Just Baking

I’m sure that every parent can relate to this familiar conundrum: Your child’s birthday is fast approaching and it is your duty to supply the best cake they have ever forked into their mouth, but there isn’t a single thing that they want. Chocolate doesn’t suit them and vanilla is too plain; Fruit flavors […]

I love baking from scratch.  There is something so fun and rewarding about transforming ordinary ingredients into a delicious dessert.  But lets face it; sometimes we have a sweet tooth with no time or energy to play Rachael Ray.  In our household, the cravings come most often from my husband.  Sudden bursts of “I need […]

Who wouldn’t love to merge health and dessert?  Recently I had the luck to stumble across a well known pastry chef, Fran Costigan, who specializes in this very concept.  In fact, Fran’s extensive culinary experience combined with her desire to have her cake and eat it too, has resulted in too many ‘healthy’ dessert recipes […]

Probably best known as the main ingredient in the flatbread injera, teff has been cultivated in Ethiopia for thousands of years. Gluten-free and full of nutrients like iron, calcium, lysine, and many others, teff is used by many athletes to enhance their training diets. It is common in the diets of the very […]

Also known as Sweet Rice Flour and Coconut Cake.
This is a lot like Bibingka, but the difference is it’s a bit more dense and rich than the Bibingka I have made previously. I think the addition of coconut milk and eggs is why it’s more rich and why the flavoring is a bit more exotic […]

A couple of weeks ago, the question was posed to my girlfriend on what she would do if she couldn’t have wheat and would have to lead a gluten-free lifestyle. She loves bread and pasta and she thought it definitely would be very tough. I don’t think she was aware of all the resources available […]

It is true, I recently discovered a wonderful woman who makes gluten-Free bread mixes that easily rival their wheat-based cousins.  This gluten-free maven, otherwise known as Anna Sobaski, has developed five wonderful creations, aptly named “Breads From Anna™.”  I had the pleasure of trialing each of the four dairy-free selections, but it was her Gluten, Corn, […]

Recently I have had a craving for a Filipino dessert my Nana used to buy me from a Filipino store in California as a child. It is called Puto and finding the EXACT recipe has been hard. I haven’t ventured into making Puto yet because it requires steaming, something I am still unfamiliar with. I […]

Just when I had tackled, no make that mastered, dairy-free cookies, a new dietary challenge was thrown into the mix - wheat-free.  Today, I made my first attempt at recreating my favorite oatmeal chocolate chip cookies sans wheat and milk of any kind.  Though I still consider the recipe a work in progress, the initial trial passed […]

Quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) is the seed of a leafy vegetable of the Goosefoot species, which is also related to spinach and rhubarb. Like spinach the leaves can be eaten. However, the plant is raised for its seed.
Quinoa has been grown and harvested in the Andes Mountain region of South America for 6,000+ years. Prized by […]