Double Chocolate Pancakes

Chocolate for breakfast? I say "yes!" They smell like brownies while they're cookies. Can you get a better start to your day than that? Chocolate pancakes are the most requested breakfast of my three year old. That is, next to his cream of rice cereal.

These are so simple! You could use sugar, honey, or a sugar-free replacement to sweeten them. I've used Pyure and coconut sugar, and both were delicious!

Double Chocolate Pancakes

1 3/4 cups gluten free all purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa or cacao powder
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar, 2 tbsp honey, or 5 tsp Pyure
1/2 cup applesauce
1/4 cup oil
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups milk (or water)
2/3 cup Enjoy Life chocolate chips
Oil, for skillet

In a medium bowl, whisk together dry ingredients and chocolate chips. Add the wet ingredients and mix again until well combined.

Heat a skillet on medium-low heat and oil it for easier flipping. Scoop 1/4 cup fulls of batter onto hot skillet, and cook until the bottom edge starts to look dry. Flip, and cook until golden brown.

Makes about twelve pancakes. Serve with real maple syrup. Enjoy!

Gluten, Dairy, Egg-Free Blueberry Muffins

Sometimes, while I'm just minding my own business, a bright idea will just pop into my head. An idea like, "That flour combination made really good cookies. Why couldn't it make good muffins? Blueberry muffins! Yes, that sounds good!" Then, while one of my children is playing with Play-Doh and the other one is coloring on a newspaper...and my hardwood floor...and the sliding door windows, I put together these most delicious blueberry muffins. (I'm so thankful for washable crayons!)

I've tried a few different gluten-free blueberry muffin recipes. They all turn out rather crumbly, like you'd expect with almost any gluten-free baked good. These particular muffins turned out moist and cake-like. They were soft, but not so soft that you couldn't spread some dairy-free butter spread on them. I'm going to make them again soon, omitting the cinnamon and switching out the blueberries for Enjoy Life chocolate chips. My three year old will be beside himself with chocolate in his muffins at breakfast!

One thing I did different with these muffins from all my other baking was to measure the flours by weight. I've been doing a little bit of reading on how that can totally change your end product in gluten-free baking. Different flours have different weights, so I looked up each one before measuring. I really do think it helped, but if you don't have a kitchen scale, don't worry too much about it. Just try to get precise measurements with your measuring cups.

Blueberry Muffins
Makes 12-15 regular muffins

1 cup (113g) tapioca flour
1 cup (135g) millet flour
3/4 cup (84g) coconut flour
2 tsp gelatin (or 1 1/2 tsp xanthan gum)
1 tbsp baking powder (Try homemade for a corn-free version!)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup applesauce
1/4 cup melted coconut oil
1/4 cup honey
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups coconut or almond milk
1 cup frozen or fresh blueberries

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and grease muffin cups, or line with paper liners.

Whisk together dry ingredients. Add applesauce, oil, honey, and vanilla, then stir. Pour in milk and stir again until well combined. Fold in blueberries. Divide batter between muffin tins. Bake for 18-20 minutes until muffins are slightly golden on top and feel firm to touch.

Yes, my muffins are square. I still don't have my muffin tins out of storage, so all I had to use was the Pampered Chef brownie pans. That larger one on the top right is actually out of a tiny loaf pan since I didn't have two brownie pans clean. It baked a few minutes longer, but turned out fine. We just sliced it up and slathered on the butter!

Chocolate Plantain Donuts

My 3 year old kept asking me for donuts, but being on the Autoimmune Paleo diet makes that a little tough. No grain or nut flours, and no eggs...how can one make a donut with those restrictions? Well, believe it or not, I tweaked a waffle recipe and came up with something really tasty! I'm excited to share it with you!

For this recipe, you'll need three or four plantains. Have you ever seen them in the grocery store? They look like an over-sized banana. In fact, they're in the banana family. Ripe plantains are delicious when they're sliced and fried and sprinkled with some salt and cinnamon. You should try it sometime!

The texture of these donuts are close to regular donuts. I don't know how they keep, since we had them all gone by bedtime. :)

Chocolate Plantain Donuts

4 cups plantain puree (3-4 large ripe--or close to ripe--plantains)

1/4 cup coconut oil, melted

1 tbsp vanilla

2 tsp apple cider vinegar

1/2 tsp sea salt

1 tsp baking soda

3 tbsp carob powder (or cacao, or cocoa)

2 tbsp maple syrup

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Peel and chop your plantains and run them through the food processor or blender until smooth. Next, add the oil, vanilla, and vinegar and blend again. Add salt, soda, carob powder, and maple syrup and blend until well mixed. 

Spoon this dough mixture into two donut pans to make twelve donuts. Bake for 12-14 minutes. Let them cool for a few minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack. 

Enjoy!

AIP Birthday Cake with Strawberry Topping

My daughter's second birthday is coming up. I wasn't sure what I was going to do for a birthday cake, since we're still in the elimination phase of Autoimmune Paleo. I pulled up my friend Google and did some searching. I had this vision of a rich-flavored cake with some creamy layer of goodness and strawberries on top. By combining a few different recipes, it came out beautifully! I'm excited to share it with you.

The original cake recipe comes from Amanda at The Curious Coconut.

AIP Birthday Cake

1/4 cup coconut oil
1/4 cup palm shortening
1 cup coconut sugar
1/2 cup apple sauce
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tsp raw apple cider vinegar
1 cup coconut flour, sifted
2 tbsp tapioca starch
2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
1 tbsp gelatin (I use this one)
2/3 cup water

Preheat oven to 350*. Grease and flour (with tapioca or arrowroot) a 7.5"x11" glass pan, or something similar.

In a large mixing bowl, add coconut oil, palm shortening, and sugar. Use an electric mixer to cream the oils and sugar for about one minute. Next, add applesauce, vanilla, and apple cider vinegar and mix for another minute.

In another smaller bowl, add all the dry ingredients and combine well. Pour about one fourth of the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Add (about) a fourth of the water, and mix well. Alternate between the dry ingredients and water until it's mixed thoroughly. The batter will be thicker than normal cake batter. Spread it into prepared pan and bake for 30-40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

While your cake is cooling, you can mix up your toppings!

For the creamy layer...Maple Icing!

1/2 cup palm shortening
1/3 cup maple syrup (you could use honey too)
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp arrowroot powder
2 tsp coconut flour
1 tbsp coconut cream (the thick part from canned coconut milk)

Combine all these ingredients and mix with an electric mixer until smooth. It may or may not separate. Mine didn't at first, so I think I may have over-mixed it. I didn't mind too much, since it was covered with strawberries and it still tasted so good! Spread this over your cooled cake.

And now...the Strawberry Sauce

10oz frozen strawberries
1 tsp tapioca starch
1-2 tbsp honey, to taste

Let your strawberries thaw in a saucepan over low heat, and then scoop out a little of the juice and mix it with the tapioca starch. Pour this mixture back into your strawberries and add the honey. Once the strawberries are soft, use a potato masher to mash them. Cook until your sauce becomes bubbly and thick, stirring constantly. Allow to cool for a few minutes, and then spread over the top of your iced cake.

Keep this cake in the refrigerator until time to serve. The icing will harden, but it's not hard to cut or eat. I hope you enjoy it!

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've got a few different gluten-free flours in my stash that I like to mix and play around with. One of them is millet flour. I haven't used it a lot, and have been trying to find more uses for it. It has a slight nutty flavor, and has a protein content similar to whole wheat. You can't use it alone, but mixed with other flours, it makes a great texture!

Anywho...I made my husband some chocolate chip cookies today and needed some for my daughter and I. (Yes, I think 'needed' is the right word.) I searched Google, and here's the recipe, including changes I made, that I found. They're delicious! The texture is perfect. They're so much like "real" cookies, you won't even miss the gluten, I promise. 😊

Gluten/Dairy-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 cup millet flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
6 tbsp coconut flour
1 1/2 tsp xanthan gum*
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 cup coconut sugar (or brown sugar)
4 tbsp palm shortening (or melted butter, or coconut oil)
2 flax eggs** (or eggs)
4 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup Enjoy Life chocolate chips

*If you use flax seed eggs, you won't need the xanthan gum.

**To make a single flax egg, combine 1 tbsp ground flax seeds with 2 1/2 tbsp hot water and let sit for five minutes to thicken. You can double this for two eggs.

In a small bowl, whisk flours, xanthan gum (if using), baking powder, and salt. In a separate medium bowl, combine shortening (or butter) and coconut sugar well. Add eggs and vanilla, mix well. Add the flour mixture and mix, then add chocolate chips.

Refrigerate dough for 30 minutes. Bake cookies for 8-10 minutes at 350°F. Makes about two dozen.

*original recipe from Amy's Healthy Baking.

Gluten/Dairy-Free Banana Oat Pancakes

Before I went gluten-free, my husband and I enjoyed a lot of different flavors in our pancakes. We'd have copy-cat Cracker Barrel pancakes one morning, then whole wheat pancakes another, buttermilk pancakes, blueberry sourdough pancakes...on the list went. In order to get a little variety in our GF pancakes, I combined a couple of recipes and came up with this. The quick oats give a nice texture to them, they stay together without crumbling, and they have an egg free option.

Banana Oat Pancakes

1 cup oat flour (or ground up oats)
1/2 cup quick cooking oats
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp coconut sugar, or brown sugar
1 ripe banana
1 egg, or flax egg*
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup almond or coconut milk
2 tbsp hemp protein powder, optional

*For a flax egg, combine 1 tbsp ground flax seeds with 2 1/2 tbsp hot water. Let it sit 5-10 minutes to gel.

Preheat skillet. If using flax instead of an egg, mix it now so it can be ready to use.

Whisk together flour, oats, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, and protein powder (if using) in a medium bowl. In a smaller bowl, mash your banana with a fork. Add your sugar, vanilla, and almond milk and whisk until sugar is dissolved. Add your flax egg (or chicken egg), and whisk again.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until combined. Scoop 1/4 cup fulls onto your skillet. I have found that oat flour pancakes cook better at a slightly lower temperature than regular pancakes.

Enjoy!