Gluten-Free Pear Chocolate Muffins with Maple or Chocolate Mascarpone Icing

So I know this post was supposed to be about peanuts and squirrels and life and was actually meant to go up on Valentine's Day, but stuff happens (like a broken in two places toe), so it will be the next post. Instead, I have to tell you about some gluten-free chocolate muffins I made a while back; I meant to post these before now because I wanted Béa of La Tartine Gourmande to see what she'd started in this house, and the Monthly Mingle deadline is today too so bombs away.

Before I say anything else, let me state a couple of things: 1) No I'm not turning into a gluten-free baker, if there's anything I love in life besides my family, it's gluten; I just haven't posted many gluten-free recipes here but 2) I do have gluten-intolerant friends and friends with food allergies (this is for you Chlōe) so I do like to keep some recipes on hand to bake for them when I need to, plus if the flavor and texture you're trying to recreate is not incredibly complex, it's not difficult to substitute in gluten-free flours without noticing the difference.

Anyway, we're constantly in boxes here, packing, unpacking, packing, unpacking; so if you can believe it, I found a 1Kg bar of Varhona chocolate in one of the boxes a few weeks ago which I had purchased at La Grande Epicerie in Paris back when I was pregnant, and though it hadn't actually gotten old even though the use by date was October 2009, I felt I owed it to our bellies and general well-being to use it as quickly as possible; also, it's cold which everyone knows is perfect chocolate weather. You will be seeing more results of this massive chocolate usage in forthcoming posts, but let's stick to the muffins for now.

keep reading >>

Apple and Olive Oil Cake with Maple Icing & the Winner of the Ottolenghi Cookbook

My apologies for posting this a little late, it's been very exciting and tiring at the same time around here between Baby Saffron saying her first words (Dada and Yaya -the best way she can say her own name right now) and her first two teeth imminently about to burst through, resulting in rather rough patches.

The days are distinctly colder now, it's time to cover up, the fall colors are out and putting on their best show (well not necessarily here but I know in a lot of other places they are) and it's time to start eating comfort foods and waging war on our waistlines, but such sweet war it is. While I love going on a picnic on a hot summer day, wearing a sundress and maybe, if we are so lucky, having some place to swim after we eat, I really do prefer early fall days when the sun still beats strongly enough to overcome the crisp, somewhat biting air but the atmosphere has already been cleansed of the polluted haze left behind by the unblinking heat of summer.
You know those days, right after the rain, when the sky is an unfaltering deep blue, the breeze nips gently at your face and hands and the air smells fresh.

On such days, it is possible to feel invincible as a child does when he is let out of school and can run free through the park with his scooter, his nanny running wildly after him.

On such days, it is possible to be brought to tears by some of the comments you left me to be eligible for the giveaway in the last post. This is where I have to tell you that I want to give each one of you an Ottolenghi Cookbook so that no one is left out, particularly when you gave me such precious or delicate gifts. Alas, that cannot be, but I want you all to know that in my head I'm giving you each a book. The actual book will travel to Mumbai (Bombay), India to Shaheen of Purple Foodie. Congratulations Shaheen, please send me your address so I can dispatch it to you! I hope you will let me know how you like it when you've tried some of the recipes in there.

In the giveaway post, I promised to give you the recipe for Ottolenghi's apple and olive oil cake with maple icing because it is sinfully good for such a hearty cake, particularly the icing. It is the perfect cake to take with you on a picnic to a nearby park on a gorgeous fall day, or to simply bake to have with tea or coffee on a grey, rainy day best spent at home. I like to think it's the sort of cake that my grandmother would have baked for me as an after school treat, had there been a Persian tradition of baking such cakes.

keep reading >>