Crackly, crunchy French bread

MAN.  This bread.  Seriously.  I made it flawlessly 3 times, making it a little more my own each time.

Then, I bought a French bread pan, so I could stop making rigged French bread pans with tin foil.  THEN, I accidentally filled my white rice flour container with sweet rice flour.  Then it was fail after gooey French bread fail.

I wasn’t sure if it was the pan, making the baking needs different, the starchier sweet rice flour, too much xanthan gum or the devil making it gummy, but gummy it was.  So I decided to tweak all of it.  Including kicking the devil out of my oven.

And I think I got it now.

Garam Masala and Ginger Cupcakes

I had such high hopes for these little cupcakes. But a few things happened:

1. There wasn’t enough ginger
2. I tried making them with canola oil for lightness instead of butter
3. The cream cheese icing elicited a gluten-like reaction… All Kraft products seem to do that here. 

So until these are all worked out, I must remain happy that at least I got pictures on my fancy new plates!

Making gluten-free pizza

The first time I ever made a gluten-free pizza crust, the mini-series that preceded the show The Starter Wife was on, and we were watching it idly.  It annoyed me.  The commercials for the series that followed drove me up the wall and significantly dampered my appreciation for Psych and Burn Notice. 

The pizza crust was a mix from ‘Cause You’re Special, that was extremely delicious.  And so sticky, that after trying to spread it around the pan for an hour and literally yelling at it with rage and frustration that the Pants – for the first and ONLY time – took over making the pizza crust.  With the grace of waxed paper, olive oil and a wooden spoon, he got it all arranged in the pan, we had pizza and holy cow was it delicious.

I do wonder from time to time whether it was this freaking crust incident that made me have such disdain and annoyance for The Starter Wife, but then I realized that no, it was just that bad of a show.  So it was cancelled, and I found a pizza crust recipe from scratch that I love and have tweaked it to my liking.  All’s right with the world.

Summertime means blueberry pie

Oh my.  Oh my my.  Now I have to find a way to say this is blueberry pie without rhyming.  That mostly worked.

I love making blueberry pies.  Although I think they’re delicious, they’re not my favorite of the bunch (that would be lemon meringue, but all things considered? I’m more of a cake girl than a pie girl*).  Although I do love them and they say summer to me.  This summer has been odd, however. Not nearly as hot and humid as summers usually are, and very rainy. Although I have a difficult time complaining about lack of humidity and heat. Especially since it’s SO much easier to make a pie crust in this kind of weather.

Tuna Macaroni Summer Salad

My mom made this for us every summer for a cold lunch, dinner, snack that wouldn’t overheat the kitchen and would keep for days.  It’s the sort of thing that is a typical 1970’s magazine recipe laden with cheese and mayonnaise and canned tuna (quelle horreur!) but that I want to eat every summer.

Bandwagon Buttermilk Blackberry Cake

Between gourmet magazine having a buttermilk raspberry cake, Smitten Kitchen having a version of the cake, Yahaira making the cake, it seems everyone and their mama is making this cake.

So I decided to hop on the bandwagon too.  I was going to do a post about an awesome lemon cake made with rosemary-infused olive oil (seriously! It was good!), but my camera battery was dead and I didn’t have any pictures of the cake before I brought it to the barbeque.  So I’ll do that bad boy later when I can make it and take pictures.