I'm Moving!

Well it's taken me a couple of months to get there, but I finally have my website up and running!  This blogspot platform was a temporary jump off point and I have moved all of the content from this page to the new website.

All of my new posts will be made at www.redhillrecipes.com.  I have just put up a new recipe for fructose free muesli bars.  Come on over!  

Coffee Scrolls For Valentines Day

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When I met Lincoln in August 1996, his favorite biscuits (‘cookies’ to non-Australians) were Coffee Scrolls:  A crunchy cinnamon flavoured bit of loveliness with a big pink dot of hard icing on top.  I can’t remember which company made them (Arnotts maybe?) but I loved them too.  They really were just so perfect with coffee.

I can’t remember the exact time frame, but it would only have been a couple of years later that they disappeared from shop shelves, never to be seen again.  A great mystery, to be sure, and an indubitable tragedy which has often been lamented at our house.  

Anyway, we are in penny-pinching mode at the moment (I believe that's a common side effect of building a house!), and it is Valentines Day today.  Well, actually it’s tomorrow, but Lincoln is going to be away then, so we are having ours a day early.  And instead of spending money on my honey this year, I shall attempt to recreate his old favorite biscuit.  Coffee Scrolls (fructose free, of course), complete with a big pink dot of icing.  Is that romantic enough?  Happy Valentines Darling!  (Excuse me while I go sample a few...)

Coffee Scrolls

This recipe makes 70 or so.

Ingredients

1 cup (250 gr) butter

1/2 cup (150 gr) glucose syrup

1/2 tsp pure non-bitter stevia powder

2 tsp bicarb soda/baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 Tbsp cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

2 1/2 cups (370gr) plain/all purpose flour

Icing 

1 cup (170 gr) dextrose

3 Tbsp water

1 tsp coconut flour (corn or wheat flour would work here too, but I like coconut)

big pinch cinnamon

a few drops of pink food colouring (optional - but obviously the icing dot won't be pink without)

Directions

1. Add butter, glucose syrup, stevia, bicarb soda, salt, cinnamon and ginger to a mixing bowl.  Blend until smooth.

2. Add flour and combine.  This is a thick dough, so a wimpy mixer might struggle.  If so, just incorporate the flour by hand (rather than wreck your mixer).

3. Split the dough in two, and shape each lump into a long even log, about 28cm long and 4cm in diameter (11 inches long with 1 1/2 inch diameter). 

4. Roll dough logs up in cling/plastic wrap, and refrigerate for an hour or more (till firm).

5. While the dough is chilling, make the icing.  Add the icing ingredients to a small saucepan, and bring to a boil over medium heat, whisking constantly to break up any lumps of coconut flour.  Allow it to boil briefly, then remove from heat and let it cool.

6. Take one log out of the fridge, and using a piece of dental floss, cut 1/2 cm (1/4 inch) thick slices, and place rounds on a baking/parchment paper lined cookie sheet.  If the dough is really hard, a sharp knife may work better. You don't need to leave much room between, these don't spread much.  Repeat with the second dough log.

7. Bake at 160C (320F) for 15-18 minutes, turning cookie sheet around half way through.

8. Let cool on a rack, then add the very important big pink dot of icing to the middle.  I used a little teaspoon, put a dab of icing on, then spread it around a bit.  If the icing has gotten too hard to spread, just warm it a little on the stove, and it will melt again (I had to do that several times, it's much easier to get a smooth dot when the icing is a bit runny).  Allow the icing to set.  

A Fructose-Free Pantry Makeover

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My pantry has had several makeovers since I enforced a fructose-free change upon it.  Immediately after reading ‘The Sweet Poison Quit Plan’, I piously tossed out nearly every thing with a sugar content.  Whereupon it quickly began to resemble Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. (You know... the one that was bare?  Oh, never mind.)  Out went the sauces, the cereals, the tinned soups (yes, really!), the dried fruit, the packet mixes... etc.  I actually had it organized for a few months, with neat little rows of things all in order (I should have taken a photo...).

And then I went through a brief uneducated stage of using low carb sweeteners.  I had several suspects in regular rotation.  Xylitol, erythritol, and splenda were my initial favorites.  I learned to cook and bake with them.  And then I discovered, through a bit more research, that as much as I wished it otherwise, they were ‘rubbish’.  Just another form of poison.  Not addictive like fructose perhaps, but harmful in other ways (in a nutshell, they are bad news for our livers).  

And so my pantry tried on yet another new look.  Low carb sweeteners are SO last season. (With the notable exception of stevia.)  And it seems we’ve got it right now, so here we stay!  This look suits us very well, and we do not consider it a trend...  

From left to right: dextrose, rice malt syrup, stevia powder, glucose syrup and malt extract.

This is what we have ended up with:

• Dextrose - which is simply the powdered form of glucose, our body’s favorite fuel.  Dextrose is finer than sugar, similar in texture to caster sugar, and tastes similar to sugar, but isn’t as sweet.  And that last comment really applies to all of these sweeteners; not as sweet.  Dextrose can be found in the brewing section of the supermarket - apparently it works better for beer making than sugar.  Make sure you don’t buy ‘brewing sugar’, which is dextrose mixed with sugar.  The packaging looks similar.
• Glucose Syrup - thick and sticky, clear and a bit sweet (any guesses about what it breaks down to?). I get this in the baking section of the supermarket.
• Malt Extract - Another thick and sticky one, it reminds me a little of molasses, though not quite as dark in colour.  This is usually found with the spreads (like peanut butter & molasses) in the supermarket.
• Rice Malt Syrup - lovely and honey-like in colour and texture, and upon digestion, breaks down to good old glucose.  I buy this in my local Coles supermarket in the health food section (although, due to flooding here it sounds like our Coles will be closed for awhile).  It should be easy to find in a health food shop too, but it’s cheaper at Coles.
•  Stevia - is 300 times sweeter than sugar so you can pump up the sweet factor in your recipe by adding just a tiny bit of stevia!  It’s low carb and doesn’t trigger much of an insulin response (sorry - medical term alert!) if any at all.  I have quite a bit to say about stevia... prepare to be bombarded.  It is my #1 choice to use in compensating for the less-sweet-than-sugar aspect of all the other sweeteners listed above.

About Stevia: If you can source a pure, non-bitter stevia powder locally, do, but I couldn’t find one.  The ones I tried were horribly bitter.  But I recalled that back in my xylitol/erythritol phase, I read a low carb baking blog that recommended NuNaturals stevia as the best tasting one.  It really sounded as though the girl (Lauren from Healthy Indulgences) had taste tested them all, and rather than wasting more money on inedible things, I took her advice.  I ordered mine from the US.  Here is the link: Where to buy NuNaturals NuStevia.  It cost US$60 for a 1 lb (454 gr) container (plus US$8 for shipping to Australia).  This amount will last nearly your whole lifetime as you only need to use 1/16 -1/2 tsp per recipe.  I think it’s worth it (unless you can find a good one closer to home, and if you do, please tell me!).   

A word of caution if you try to find stevia locally though:  don’t buy one that is mixed with fillers.  It might say ‘baking blend’ or ‘granulated’.  Check the label and if it lists anything like 'maltodextrin', ‘polydextrose’, ‘inulin’ or ‘erythritol’ don’t buy it!  Those things are what I refer to collectively (along with lots of other things that harm us in quiet unseen ways) as ‘rubbish’.  I prefer not to go into the medical and scientific reasons behind my opinion of various forms of ‘rubbish’, but rest assured, I have done my homework before lumping them in that category.

I have to say that a few things with a small sugar content have snuck their way back into my pantry.  I am somewhat less of a Fructose Nazi than I was at the start.  But I am a big label reader, and there is nothing with more than 3 gr of sugar per serve allowed.  

The labels don’t say what sort of sugar it is though, so it is worth reading the fine print to see if it is glucose, dextrose, lactose or maltose, all of which are fine:  They break down to glucose, and are perfectly acceptable in a fructose free diet.  So for example, the label of my favorite full fat Greek Yogurt says ‘Sugar: 5.9 gr/serve’... well above my 3 gr limit, but in the ingredient list there is no added sugar, so I know that the sweetness comes from the naturally occurring lactose in the milk content.  And lactose breaks down to glucose, so we’re all good.

The real label trap comes with any one that confusingly reads ‘Sugar Free’.  Almost all ‘sugar free’ soft drink, lollies/candies, chocolates, cookies, jelly, jam, ice cream, you-name-it is sweetened with ‘rubbish’, in one or several of many forms.  As a rule of thumb, just avoid them.  The day may come when food companies get on board with making fructose free products, but as far as I can tell it hasn’t happened yet, and you pretty much have to make your own sweet treats.  But don’t worry.  I’m doing my best to help with that!

A Healthy Carrot Cake Masquerades As Decadent

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I don’t know.  You put carrots in a thing, and then call it dessert?  What kind of bizarre talk is that?  

And zucchini?  ...That’s another vegetable.  

SO many eggs?  Are you sure this is a cake, and not a frittata?

...Well I do admit that the combination is maybe a little on the ‘innovative’ side.  (I like that term better than 'weird'.  It suggests 'genius' instead of the opposite).

And in my defense, I did add cinnamon, spices, and other sweet tasty stuff which overrides any resemblance to the frittata you may be imagining.

I like cake.  I like dessert.  I do abstain most days of the week, but I’ve got that foodie curse of feeling a compulsion to obey the desires of my tongue (more often than I’ll admit).

This cake is a compromise.  Between what I want (dessert) and what I need (a few more green beans).  But it doesn’t taste like a compromise.  Promise.  And it's gluten free (for those who require such things, or cook for ones who do).  And it's even nearly considering being kind-of-sort-of-low-carb. 

May I quote that nasty woman from back in the 1700’s?  “Let them eat cake!”  (But my take on the statement has got a nicer connotation than that other woman's).

Healthy Decadent Carrot Cake

Ingredients

Cake:

1/4 cup (25 gr) coconut flour

2 cups (180 gr) almond flour/meal

2 Tbsp oat bran (optional - makes it healthier)

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp salt

1 Tbsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp cloves

1/4 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp pure non-bitter stevia powder

1/2 cup (125 gr) butter softened

1/4 cup macadamia or coconut oil (or other mild flavour oil)

1/4 cup (75 gr) rice malt syrup

2 Tbsp (40 gr) glucose syrup

1 tsp vanilla

6 eggs

2 cups (250 gr) coarsely grate carrot

1 cup (150 gr) coarsely grated zucchini (I peeled mine to disguise it from my kids, who are suspicious of green flecks)

1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts (you could use macadamias here instead)

1/2 cup (40 gr) fine desiccated coconut

Icing

150 gr unsalted butter softened

120 gr cream cheese softened

1 cup icing dextrose (see note below about how to make this)

1/8 tsp pure non-bitter stevia powder

1/4 tsp vanilla

Directions

Cake

1. Grate carrot and zucchini, place in a bowl, add coconut and walnuts.  Set aside.

2. Combine coconut flour, almond flour, oat bran, baking powder, salt, stevia, and all spices, whisk together.

3. Add butter, oil, rice malt syrup, glucose syrup, vanilla and eggs to the dry ingredients, beat till combined.

4. Fold in carrot, zucchini, walnuts and coconut with a spoon or spatula.

5. Line two 20 cm (8 inch) round springform pans with baking/parchment paper, spoon half of the batter into each, and smooth with a spatula (the batter is very thick).  Or you could use one 28 x 18 cm (11 x 7 inch) baking dish if you don't want a layer cake.

6. Bake at 160C (320F) for 30-40 minutes (or until the top of the cake springs back when touched gently in the middle) turning half way through.

Icing

1. Beat butter and cream cheese together.  

2. Add icing dextrose, and vanilla.  Beat till pale and smooth.

Note:  Icing Dextrose - Add the dextrose to a food processor or blender and pulse/blend till very, very fine (like icing sugar!). You will need to stir it a few times, but let it settle before taking the lid off or you will have clouds of powdered dextrose floating around your kitchen! I like to blend a whole packet of dextrose at a time, and keep it in a container ready for the next icing episode.