Butternut "Brownies" - Finding Food with Baby, part 2

I needed to bake something sweet but not too unhealthy, if only to stop me from eating Oreos. J brought them home because I could eat them and we finished them way too fast. I don't even like them that much! But what to bake that is dairy and soy* free?

I'm already gotten comfortable with dairy-free baking since there are a number of dairy-free people in my life. It's really not that difficult. Problem is, most of my dairy substitutions involve soy: soy milk, soy yogurt, Earth Balance Buttery Spread, and tofu. I've switched to almond milk and seen coconut yogurt but haven't tried it. Oil and lard can be used as butter substitutes but behave quite differently. I've heard of margarine without soy but couldn't find it**. So I decided to try coconut oil. (Still haven't come up with a tofu substitute)

Coconut oil is solid to something like 75-80°F and is supposed to work more like butter than other oils. The flavor also shouldn't be noticeable in most baked goods; it wasn't noticeable in this.

There was a lot of roasted butternut squash in the fridge and I wanted something with a fudge/brownie texture, not a cake texture. The spices were chosen to let the butternut taste like butternut, not pumpkin. It's not too sweet and works as either dessert or breakfast. The flavor develops and is even better the next day.

Fudgy Butternut "Brownies"

190 g flour (about 1-1/2 cups)

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon star anise

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
74 g coconut oil (about 1/3 cup)
150 g brown sugar (about 3/4 cup)
42 g honey (about 2 Tablespoons)
2 large eggs
425 g butternut squash puree (15 ounces, about 1-3/4 cups)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9" square pan.

In a bowl, whisk together flour and spices. In a separate large bowl, cream together coconut oil and sugar. Beat in honey. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Stir in butternut squash puree. Stir in flour mixture just until combined. Spread in prepared pan.

Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until tester comes out mostly clean. Cool in pan on rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely.

* soy lecithin and soybean oil are okay
** just found stick margarine without forbidden soy

Oat Bars - Finding Food with Baby, part 1

Ever since G. was born 3 months ago things like cooking have become quite limited. We're lucky to have some amazing friends who have fed us some fantastic home cooked food including pot roast,  chicken tagine, and more. We've also discovered a decent Thai restaurant that delivers and has lots of options with vegetables. This vegetable thing is important. We find ourselves seriously lacking in that area when I'm not grocery shopping regularly and it's the wrong time of year for the CSA boxes full of produce.

And just when we started to get good at feeding ourselves again, there's a new catch - the doctor suggested trying G. on a dairy and soy protein free diet in an effort to help her terrible reflux since medication wasn't helping enough. This means I am on a dairy and soy protein free diet, too. Have you noticed how many foods include soy proteins? Most marinades. Most vegan or dairy free foods. And every single readily available granola bar.

I need easy to grab, nutritious snacks that can be eaten while holding a crying baby (reflux makes her hurt and cry) so the lack of granola bars hit me hard. Especially since cheese is out and hard boiled eggs need peeling. Fortunately, I already had this oat bar recipe worked out. We always liked these but they are now a staple in our house!

Feel free to use any combination of dried fruit & nut bits. Just make sure to chop up anything large, like apricots or apples. Good combinations are cranberries & peanuts or apples & candied ginger. Chocolate chips & coconut turn this into something more dessert-like.

Oat Bars

2 cups regular oats
70 g flour (about 1/2 cup)
28 g ground flaxseed (about 1/4 cup)
50 g brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup honey
6 Tablespoons applesauce, unsweetened
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 large egg
1-1/2 cups bits (dried fruit & nuts)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9-inch square pan or line with parchment paper.

Combine oats, flour, flaxseed, sugar, salt & cinnamon. Whisk together honey, applesauce, oil & egg. Add to dry ingredients, stirring to combine. Stir in bits. Spread in pan.

Bake 30 minutes. Cool. Cut into 16 pieces

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

J. and I love bread pudding. Dense, solid bread pudding. None of this light, fluffy, airy stuff. So when it came time for his birthday party this year, I decided to make an autumnal flavor bread pudding to go along with his favorite chocolate birthday cake. And thank goodness I made 2 desserts. The cake was gone in seconds, it was like locusts invaded!

My favorite bread to use for bread pudding is King's Hawaiian Sweet Bread. It's light, sweet, and really soaks up the custard nicely, leaving that dense texture I'm looking for. For those who have only seen the rolls in small packages, which is all you get around here, they make 1 pound round loaves (actually the original form). Other sweet breads work well too, like challah or brioche. And when I've got a lot of leftover, stale bread of any type, I'll use it for bread pudding and it works fine. I usually go by the weight of the bread, not the volume, when changing types.

This bread pudding definitely improves after a day and is great cold. The sweetness and spices come through much better. I served it warm out of the oven and it was okay, but the next day out of the fridge? Fantastic!

Pumpkin Bread Pudding
1 pound loaf Hawaiian sweet bread, 3/4" cubed (about 16 cups)
5 large eggs
12 ounces evaporated milk
1 cup milk
15 ounces pumpkin puree (1-3/4 cups)
5-1/3 ounces brown sugar (3/4 cup, 150 g)
1-3/4 ounces sugar (1/4 cup, 50 g)
1/4 cup dark rum
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
3 Tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into little cubes

Lightly toast the bread in a 350° oven just to dry it out.

In a large bowl, whisk together all ingredients except bread and butter until well combined. Stir in toasted bread cubes. Transfer to a 9" x 13" baking dish. Let rest for at least 1 hour or cover and chill overnight. Sprinkle butter cubes over the top.

Preheat oven to 350°. Bake for approximately 40 minutes, until set.

Lemon Flaxseed Loaf Cake

This is a cake for lemon lovers. Sometimes I just want clean citrus flavors. Nothing else will do, not even chocolate or ginger. So faced with a yearning for citrus, a bag full of lemons, and dislike of poppy seeds, I came up with this moist, tender, distinctly lemon cake where the flax seeds give just a hint of nuttiness. If you are really crazy about lemon, double the amount of glaze and coat the loaf on all sides, slowly so it all soaks in.

Lemon Flaxseed Cake
90 g whole-wheat pastry flour (about 3/4 cup)
130 g all-purpose flour (about 1 cup)
20 g flaxseed meal (about 3 tablespoons)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
200 g sugar (about 1 cup)
1-1/2 Tablespoons lemon zest (2 large lemons, use juice in glaze)
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup half-and-half (or additional yogurt)
Lemon Glaze

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease & flour a 9" x 5" loaf pan.

In a bowl, whisk together flours, flaxseed, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside. In a separate large bowl, whisk together eggs, sugar and lemon zest until pale. Add butter to egg mixture and whisk to combine. Add yogurt and half-and-half to egg mixture and whisk to combine. Sprinkle 1/3 of the flour mixture over the egg mixture and gently stir just to combine. Repeat in 2 more additions, stirring just to combine, lumps are okay.

Bake until tester comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Remove from pan and poke holes in the top and sides of the cake with a toothpick. Slowly drizzle glaze all over, making sure it soaks in and trying to waste as little as possible to drips. Cool completely.

Lemon Glaze
3 Tablespoons lemon juice (2 large lemons)
2 Tablespoons sugar

Heat lemon juice and sugar gently, stirring until sugar dissolves.

Miniature Elizabethan style scroll

When Her Majesty requested a tiny scroll in an Elizabethan grant/charter document style for an award dear to her heart I really wasn't sure what to do. The extra small scrolls are something I like to do but the style is heavy on calligraphy, not my strong point. The original plan was to collaborate where I would do the drawing/painting but someone else would do the calligraphy. We found examples of the style with portraits of Elizabeth in the initial capital E, sometimes in color, sometimes pen and ink. Being grants or charters, these were all of a rather large size, easily over 2 feet on a side.

The primary exemplar was a letter patent dated 1572 (UC Berkeley, Robbins MS 151). It is 609 x 761 mm (24 x 30 inches), which eventually got worked down to 4 x 6 inches, not entirely to scale but it looked okay. The wordsmith, also specially requested by Her Majesty, did an amazing job with creating a short text in the corresponding style. Not something that you'd historically see but it "felt" right!

Unfortunately, due to the way scheduling worked out, the calligrapher had a lot going on and I wasn't willing to add more to her plate just because I was afraid of a new writing style and those fancy cadels. Eek. I'd avoided this for a really long time but everyone kept telling me it wasn't so hard. Well, after a lot of practice, fiddling, tracing, graphing, and creativity, I came up with cadels I found acceptable. The hardest part was the B with the entire center section empty for the portrait. They were actually right about the calligraphy, not that bad! More like handwriting and a lot more forgiving than most hands.

The drawing was the easy part for me. At that size, really, just get it vaguely looking like the person and it's fine. The little acorn represented Her Majesty and the rose represented the award.

Whole Wheat Apple Cake

Occasionally, I get it in my head to come up with a baked good that will satisfy my mother-in-law's love of sweets but also fit with the low-sugar, low-refined carbohydrate diet that she should be following. Even more occasionally, this works.

The first version of this cake was way too dry & crumbly, although it tasted good. Just a bit more fat and it became something much more enjoyable to eat. If you use applesauce in place of the half-and-half, it will be a bit less tender but still good.

Whole Wheat Apple Cake
210 g whole wheat pastry flour (about 1-3/4 cups)
26 g ground flax seed (about 1/4 cup)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt
200 g light brown sugar (about 1/2 cup)
2 large eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup half-and-half or unsweetened applesauce
1-1/2 cups sweet red apples (fuji), unpeeled, diced small (about 2 small)

Preheat oven to 375°. Grease and flour a 9" x 4" loaf pan.

In a large bowl, combine flour, flax seed, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, ginger, and salt.
In another bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, buttermilk, oil and half-and-half. Add wet ingredients to dry, stirring just until moist. Fold in apples. Pour into prepared pan.

Bake until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 30-35 minutes. Cool in pan on rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely.

late 12th century french style scroll

When a friend was scheduled to receive an award, I asked to create her scroll. Her persona is a late 12th, early 13th century English woman living on the continent. The text was written by another friend based on a grant of lands by Countess Adela of Blois, c. 1101. The inspiration piece I finally decided to use is a French Bible, 1185-1195, approximately 525 x 360 cm (Bibliothèque St. Geneviève ms 0010, f.77v and f.1).

I tried to keep the layout as close to the inspiration manuscript as possible, scaling down from the original size to fit on an 11" x 14" piece of pergamenata, keeping the same number of lines on the page and the same line height for the illuminated capitals. The original manuscript marks the start of new sections of the text with illuminated capital letters, often preceded by red and blue capitals that introduce the following section. The words and phrases that I wanted to emphasize in the award text were not actually the beginning of sections, but were spaced in a way that I could achieve a similar feel to the page.

I also tried to keep the same relative proportions for calligraphy as the inspiration manuscript; proportional to row height, body height = 5/11, elevated 1/11 over bottom line, ascender & descender = 3/11. Letter forms and punctuation and from the original (period, comma/colon, hyphen) and abbreviations and ligatures are inspired by both the original and a similar manuscript (British Library Arundel 490).