Gluten and Dairy free Eggs Benedict

So I made english muffins. Besides eating half of them fresh from the oven, smeared with butter (of the dairy free variety, of course!) there is only one thing to do with them.

Eggs Benedict.

When you have english muffins, fancy brown eggs, and canadian bacon lying around, it must be made into a benedict of an egg.

As I'm trying to write this. I have been sneezing non stop for the last five minutes. Allergy season, please be over already. I'll trade you my first born child, to never have a sneezy, itchy, swollen facial situation again. You can take the food allergies too, that sounds like an even trade.

Anyway, back to the eggs benedict:

You start by toasting up some canadian bacon and english muffin halves. Muffin topped with butter, both cooked on a baking sheet until lightly browned. I think I turned the oven to like 375 or something, but it doesn't really matter, as long as they aren't burnt or raw. (you can use the broiler also, just keep a close eye out!)

Next you poach an egg. 

(or two-technically eggs benedict should be both halves of the muffin topped with treasures.)

Now I don't want to start an uproar or make anyone feel all depressed about themselves or anything, but I'm kind of a super awesome egg poacher.

Don't feel bad that you aren't as awesome as me at it.

Its just a special talent I possess. 

You know another incredibly useless special talent I have in my life? I can totally predict when people are preggo. I don't know why, but I've always been able to tell way before the news is shared. Halle Berry? Totally predicted it at the Oscars. I had witnesses, and I was right. So watch out ladies I don't know (this power usually works best with people I see often, but am not too familiar with.) if your hiding a bun in your oven right now, I'll know. There are actually a few of you out in the blogosphere I have my thoughts about....

But again, back to the eggs bendicto. (thats me talking in an accent. if you can't tell.)

I rock at making this dish.

The only time I do not rock at poaching eggs for said eggs benedict, is when I decide to abandon that poor little egg while I go butter up another muffin. and no thats not a euphemism, I was actually buttering a muffin. Of the English variety. (still not a euphemism!)

How do I make such fabulous poached eggs, you may ask?

By using to special tricks. You can just use one or the other, but making decisions is not one of my talents-so i use both.

Trick one is to add a little vinegar to your water. You fill up a pot with an inch or two of water, then you add a teaspoon or two of white vinegar. Easy right? The vinegar helps the eggs to coagulate to itself without seperating.

Trick two is to make a hurricane in your pot. Add the same amount of water as trick one, and after its boiled stir it all around quickly until a little hurricane of water forms in the middle. Plop the egg right into the hurricane, and it will spin around itself to prevent separating.

Use one or both of these tricks, and you too will impress the world with your egg poaching skills.

So you got your eggs, bacon and bread. Like so^^

Next you want to make a Hollandaise sauce. You want to make the sauce last, because it will started to harden and curdle as it cools. Thats why in these pictures its a little clumpy, it wanted to be eaten right away.

Making Hollandaise sauce dairy free, uses the same concept-but it will turn out a little different. It won't be quite as creamy, and depending on what type of non-dairy butter you use it may be a different color. I used Nucoa buttery sticks, and thats why the sauce is so bright and yellow.

Heres how you make it, using a blender method:

you need: 2 sticks of butter

        3 egg yolks

                juice of 1 lemon

                       1 tsp cayenne pepper

Start by melting the butter in a sauce pan (microwave works fine, too)

Pour the egg yolks into a blender, and mix on low speed just until combined. Next, pour the melted butter in a very thin stream while the blender is going (on low still) and until the butter is all combined.

While its still going, add in you lemon juice. If it appears thick, add a little more lemon juice and continue to blend. Add in the cayenne pepper, to your liking, and serve right away.

Pour the sauce on top of your egg, bacon, and bread.

Its ready for eating!

But wait, it looks a little bland. and there are no vegetables involved.

A little spinach on top...

Ahhhh, much better.

(you can replace the bacon with spinach to make eggs florentine. As this has both spinach and canadian bacon, we shall call it eggs benetine. floredict? whatever.)

Enjoy!

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Gluten Free English Muffins. Sorta.

I have a problem being left alone. 

Knowing that I'm all by myself, just freaks me out. 

When solitary, I get super antsy, snacky and sleep deprived.

Last weekend, was such a time when me and the Pennster where left to our own devices.

To Penny, it meant nothing. To me, it meant several days of no sleep, lots of projects, and an overused television.

In between watching a Snooki & Jwoww marathon (so bad its good. Really I probably shouldn't admit to watching it...), and cleaning every surface I passed; I decided to bake some things.

First, I made a loaf in the bread machine, 

oh look, here it is:

I was not super thrilled with it...I have yet to find a good bread machine situation I liked. (although, I did make it for stuffing at Christmas, and it worked perfectly.)

It also could have not been so great because I put it in, then left for three hours to do an impromptu photo shoot and Chipotle date with a friend.

Coulda been the problem. Who knows.

Next up, I made some English muffins. I call them english muffins, because thats what they were supposed to be, and thats what I used them for, but they didn't actually taste like a regular, gluten filled muffin. They were delicious, obviously :) but a little bit different. 

These little bread nuggets did have the basics of an english muffin though; a hard exterior, and soft and fluffy inside. 

I will continue to try for a more "normal" english muffin recipe, but in the meantime I'll keep enjoying these little guys. I used a buckwheat flour blend, which helped it stay moist and a little more filling.

Heres the recipe for you very fine folks:

*I do not have english muffin rings, so I used my mini springform pans, and It worked just fine. I imagine you could just spoon them on a pan also; they just wont be as shaped :)

Enjoy!

Stay tuned for what I used these english muffins for!

P.S. Thanks for hanging in there while I promote my non-food related social media outlets, I'm almost done, I promise :)

oh but hey, you can follow me by clicking on the links  over there >>>

Love you all! 

xoxox

Raspberry Chocolate Banana Bread

I shared with you a couple of muffin recipes using buckwheat, last week. Today I give to you a different version of banana bread.

This bread tasted quite different than the banana muffins I previously made. These little loaves {aren't they cute} included raspberries, as well as chocolate chips. It also used yogurt {I used coconut yogurt, of coarse} which made it quite moist. 

Maybe a little too moist...it took twice as long as I expected to cook through. These little puppies did make it to the freezer {unlike these} and now I don't have to purposely overripe bananas to make some more.

Personally, I do prefer the other recipe for banana bread, but I like the raspberries thrown in, on this one. They are both delicious, but each have very different flavors and textures.

Raspberry Chocolate Banana Bread

original recipe here

Ingredients:

1 cup Bob Red Mills GF all-purpose flour

1 cup Ground Buckwheat flour

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup Honey

1/4 cup agave

1/2 stick nucoa margarine, at room temp

2 eggs

3 mashed bananas

1/4 cup So delicious plain coconut yogurt

1 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup Enjoy Life chocolate chips

3/4 cup raspberries {large ones-break in half}

Directions:

-Preheat oven to 350degrees. Spray or line pan.

-whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt

-in a separate bowl, beat sugar and butter with a mixer at med speed until well blended. Add the eggs one at a time. Add the banana, yogurt, and vanilla. 

-Stir in flour just until moist. Stir in the chocolate and raspberries.

-Spoon batter into prepared pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. {in the mini pans, it took about 50 minutes. A large loaf may take longer...}

-remove from pan, and cool completely.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins

I may or may not have purposely let some bananas go bad so I could make some banana bread. Than I did it again a few days later. 

Yup. I made these twice in one week. 

To my credit, I did make the second batch to be frozen.

It just so happens, that only about half of the dozen actually made it to the freezer.

I did give some of them away though, so theres that.

My three little monkeys {aka nephews} also thought they were pretty tasty, so they must be a keeper.

As with the blueberry muffins, I used buckwheat and honey instead of sugar. I also threw in some agave. 

Let me tell you why, honey is cheaper than agave, agave is sweeter than honey, honey has more substance than agave. 

Thats why there is both. Honey to replace sugar, agave to add some more sweet.

It makes sense to me anyway.

You wont miss the sugar, or the gluten or the dairy. I promise. They are amazingly amazing.

Buckwheat Banana Bread 

the original recipe is from me madre, with several changes by muy.

Ingredients:

-1 cup Bobs Red Mill GF all purpose flour

-1/2 cup ground Buckwheat

-1/4 tsp baking soda

-1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

-1 egg

-3 mashed bananas {about 1 cup}

-3/4 cup Honey

-1/8 cup agave

-1/8 cup cooking oil

-a squeeze of lemon juice {about 2tsp}

-1/2 cup chocolate chips, chopped walnuts or pecans {or both, if your into that sorta thing}

Directions:

-Preheat Oven to 350degrees

-grease bottom and sides of loaf pan-or-use muffin liners

-In medium mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and a pinch of salt. Make a well in the center of the dry mixture;set aside.

-In another bowl, combine egg, bananas, honey, agave, oil, and lemon juice. 

-Add egg mixture to dry mix all at once.

-Stir just until mixed and moist {batter should be lumpy}

-spoon into pan. For muffins, you want to fill almost all the way to the top. they don't rise very far up.

-Bake about 20-25 minutes for muffins/50-55 minutes for loaf, or until toothpick comes out clean.

-cool on wire rack.

makes 1 loaf, or 18 muffins.

scrumptious! 

Buckwheat Lemon Blueberry Muffins: gluten, dairy, sugar free!

I've been on a big muffin binge lately. I'm not sure why exactly, but in the last few weeks my breakfast, lunch and dessert of choice is a big deliciously moist muffin.

As I think about it, it started at farmers market a couple weeks ago; I've been on a mission to go to farmers market every week. This involves waking up early every saturday morning and usually missing breakfast to go fill up my little basket with fresh tomatoes and avocados. The first week I went, we happened upon a booth from a somewhat local bakery that I had never heard of before. We stopped due to the gluten free sign that was up, and when it was discovered that the muffins they had for sale where not only gf, but dairy and refined sugar free as well, I had to try one. It was amazingly delicious, and extraordinary moist. 

It had buckwheat.

Buckwheat, which is not actually related to wheat, is a gf grain I did know about, but I had never used before. I have eaten in the past foods made with buckwheat flour, and I even had a bag of it in my freezer, just never quite knew what recipe to use it in-or what texture it would create.

After eating that muffin at farmers market, I decide to make my own and test out the flour. 

I decided this one day at approximetaly three a.m. I had been lying in bed waiting patiently for the sandman to make a visit, when I began thinking about muffins. (yes--I often think myself to sleep with recipes, I wouldn't recommend it) Than I got hungry, and I gave up on sleep happening so I headed to the kitchen and made these guys. Since I was incredibly sleep deprived, I may have gone a little overboard on some things (like the quantity of blueberries) but they turned out great and my tummy was very happy.

Buchwheat Lemon Blueberry Muffins

3/4 cup coconut yogurt
1/4 cup dairy free milk (I used almond milk)
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup Buckwheat flour
3/4 cup Honey
1/8 cup agave
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup blueberries

-preheat oven to 400degrees
-Mix yogurt, milk, lemon juice, honey, agave and egg in small bowl, set aside.
-Mix together flours, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.
-Add wet ingredients to dry and mix well.
-Fold in blueberries to mixture.
-spoon into muffin tins {to almost the top}, and bake until toothpick comes out clean; about 20-24 minutes.

I have some more muffins coming your way this week!