Gluten-Free Yellow Cake Batter

Everybody needs a basic cake batter recipe to work from, even those who have a low tolerance for gluten.  Fussellette was coming for Easter and I wanted to serve a cake for dessert.  So I needed to come up with a cake that she could enjoy along with the rest of our guests.

This recipe is adapted from Martha Stewart’s Easy Cake Batter.  I replaced the flour in the recipe with a gluten-free mix I came up with myself, with a little bit of help from Ellen’s Kitchen.  If you are curious as to the right proportions when combining gluten-free flours, check out her suggestions — they are very useful.

First we want to bring all our liquid ingredients to room temperature: 1 cup butter, 4 large eggs plus 2 large egg yolks, and 1 1/2 cups buttermilk (or soured milk). If you want to warm up your ingredients a little faster, try placing them in a warm water bath.

In a bowl, whisk together 2 cups white rice flour, 2/3 cup almond meal (I find that the coarseness of the almond meal gives the cake crumb a springy, solid texture, with no fear of it falling if handled too roughly), 1/3 cup tapioca starch/flour, and1 tablespoon baking powder.  So the final result of this particular combination tastes like a sweet, more tender version of cornbread — it has a finer texture but that’s the best analogy I can come up with.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together your butter with 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar, until it’s light and fluffy and creamy.  Don’t rush this process.  Let your mixer go on high for about 6 minutes, and you will see the difference between butter and sugar that are just well-combined versus butter and sugar that are well and truly creamed together. This is the just-combined stuff.

This is the truly creamed stuff.  It makes all the difference in a cake, especially one where you need all the help you can get to keep the structure light and fluffy.

Mix in your eggs, one at a time, until they are well-combined.  Again, you add the eggs a bit at a time so that the mixer paddle will have a chance to properly emulsify all of it.

Add in at this point 1 tablespoon vanilla extract.

Flip the mixer to its lowest setting and mix in about a third of your flour mixture.  Pour in half the buttermilk and let that get mixed in as well.  Then another third of your flour, mix that in, and the rest of the buttermilk.  When that’s mixed in, add the last of the flour and mix until just combined.  You may need to scrape down the sides of the bowl. This picture is blurry because I like to cook in motion.

Now you have a basic batter with which you can do pretty much anything.  You can turn it into a layer cake, or mix it with other flavours like chocolate or fruit.  Or you can make it into cupcakes, like I did here (the frosting is a package of cream cheese mixed with a cup of icing sugar and some coconut).

This cake here I wrapped up and froze for a future event.

For Easter I poured the batter into two pans and then layered the cake with whipped cream mixed with raspberries.  DIVINE.

Lining Up Yer Linens

Martha Stewart.  Love her or hate her (or, like me, oscillate frequently between the two emotions), but you have to admit that the woman (or one of her various minions) knows how to organize a closet.

We don’t have a lot of linens in our linen closet, but if I leave the Pie to his own devices for even an hour I will find the whole thing in complete disarray.  Folding stuff and stacking it in neat piles is not something in his skill set (which is fine, because he’s really good at other things, like frying eggs over-easy, which is not in MY skill set).

Martha suggests keeping your various sheet sets folded and tucked into one of their own pillowcases.  This way they stay folded if the pile falls over, and you don’t end up looking for lost pillow cases at inopportune times.  So simple.

Cleaning Your Dishwasher

Before we get started, I will have you know that cleaning your dishwasher isn’t something that only germaphobes with a free hour get into.  It’s actually a really good idea.  Seriously.  I’m not crazy.

Regularly cleaning your dishwasher (say, every six months or so) can make for a more efficient dishwasher, cleaner dishes, a nicer-smelling kitchen, and money saved on repair costs.  You may think that cleaning something that constantly runs soapy water through itself seems strange, but all that food residue it takes off your cutlery and plates has to go somewhere, and it doesn’t all make it down the drain.  Which, when I took the time to clean my own dishwasher, I found out, to my continuing disgust.

Many websites offering how-to tips on cleaning your dishwasher advise against using gel detergents in your machine, as many contain bleach, which can break down your rubber seals over time and damage stainless steel interiors.  While using a powdered detergent works, keep in mind that the powders don’t always dissolve completely in the wash, which can block your drains and such.  We use a gel detergent that is made up of natural ingredients, and which contains no parabens, petroleum products, or bleach.  They’re easy to find.  Even Martha Stewart makes a decent version.

Another important thing to remember when using your dishwasher is to use the hottest water possible.  The manual on my dishwasher recommends a temperature of around 120°F (about 49°C).  Unlike clothes washing machines, most dishwashers are not designed for cold-water washing.  If you want to save energy, select the air dry setting at the end, if you have one, instead of the heated dry setting.

Now while I say it’s a good idea to clean your dishwasher every six months, I have had this dishwasher since August 2008 (it was the Pie and my “negative-first” anniversary present to each other, how romantic) and I have never cleaned it.  Until now.  We did buy the cheapest model available, so we never expected magic performance, but lately (probably the past year or two, if I’m honest), we’ve been pulling more and more “casualties” out of the dishwasher.  These casualties are the Pie’s name for any dishes with food stuck to them.  Which he then leaves on the counter for someone (usually me) to wash by hand.  Personally, I don’t really care.  I figure if the food has been in water that hot for that long, it’s probably sterilized and will only add flavour to whatever I am eating next.  But sometimes you have to take one for the team.  Plus it would be nice to have all the glasses sparkling again.

So.  Cleaning the dishwasher.  Let’s get down to it.  Using a gentle cleaner, such as dish soap, and a soft cloth (don’t use abrasives in your dishwasher), get to cleaning the outside and all the goo left on the sides of the dishwasher doors.

These are the parts that you don’t see when the dishwasher door is closed, but which don’t get exposed to the inside of the washer when it is in operation.  Make sure to thoroughly wipe down any gaskets and seals as well.  Crusty food on seals makes for crusty seals that don’t seal properly.

If you have a dishwasher with a stainless steel interior/exterior, you should use a mild steel cleaner.  Method makes a good one.  I used this one by Seventh Generation on my plastic interior.  It’s a good grease cutter.

Give the interior of the dishwasher a light scrub as well.  Make sure you get the spot under the dishwasher door.  It can get pretty gross down there too.

Pull out your dish racks and clean them too.

Pay close attention to the cutlery baskets, as they can trap food.

Your bottom rack will come out easily, but the top one may have some stoppers in place that you will have to remove first.

Now, that nifty propeller thing is the part that sprays hot water all over your dishes.  It also gets clogged with food.

Using a pair of needle-nosed pliers, a piece of bent wire, or a toothpick, carefully remove any debris from the holes on top without scratching the apparatus.

I actually removed a small stick from one of the holes.  And quite a lot of my own hair.  Ew.

Now for the drain.  Depending on your dishwasher, this could be under your washing arm or at the back of the machine.  First, remove any food that is stuck on top of the drain.

Now pop that sucker out.  There might be screws holding it in place.  I wasn’t sure with mine (and didn’t want to break it by manhandling it out), so I looked up the model number (I have a Kenmore 665.17702K600 Portable Dishwasher) on the internet and found that you can just pop up the long side of it.

Then I just gave it a bit of a counter-clockwise twist and it popped right off.

And then I had this to contend with.  Feel free to gag and shudder.  I definitely did.

There was probably a litre of stagnant water lying in there.  I have never wanted a shop-vac as much as I did at that moment.  I tried scooping out the water in a shot glass but the glass was too wide for the wee hole.

In the end I took the lid from a laundry-detergent bottle in the recycling.

With a hefty knife and some swearing, I cut off the sticky-outy bit so it was narrow enough to fit through the hole.

Tada.  Gross water drained.

I don’t want to know what this black stuff is, so please don’t tell me.  But I scrubbed at it with a dish brush.

And a tooth brush.  And wiped up the majority of its slimy substance.  Good thing I didn’t bother to shower before doing this.

Now you can take a deep breath because all the gross stuff is at an end.

Gren is notably relieved.  Or confused.  It’s hard to tell with him.

Now you have to put your racks back in and run the dishwasher on two empty cycles.

For the first, put two cups white vinegar upright in the top rack of your dishwasher.  Run the machine on the shortest setting at the hottest temperature.  When that cycle is complete, remove the cups of water and sprinkle the bottom of the dishwasher (just sprinkle, mind you, we don’t want to clog our newly cleaned drain) with baking soda, and run it again.  Now you are officially done.

Also I bet you are thinking more about what you put in your dishwasher than you were before, right?

To see where I got my know-how, check these places out:

WikiHow

Apartment Therapy

Wisebread

House Cleaning Central

Deep-Fried Dinner

For the Pie’s birthday dinner, we decided to try deep-frying for the first time.  We’d been putting it off because, well, it’s incredibly unhealthy, it’s a dangerous fire risk, and our kitchen has no fume hood so we’d be dealing with the aromas of cooking oil for several days.

But we needed to learn (in the same way that we need to learn everything else we do here).  So we decided to try two different methods and make Buffalo chicken strips (with blue cheese dip) and some beer-battered onion rings.  Both recipes come from Martha Stewart’s Every Day Food magazine.  Both recipes involve buttermilk.

Now, though I’m presenting two different recipes here, I’m going to give the instructions to you in the order I did them, because that makes the most sense to me.  In order for you to differentiate the two recipes, I’ll preface instructions for the chicken with BCS and use OR for the onions.

BCS/OR: Turn your oven to 250°F.  Put some cooling racks on top of rimmed baking sheets and put those in the oven.  Those will be your warming and draining trays for your chicken and onions.

OR: Slice 2lb onions into thick rounds and submerge them in 2 cups buttermilk for about an hour before cooking.  The buttermilk takes the acidic bite out of the onions, making them sweet and tender.  Just a warning: following this recipe results in a heckuva lotta onion rinks, so if you don’t want to fry up a million, I suggest halving it, or even quartering it.

BCS: Crumble up 1 cup blue cheese (I used 400g here and it crumbled to about a cup) and 1/2 cup buttermilk.

Stir that around and set it aside.

Cut up some vegetables while you’re at it, why don’t you?  You’re about to consume pure fat — you should probably add in some vitamins.

BCS/OR: Plop about 1 1/2 cups flour in a shallow dish and put that near your stove.  That’s for the batterin’.

OR: Crack two eggs into a bowl.  Whisk ‘em.

Whisk in 1 bottle lager or pale ale.

Whisk in 1 1/2 cups flour and 2 teaspoons coarse salt.  Set that near the stove as well.

BCS: In yet another bowl, combine 1/3 cup hot sauce with 3 tablespoons butter.  Stir well and set that aside for now.

Slice up 3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts into finger-sized pieces.

Dip them in 1 cup buttermilk.

Then into that flour you have ready.

Lay them out on a baking sheet.

I think we’re about ready to start cooking.  While I’m sure you could do these two dishes at the same time, I am far from experienced with hot-oil cooking, rather prone to accidents, and I only have one large-sized element on my stove.  So I am going to cook the chicken first, as it doesn’t need to be crispy and can therefore sit in the oven for longer.

As a safety note, we had a box of baking soda handy at all times during this, in case of flareups.  Never leave hot oil unattended, and never, NEVER add additional oil of any kind or any temperature to oil that is already hot.

BCS: Heat 1/2 cup to 1 cup vegetable oil in a heavy skillet.  You can tell if the oil is hot enough for frying when a pinch of flour dropped into it fizzes rapidly.

Slide a few chicken pieces in, working in batches.

Cook for about 6-8 minutes, rotating halfway through, until the chicken is golden brown.  Remove the cooked chicken to the rack in the oven.

This was a very spatter-y process, so I wore long sleeves and kept my face averted from the pan.  My hands kept getting burned from little splashes of oil.  In the end I pulled on a pair of work gloves to protect them and worked happily after that.

Make sure to let that oil cool before you move it anywhere.

OR: In a large, wide saucepan, heat up 5 cups vegetable oil.  I know, that’s a lot of oil.

Use a candy or deep-fry thermometer and continuously adjust the temperature of your element to keep the oil at 375°F.  If it gets too cold, it won’t cook the onions all the way through, and if it gets too hot, well … let’s not think about that.

What was interesting was the cool pattern the oil made while it heated.

Take a ring of onion out of the buttermilk and dip it in the flour, then into the beer batter.  Shake off the excess.

Slide the ring carefully into the hot oil.  Cook in small batches, rotating halfway through, for about 5 minutes.  Remove to the other rack in the oven to drain and keep warm.  This method of frying was wayyyyy less spatter-y, if you were interested to know.

We had a lot more onions left to cook after we had cooked as many as we thought we could eat.  We figured they would keep until tomorrow and we would try again.

BCS: When everything is cooked and you are ready to go, take the chicken strips out of the oven and toss them in the hot sauce.  These will be served with the blue cheese dip we made earlier.

OR: For the onions we had a nice tzatziki dip as well as a chipotle mayo.

All told, it was pretty epic.

I made a pizza. From scratch. In the middle of Gros Morne National Park.

And it worked!  Beat that, Martha!

Flushed with the success of our raspberry orange crumble in the woods, we figured we’d try out one of the recipes in the wee book that came with our Outback Oven and attempt the challenge of making a pizza from scratch while camping.

First we make up the dough.

In a bowl, mix 2 cups flour with 1 packet instant yeast, 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, and 2 teaspoons salt.  I shook in a few teaspoons of grill herb mix (basil, oregano, etc.) from a Coghlan’s spice pack I had on hand.

Pour in 2 tablespoons olive oil and 2/3 cup warm water and stir-stir-stir.

Knead that sucker until all the flour is mixed in, about 5 minutes.  If your dough is still sticky, you can add more flour.

Flatten the dough into the bottom of your oven pan, and cover with lid. 

Place somewhere warm to rise for about 15 minutes.  I put mine next to our fire, because it was a chilly afternoon in our shady campsite.

While it was rising, I sliced up 3 cloves garlic, one half tomato (vegetables were hard to find in Gros Morne), some hard salami, and the Pie kindly grated me some cheddar cheese (because that was what we had).

Spread a few drops of olive oil on your risen dough.

Spoon on about 3 tablespoons pizza sauce and spread that around.

Add your toppings.

Then your cheese.

Cover with lid and the parka-tent thing and bake for about 20 minutes.  Keep an eye on it.  You can check the crust by flipping it up, just to keep it from burning.Let it cool a few minutes in the pan or you will burn yourself.

Make sure to slide the pizza out of your nonstick pan before cutting.

The boys and I agreed that this was one of the better pizzas we had eaten recently (and we had recently eaten moose pizza, so that was saying something).

Gren didn’t get any.  Awww …

Quick and Dirty Veggie Sides

Let’s face it: unless you’re Martha Stewart (and if you are, hi Martha, how you doing?  I’m a BIG fan), you can’t whip up awesomeness in your kitchen with only the freshest ingredients every single night of the week.  So if you’re like me, you probably have a sizable collection of frozen vegetables in your freezer.  Fun fact for you: frozen vegetables actually contain more vitamins than the fresh ones you get in the grocery store, because they are flash-frozen at the peak of freshness.  And now you know.

The great thing about frozen vegetables is they’re ready in minutes and having them on hand saves you a trip to the store in the middle of a snowstorm.

Problem is, they’re a little on the boring side.  So here’s a quick way to add some kick-ass to your frozen food.

Get your frozen vegetables from their package to a large frying pan or flat saucepan.  My method involved smashing the package on the counter several times to loosen up the veggies.

Tonight we had peas and spinach.  Lots of lovely chlorophyll.

Add to that a tablespoon or two of butter, some minced garlic, and some fresh herbs.  I used basil here.  Some salt and pepper if you’re feeling sassy.

Heat on medium until the vegetables are thawed and the excess water is absorbed.  Add a few tablespoons chicken broth and stir until that is absorbed as well and the vegetables are tender. 

Serve hot!

Freezer Inventory

I know: it’s crazy.  It’s taking organization to crazy OCD levels.  Don’t judge me.

But Martha Stewart does it.  Lots of other food bloggers and organization companies advocate it.  It’s really not so crazy.

And after discovering some frozen mysteries that had been in our deep freeze since we moved to Newfoundland, the Pie and I now do it.

We have a list of the entire contents of both freezers, which we update every time we take something out, and every time we put something in.

Gone are the days when we hung over the freezer door, wasting energy as we tried to remember what was at the bottom and what we could have for dinner.

Gone are the days of discovering you actually have five of something you just picked up at the grocery store.

And long gone are the days of finding ancient remains in the bottom of the freezer.  When the Pie was 16, he went over to his grandmother’s for dinner.  She served a turkey.  It wasn’t until after dinner that Mrs. Nice discovered the label for the turkey and asked her mother where she had gotten said turkey.  “From my freezer,” her mother replied.  The packaged date on that turkey was from 1981.  The turkey was SEVENTEEN years old, a year older than my husband when he ate it.

We have vowed never to let that happen.

If you’re interested, Martha Stewart has a handy guide to tell you just how long you can keep things frozen.  You can check it out here.

Fudgy Rocky Road Squares

Ooey, gooey, crispy and crunchy, these easy-peasy squares came out of Martha Stewart’s Every Day Food magazine, to which I am an ardent subscriber.

They don’t require a whole lot of baking, and if you’re feeling super lazy you could get away with not baking at all, so that’s always a bonus.  All you need are five ingredients: graham crackers (whole), almonds, marshmallow fluff, chocolate chips, and condensed milk.  Simple.Preheat your oven to 375°F.

Line the bottom of a 9″ x 13″ baking dish with graham crackers.  Break them if you have to in order to get them to fit.  Bake them until the crackers are lightly toasted and fragrant, probably about 8 minutes.

While that’s going on, coarsely chop up 1 1/2 cups almonds.  Sprinkle the almonds evenly over the toasted graham while it’s still warm.

Dollop on about 1 cup marshmallow fluff in large spoonfuls.  Allow it to soften and spread by itself.

In a double boiler or heatproof bowl set over simmering water, combine 1 12oz bag chocolate chips and 1 14oz can condensed milk. I’m pretty sure you need to use chocolate chips here instead of baking chocolate simply because of the unique physical properties of chocolate chips. 

Cook, stirring once in a while, until the chocolate is all melted and everything is smooth.

Work quickly, before the chocolate has a chance to thicken, and pour it over the marshmallow fluff.

Use a thin-bladed knife to swirl the marshmallow and the chocolate together. 

Refrigerate until set, about an hour, then cut into squares and serve. 

Keep them wrapped up tight in the refrigerator when you’re not chowing down.

Card Key Chain

Thanks, Alidoesit readers, for a whole year of DIY posts!  Your feedback has been great!

I definitely got this idea from Martha Stewart, but it’s a good one.

I try to avoid joining memberships at stores and things, because I hate carrying cards, but sometimes you just can’t help yourself.  As a result my wallet is jam-packed with cards that I don’t necessarily use on a daily basis.  Plus, they’re tucked inside my wallet when the Pie needs them or vice versa.

Some companies are smart and they give you a wee tag to fit on your key chain.

So why not have a key chain solely for the cards you don’t use all the time?

It’s a simple matter to poke holes in all your cards with a hole punch.  I figure that the middle of the side of the card is the best place to avoid cutting through magnetic tape and bar codes and the like.

Then you can just stick them all together on your key chain of choice, ready for you to use whenever you need them, available to whoever needs them.  Hang them in your car, clipped to your purse, or in the front hall by the door — wherever is convenient for you.

Tweed Felt Oak Leaf Bowls

Here’s another cute idea I picked up from Martha Stewart.  These bowls are great for odds and ends and for serving nuts and things as well.

Download the template from the website and resize it however you wish, so that it fits on the fabric you choose to use.

I decided to make three bowls here, but for each one you will need equal-sized rectangles of felt, fusible webbing (that’s the stuff that is sticky on both sides), and wool tweed.  The thicker your tweed, the better your bowls will stand up.

For the fusible webbing I used this stuff, which I picked up from Fabricland.

Follow the instructions closely on your packaging to use the webbing to fuse the felt to the tweed.  It took me a couple tries to get it right, so make sure to do exactly what the package tells you to do.

Cut out your template and use it to cut out the shapes from your fused tweed/felt.

Use a blanket stitch to sew up the V-shaped notches.

That’s it, that’s all.  Cute, huh?