taco!

an avocado mais taco, a yummy quick snack or entree for the gluten free vegetarian among us. you'll need to gather the following ingredients:

corn tortillas
muenster cheese, thinly sliced (i like boar's head)
ground cumin
red onion, diced
1/4 of a hass avocado (1/4 sliced lengthwise makes 2 tortillas)
red leaf lettuce, cut into strips
tofutti better than sour cream

lay out a tortilla on the plate, place one slice of cheese centered and sprinkle onto it a little bit of cumin, microwave for 10 seconds. layer the diced onions, avocado slices, and strips of lettuce. top off with some dabs of tofutti sour cream. fold over and eat, me gusto!

perhaps not a fool

echo did a wee bit of posing today in front of a lovely vintage printed textile i discovered while antiquing. it is covered in blueberries and strawberries.

on other fronts, the gluten free thing isn't going half so bad as initially imagined. so far i have baked a delicious sweet cornbread, a lavender honey cake, dark chocolate brownies, and a dutch chocolate zucchini cake. there are plans on the horizon to make blueberry oat muffins and an irish soda bread. amazingly the most glorious thing about all of these scrumptious baked goods is that they are made from scratch and gluten free.

in the land of honey

one of the first gluten free baked goods i tried my hand at was a lavender honey cake. the recipe was a modified version of one posted on gluten-free girl, a lemon poppyseed cake. it came out quite yummy, but a little dense; for it rose like a souffle and fell, creating a somewhat dense but nonetheless moist cake with lovely tones of lavender. when i figured out where i had gone wrong i made the required changes to the recipe. here it goes:

gluten free lavender honey cake

3 tbs heavy cream
3 large eggs
2 tsps vanilla extract
3/4 c honey

1/2 c tapioca flour
1/2 c potato starch
1/2 c white rice flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp xanthan gum
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbs baking lavender

13 tbs softened butter, cubed

preheat oven to 325 degrees. butter bottom and sides of a 9" round cake pan, cut out parchment paper for the bottom so that the cake won't stick.

whisk the heavy cream, eggs, vanilla, and honey together.

blend well together the dry ingredients in a stand mixer, including the lavender.

slowly add the softened butter and half the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, let them blend well for one minute. scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula. add half of the remaining wet ingredients and blend. scrape sides again. add the remaining wet ingredients and stop when blended.

softly pour the batter into the pan, smoothing the top with the spatula. bake the cake for 30 minutes to 1 hour, or until a butter knife comes out clean. let sit in pan for 10 minutes then remove to a rack and cool completely. you may frost with a sugar glaze if necessary, or just a light dusting of confectioner's sugar.

this recipe has been modified to use honey as the sweetener, if another sweetener is to be used relate back to the original recipe for lemon poppyseed cake.