Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting

If last year's challenge for Sabrina's birthday was to make a cake without any wheat, corn, or dairy, then this year's challenge was to make a cake that also did not have any eggs. It took me several tries, but the girls didn't mind eating the trial versions, even if they didn't turn out quite right. I started with a Cook's Illustrated recipe for vegan chocolate cake and an award-winning recipe for vegan chocolate cupcakes. Unfortunately, these recipes didn't work as well using gluten-free flour. However, with a bit of tweaking, I came up with a version that turns out just right. For the frosting I started with a recipe for vegan chocolate frosting, which I adapted based on the ingredients I had on hand.

We had these cupcakes at Naomi's birthday party and at Sabrina's school party for her birthday. Needless to say, we've had a lot of cupcakes over the past month. I thought I might get tired of them, but not yet. Now I just need to think of a reason to make some more.


Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting
makes 12 cupcakes or 1 cake (in an 8"x8" pan or a 9" round cake pan)

Ingredients for the cupcakes:

• 1 cup unsweetened vanilla rice milk. I use either Trader Joe's or Rice Dream brand.
• 2 Tbsp. ground flax seed meal. I used Bob's Red Mill brand.
  
• 1 1/2 cups Bob's Red Mill Gluten-free flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa. I use Ghirardelli's.
• 1/2 tsp. sea salt
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 3/4 cup granulated white sugar
• 1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract. Use Trader Joe's alcohol-free vanilla extract or another vanilla extract that does not have corn syrup and is preferably alcohol-free, since the alcohol could be derived from corn. Recently I have been using Rodelle Vanilla Flavor alcohol free all natural extract, which I found at Stop and Shop.
• 6 Tbsp. canola oil

Ingredients for the frosting:

• 1/2 cup dairy-free semi-sweet chocolate chips. I recommend Ghirardelli, Trader Joe's, or Enjoy Life brand.
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1 Tbsp. agave syrup or honey
• 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract. Use Trader Joe's alcohol-free vanilla extract or another vanilla extract that does not have corn syrup and is preferably alcohol-free, since the alcohol could be derived from corn. Recently I have been using Rodelle Vanilla Flavor alcohol free all natural extract, which I found at Stop and Shop.
• pinch of sea salt

Instructions for the cake:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease an 8"x8" Pyrex pan, a 9"x9" cake pan, or 12 cups of a muffin tin with canola oil. If you would like to use cupcake liners, just grease the top of the muffin tin, so that any batter that rises above the liners does not stick to the muffin tin.

Heat 1/3 cup of the rice milk in the microwave until warm. Stir in the flax seed meal and set aside. In a large bowl sift the flour, cocoa powder, sea salt, and baking soda by stirring them with a large whisk. Make a hole in the middle of the dry ingredients and then set the bowl aside.

Warm the remaining 2/3 cup of rice milk. In a medium bowl stir together the granulated sugar and warmed rice milk so that the sugar starts to dissolve. Then whisk in the apple cider vinegar, vanilla extract, and canola oil. Finally stir in the flax seed meal and rice milk mixture.

Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir just until the flour mixture has disappeared. Scoop the batter into the cake pan or muffin tin and bake for 15 minutes. If making cupcakes, let them cool for a couple of minutes before removing them from the muffin tin. Let the cake or cupcakes cool completely before spreading on the frosting.

Instructions for the frosting:

Place a small saucepan over low heat. Add the chocolate chips and canola oil to the pan. Stir frequently, until the chocolate chips have just melted. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the agave syrup, vanilla extract, and sea salt.

Place the pan in the refrigerator for 20 minutes so that the liquid cools and thickens slightly. Then pour the liquid into the bowl of a standing mixer. Using the whisk attachment, beat the liquid on medium speed until it lightens in color and thickens to a spreadable consistency. Spread the frosting over the cake or cupcakes.

Chicken Cacciatore

I was too hungry tonight to take a picture of the chicken cacciatore before I dove in. Do you ever have nights like that? I meant to have dinner ready by 6 pm, but by the time I finished giving the girls a bath, it was almost 6 pm already, and I still had to make the salad and salad dressing. We sat down to eat by 6:15, but by then the girls and I were famished. There aren't very many times when I've seen Sabrina eat as quickly as she did tonight. It also helped that she really liked the chicken cacciatore. "This is really yummy!" she told me, and then she asked for more. Michael, who isn't the biggest fan of chicken thighs, also liked this dish a lot, so I think it now has to go into our regular dinner rotation.

Cacciatore means "hunter" or "hunter style." My particular rendition of this recipe didn't involve much in the way of hunting, except perhaps hunting down the crock pot in the very back of my cupboard. And it did take me a while to hunt down a jar of marinara sauce that didn't contain any soy or corn products. To my relief, I eventually did manage to track down and capture a jar that was just right.

Chicken Cacciatore
serves 3 adults, or 2 adults and 2 children

Ingredients:

• 6 ounces of brown rice spaghetti noodles (if serving 2 adults and 2 children), or 8 ounces of rice spaghetti noodles (if serving 3 adults). I use Trader Joe's brand because it's inexpensive, but I'm sure there are other brands available.
  
• 1 large yellow onion
  
• 1 package containing 6 boneless skinless chicken thighs that are all-natural, kosher, or organic
• 1 24-ounce jar of Bertolli Vineyard Premium Collections marinara with Burgundy wine (This is one of the only marinara sauces I have found that does not contain any corn syrup, soybean oil, or citric acid.)
• 2 Tbsp. dry red wine. I used Burgundy.

Instructions:

A little more than 7 hours before you want to serve the dinner, begin the recipe. Peel the onion, cut it in half, and then slice it into half-moon shapes. Lay the onion half-moons onto the bottom of the crock pot so that they cover the bottom. Thoroughly rinse the chicken thighs and place them on top of the onions. Then pour the jar of marinara sauce over the top of the chicken thighs so that the sauce completely covers the chicken.

Cook the chicken in the crock pot for 6 to 7 hours on low. Or if you prefer to start out with frozen chicken thighs, cook them for 1 hour on high and then 6 hours on low.

30 minutes before the chicken will be done, put a large pot of salted water on the stove over high heat to bring to a boil. When the water comes to a boil, add the spaghetti noodles and cook for 10 to 12 minutes. When the noodles are done, pour them into a colander and thoroughly rinse them in hot water. This will prevent the noodles from sticking together and becoming one large spaghetti blob that is virtually impossible to break apart.

When the chicken is done, remove the chicken thighs from the crock pot and place them on a plate. Add 2 tablespoons of red wine to the marinara sauce and stir. Serve the chicken cacciatore by placing some spaghetti on each adult's plate, adding 2 chicken thighs, and ladling sauce over the noodles and chicken.

Blueberry Muffins

I have been working on a recipe for egg-free blueberry muffins for a while. Since I always have a bag of wild blueberries in the freezer, I wanted an easy muffin recipe that I could use them in. I recommend using wild blueberries for this recipe because they are smaller, and therefore less likely to sink to the bottom of the muffin than regular-size blueberries.

It's still amazing to me that using flax seed meal, apple cider vinegar, and some extra baking soda, I can replicate the properties of egg in a muffin. These muffins hold together, rise, and stay moist, even without the egg. Hooray for egg-free muffins!

Blueberry Muffins
makes 6 muffins

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup rice milk. I used Trader Joe's vanilla rice drink or vanilla-flavored Rice Dream.
  
• 1 Tbsp. ground flax seed meal. I used Bob's Red Mill brand.
• 1 cup and 2 Tbsp. Bob's Red Mill Gluten-free flour
• 3/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. sea salt
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/3 cup granulated white sugar
• 3 Tbsp. canola oil
• 1/2 Tbsp. (which is 1 1/2 tsp.) apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup frozen wild blueberries

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease 6 cups of a muffin tin with canola oil. Heat the rice milk in the microwave for about 45 seconds. Add the flax seed meal to the rice milk, stir, and then set aside.

Into a medium bowl sift the flour using a sifter or a sieve. Add the baking soda, salt, and cinnamon, and stir to combine. In a small bowl mix together the sugar, canola oil, apple cider vinegar, and the rice milk and flax seed mixture. Then make a hole in the flour mixture and pour the liquid mixture into it. Stir just until you don't see any more dry flour.

Take the frozen blueberries and pour them into a small Ziploc bag. Add 1 teaspoon of gluten-free flour, seal the bag, and toss the berries around in the bag until they are coated in flour. Then gently stir the blueberries into the muffin batter. Quickly scoop the batter into the muffin tin and place the tin in the oven.

Bake the muffins for 15 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out of them mostly clean.

Oven Baked French Fries

Tonight for dinner I made some French fries that Michael liked so much that he said they didn't taste homemade. Hmm, I think that was a complement, right? I'll take it as one. ;) You can tell that the picture is of my plate because I'm the only one in the family who doesn't prefer to dip my French fries into ketchup. The girls have both taken after Michael in their appreciation of that red condiment. I think I might try to figure out how to make homemade honey mustard sauce so that I have something I like to dip my fries into as well.

If you like really crispy fries, then these aren't for you. (If your preference is for extra crispy, you might want to try out this Cook's Illustrated recipe.) But if you like French fries that are crispy on the outside and soft in the middle, then these are perfect. One pound of potatoes was plenty for the four of us (two adults and two small children) for dinner, but the French fries tasted so good that we all could have eaten a lot more. As the girls get older, I know that I'll need to make at least a pound and a half, otherwise Michael and I won't get as many of the fries as we would like.

I've used only regular white potatoes when I've made these French fries, but other recipes swear by Russets. I think that whatever kind of potato you have on hand would probably be fine. The key steps are to dry off the potatoes after you rinse them, to use the full amount of oil, and not to salt the fries until they have baked. When I didn't follow these steps, the fries stuck terribly to the baking sheet. The loss of some of the French fries was mourned by all, so now I am careful to preserve every last fry for our consumption.

A couple of other recipes with helpful tips for making great oven baked French fries are at the following links for Roasted Potato Wedges and Perfect Oven Fries.

Oven Baked French Fries
serves 2 adults and 2 small children

Ingredients: (on a normal night)

• 1 lb. potatoes
• 2 Tbsp. canola oil
• 1/8 tsp. onion powder
• 1/8 tsp. paprika
• 1/8 tsp. black pepper
• dash of cayenne pepper
  
• 1/2 tsp. kosher salt

Ingredients: (on a night when we're all really hungry)

• 1 1/2 lb. potatoes
• 3 Tbsp. canola oil
• 1/4 tsp. onion powder
• 1/4 tsp. paprika
• 1/8 tsp. black pepper
• dash of cayenne pepper
• 3/4 tsp. kosher salt
  

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Place the baking sheet in the oven while it is preheating. Rinse the potatoes and then dry them thoroughly. Cut the potatoes into strips that are 1/4-inch wide and tall, and the length of the potato. Place the potato strips into a medium bowl and toss with the canola oil. Sprinkle the onion powder, paprika, black pepper, and cayenne pepper onto the potatoes and toss so that the potatoes are evenly coated with the spices.

When the oven is preheated, take the baking sheet out of the oven using oven mitts and spread the potatoes on the sheet in one layer. Return the baking sheet to the oven for 10 minutes. Then take the baking sheet out of the oven to toss the fries. Return the sheet to the oven for 10 more minutes. Toss the fries again; then return the sheet to the oven for 15 minutes. After the 15 minutes are up, transfer the French fries to a bowl. Sprinkle the salt onto the fries and toss the fries to distribute the salt evenly. Cover the bowl with aluminum foil until ready to serve.