Category: Gluten free

Week 11 (part II): Alternative Baking and Stage #2

5 Comments

The latter part of Week 11 was all about alternative baking. I also gave my class presentation on this topic on thursday morning. Preparing for the presentation is mostly what threw my blog schedule off in the last two weeks. I spent alot of time reading and researching. It is a huge topic, and a very interesting one. One we should all be aware of.

Each student has to give a 20 minute presentation on a topic in our program, and last week was my turn. I had chose alternative baking at the beginning of the term. It is basically baking to accommodate different lifestyles, diets, allergies, and eating preferences.

20140713-223506-81306096.jpg

For my presentation I served milk + cookies, but I demonstrated how to make sugar free nut milk (hazelnut almond caramel vanilla milk), and served gluten free vegan chocolate chip cookies.

Continue reading →

Morning Glory Muffins – glutenfree, egg free, vegan option

2 Comments

Well, here you have it folks, my first recipe share from school! All our recipes are in metric measurements so I converted it for you at home, weighing out the ingredients on my digital scale and then measured the imperial amounts to make this delicious Morning Glory Muffin recipe (one of my favourite muffins ever).

Fresh morning glory muffin right out of the oven – love the flavour from the blend of apple, carrot, coconut, and pineapple.

Mix batter just until moistened

Mix batter just until moistened

Continue reading →

The Night Before Pastry School

Leave a comment
Shoes, back pack, textbook, ready to roll! Pastry school here I come!

Shoes, back pack, textbook, ready to roll! Pastry school here I come!

My bag is packed and my lunch is ready! I’m supposed to check in tomorrow morning at 8am to receive my toolkit and uniform, before class starts at 9am. I am looking forward to receiving my chef jacket most, as my name will be on it! This will be what we wear everyday for the program. We have to bring a calculator, notebook, pen, ruler, and lock (for our locker).

We also have to bring our own shoes – black, non-slip, no-scuff. I found mine the other week after searching several stores and trying on many pairs of shoes (looking for the right fit and comfort). I am pleased to share that Birkenstocks won, found at The Right Shoe in Vancouver. I can’t wait to break these puppies in! Continue reading →

Elimination Diet + Vegan Carrot Cake

Leave a comment

A couple weeks ago we started an elimination diet, after reading about it on the MindBodyGreen website. This wasn’t the first time we’d read about eliminating gluten and/or dairy for health benefits, but you never really know how your body will react until you try it. Basically it’s to test for allergies.

So, for the first time in my life, I have been cutting out gluten, dairy, eggs, soy, alcohol and fast food. There is just over a week to go, then we reintroduce foods back in to our diet one at a time, and listen to your body to see how it reacts. If you don’t feel good after returning to gluten or soy, for example, then you may have a sensitivity.

If you love butter, bread, and ice cream as much as I do, then you can appreciate how much of a challenge it is. What the heck do you eat with these limitations?! A lot. Forced to think outside my food comfort zone, and try more things that I don’t normally eat, it has actually been very interesting. I am hungry more often, and never feel too full really. I find that I am eating almost every three hours and feel like I have more energy too. This was after the initial cranky-phase!

Knowing that pastry school is just around the corner I am praying I don’t have any serious affinities for any of these ingredients, but maybe that will mean I become an alternative-baker. I think I’ll be ok though.

But one of the things I miss most over this past couple of weeks is desserts. Fortunately there are a TON of gluten-free and vegan baking sites.

Oh She Glows is one of them, with an amazing carrot loaf recipe. I just tried it out last night. You would hardly know the difference, and it is chalk full of good ingredients. [CORRECTION: since this post originally was written, we’ve eaten loaf and it tasted AMAZING – moist and packed with flavour. But then we learned the hard way, that spelt flour actually does have gluten in it. My boyfriend had a reaction to the loaf – confirming our guess that he is actually allergic to gluten. So instead of using spelt flour I’m going to try the gluten-free all purpose flour by Bob’s Red Mill next time].

20140411-000857.jpg

Continue reading →