On the one hand, I would say this is not a cookbook for beginners. This is the one you’ll want to have around when you’re ready to really show off your mad skillz. Say, when all this hard work you’re doing finally pays off, and your formerly-autistic, recently-engaged child wants you to bake them a GFCF Champagne-Cointreau Chiffon wedding cake. (I’ve got that page bookmarked, myself.) But on the other hand, the whole first half of the book is an incredibly detailed breakdown of how to get started on the diet, including a whopping 34-page shopping guide. So I sure could have used it back in the early days, too. C’est la vie.

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The thing is, being a European, Chef Braux gives all the ingredients by weight. Fortunately, I speak French-measurements (as opposed to actual French, which I definitely do not speak,) and have translated for you here. Start with 2 cans of Thai Kitchen coconut milk. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

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I do actually own a little kitchen scale, for occasions such as this. All the recipes in this cookbook are in American ounces, but if you’re going to bother getting a scale, it’s important to choose one that can convert to metric (grams) as well. The truth is, weight is often a better way to do things, especially when baking. First off, you can fit up to 50% more or less flour into a “cup,” depending on how much you pack it down; what’s more, different flours have different densities, so if you substitute one GF flour for another you’ll end up with a completely different result — unless you use the same number of ounces, rather than the same size. But for things like sugar… meh. The recipe called for 12 ounces…

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…which ended up being exactly 2 cups of sugar. Go figure.

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Next, we’re going to mix in some shredded coconut. The more familiar bags of wet coconut that you find in the baking aisle should be gluten-free, but they’re also packed with preservatives. I prefer this stuff, but whatever floats your boat.

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Important lesson here: the recipe called for 4 ounces of coconut, or 1/3 the weight of the sugar. But because coconut is so much lighter, this ended up being a little over 1 cup of shredded coconut, or more than half as much quantity as the sugar. You definitely can’t switch back and forth between weight and size on an even ratio.

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Anyway, dump your coconut into your bowl, and add 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

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Also mix in 2 teaspoons of Adam’s Extract vanilla. Vanilla is one of those sneaky things that can often contain gluten, but Adam’s Extract is gluten-free in both liquid and powder form.

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Scramble six eggs and blend them thoroughly into your custard batter, making sure there are no random yellow streaks left floating around in there.

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Now, a proper gourmet chef would use ramekins to cook their individual servings of custard. But if I have taught you anything, it is that I am not a gourmet chef, and most of the time I’m not even proper. So instead I am using these silicone baking cups, which happen to be heart-shaped for added cuteness. They’re great for muffins and jello too, by the way.

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Set them inside a large baking dish with sides, and fill each cup with batter.

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Then carefully pour water into the baking dish, until it comes halfway up the sides of the custard cups. This will ensure an even temperature around your delicate little desserts. Pop them in a 350 degree oven for about 30-40 minutes, until the tops feel somewhat firm and the center is no longer jiggly. The larger your baking cups, the longer it will take to cook.

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While that’s cooking, we’re going to make a delicious fruit sauce to go on top, which I’m told is a coulis in French. The recipe suggested raspberries, but I didn’t have any, so strawberries it shall be. Thaw about 1/2 cup of whatever fruit you want for one minute in the microwave (or use fresh fruit, and use the extra minute to feel smug about it.)

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Then add 1/4 cup powdered sugar. Watch your ingredients carefully here! Sugar doesn’t actually come in “powder” form, instead they take cane juice and add it to an existing powder base. Usually it’s corn starch, but it can often include regular flour as well, so double check. The best ones will use tapioca starch instead.

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Add 1/4 teaspoon of lemon juice to the mixture…

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And blend away! It’s hard to do such a small quantity in a regular blender, but a food processor or immersion blender will get the job done.

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When your coconut custards come out of the oven, refrigerate them until you’re ready to serve, at least an hour or two. Drizzle some of your strawberry coulis on top, and revel in your gourmet skills. Heck, I might even buy myself a tall white hat.

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Bon Appetit!

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Coconut Custard with Strawberry Sauce

2 cans Thai Kitchen coconut milk
2 cups sugar
1 cup shredded coconut
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
6 eggs

1/2 cup strawberries
1/4 cup GF powdered sugar
1/4 tsp lemon juice

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Start with one container of coconut yogurt (that’s 2/3 cup if you like to make your own.) I’m doing this in a mixing cup with my immersion blender, but you could just as easily do it in a regular blender.

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Add one Tablespoon of lemon juice.

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Now add half of a small avocado. You know how to cut open an avocado, right? Just  slide the knife all the way around in a circle, then pry the two halves apart. Whack the knife into the pit (it makes a very satisfying thok sound,) and pull it out. You can use the other half for a sandwich, salad, or any number of things (including doubling this recipe,) or you can press the exposed side into plastic wrap or foil to seal the air out, and it will keep in the fridge for a few days until you decide.

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Score the avocado in both directions all the way down to the peel, but not through it. Then flip the whole thing inside out, and all your avocado pieces will fall right off, perfectly neat and formed.

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Which is not strictly necessary in this case, since we’re going to blend it all up anyway, but it’s nice to know, if you’re ever trying to fan out some pretty avocado slices on a fancy plate somewhere.

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Finally, add one Tablespoon of water. This will still leave it moderately thick; feel free to adjust the amount of water up or down to get the consistency you’d prefer.

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This, for example, is the perfect consistency for dipping carrot sticks, which is my personal favorite use for this tangy delight. But you may have noticed that my quantity mysteriously doubled here. You may also recall that I mentioned this sauce could be used, among other things, for casseroles. That, my friends, is what we in the business refer to as foreshadowing. Stay tuned.

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Happy Eating!

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Avocado Cream Sauce

2/3 cup coconut yogurt
1 TBS lemon juice
1/2 of a small avocado
1 TBS water

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Of course my version is GFCF. (That’s kind of my thing. Did you know that? Sorry if it was too subtle.) So we start with a package of Applegate Farms hot dogs. They also make a decent turkey hot dog if you happen to prefer that.

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Slice the hot dog into bite-sized chunks, and jab half-sticks of uncooked gluten-free spaghetti into each piece. I’m actually using this cool new King Soba pasta my store started carrying, made out of sweet potato and buckwheat. Now before you go into palpitations, remember that buckwheat is not actually wheat. It’s a completely different plant, contains no gluten, and is one of the better GF flours to work with, in my opinion. It just has a stupidly inaccurate name, that’s all.

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Speaking of inaccurate, octopuses might not be the best name for these, since most of them end up having more than eight legs. You can call them jellyfish if your anal-retentive kid is gonna call you on it. When they’re still uncooked like this, I actally think they look like little Sputniks (which makes sense, because they’re Russian, remember?)

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Toss them into boiling water and cook according to your pasta’s package directions.

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And voila, we have noodly appendages! Do I think it looks appetizing myself? Well no, not really. But I don’t have a Y chromosome. Little boys think this stuff is hysterical, and they eat it right up. Literally.

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Happy Eating!

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You can make your own! Seriously. It’s way easy, and costs about 1/3 as much.

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This isn’t a recipe so much as it is a process, which is to say, having the right kitchen equipment is key, including a yogurt maker. But before we get to that point, you’ll need a double-boiler. (If you’ve never heard of one, that’s a special kind of pot that is actually two pots, one nestled inside the other. You put water in the bottom pot, and this allows you to warm things in the top pot extremely evenly and carefully without scorching. It’s generally used for melting chocolate and other delicate things like that.)

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Anyway, pour in two cans of coconut milk, turn on the heat, and watch the temperature with a thermometer until it gets to exactly 180 degrees. Don’t forget to stir occasionally so you’re getting an accurate reading.

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Meanwhile, get out your yogurt starter. This is the polite name given to the living bacterial critters that make yogurt what it is, also known as probiotics. But be careful! Anything that is officially sold as “yogurt starter” almost certainly has dairy in it. If your kid already takes a good probiotic supplement (and they probably should be,) you can just open up one of those capsules and use it. Or if they don’t, and you’re not sure where to start, Culturelle is a good brand that is gluten- and dairy-free, and comes in individual packets you can use for each batch of yogurt.

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Just as the temperature is right at 180, pull the top pot off of the double-boiler. You just want to graze that upper limit; any higher and it might start boiling, which we don’t want. The only reason we’re heating it up at all is not to cook it, but to sterilize it. Making yogurt involves creating an ideal environment for bacteria to grow, so we have to make sure that there are absolutely no bad bacteria hanging out anywhere near our coconut milk before we start.

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Now it’s sterile, which is great, but it’s still so hot it would kill our good bacteria too if we put them in there, which is not so great. So we have to let it cool down again, to 110 degrees, which happens to be the perfect temperature for making little buggies happy. (The same goes for when we’re baking bread with live yeast, you may recall.) You could just set the pot aside and be very patient, or you could be like me and dip the pot in a large bowl of water to cool it down faster.

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Once you’re back down to 110 degrees, scoop a small amount out of the pot and mix it with your probiotics. Make sure all the powder dissolves thoroughly.

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Then mix the dissolved concoction back into the pot.

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Pour the whole thing into your yogurt maker’s inner container…

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Then close up the outer container around it and let it hang out on your counter for 24 hours. Some instructions might tell you that you only need a few hours, but in my experience that just doesn’t give the bacteria enough time to flourish unless you’re using multiple doses of probiotics. Ideally, when you open that container up, it should be noticeably thicker than it started, and that’s how you’ll know the probiotics have really multiplied. If it’s still completely runny, you may need to use a double-dose of your probiotic, or you may have accidentally killed it at some point, perhaps by adding the bacteria in while the milk was still too hot, or by using a questionable brand of probiotics that was mostly dead to begin with.

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But even the heartiest of probiotic colonies probably aren’t going to result in the kind of yogurt thickness you’re used to buying at the store. To achieve this, you have to strain the yogurt, also known as dripping it. Your yogurt maker should come with a bag of cheesecloth (so named because it’s what you use to make cheese!) Set the bag inside a large bowl, pour the yogurt in, and then lift the bag and hang it by the strings, allowing the clear liquid to drip out.

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I usually tie mine to the microwave door handle. If we were making yogurt out of milk, that liquid would be what’s known as whey, but as it is, it’s just coconut water.

How long you let it drip depends on how thick you want it; at some point enough liquid will come out that you’ll move beyond yogurt into the consistency of cream cheese, which may even be something you want to try to make sometime. I’ve never been able to get it anywhere near a truly firm, grate-able cheese consistency, but I suppose it might be possible if you let it sit long enough. Some people also prefer to drip it in the refrigerator rather than out at room temperature, but my refrigerator doesn’t have nearly enough space for that.

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Ultimately, you’ll have to turn the bag inside out and do a fair bit of scraping to get the yogurt into a storage container. Make sure you make a big mess while you’re doing that. It’s what I would do.

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And I figure, if I’m going to all this work just to have yogurt in the house again, I deserve to be downright decadent in enjoying it. That right there is a banana, topped with coconut yogurt, drizzled with honey. I could eat that for breakfast every single day, y’all.

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Happy Eating!

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Homemade Coconut Yogurt

2 cans coconut milk
1 packet/dose of GFCF probiotics, or more as necessary
banana (or other fruit as desired)
honey (not optional!)

Making your own jello — er, excuse me, your own flavored gelatin — is so incredibly easy, y’all. Also, it’s cheaper. Oh, and healthier, too. Did you know gelatin is good for digestion? Jell-O used to advertise that on their products back in the 50s, but then their devious marketing guys figured out they could sell more if they promoted it as fun for kids! instead. No offense to Bill Cosby, I’m sure he’s not devious.

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Most people don’t even know you can buy this stuff, but every grocery store will have it in the baking aisle. It’s just plain gelatin. Basically, it’s a box of Jell-O, but without the chemicals, dyes, and artificial sugars. Well, actually it’s like four boxes, since it comes with four envelopes. And yet it costs less. Crazy, huh?

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And here I have a bottle of Not Artificial Flavoring. Look how sneaky I am, tricking my kids into eating vegetables yet again! That’s another advantage of making it yourself, you can put in whatever blend of juices that you want. And every drop of real juice you put in is a whole drop more than that Jell-O box would have had. Just because they put a picture of a cherry on the box doesn’t mean there’s a single molecule of actual cherries in there.

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Pour one cup of your juice into a decent-sized bowl, and sprinkle one packet of gelatin all over the surface. Let it sit there for a minute. Meanwhile, heat another cup of plain water in the microwave. About one minute ought to get it to boiling, conveniently enough.

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Notice that I’m holding the glass with an oven mitt, because it does contain boiling water, after all. So be careful. This is exactly what you’d be doing with a box of Jell-O, by the way: put the packet in the cold liquid, then pour in the boiling liquid. You are expending zero extra effort by making your own, and getting a whole ton of benefits.

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Now, if you’re making your gelatin with a fruit juice, there’s no need for extra sweetener. But if, like me, you’re secretly foisting purple vegetable juices upon your kids, you may want to add a Tablespoon or two of honey just to make it convincingly dessert-like.

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Once everything is thoroughly stirred together, just pour the whole bowl into a 9×9 glass baking dish. I’m proud to say I do not now, nor have I ever owned a jello mold — but if you do, hey, go for it!

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Place it in the fridge for 3 hours, and voila! If you want, you can go all crazy with fun cookie cutter shapes, or you can just cut the whole thing into cubes like boring old me.

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This recipe actually makes a pretty firm gelatin, because I like to pop several of these cubes into my kids’ lunchboxes, and I don’t want them reduced to slush by the time they’re ready to eat. If you want a softer result, just add another 1/2 cup of juice to the recipe, or even a full cup if you’ve misplaced your dentures, or had your wisdom teeth pulled recently. Of course, you could also pour them directly into tiny serving cups before chilling, so they’d be ready to throw in a backpack or purse at a moment’s notice.

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Happy Eating!

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Non-Branded Gelatin Dessert

1 envelope plain Knox gelatin
1 cup boiling water
1-2 cups fruit or vegetable juice
1-2 Tbs honey, if desired

Let’s face it. There are a lot of gluten-free substitutes out there that individuals who have been eating gluten-free for awhile will insist, “Oh, it tastes just like the real thing, you can’t even tell the difference!” We all know they’re delusional, plain and simple. They’ve forgotten what the originals tasted like. A lot of gluten-free stuff tastes good in its own right, so that’s fine — but don’t give me applesauce and try to convince me it tastes just like mashed potatoes, you know? There’s nothing wrong with applesauce tasting like applesauce.

The point is, I would read about these fabled kale chips, and all I could do was shake my head in pity at these pathetic people who had somehow convinced themselves that cooked lettuce could taste like a chip. How badly must they want to eat chips, I thought, to be able to pretend this stuff tastes good at all, let alone like anything resembling a chip?

Let me cut to the chase, here: I was wrong. Boy, was I ever wrong. These things are completely amazing. They shatter in your mouth, like a wafer-thin potato chip. They don’t quite taste like potato chips, but they definitely don’t taste like a leaf. The predominant flavor is the salt, just like with a potato chip. But of course what really matters is the kid-test. And I am here to tell you, Girl Scout’s honor, my kids have been wolfing these down since the first day I made them. I had to sneak-force the first bite into the GFCFBoy’s mouth, that’s the kind of resistance he was putting up… and after the look of surprise wore off, he started grabbing them straight off the pan.

Seriously, y’all. I’m not making it up. My two children under the age of four are eating fistfuls of baked kale. It’s insane.

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It’s important to note this can only be done with kale, because it has such a naturally dry, dense leaf. You absolutely cannot make this with spinach, for example, because it will just wilt. So first, wash your kale leaves, making sure to get the middle of the stem where the dirt tends to hide.

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Next, run your knife along each side of the main stem to remove it. We just want the leafy bits.

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Crosscut them into chip-size pieces. You could also tear them with your hands, precision isn’t really important here.

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Now, this is important: after you cut all your pieces, let them sit until the leaves are completely dry again. You’ll know they’re ready when that ashy-white color has come back. You could speed it along with a towel or a salad spinner or something, but the best thing to do is just give it time to fully evaporate. It’s critical that these things be as dry as possible in order to cook right. Then, and only then, pour about 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil into the bowl, and work it all around with your hands.

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And I mean really work it. You want every square millimeter covered with oil. I actually find that it’s kind of a waste of time to do it in the bowl, because these curly leaves always manage to hide their inner surfaces. Instead I work it around the bowl for maybe 30 seconds so my hands are nice and oily, then I rub each leaf flat between my palms as I lay them out on the baking sheet. It’s messy, but it goes fast.

So. Critical step number one is they must be totally dry when you start. Critical step number two is they must be saturated with oil over every membrane. And critical step number three is: don’t crowd the pan. You want lots of shiny foil showing up between the leaves. I spread one head of kale over at least two large baking sheets.

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Put them in a 350 degree oven for 12-15 minutes. They’re done when the leaves are dark and stiff, but not yet brown. You can literally just stick your hand in the oven and brush it very lightly across the tops — if they feel stiff like autumn leaves, they’re ready! But if they’re brown like autumn leaves, they’re burnt, and don’t even try tasting them, because they will be nasty. Better to pull them out too early than too late, trust me.

UPDATE: I have since settled upon a much more effective cooking method, if you happen to have a convection oven (this sometimes masquerades as a “speed bake” button on the front panel.) Basically the convection function turns on a fan inside the oven, which dries out the air — generally resulting in things cooking faster, but the drying aspect is the key here. Cook the kale chips at 250 degrees, with the convection fan on, for 25-30 minutes, stirring once. They will come out perfectly even, and you will never have to worry about burning them even a little.

Sprinkle them liberally with salt, and possibly other seasonings if you’re feeling adventurous. Garlic powder is a popular choice, and some kale chip mavens even go for things like paprika or dill. I like just plain old salt, though. You must not salt them before they go in the oven, though, only after, because otherwise the salt will drastically shorten the cooking time (by drawing the moisture out faster) and it will be almost impossible to catch them in that narrow window between cooked and burnt.

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See how they’re shiny, but dry? It’s almost like they’ve been fried in the olive oil. They’ll keep in an airtight container at room temperature for more than a week. I’d like to tell you exactly how much more, but I can’t, because I swear to you, my kids keep eating all of them! And these are not children who appreciate anything of a leafy variety, not at all. I know exactly how skeptical you’re feeling right now, but give kale chips a chance. I’m so glad I finally did.

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Happy Eating!

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Kale Chips

1 bunch of kale
2-3 Tbs olive oil
salt

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The key ingredient here is the rice paper that the spring rolls are wrapped in. My grocery store carries it in the ethnic food aisle, but you may have to go to an Asian market to get it, it just depends. The ingredients should literally be nothing but rice and tapioca starch.

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My shrimp are looking pretty pathetic here, to be honest. They were frozen. They look better by the time they’re cooked, I promise. You’ll want to boil three shrimp for every spring roll you plan to make. They should only need maybe 7-8 minutes to cook, even if you start from frozen.

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The bulk of the spring roll is going to be filled with these tiny white noodles called vermicelli, or cellophane noodles. Often they are made of rice, but sometimes they are made of mung bean, as is the case here. Again, any Asian market will have them.

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Mine come conveniently clumped into single-servings, which will fill two spring rolls each. But if yours are in a big block, just break off what you need. Boil them for about 5-7 minutes, just until the noodles are soft and slippery, then you can turn the heat off and let them hang out in the water while you assemble the spring rolls.

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Fill a huge bowl with warm water. Dip one sheet of rice paper carefully under the water, and hold it there for 30 seconds.

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See? Soggy and floppy! I mean, ah, soft and pliable. Yeah.

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Traditionally, shredded cabbage is the main vegetable of choice in spring rolls. But I’m kind of partial to this random product I found. It’s basically just shredded broccoli stalks. Plus, it’s got this weird carrot-and-broccoli superhero lady on the bag, so that’s something else in its favor. I think. Anyway, just pick something green and slightly crunchy, whatever floats your boat.

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It’s hard to see, but my wet rice paper is laying on the cutting board, and the filling is about two inches from the bottom edge. Lay three shrimp in a line, then top with your shredded cabbage (or broccoli shreds, like me.) I also added some shredded carrots and a thin slice of yellow bell pepper. Really, the fillings are up to you. We’ve filled some with cooked rice and leftover pulled pork before, and it turned out great. Anything you can put in a burrito, you can put in a rice paper wrapper.

That herb I’m topping it off with is cilantro, by the way, also known as coriander. If you hate cilantro (and many people do,) another traditional herb you could substitute is mint.

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By now your noodles will be a tangled mess inside your pot. Take a fork, and twist up a hefty amount like spaghetti, so that the dangling column is about an inch thick. Then just take a pair of kitchen scissors and snip it right off. Instant spring roll size!

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Fold the sides of your rice paper inward…

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Then roll tightly from the bottom upward, making sure the top flap gets a nice wet seal against the rest of the roll. If you let the rolls sit for awhile before serving, the rice paper will have a chance to dry out just a little bit, which will reduce the chances of it tearing. Assuming you can stand to wait that long. These hold up great in lunchboxes, by the way.

And of course, don’t forget the peanut sauce.

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Happy Eating!

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Spring Rolls

8 rice paper rounds
24 small shrimp
shredded cabbage or broccoli
shredded carrots
cilantro
Vermicelli noodles (rice or mung bean)

You’d think boiling the eggs would be a no-brainer, but you’ve got to do it right or they won’t peel cleanly. Start with 18 eggs in a pot of cold water, and turn the heat to high. Once the water reaches a rolling boil (that is, giant bubbles splashing everywhere, not tiny little simmery things,) then start your timer for 15 minutes.

You’re destined to lose a few eggs during the boiling process, like this one that exploded spectacularly underwater right before my eyes. But we can still use the yolk in the filling mixture, and the white can be set aside for taste-testing purposes. I can always find at least a couple that are just not pretty enough to go on the plate, and I have no choice but to eat them right then and there.

Once you’ve drained the pot, set it in the sink and refill it with cold water, then plunge the eggs back in. This will cause the insides to shrink back from the shell, and they will come out nice and smooth when you peel them.

Then cut all those little suckers in half lengthwise…

And drop the yolks into a large mixing bowl. If they’re cooked right, you should be able to just give the egg a little squeeze and it will pop right out.

Mash them up with a fork until you’ve gotten all the large lumps out.

Okay, sure, there can be a few lumps left. We’ll continue to work on those as we add the wet ingredients. First, mix in 3 Tablespoons of French’s yellow mustard. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas at any time. Always check your labels!]

Then add 2 Tablespoons of pickle relish. Most major brands are gluten free, but sadly enough some aren’t, so double check yours. It’s up to you whether you go for sweet or dill relish — generally I would say dill, but this time I’m using a spicy-sweet specialty brand called Wickles. I could eat that stuff with a spoon, I tell you.

Then add 1 Tablespoon of Lea & Perrin’s worcestershire sauce (make sure you use the original flavor, as their lighter “chicken” worcestershire sauce is not dairy-free.)

And 1/4 teaspoon of McCormick’s celery salt.

Finally, add in 2/3 cup of Hellman’s mayonnaise. As a relatively bland ingredient, the mayonnaise’s role is entirely for smoothing out the texture. So to that end, you don’t want to put in too much, or your filling will get runny, and then the only way to fix it will be to boil more eggs and harvest the extra yolks. I personally like to go cautiously and start with 1/2 cup of mayo, and add in more as necessary, but I freely admit that I take my deviled eggs very seriously.

Swipe about a Tablespoon of filling into each egg half with a spoon, smoothing the top a little so it’s at least moderately attractive. If you want to get really fancy, you can scrape the filling into an icing bag and squirt it in all decoratively. But an upside-down spoon’s good enough for me.

Finally, sprinkle the tops with paprika. Such a pretty spice.

And you’re ready to go! This is an especially nice hors d’oeuvre if you’re trying to cook a GFCF holiday meal for extended family members who aren’t used to eating on strange diets, because other than some judicious brand selection on your part, the ingredients are the same as you would find in a traditional recipe. Heck, with the right collection of recipes, your family might even get through the whole meal without realizing it was restricted to begin with.

Happy Eating!

The GFCF Lady’s Deviled Eggs

18 eggs
3 TBS French’s yellow mustard
2 TBS Wickles relish
1 TBS Lea & Perrin’s worcestershire
1/4 tsp McCormick celery salt
2/3 cup Hellman’s mayonnaise

Anyway, that programmer who wanted to be a personal trainer was a bit of a health nut, as you can imagine. He always brought his lunch from home and drank these nasty-looking concoctions in a big insulated thermos. One day I joked about how I could easily be as muscular as he was, if only I drank a protein shake every day like he did. He informed me that it wasn’t a protein shake, it was just a plain old smoothie. (He preferred his protein in bar form, apparently, but that’s beside the point.) I accused him of being a liar (very politely, of course,) since the number one rule of smoothies in my world is they have to taste good, and I could only assume that his tasted like it looked–which is to say, gross.

“Au contraire!” he cried. Actually, I think he just said, “No, seriously, taste it.” And he was right! It tasted just like a regular smoothie. Fruity and frothy and delicious. “It’s only ugly because I put greens in it, but you can’t taste them at all.”

Greens, huh? Huh. Shortly after that, he left to embark on his personal training career, and I went to go have a baby. Haven’t heard from him since. But his weird greens-in-smoothies notion stuck with me, and I ended up trying to make my own during those days when I desperately needed healthy stuff I could eat with one hand while nursing a baby.

I failed miserably. What came out of my blender was nothing but a smoothie with coarsely chopped salad in it, no matter how hard I tried. I abandoned the idea and moved on with my life.

But then! A reader recently alerted me to another awesome GFCF cooking blog called Whole Life Nutrition. One of her signature items is the “green smoothie,” which as you may have guessed is just a smoothie with greens in it like my old coworker used to make. And while reading her writeup about them, I realized the key mistake I’d made with my misguided attempts years ago.

See, a regular blender just can’t cut it, so to speak. What you need is an immersion blender. There is actually a commercial-grade blender out there that can get the job done, but it’s a little pricey. I’ll shell out $180 for a professional waffle-maker, but a $400 blender crosses the line for me. Plus, an immersion blender is great for soups too.

This one came with a handy little blending cup, but any tallish container will work. I cram mine full of as many greens as I can fit, and then add about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of juice.

The less juice you can manage to use, the smoother it will blend. See how there’s no choppy leaves left, only green puree? Immersion blender, baby.

Use whatever fruit you want for your main smoothie ingredients. I’m a fan of the classics, like strawberry-banana. If you’re going to freeze your own bananas, by the way, make sure you peel them first. Frozen peel does not come off easily, and peeled bananas won’t go brown in the freezer.

A cup of frozen strawberries, and we’re ready to…

Pour in our green concoction! Doesn’t that look appetizing? No? Oh, but it will taste wonderful, I promise you. My computer-programmer-turned-personal-trainer friend would never lie to you.

Sure, it’s not so pretty after it’s all blended together. Red strawberries + green lettuce = yucky brown. But there are a few things you can do to get your kids over the visual hump. First, you can put it in a plastic cup with a lid and a straw, or even one of those opaque water bottles. Or, you can use a dark fruit like blueberry or blackberry, and that will mostly overwhelm the green.

Or finally, you can embrace the green. Mine had some red leaf lettuce mixed in, so my green was already a little muted. But a blend of pure romaine, or arugula for example, will give you a really vibrant green color. Pair that with only very pale smoothie ingredients, like bananas, apples, pears, green grapes, pineapple, or coconut milk yogurt, and your final product will be so green that it enters the realm of fun. Call it a Ghost Slime smoothie for Halloween, or a Leprechaun Smoothie for St. Patrick’s Day. Once they taste it, it’s in the bag, because I’m telling you, you absolutely cannot taste the veggies one bit.

Happy Eating!

Sneaky Smoothies

1-2 cups packed greens
3/4 cup fruit juice or coconut milk yogurt
1-2 cups frozen fruit

Imagine how shocked I was to discover that I actually like these gluten-free muffins! I mean, I really like them–I sneak them between meals when the kids aren’t looking, which is the highest compliment I can pay a food.

This may have something to do with it: the recipe starts with 1 cup of sugar. (Actually I know for a fact the sugar plays a big role in my appreciation, because the first time I attempted this recipe I was dumb and forgot the sugar, and they came out inedible. Fortunately I realized my mistake before I threw out the recipe altogether.)

Then mix in 1 cup of applesauce. Applesauce is one of those things that any sane person would want to assume is gluten-free, but as you’ve probably figured out by now, food manufacturers are anything but sane. Check your labels and make sure it’s got nothing but apples in it.

Next, mix up this neato slurry of 4 Tablespoons of potato starch in 2 Tablespoons of water. The result will be this kind of gooey consistency that is a liquid if you are gentle but resists if you try to move it too fast. You may have even played with something like this in school when you were a kid like I did. Anyway, this is actually a basic egg substitute, so if you’d rather toss in two beaten eggs instead, you could do that too. But the potato starch mixture is good for those with egg allergies or concerned about cholesterol.

Then add 1/3 cup canola oil…

And 1/2 teaspoon each of cinnamon and ground cloves.

Also, 1/2 teaspoon each of gluten-free baking powder, and baking soda.

Now, mix in 1 1/4 cups of gluten-free flour. Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose Blend is usually my go-to choice, but in this case that’s actually amaranth flour up there. I’ve made it with several different types, and they all come out good, so use whatever you want.

Drop the batter by spoonfuls into muffin cups. I like making mini-muffins, because they make better serving sizes. You can have 2 or 3 at breakfast, or toss just one in a lunchbox… or snack on however many you want between meals, for example. They aren’t going to rise much, so fill them about 3/4 full. I usually end up with about a tray and a half’s worth of these mini-muffin size.

I also smooth out the tops with a wet finger. It just makes them look better, and appearance is important when you’re trying to get a kid to try something new. It might look tedious, but it goes really quickly if you just put a cup of water right next to the tray. Dip, dab-dab-dab, dip, dab-dab-dab… takes 30 seconds. Of course ugly muffins still taste good, too.

Bake at 400 degrees for 22 minutes. If you’re making larger muffins, you’ll need to extend the baking time a bit. They’ll be done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, just like everything else. Let them cool as long as possible before digging in, because they’re so moist the middles stay hot for a surprisingly long time. They’ll store for several days in a tupperware, or you can go so far as to freeze them for future use.

Also, unless you’re trying to take a picture of them, don’t bother with the kind of restraint I’m showing here. Pop them in your mouth all in one bite. It’s the best way, I promise you.

Happy Eating!

Applesauce Muffins

1 cup sugar
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
4 TBS potato starch in 2 TBS water
       (OR 2 eggs)
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp GF baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 cups GF flour