I spent my weekend enjoying the presence of wonderful people, eating good food, going to the State Theater for my first time to see Galumpha, a high-energy acrobat group (), and not getting much done in terms of school work. Friday was so unseasonably warm here that I didn't need to wear a coat, and the warm sun beckoned me to skip my classes and stay outside all day (although I did go to all of my classes on Friday). In my hands-on horticulture class, we learned about bulb forcing, and planted loads of bulbs (hyacinth, amaryllis, tulips, daffodils, paperwhites). We got to take home the paperwhites and amaryllis, and they are already starting to grow! I took some pictures while in the greenhouses, and really like how they look in black and white instead of color. Most pictures of flowers are in color so the viewer can appreciate the beauty of the flower, but I really like the pictures in black and white because they seem more like landscapes instead of just portraits of flowers, and you can really appreciate the structure and form of the flowers without being distracted by nice colors.

Friday night, Bob held a potluck at his house, which was really nice because I hadn't been to the farm since November, and I really have been missing it (even though now everything is covered in snow and the only things growing are salad greens in the hoop house). Hope and Lyca came with me, and brought coconut milk rice pudding and fire toys to perform with. I brought a soup/stew/chili without the chili powder kind of dish, which turned out to be really delicious.

1 yellow onion
a bunch of cloves of garlic
1 large red pepper

Saute the onion, garlic, and red pepper on the stove until onions are translucent and pepper is soft. Remove from heat.

28 oz. can organic diced tomatoes
16 oz. package organic creamy butternut squash soup
1/2 sweet potato
a handful of crimini mushrooms
3 carrots
about a cup and a half each of red kidney beans and black beans (you can either use rinsed canned beans, or rehydrate the beans ahead of time)

thyme
oregano
basil
a couple of bay leaves
salt
pepper

Chop the vegetables up and throw everything (season with your own preference for spices, I used thyme, oregano, basil, a couple of bay leaves, salt, and pepper, but wanted to throw some sage in there too) into a crock pot and cook on low forever. I put everything in my crock pot around 8:00 am and removed everything around 4:45 p.m. after I got home from classes. When I got home, I cooked some red quinoa really quickly and steamed some kale and spinach to throw in also. I added a huge bunch of kale and spinach and probably a cup and a half of cooked quinoa to the stew.

The potluck was a success! We had good food (Bob and Laura made homemade pizza;
there was also another soup made with Bob's frozen veggies from earlier on in the farming season, apple crisp, Hope's coconut milk rice pudding, ice cream, and a fresh salad from Bob's hoop house), fire-spinning, and I was very entertained by watching all of the children (I think there were 6 of them) running around the house with never-ending energy (although they were way too loud and the adults had to temporarily break up their fun throughout the night to settle things down). Bob showed us a ripped-apart carcass of a deer that had been seemingly attacked by coyotes, and the dead mink which had gone on a mass killing rampage in his chicken house (Bob hung the mink in a tree so he can get the bones once all of the fur and meat decomposes).

On Saturday, Lyca and I braved the horrible, 50 mph wind gusts to stop by the winter Farmers' Market and wander around the Ithaca Commons before Galumpha. The market was nice, but we were a little disappointed because we had been planning on eating breakfast there, but there were no ready-made food stands so we had to go to Waffle Frolic to eat (which was delicious but very expensive).

The State Theater was gorgeous and impressive, and the show was very lighthearted and entertaining. There were many, many children there with their families, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the dancing and acrobatics of the performers.

It is now Monday, which means the start of a new week of school, work, and homework. I need to start studying for my prelims because my first exam is a week away. I have two potlucks this week to attend (Thursday for class and Friday with the gluten-free meetup group on campus), which means I will definitely be making some good food in the near future!

02.14.2011 1:41 p.m.
My twenty-first birthday. I finally settled my fairy self down for a moment’s rest after being up and actively doing things since 5:00 in the morning.

02.15.2011 7:00 a.m.
I had the most amazing, magical, sparkling, flowing, tiring, sugary, warm, cold, loving, happy, thankful, magnificent twenty-first birthday anyone could ever hope for…

I woke up at 5:00 in the morning to catch the rising of my sun over the east hill while perched precariously on a frozen (but quickly thawing) waterfall in lower Robert Treman State Park with Lyca and Damaris, and was welcomed at 8:12 a.m. into the twenty-first year of my life by these two amazing people (one who I have known for quite some time; the other I have recently become acquainted with).

We celebrated the earth, the day, the sun, and the warmth with an amazing collaborative photo shoot involving frozen water, pouring water, shoes and socks, fire, sun, dry ice, and cold fingers and frozen toes. The air around us was soft and pleasant, and caressed our bodies as we carefully positioned ourselves on the ice, trying our best not to step through (although we did, and it was cold). We watched the sky change from dark gray to blue, slowly progressing through lighter and lighter hues with each passing moment. The progression of the colors of the sky and earth as a result of the sun’s greatly anticipated arrival was truly magical. When the sun finally broke free and rose over the horizon, we greeted it with upturned faces, smiles, and thanks.

We warmed our toes on the ride home, and decided that cheesecakes (yes, cheesecakes, plural) would be an appropriate breakfast. Since Lyca doesn’t have a coffee grinder, we took the cheesecakes in my picnic basket to Gimme Coffee on Cayuga Street, and sat there eating delicious chocolate currant and vanilla bean cardamom ginger cheesecake and drinking amazing, fresh coffee. One of the women in the coffee shop was staring at our cheesecakes, and we offered her some and found out that it was also her birthday! She kindly declined the offer, which made me a little sad, because I think she would have really liked them!

After the cheesecake picnic at Gimme, I drove Lyca home and went to visit Varya at her apartment, toting my picnic basket upstairs with me. I gave her a slice of each cheesecake (which she was very excited about!) and she shared some of her Limoncello (very delicious citrus liqueur) with me. I offered to drive her to class, which gave us more time to spend together, so we decided to go downtown briefly because I wanted to buy some flowers for friends. We stopped by a beautiful bed & breakfast at the bottom of Buffalo Street because Varya wanted to inquire about reserving rooms for graduation weekend. The inside of the B&B was beautiful, and the woman we talked to was adorable and gave me a piece of cake and chocolates for my birthday (Varya told her it was my birthday; Varya ended up taking the cake and chocolates to studio with her because I couldn’t eat the cake and I had already had my fair dose of sugar for the morning). After visiting the B&B, we went to Bool’s Flower Shop (the flower shop that Ginger Babel lived in for the month of December) where we were the only women in a store filled with men (not counting the ladies arranging the flowers behind the counter). It was hilarious, and we had a great time fluttering from bucket to bucket, choosing the perfect flowers. I bought Hope and Varya each a rose (red for Hope, light pink for Varya), a beautiful purple iris for Karli, and a giant bunch of bright assorted flowers for Laura.

After I drove Varya to studio, I stopped by to visit Laura at work (she works in Rhodes hall on campus), and she was very surprised and happy to receive cheesecake and flowers. I shared my cheesecakes with her officemates, who were also very appreciative.

Once I had played the part of Laura’s personal cheesecake fairy, I took a trip to the Cornell Plantations where I wandered around taking pictures and rang the gong three times in celebration of the day. I sat for a while on the long, curved bench at the top of the hill, looking out at the plantations below. The sky was dark gray and threatening rain, but it was pleasantly warm and calm. After a y feet were soaked again (I changed my boots after the photo shoot because mine were soaked through with ice water), so I stopped home to grab some food, dry socks, and another pair of boots. I then went to 140, distributed more cheesecake, and picked up Karli so we could pay Hope a visit. Hope was all dolled up in her Valentine’s Day best, and looked absolutely adorable. We visited with her for a little while, and afterwards, Karli and I went to a wine store where we encountered an adorable little girl named Saffron, and then wandered aimlessly around the commons until we needed to go take a nap.

Birthday dinner consisted of vegetarian sushi making (we used cucumber, carrots, avocado, and apples) with Karli and Lyca (even though Karli and I were very out of practice at rolling sushi) and was very tasty! It was the perfect dinner to balance the many pieces of cheesecake I had eaten earlier in the day ☺

The cheesecakes I made very tasty, and I personally preferred the vanilla bean/cardamom/ginger/fig jam cheesecake to the chocolate currant cheesecake, but some people liked the chocolate currant one better… different people like different things I guess!


Cardamom vanilla bean fig cheesecake with walnut crust

Crust:
2 cups walnuts
3 teaspoons butter, melted
1/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
¼ tsp cardamom powder
¼ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp cinnamon
2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons molasses

1 jar of fig jam

Cheesecake:
32 oz cream cheese, room temp
4 large eggs, room temp
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cardamom powder
1 vanilla pod, cut in half and scraped to get the beans
1 teaspoon ginger


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line the bottom of a springform pan with aluminum foil, assemble the pan, and wrap the foil around the outside. Cover the outside of the pan with more foil so that water doesn’t get into the cheesecake when it is cooking in the water bath.

Process the walnuts in a food processor or blender so they turn into a coarse meal. Mix in brown sugar, cardamom powder, ginger, and cinnamon. Add maple syrup, molasses, and butter. Mix until all of the walnut meal is coated with the sticky liquid ingredients (butter, molasses, and maple syrup). Press into the bottom of the springform pan and bake at 350 degrees for about 5-7 minutes. Take out of the oven and carefully spread a layer of fig jam on top of crust.

In a large bowl, combine cream cheese and sugar, and blend until smooth. Add cardamom powder, vanilla beans, and ginger, and then eggs, one at a time, beating with hand-held mixer until smooth. When batter is a uniform consistency, pour into crust.

Bake cheesecake in a water bath (I used a larger skillet filled with water with the springform pan inside of it) for about 1 hour (it took mine a little more than an hour) until it has set. The center will still be a bit wobbly, but will set in the fridge. Remove from oven and let sit in the water bath for a couple of minutes, then remove the cake from the water bath and let sit on counter until cool. Place in a refrigerator over night (or for about 6 hours) to let it set. Once cheesecake has set, remove from fridge and spread jam on top and sides, then eat!

Blueberry Cheesecake (delicious recipe from the summer)

In preparation for a weekend of baking cheesecakes (I am planning on creating a dark chocolate currant cheesecake with a walnut crust and a vanilla bean cardamom cheesecake with fig jam) for my 21st birthday (IT'S ON MONDAY!!!) and Valentines' Day, I decided that it would be nice to share an older cheesecake recipe I came up with over the summer.

Around the middle part of this past summer, when the blueberries were literally falling off the bushes because they were so ripe, I went blueberry picking in Spencer, NY, with Coco. We tried to resist eating too many of the blueberries as we picked, and ended up taking home about 5 pounds of blueberries each (and an added bonus was they were very cheap because we picked them ourselves). It had been River's birthday earlier in the summer, and since I hadn't seen him for his birthday, I told him I would make him a birthday cake when he came to Ithaca. I decided that, since it was summer, a blueberry cheesecake would be quite appropriate.

To start off, I made a homemade blueberry syrup/sauce to add to the cheesecake batter and drizzle on top of it when it was done cooking, cooling, and setting.

Blueberry Sauce

1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup water
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/4 cup sugar

2 cups fresh blueberries (make sure there are no stems!)

Mix together the orange juice, water, cornstarch, and sugar in a saucepan over medium/low heat. Add blueberries and bring to a boil, making sure to stir frequently. Once the mixture has boiled, turn the heat down low again and let it simmer until the blueberries have exploded and the sauce has thickened up. Don't worry if it looks a little too runny when it is on the stove- once you take it off and it cools, it will thicken up. Also, the blueberry sauce will have little bits of blueberry skin in it. If you don't want these in your cheesecake, you can always strain the sauce through something like cheesecloth, but I personally like the blueberry skin bits in my cheesecake. :)


This blueberry sauce is really delicious on top of oatmeal, ice cream, plain yogurt, cheesecake, and many other delicious things :)


Now, this blueberry cheesecake is extra wonderful because it has a gluten free crust, meaning that those who are avoiding gluten can also enjoy it. Personally, I think that nut crusts are a much more delicious base for a cheesecake than ground-up, store-bought graham crackers. It seems to me that many people overlook the crust when they make cheesecakes and try to focus their attention on the actual creamy cheesecake center. In my mind, all aspects of a cheesecake are equally important to consider when creating a recipe. There must be a delicious base, creamy, but not too sweet center, and either no topping at all, or one that compliments all of the other flavors found in the cake.


Blueberry Cheesecake

Pecan crust:
1 1/2 cup pecans
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tsp molasses
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
3 teaspoons butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Line the bottom a springform pan (I think I used 8 or 9 inch) with aluminum foil (makes for easy cheesecake removal after it's done cooking).

If you have a blender or food processor, put the nuts in and pulse until you have a medium-coarse meal. You don't want the nuts to be as fine as flour, but you also don't want huge chunks. I personally like to leave some small/medium-sized chunks in there to add a little extra crunch to the crust. If you don't have a blender or food processor, you can put the nuts in a bag and roll them with a rolling pin, or smash them with something heavy.

Pour the nuts into the springform pan and add the brown sugar and cinnamon. Mix until uniform consistency. Add the molasses and melted butter. Press mixture to the bottom of the pan and bake for about 5-7 minutes until the crust firms up a little bit. Take out and let cool while you mix together the cheesecake batter.

Blueberry Cheesecake

3 8oz packages of cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup homemade blueberry sauce
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/8 cup white sugar
3 eggs, room temperature

Meanwhile, add cream cheese (or mascarpone, which I prefer to cream cheese, but it is more expensive so I use it sparingly) sugars, and blueberry sauce, and beat with an electric hand mixer until nice and creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition.

Before you pour the cheesecake batter into the prepared crust, prepare your springform pan for cooking in a water bath (to prevent cracking of the cheesecake). Cover the entire outside of the pan in aluminum foil, making sure that there are no holes or gaps where water can enter the pan (it isn't water-tight).

After you have secured your pan, place it in a water bath (I use my skillet. Because it is so small, it is easier to put the pan in the water bath and then pour in the cheesecake batter, but if you have a larger water bath, you could also just pour the batter onto the crust and then place the whole thing in the water bath). Carefully pour in the cheesecake batter on top of the crust. Smooth out the top of the cheesecake so it is is nice and even.

Bake in a water bath for about 1 hour. Middle of cheesecake will still be wobbly, but the edges should be nice and firm. Make sure that you have enough water so it doesn't all evaporate before the cheesecake is done cooking, and if it does, add a little more to the bath.

When the cheesecake is done baking, turn off the oven, open the door, and let it sit in there for a few minutes. Then you can take the cheesecake out of the water bath and let it cool on the counter for a bit. Once it is cool to the touch, put it in your refrigerator to set (overnight or about 5-6 hours).



Now comes the best part of the recipe... eat it!

Random thoughts on food & sustainability for class that I thought I'd share...

Someone in my class posted this question on a class discussion board: "Most of the population is far removed from agriculture, and it is true...the typical attitude towards agriculture is complacency. In order to truly be sustainable, or even move closer towards sustainability in our food system, everybody needs to be on board. With that being said, what is the most efficient and logical way to encourage people to work towards the same goal? If the average person's attitude towards this dilemma is complacency, why are they willing to change now? It is refreshing to see some people taking small steps (recycling, buying local, composting etc) and perhaps that is a good start, but sometimes I can't help but think "sustainability" to the average person is just the latest fad to get on board with. Are consumers buying local, organic, "all natural" with themselves and their health in mind? Or are they doing it for the environment?"


Here was my response:


I don’t really agree that “the typical attitude towards agriculture is complacency”. I think a better word to describe the attitude towards agriculture is oblivion. People are no more aware of how oreo cookies are made than how brussels sprouts are grown. If we tell people “These brussels sprouts were grown on a farm in Upstate New York”, we are not providing them any information about the thought, preparation, and physical labor that went into growing them. In my opinion, people’s attitudes towards agriculture are greatly affected by consumerism. The strongest tie that most people have to the land that fruits and vegetables are grown in is the occasional bit of dirt they wash off when they buy pre-packaged lettuce in the fresh foods section of Wegmans. Yes, Wegmans will proudly advertise produce that is ‘grown locally’ (funny because they consider farms in the middle of Pennsylvania “local”), but the problem here is that people don’t understand what local is. There is a HUGE difference between picking up your CSA share each week at a local farm and buying “locally grown” peaches from somewhere in PA.

I think it is absolutely impossible to “encourage people to work towards the same goal” because we are trying to get people to work towards some giant, very broad goal that seems so far removed from peoples’ lives that it is insignificant. How can we tell people to act sustainably when they don’t even know how to grow their own vegetables? If people don’t even know what goes into producing the food that they eat, how on earth can they grasp the concept of “being sustainable”? Because people are so removed from agriculture, “being sustainable” doesn’t have any direct impacts on their lives (This gives people the mentality of “Who cares if I recycle when I can just throw my garbage away?” People don’t see where their cans go regardless of whether they recycle them or throw them away, so who cares where they go?). The whole idea of sustainability is so huge that people cannot put their hearts into “being sustainable”. People don’t look at the greater, long-term benefit for society as a whole, but instead are more focused on the instant gratification of throwing their food waste into landfills where it contributes to methane production than spending a summer turning their compost pile so they have rich, lush food for their fall garden.

When you ask people to define sustainability, they might say “Saving energy, recycling, reducing the carbon footprint”, but sustainability is not simply tackling these issues. The heart of “being sustainable” is a fundamental understanding of how our society works and how fundamental the agricultural base is to each of our lives, even if we only eat canned corn and hotdogs (like my housemate). How can we preach sustainability to people who eat neon foods (Cheetos, anyone?) that ARE NOT EVEN FOOD! In my opinion, there is a HUGE difference between food, food chemistry, and food culture. In my mind, food is what connects us as humans. We ALL need food to survive. Food in the simplest sense is the raw ingredients. People all over the world share a connection to food, but the foods they have access to differ with physical location (taking into account climate, growing season, etc.), so there is undoubtedly culture tied into raw materials too. When we start combining ingredients and processing food, it is no longer food in its pure sense; it is now chemistry, an intricate dance of molecular gastronomy that may or may not still be considered food. Before people can even start thinking about “being sustainable”, it is essential to understand what sustainability means to their lives and environment around them. Maybe if garbage dumps and compost piles were located in the centers of villages, people would start to get the picture.



Here are some other thoughts on food:

I believe that food is fundamental to human life, and what we eat serves as a life map of who we are. In order to be happy and carefree individuals, we must eat good, healthy food that is as close to the source as possible, and we must be conscious of how it is produced and where it comes from. I believe that everyone deserves the chance to eat local, organic, and sustainably produced food that has been grown with love and care, and everyone deserves the opportunity to learn more about making healthy choices in their lives. We should not need to rely on processed foods packaged in cans and boxes to sustain life, and we are all entitled the opportunity to know what we are eating, where it comes from, who produced it, and how it was grown. By exploring the world of agriculture and reaching out to individuals who are not familiar with it, we ourselves can learn and teach others about fruits and vegetables that we never knew existed, and can experiment with combining the freshest ingredients to produce the most beautiful, delicious, fresh, healthy and colorful meals.

Chocolate chip scones #1 (gluten-free, of course)

Even though I really would rather wait until I get an amazing kitchen scale to start really experimenting with more recipes, I didn’t feel like doing my reading for class tonight (shhhhh) so I decided to work on a scone recipe. At the celiac monthly dinner at Flora Rose house the other night, I got requests for gluten-free chocolate chip scones and cinnamon buns. Well ladies, here is my first attempt at the scones.

After trying to find a good online recipe for a gluten-free scone to inspire my own scone recipe and failing miserably, I decided to use one of the new books I recently purchased, Professional Baking, by Wayne Gisslen (fifth edition). I have just started looking at this book, and it is really amazing. There are step-by-step full color photos of different baking techniques, and the recipes are simple and are written in ratios. According to Professional Baking (p.226), the ingredient proportions for scones are as follows:

Bread flour 50%
Pastry flour 50%
Sugar 12.5%
Salt 1%
Baking powder 6%
Shortening and/or butter 40%
Eggs 15%
milk 45%

total 219%


The recipe told me to follow the method for making simple biscuits on page 219, and here is what it said:

Procedure-Biscuit Method
1. Scale all ingredients accurately.
2. Sift the dry ingredients together into a mixing bowl.
3. Cut in the shortening, using the paddle attachment or the pastry knife attachment; if you prefer, cut in the fat by hand, using a pastry blender or your fingers. Continue until the mixture resembles a coarse cornmeal.
4. Combine the liquid ingredients
5. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients. Mix just until the ingredients are combined and a soft dough is formed. Do not overmix.
6. Bring the dough to the bench and knead it lightly by pressing it out and folding it in half. Rotate the dough 90 degrees between folds.
7. Repeat this procedure 6 to 10 times, or for about 30 seconds. The dough should be soft and slightly elastic but not sticky. Overkneading toughens the biscuits.

The dough is now ready for makeup (p.219).


I decided to attempt to make some nice, roll-out scones, but actually ended up putting too much coconut milk into the batter and having to add 1/2 cup additional flour (I added the gluten-free flour blend #2 that I made earlier) and some extra baking soda to the recipe to even things out. The dough ended up being very sticky, so I decided to make drop scones instead of roll-out and cut-out scones. Essentially, I started with a recipe for rol-out scones but ended up with drop scones even though I didn't follow the proportions for the drop scones (recipe is also on page 219 of my book, right below the recipe for 'regular' scones). BUT THEY ARE REALLY, REALLY GOOD! Also, since proportions for gluten-free goods are different than 'regular' baked goods, it shouldn't be that bad that I really played with the ratios of ingredients.


Chocolate chip drop scones #1 (gluten-free)

½ cup gluten-free flour blend #2
¼ cup oat flour
¼ cup buckwheat flour
¼ cup potato starch flour
¼ cup tapioca flour

¼ tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
¼ cup sugar

1 stick butter, chilled and grated with a cheese grater

1 egg
½ cup coconut milk

Chocolate chips to your preference

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Sift flours (gluten-free flour blend #2 or your favorite gluten-free all-purpose flour blend, oat, buckwheat, potato starch, and tapioca) into a bowl. Add salt, baking powder, baking soda, and sugar, and then sift all dry ingredients until uniform consistency. Grate the butter with a cheese grater into the bowl of dry ingredients and then crumble everything together with your hands so the mixture resembles a coarse meal. In a separate bowl, stir together coconut milk and egg, and then pour into dry mixture. Stir everything together.

Batter will be very sticky. Drop by rounded dollops onto a cookie sheet and bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20 minutes. Yield is about 9 palm-sized scones (well, unless you burn 3 of them like I did!).

I recently purchased a bunch of amazing books related to food politics, baking, and cooking, and am waiting eagerly for them to all come in the mail! I received a few of my books already, and one of them Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, by Michael Ruhlman, has changed my outlook on gluten-free cooking and baking, and I have decided that I absolutely need to purchase a kitchen scale before I go any further with my baking endeavors. The author introduces the concept of ratios, explaining "A culinary ratio is a fixed proportion of one ingredient or ingredients relative to another. These proportions form the backbone of the craft of cooking." (p xi)

Ratios are extremely important in baking because they determine whether a recipe will yield pancakes or crepes (varying the amount of flour in the recipe), drop cookies or cut-out cookies, or a light and fluffy or dense and rich cake. A HUGE problem underlying all gluten-free cooking is figuring out correct ratios. In gluten-free baking, all sorts of different types of flours can be used as substitutes for wheat flour; in my pantry right now, I have white and brown rice flour, mesquite pod flour, soy flour, almond flour, millet flour, chesnut flour, 'sweet' white sorghum flour, garbanzo bean flour, chickpea flour, cornmeal, oat, and buckwheat flour. Each one of these 'flours' is simply the ground form of some kind of seed, pod, or nut. 'Flour' may be produced from things such as ground tree pods (i.e.,mesquite), seeds from a cereal grain (i.e., oats), or seed from a non-cereal grain (i.e., buckwheat, which, contrary to its name, does not contain gluten). The wide variety of gluten-free flours is very exciting because each flour has its own distinct flavor and unique qualities which might make it compatible in some recipes, yielding a delicious cookie, muffin, or cake, or detrimental to others (i.e., contributing to flat cookies, quick breads that don't rise, etc.).

I am still fairly new to the gluten-free baking world, but at the beginning of my baking endeavors, I couldn't really understand why it was nearly impossible to only use one type of 'flour' in a gluten-free recipe (I admit, I did attempt to bake with only brown rice flour a couple of times, and I have only found one cake recipe that actually works using only one type of flour, and this is because the flour is not doing any of the grunt work in the recipe, the eggs are really the backbone of the cake). I now know that a combination of flours is required to "replace" the wheat flour in most recipes (however, I don't regard it as "replacing", I like to think of it as creating a whole new, exciting, different recipe that compliments the flavors and textures of gluten-free products).

Here is the **one** recipe that has ever worked with only one type of gluten-free flour (slightly modified from About.com)

Gluten-free German Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:

4 ounces sweet German chocolate
6 eggs, separated
2 cups sugar, divided
1 cup butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups brown rice flour
2 tbsp corn starch
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Separate your eggs into yolks and whites; put the whites in a large bowl, and the yolks in a smaller bowl (make sure your eggs are at room temperature for maximum fluffiness when you beat them; if they aren't at room temperature, you can place them in a bowl of warm water first to bring them to room temperature).

Create a double boiler on your stove (a pot with boiling water with a bowl on top) and melt the chocolate.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, cream the butter and 1 1/2 cups of the sugar together. Add the vanilla and egg yolks. When this mixture is nice and creamy, add the chocolate, and stir until everything is a uniform consistency.

In a separate bowl, combine the following dry ingredients and sift until uniform consistency: brown rice flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cornstarch.

Add the dry mixture and the buttermilk to the butter/chocolate mixture alternately, beating until smooth. Set aside.


In another bowl, beat egg whites until frothy. Add the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar and beat until stiff but not dry.

Carefully FOLD the egg whites/sugar mixture into the rest of the ingredients. This helps make the cake nice and fluffy and delicious! If you beat the ingredients at this point, you are beating the air out of the egg whites, and defeating the purpose of beating them in the first place, so DON'T DO IT!

Pour batter into three 8-inch springform pans lined with parchment paper, and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes or until cakes are done.

Let cakes cool completely before frosting!


Anyway, back to talking about ratios, which are even more important to pay attention to in gluten-free baking because it is simply impossible to substitute "other" types of flour for wheat flour in a 1:1 volume ratio. Gluten-free flours have different textures and weights; one cup by volume of wheat flour does not necessarily weigh as much by volume as one cup of a gluten-free flour. Therefore, when you are baking, the proportions of dry ingredients to wet ingredients will not be correct. According to my ratio book, "a cup of flour can weigh anywhere between 4 and 6 ounces", but the author is only talking about wheat flour (p. xvii). When you get into the gluten-free realm, there is a much greater range of weight for a certain volume of flour (I will explore and write about these different weights as soon as I get a kitchen scale).

Ruhlman explains, "One of the facts underlying the universality of ratios is that they are based on weight rather than on volume measurements." (p.xvii) The weight of a certain volume of a given ingredient may be affected by many things such as the amount of moisture in the air (and thus the amount of the air's moisture that has been absorbed by the given ingredient), or how firmly you pack ingredients (a cup of lightly packed dark brown sugar will weigh less than a cup of dark brown sugar packed very firmly). Thus, in gluten-free baking, we must really pay attention to the weights of the ingredients that we are using. I believe that this is one of the keys to unlocking the mysteries of baking with alternate ingredients.

So, what does this mean in the context of this developing blog? This means that my homework is to go do my research on kitchen scales and find one that suits my needs, buy it, and start weighing and experimenting!

I have always loved science experiments (from testing the pH of my fish tank as a child, to the volcano with baking soda and vinegar in fourth grade, to my AP Chemistry experiments my senior year of high school), so I turn this into one big experiment. I plan to study and learn as much as I can about all of the different types of gluten-free flours out there, where they come from (what types of plants, where are they grown, etc.), how much they weigh per unit volume, how they taste, how they smell, and how they interact with other ingredients.

The challenge is to tackle all of this while still keeping up with my job (working in the bakery at Cornell- no, it isn't gluten-free), school work (I am taking seven courses plus gymnastics and three credits of independent study), running as much as I can, spinning poi, designing two outfits for the Cornell Design League fashion show this spring, practicing yoga, helping Coco with his leatherworking and learning as much as I can about leatherworking, and working on Bob's farm as soon as the weather warms up.... YIKES!

this is going to be a wonderful, wonderful journey!!!