Just Say 'NO!' to Oats

I've read about all the confusion and differing opinions on oats and Celiac Disease, and deep down inside I had hoped that I was one of those "oat ables."  I even bought a bag of GF oats and GF oat flour when I was back in Canada.  After reading through an old recipe book and after days of dreaming of crispy-edged coconut oatmeal cookies, I made a large, slightly altered GF batch of golden cookies.  They look good, only falling apart a little (*sigh*), and they taste great.  I even had one for breakfast, since oatmeal is often the breakfast of choice for many.  That was a mistake.  It was a good thing to do in that I learned that oats are NOT my friend, but a bad thing to do on an empty stomach.  Twenty-four hours from their birth, I have already verbally given away the oats to another Celiac in the area (yeah!  Two of us around here now) and the cookies will go into the rest of my family's lunches.  Another *sigh*.

GF Rootbeer

Eureka!  Not only did I find a gluten-free rootbeer, I found one that tastes JUST like the rootbeer my Grandpa Jim used to make.  He'd make a batch every few years, bottle it into green plastic pop bottles, and  store it in the basement of his summer cabin at the lake.  This was no ordinary cabin...not only was it built by hand in the '50s, but it was built against a hill.  The end result for a child growing up in the '80s was a dank, musty-smelling, drippy basement that you entered under the back porch and literally walked partially into a hill.  The cement breathed cool and it was actually a perfect place to stand and cool down on a hot summer's day.  That's where Grandpa Jim stored his rootbeer, and it was a treasure trove.

Last weekend I was shopping at a western-type grocery store, and I found Virgil's Micro-Brewed Rootbeer.   I was intrigued just because it towered above the other sodas in a tall, brown, glass bottle.  I was thrilled when I read the ingredients (all natural) and they ended with "gluten free."  Every day I've thought about opening the bottle and enjoying it, but I had to savour the idea for a while.  Tonight was spaghetti night, with GF rounds of french bread and a tasty green salad.  Tonight was the night.  Although it says 'serve chilled (without ice),' I added a few ice cubes and it was lovely.

Living in Indonesia can be bittersweet, because it's possible that I will go back to the same store in a few weeks and this rootbeer may no longer be on the shelves.  However, if it is, I may just have to buy a few bottles to tuck away for other Friday Night Spaghetti Nights:)

GF Yellow Cake for Strawberry Shortcake

I love the internet for finding incredible recipes.  Usually I find a recipe, check out the comments, and then alter the recipe to my available ingredients.  A few family favourites are chocolate mousse made from tofu, and black bean brownies (google this and you get a variety of recipes).  The  newest in our house is a yellow cake that I found at allrecipes.com.  It's a lot like the white cake that my mom used to make for strawberry shortcake, with the perfect amount of bubbles for soaking up the strawberry juices and the right density to make it taste homemade.  This recipe calls for 2/3 cups of mayonnaise, and she had a great white cake recipe like that, too.  Maybe this is just a gluten-free version of the same.  

Thankfully, this is a cake I can make if I run out of my imported flours, because it calls for white rice flour and tapioca flour, 2 kinds that can easily be found on grocery store shelves for quite cheap here.  I did, however, add a bit of 'tropical' flour that made this yellow cake rather greeny-purple.  A strange combination, but it gives it a spice cake look.  The flour was purple sweet potato flour, and it is a very light flour that I find gives cakes a really nice lift.  Probably the 3 teaspoons of baking powder and 1 1/2 teaspoons of guar gum helped as well.

Today I used this cake as the base for a strawberry shortcake birthday cake, and it was a hit.  I love it when people say "is this gluten free???"  I mixed strawberries with a hand blender, mixed them to my already-mixed white icing (butter, icing powder, vanilla, milk), and then used this for layering the cake.  The outside topping was whipped cream and sliced fresh strawberries.  Yum!  This cake is moist enough that it stays intact when cut, which I find is unusual for most GF cake recipes.

A few years ago a friend and I decided that whenever we make things for events outside of our family, it's in our best interest to leave a few of the goodies behind for our loved ones (it only makes sense!), so I only used 3 of the 4 layers cut from the original 2 round cakes.  I cut the 4th layer in half and made half a cake that we'll eat tonight for dessert.    With the 4th layer this would be a really high layered cake, but it would be kind of neat to try!