Gluten, Dairy, Refined Sugar and Soy Free Orange Ginger Honey Cranberry Upside Down Cake

A few days after Christmas, I got the flu, which then morphed into viral bronchitis (fun, eh?), so I haven’t spent that much time making anything other than tea and chicken soup. However, I was really itching to bake something before I go back to work, so I thought: “why not make something that is full of cold-fighting ingredients, so it doesn’t make me feel worse?” (Any excuse works when it comes to me justifying my desire to bake!)  Things like:

• Honey – can soothe sore throats, is full of antioxidants and is anti-bacterial (source)
• Oranges & cranberries – contain vitamin C, which helps you fight colds (source – a book written by my favourite chemist, Linus Pauling. Yes, I am a nerd.)
• Ginger – is an antihistamine and decongestant (source)
• Coconut oil – helps your immune system and isn’t soy. (source)

Since sugar is known to not help your immune system, I wanted to reduce the amount used and use honey instead for its illness fighting properties. I did include a small amount of unrefined granulated sugar as I know that cakes get part of their fine crumb from granulated sugar. Plus, I’ve never really baked with honey so I didn’t want to stray too much from the original recipe.

The cake turned out quite well – it wasn’t overly sweet, the cranberries and orange flavour played off each other wonderfully, the cranberries were sufficiently goopy and delicious (look at the edge of the cake – upside down cakes can’t get better than that!) and the cake texture is moist and delicate. It wasn’t overly ginger-y, so if you like ginger, please feel free to add more!

I’m pretty sure that you can make this recipe to be egg free easily – either add two egg replacers or increase the xanthan gum to 1 tsp, add an extra tsp. of baking powder and increase liquid by ~ 4tbsp or until your batter reaches the desired consistency. If you try this, please let me know!

The cake was inspired by this honey cake from Free From Kitchen. The upside-down-ness was inspired by this Cranberry Upside-down Cake by The Daily Dietribe, this cake from Hungry Cravings and the pineapple upside down cake in the Joy of Cooking.

Gluten, Dairy, Refined Sugar and Soy Free Honey Orange Ginger Cranberry Upside Down Cake

For Cranberry Upside-Down-ness
~ 3 tbsp coconut oil
1/3 c. honey
Grated fresh ginger (~ 1/2″ x 1″ knob, more or less to taste)
1 – 2 tbsp. sucanat
1 package fresh cranberries

For Cake
45 g brown rice flour
40 g sorghum flour
20 g millet flour
30 g sweet rice flour
40 g tapioca starch
1/2 tsp. xanthan gum
2 tsp. baking powder
Pinch of Salt
100g coconut oil
150g honey
35 g sucanat
1 tbsp. orange zest
1 tsp. grated ginger
1 – 2+ tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice
2 tbsp. almond milk
2 large eggs

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Place the 3 tbsp. coconut oil in a 9″ cake pan and place in the oven until melted (about a minute). Swirl around to coat the bottom.
3. Combine honey, ginger and sucanat in a measuring cup. Pour into pan and spread out over the coconut oil.
4. Place pan back in oven, stirring every few minutes until sugar mixture bubbles a lot. Remove from oven.
5. While pan is heating, wash cranberries and remove the gross ones. Once pan is out of oven, spread cranberries over pan until it is entirely covered in a single layer. Set aside.
6. Zest orange and squeeze the juice out of one half. Grate the ginger.
7. Whisk together the flours, xanthan gum, baking powder and salt.  Set Aside.
8. In a small saucepan, mix together the coconut oil, honey and sucanat. Heat up, stirring, until the sugar starts to dissolve. The coconut oil will stay separate from the honey and that is okay.
9. Pour mixture into bowl of a stand mixer. Add zest and ginger.
10. Alternate adding flour with the orange juice/almond milk, adding more liquid if needed. Beat until combined. Don’t over beat as you’ll end up with channels in your cake like I did.
11. Add eggs one at a time and beat until smooth.
12. Scrape into pan over cranberries and spread evenly.
13. Bake in oven for 25 – 35 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Place a pan on the rack below to catch any drips.
14. Let cool for a few minutes on a rack before placing a serving plate over the pan and inverting. Remove pan and let cool.
15. Enjoy!

What do you do for sweets while sick?

SRC: Natural Noshing’s Coconut Trail Mix Bark

For April’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired with Nora of Natural Noshing. She tried to cook and bake gluten and refined sugar free, which made it really difficult to choose just one thing!

I decided to make her Coconut Trail Mix Bark made with homemade coconut butter. It’s like white chocolate bark but without the sugar. I really love that she also only uses a normal food processor instead of the fancy blenders many people seem to have for making nut butters and such. I was so impressed with this bark as there is essentially no added sugar but it’s still plenty sweet enough.

I brought some to my family and they were so impressed that dried coconut would become so smooth and chocolate like. My brother absolutely loved it, which is fantastic as this makes a fair amount of bark!

Check out the rest of Secret Recipe Club’s group D recipes here:

Vegan Gluten Free Ginger Crackle Cookies

Do you ever have a strong desire to make cookies? Yesterday I was feeling fairly Christmas-y and decided that Christmas cookies were severely lacking in the Bean household and I needed to remedy that! Instead of defaulting to the usual Bean-family Cherry Almond Crisps, I asked Mr. Bean what his favourite cookies were. As you can probably guess, they’re Ginger Crackle Cookies, one of his family staples.

Given that I am unable to make the cookies exactly how his mum does (the gluten free requirement is pesky like that sometimes), I decided to embark on the adventure to make a similar, more healthy gluten free ginger crackle cookie. I also wanted it to be vegan as I’m saving up my dairy and egg quota for eggnog later this week! I think I was pretty successful – the cookies are quite soft on the inside and slightly harder on the outside, chewy and had the appropriate amount of crackling. They are also pretty delicious to boot!

I based my recipe on this one from In the Kitchen with Kath. I made them vegan, refined sugar, soy, cinnamon and gluten free so that everyone in my family could eat them (as frankly neither Mr. Bean nor I need to eat that many cookies ourselves!)

Vegan, Gluten and Refined Sugar Free Ginger Crackle Cookies

50g brown rice flour
75g sorghum flour
25g millet flour
50g sweet rice flour
50g tapioca starch
20g potato starch
1 1/2 tsp. xathan gum
2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. ginger
1/4 – 1/2 tsp. cloves
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon (if you can have it – I didn’t add it)
Scant 1/4 c. soy-free buttery spread, melted and cooled*
Scant 1/4 c. canola oil*
Scant 1/4 c. grapeseed oil*
3/4 c. sucunat sugar, finely ground
1/4 c. molasses
1 egg replacer (or 1 egg if you can eat them)
Sucunat or other granulated sugar – make sure that your sugar is coarse enough so that they don’t dissolve onto the cookie like mine did!

*I just poured about the same amount of each in the same measuring cup until I had 2/3 c. oil. Anything more than that is too much!

1. Whisk together the flours, xathan gum, baking soda, salt and spices. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, beat the oils, sugar molasses and egg replacer until combined.
3. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet and beat until well blended and smooth
4. Cover dough and refrigerate for one hour.
5. Preheat oven to 375F.
6. Shape the dough into 1 – 1 1/2″ balls. Dip in granulated sugar then place on parchment lined cookie sheet.
7. Bake for 8 – 12 minutes.
8. Then cool on a wire rack.
9. Store in a plastic bag or sealed container.
10. Enjoy!

What is your favourite Christmas Cookie?

Shared at: Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays, Traditional Tuesdays and Gluten-Free Wednesdays.

Homemade Granola

As a kid, one of our favourite family activities was making granola – we could hardly wait for it to be done! We first mixed together the dry ingredients, then added the honey and oil, then spread out the sticky mixture onto cookie sheets (and of course conveniently getting some “stuck” on your hands), then waited for it to cook (why do things take so long when they smell SO good?) and finally getting to try some! (After waiting long enough so it didn’t burn our mouths!)

As I was looking through Emily of One Lovely Life’s blog for recipes to try for the Secret Recipe Club, I saw that she had quite a few granola recipes. (I made her Fall Fruit Pie and it was delicious!) I was suddenly reminded of my childhood activity of making granola and called up my mum to find how how she used to make it. This is tweaked from the original recipe – I used gluten free oats, rice bran instead of wheat bran, added some quinoa flakes and I used some applesauce to keep the honey content lower. We used to also add sunflower seeds, which I didn’t add because I didn’t have any. You can probably add some cinnamon, other nuts or dried fruits – it’s completely up to you!

Homemade Gluten Free Granola

4 c. GF rolled oats
1/2 c. rice bran
1 c. shredded coconut
1 1/2 c. chopped almonds
1/2 c. quinoa flakes
1/3 c. oil
2/3 c. honey (more if you want things to stick together more)
4 – 5 tbsp. applesauce

1. Preheat oven to 300F.
2. Mix together the dry ingredients.
3. Measure out the oil first and then measure the honey on top of it. This helps you from having to scrape honey out of the measuring cup.
4. Pour wet into dry and mix. Add more honey or applesauce to get the desired degree of moisture.
5. Divide granola between two cookie sheets and spread out to an even thickness.
6. Bake for 15 minutes then use a spatula to flip the granola over and respread it out on the cookie sheets. When you return the pans to the oven, switch pan locations and rotate pans so that they cook approximately evenly.
7. Bake for another 10 minutes or until slightly less done than desired (it will continue to cook a bit once it’s removed from the oven.)
8. Put on cooling rack and loosen granola from pan. In another 5 – 10 minutes, repeat.
9. Once cooled, store in glass containers or in plastic bags.
10. Enjoy for breakfast with fruit, on yogourt or added to another cereal!

Did you make anything regularly with your family growing up?

Recipe Shared at: Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays and Gluten-Free Wednesdays.

GAHIGF: Vegan, Gluten and Refined Sugar Free Pecan Pie Bars

Can you believe that I have never had pecan pie before? I’m assuming for some Americans that is shocking as it’s an American Thanksgiving staple, but my family never ate it. So when Brittany of Real Sustenance announced that the themed for this month’s Go Ahead Honey, It’s Gluten Free was Thanksgiving, I thought why not try a Thanksgiving staple that I’ve never made before? I guess I could have made an actual pie, but bars are smaller, less fussy and easier to photograph!

From the recipes I first found, I was shocked at the amount and kind of sugar that goes into many of them – 1 c. of corn syrup and at least 1/2 a cup of sugar for one cup of pecans? No thank you! So obviously, I wanted to make my attempt at pecan pie much, much less sweet so I didn’t end up with a headache. This version uses about 1/2 c. of sweetener in total and they are still sweet, but not sickeningly so. I was first inspired by these Vegan Pecan Pie Bars by The Almond Flower – they look so simple and delicious! However, when I asked Mr. Bean about the consistency of the filling and he said “soft” – most likely due to the eggs – and I wasn’t sure if that recipe would give me the texture I wanted. Further searching came up with this Sugar Free Pecan Pie Recipe that uses flax meal and arrowroot powder instead of eggs. It seemed to have worked as Mr. Bean said that the texture of the filling was almost spot on! Hurrah!

Vegan, Gluten and Refined Sugar Free Pecan Pie Bars

Shortbread Crust:

2 c. blanched almond flour
4 tbsp. coconut oil, melted
2 tbsp. grapeseed oil
2 tbsp. honey or agave nectar
dash of salt

Pecan Filling

1 3/4 c. chopped pecans
1/3 c. maple syrup
1 – 2 tbsp. honey or agave nectar, if desired
1/4 c. coconut oil
1 tbsp. vanilla extract
1 tbsp. flaxseed meal
1/2 tsp. tapioca starch (could use arrowroot to make grain free)
2 tbsp. nut milk (or whatever kind of milk you want)
Salt for pecans

1. To make crust, turn oven to 350F and line with parchment paper or grease an 8×8″ pan.
2. Mix ingredients in a medium sized bowl until combined.
3. Press into prepared pan and bake for 15 minutes or until the crust starts to turn brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool.
4. For the filling: In a small-medium sized pot, mix together the coconut oil, maple syrup, honey and vanilla extract.
5. Bring pot up to a boil and simmer for about 5 minutes, whisking it frequently. (The coconut oil and sweeteners will not mix very much as one is polar and the other is not. Don’t worry as the nut milk slurry will act as an emulsifier.)
6. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature. (I stuck mine in the fridge for 10 – 15 minutes, giving it the occasional stir to prevent any coconut oil from hardening.)
7. Meanwhile, toast the pecans in a pan on medium heat for about 5 – 8 minutes or until they smell like roasted pecans, stirring frequently. Once toasted, remove from heat and sprinkle with salt.
8. In a small bowl, mix together the flaxseed meal, tapioca starch and nut milk. Let it sit for a few minutes.
9. Once the sugar-oil mixture is cooler, whisk in the nut milk mixture until combined and smooth.
10. Mix in the chopped pecans and mix until combined. Pour onto the cooled shortbread and distribute evenly.
11. Bake at 350F for about 20 minutes or until the filling begins to set and loses its shine. Remove from oven and place on cooling rack.
12. Before serving, chill in the fridge for at least an hour – the colder they are, the easier they are to cut and serve!
13. Enjoy!

What is your favourite Thanksgiving Staple?

Recipe shared at: Sugar Free Sundays and Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays.