Friday, April 5, 2013

Weird cookies for Lent

Edit: PSYCH! SPELT ISN'T GLUTEN FREE

I've got some modified Maple Nut Cookies in the oven. They are vegan, gluten free, and refined-sugar-free. I don't think I have any gluten sensitivities but so many people do that you might as well learn how to deal with it. My mods are in italics.

Wet Ingredients:
4 Tbs Maple Syrup
1/2 Coconut Oil (melt to mix)
1/2 C Coconut or Almond Milk
2 Tsp Vanilla Extract (Mine has cardamom pods soaking in it just to be weird)

Dry Ingredients:
1 C Spelt
1/2 C "Gram Flour" (Chickpea flour, available at Indian and international groceries)
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
A dash of cinnamon
1 Tbs flax meal

Sieve together dry ingredients. Whisk together wet ingredients separately. Combine wet with dry, stir until clumped. Adjust for spoonability with extra flour or water. Fold in almonds. Grease a pan with coconut oil. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes. They will pretty much retain their shape.

I am interested to see how they turn out. The recipe was originally gluten free, so I don't think subbing spelt for quinoa flour should change things too much. I have made two things with gram flour recently. One was an Indian recipe which ended up tasting like peanut butter cookies, somehow. They were approved by the kids at school. The other was besan ki roti which was NOT approved by my husband. The chickpea flour has a really, really weird, bitter taste to it which somehow disappeared in the besan cookies and did not disappear in the roti. My theory is that the roti didn't get hot enough to transform the taste. Maybe you will have better results with Manjula's recipe.

The cookies are out now and they look fairly normal. I am not going to show you a picture because I am a bad photographer and I'm sure the cookies would look like rocks or poop.

Okay, now I've tasted them and they are not my favorite, but appropriately weird for Lent.
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Here is a thought. I have noticed that people do find their way to my blog through Google, looking for information about Orthodoxy. (I'm sure they're promptly disappointed.) I think I will put up some of plans that my husband and I have developed for an Orthodox K-12 somewhat-classical-more-like-Great-Books curriculum, slap some Googleable keywords on there and see if anyone shows up. I don't know if this plan will ever come to fruition in the school where we currently work, but I don't see why it couldn't work somewhere, with God's help. Perhaps it will at least inspire the one or two people out there who may someday Google "Orthodox K-12 somewhat-classical-more-like-Great-Books curriculum."

In the meantime, if you are interested in talking about Orthodox education, I'm all ears, and a few helpful thoughts.

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