoon I assembled the cake (this time I had pineapple and mandarin oranges to top it with, along with a few pomegranate seeds)

It turned out even better than the first!

For my mothers birthday I did indeed make her a Gluten Free German chocolate cake, but due to a busy day and car troubles I was rushed and didn't take any pictures as I made it... or an end result photo come to think of it. Anyway her cake turn out as well (although I thought the frosting was too runny) It was delicious and there were no left overs :) All in all we had wonderful birthday cakes to go with wonderful birthdays :)

Dutch babies a.k.a German pancake

 One of my favorite things to have for breakfast before going gluten free was dutch babies (some people know them as German pancakes) there egg-y and puffy and if done right the corners with have a salty crispness to them. Drench them in syrup, lemon and powered sugar or with butter and fresh fruit they are delicious.  I cannot tell you how excited I was to find a gluten free recipe for them a few months ago, but I can tell you I have made the a LOT sense them. (and of course I cannot find the website where I found the recipe, so until I do, you don't have a link)

Five simple ingredients:

 2 TBs butter

6 Eggs room temperature (leaving them out overnight works well)

1 1/4 cup milk

1 cup GF flour blend (Use whatever four blend you like as long as it contains flours only. I usually  mix Rice, tapioca, and millet.

1/4 tsp Salt

Directions:  Preheat over to 375degrees and place butter in your casserole dish and put it in the warming oven to let it melt and coat the pan.   Combine the eggs, milk, salt and flour and mix until there are no lumps. When over is at 375 pour your batter into the buttered pan and  bake for about 20 minutes.

It gets beautifully bubbly and golden.

cut into squares and top with your favorite topping and enjoy!

With lemon and powdered sugar :)

With homemade berry syrup and powdered sugar :)


I loved making the homemade berry syrup with the dutch babies were cooking.

I took a few handfuls of frozen berries (saved from the summers farmers market) and added a bit of sugar and a pinch of kosher salt and let it bubble and cook down until the dutch babies were done. Yummy!

Some misadventures in baking....

I started last week with gusto, I was pumped and excited to make myself some Gluten Free treats and had looked up a few delicious recipes.

 After being tempted at work with cream puffs I decided I needed to make them myself. I  spent a good chunk of my Sunday looking for good Gluten free choux pastry recipes and found two the looked like they would work, one with a rice flour blend and the other with a corn flour blend. I decided to try the rice flour first as it looked similar to the original method.  When I was a kid I remember staying up with my mother as she baked for the holidays, she would make chocolate eclairs for Easter and I simply loved being the taster. If she made bigger puffs, after they baked she would cut them open and scrap out the insides to make room for the filling and this warm, moist, pudding like stuff would be scraped into a bowl. It really was only flour, butter, and egg but I thought it was the most amazing thing in the world and would gobble it all up. The rice flour recipe started out well, even looking like the gluten version through most of the steps. I was really beginning to get excited, then came time to put it in a bag and pipe it on to the baking sheet.
It was runny, but I had hopes it was just because it was Gluten free and Gluten free recipes tend to be moister than those with wheat flour.

I was wrong.

They flattened out into disc shapes and stayed there. I let them cool and tasted one, and it tasted pretty good, but was dense. My optimism  shoved the disappointment aside and I began to start on the second recipe I found.  As I cooked up the next test subject I could see it had a thicker consistency to it  and would hold its shape when I piped it out and sure enough I piped them out on the baking sheet and they didn't droop. I baked them and crossed my fingers that  I would soon be enjoying delicious cream puffs. Busy with other things I let them cook five minutes longer than called for and quickly pulled them out of the over, a little dark but not ruined. I pricked them with my knife to let out the steam and met only crunch, I then tried one, It was crunchy, and solid. Even if I had taken them out 5 minutes sooner they still would have been solid, crunchy and tasting like a tortilla chip.

 I decided that cream puffs were not happening that day and moved on.

Next on my list of things to try were Beignets. A sweet doughnut like treat you fry and dust in powdered sugar. It called for Gluten free vanilla cake mix which I happened to have, I thought it was fate. After doing the first few steps of the recipe, it called for you to put the 'dough' on a floured surface and knead in the rest of the flour until it formed a nice ball....This is what happened.



I ended up adding more flour to it than the recipe  called for. I never did get it into a ball, but I kept on going.

This was as close to a ball I could get it and I moved on to the next step, covering and refrigerating for at least 12 hours. 12 hours later it looked more like a dough ball and I rolled it out and cut it into pieces and got my oil nice and hot.

It broke into pieces if i tried to flip it over and cook the other side. In the end this is what I ended up with.

After reading through the recipes I decided that  with the cream puffs my liquid could of been off on both of those, but I think the recipe for the Beignets wasn't my fault for not turning out, or at least not for turning out as bad as it did.

I was done with trying to make sweet things and went back to something I had made before.
I was going to make chicken pot pie for dinner using that cracker recipe, remember? I made it omitting the salt completely and adding more chicken bouillon. I cooked up everything for the filling and rolled out the dough, It didn't want to cooperate and stay together when I moved it into the pie dish so I just mushed it in there and rolled the top portion out on wax paper and after filling it I plopped the top crust on and  pressed it down to seal it.

Not the prettiest but I felt triumphant.  I baked it until  it was golden and the inside was done.

Beautiful if I do say so myself, and it was tasty, the perfect tasting crust but when I went to cut into it.....

It was extremely  brittle and crumbled when I cut into it, I need to work on it a bit more  so it's more pie like but it turned out way betting than my attempts at baking sweet things Gluten free. When I work out the kinks you'll get the recipe :)

Chicken Crackers

On Saturday I took a "me" day and stayed home so I could get some things done and lounge around the house watching movies. I made a few things that day in the kitchen, one of which was batch of Gluten Free Chicken crackers. I adapted someone else's recipe for Gluten Free crackers as I couldn't actually find a chicken flavored cracker recipe. I took the basic recipe and lowered the salt and added my chicken flavored "better than bouillon"  I probably should have rolled them out a little thinner but was afraid they were going to stick to my counter (which some did).

I'm happy with how they turned out this first time. The recipe needs a bit more tweaking,  I think I will totally omit the salt and add more bouillon next time, as the chicken flavor was very subtle.

 After I made these and I was munching on them during a movie I came to the conclusion that instead of cutting them up into crackers they would make a killer chicken pot pie crust. So my mission this next week is to make this cracker recipe again (after tweaking it) and make pot pie, I will then share with you the perfected recipe. Until next time!