and she's back in the game! Gluten-Free Challenge

hellooooooo internet!

We've been estranged for months now, but we kissed and made up. Wooohooo! Get ready for some serious..."blogging."

As the four of you have heard, my "followers", I actually am a pastry chef now. Chef Lauren. no biggie. There is a new place opening on Grand Avenue in Oakland and I am their sole pastry chef. ME! I don't know how or why this has happened, but it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It's probably better than sliced bread. (unless I make the bread and slice it my self. that's pretty delicious.)

So many many blogs will be in the haps since I have some serious researching ahead of me. Let me catch you up to speed on a few things that have been through my oven since I've been avoiding my darling internet:

A request was made for vegan & gluten-free pastries. I have never made gluten-free pastries. FUN! The request was as follows: 1 strawberry-rhubarb pie, 1 apple-pie, & cupcakes (with which I could do as I please).
If you don't know, pie is my favorite thing to make. Why, you ask? Because it takes every bit of your concentration (pie dough is sensitive). Like math. Also, just in case you don't know, GLUTEN keeps fragile, sensitive things stuck together. So now we have a fragile, fussy pie dough that decides, at any and all moments, not to stick together. WHAT?! It was frustrating to say the least. Here are the results
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The gluten-free flour mixture I used is a secret, but no matter what you use as your mixture, you must add 1/2-3/4 tsp xanthan gum per 2 cups of flour. Why? Because it is supposed to help it stick together. Why? Because gluten makes the world go round, and with these pies, it stopped spinning. Xanthan gum is crazy expensive, and if you are frequently baking gluten free stuff, you will go through it like water.

The filling for the strawberry-rhubarb I kind of made up:
Equal parts quartered strawberries & cubed rhubarb, 1/3 c brown sugar, 1/3 c white granulated sugar, 2 tbsp gluten free flour, 1 tsp cornstarch. let sit all together for 10 minutes to soften.

Also made these gluten-free marble cupcakes (much easier than pie dough), later topped with a simple, thick chocolate ganache:

This recipe is from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World,
I did NOT use their gluten free cupcake recipe, I actually just used their marble cupcake recipe and used substituted my own flour mixture (because its better).
I've made Ganache a few times, and I love the way it tastes. I hate frosting, so eating something that's kind of drippy and real chocolatey is awesome. I have also found that making ganache with real butter ( I know this is a vegan baking blog, but as a pastry chef I had to bend the rules a little bit) and it was WAY better than the one I made with Earth Balance. Not because of the taste, but because of the texture. EarthBalance created an oily, kind of lumpy liquid (for some reason it separated). Real butter created a super smooth sauce, it was awesome. And also a huge bummer that dairy products can be helpful when baking. So for this vegan pastry request, I simmered 1/4 c almond milk, and added a shit-ton of semi-sweet chocolate chunks, and stirred. refrigerated. and dolloped onto the center of those cupcakes. pretty damn good!

But to get away from this gluten-free madness, one night I didn't want to make dinner, so I took some inspiration from www.101cookbooks.com (AWESOME recipes) and made a savory vegetable whole-wheat muffin with the rest of my vegetables.

Leek
Sweet Potato
Zucchini
Green Bell Pepper
Rosemary
Thyme
Whole-Wheat muffins.

Some vegan I know came over and ate 3 in 15 minutes. He says he likes "contained food", and these are "food muffins." As opposed to non-food muffins, of course. The doughy part is just whole-wheat flour (about 2 cups for a dozen), 4 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, & 2 "eggs" (I used 2 tbsp ground flax seeds to 6 tbsp water, whipped together until gelatinous in food processor or I use my coffee grinder). Roast all the veggies with spices at 400 degrees, mix with 1/2 cup (or more) almond milk & flax seed mixture and sift in dry stuff. bake for 20 ish minutes. Yum!

I still have many pastries to write about (borekas, peach-blackberry upside down cake, peanutbutter and jelly sugarless cookies), but I will wait. Now go bake stuff!