Dawn's Tapioca Pudding

Dawn's Tapioca Pudding

This recipe calls for a rice cooker with "fuzzy logic".  Not the cheap rice cookers, but the more expensive ones like the Zojirushi 5-1/2-Cup Neuro Fuzzy Rice Cooker.

32 oz unsweetened almond milk
7 oz Reese large pearl tapioca
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs (divided)
1 pinch salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tbl vanilla

Soak tapioca pearls as directed.

Place drained tapioca, almond milk, sugar, eggs YOLKS and salt in the rice cooker bowl.  It's probably a good idea to beat the egg yolks before putting them in.  Stir to combine.

Set rice cooker for Porridge mode and start.  Stir for a few seconds every 20 minutes.

When rice cooker goes into keep warm mode, take eggs WHITES and 1 tsp of sugar and whip until stiff peaks.

Add vanilla to tapioca mixture and stir.  Fold in whipped egg whites.

Let cool a bit, then eat warm.
Or pour into containers and serve cold.
It's good either way.

Calorie analysis:
Unsweetened almond milk: 120
Tapioca: 700
Sugar: 790
Eggs: 210

1820 calories per batch.

I'd say there were 6 nice-sized servings (it was quite filling), so that's only 300 calories per serving.

Gingerbread Truffles

Gingerbread Truffles

Gluten-free

1 ¼ cup shortening

1 cup sugar

1 cup molasses

2 tbl vinegar

5 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 to 3 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground cloves

Covering:

12 oz dark chocolate

1/2 cup shortening

Cream shortening and sugar. Beat in molasses and vinegar. Add dry ingredients and mix together. Roll into 1” balls (I find that a #50 disher will scoop out a nice-sized amount). Freeze for 1 hour.

Melt dark chocolate and shortening until liquid. Dip frozen gingerbread balls in the chocolate and place on parchment paper. Chill until chocolate hardens.

Makes about 56

Notes:

• Any flour can be used. I used gluten-free oat flour to make them gluten-free.
• I used 1 bag of Ghiradelli dark chocolate chips.

Blueberry Pie

After trying a couple of experiments, and checking out a couple of web site recipes, I put together a nice recipe for blueberry pie - and made it gluten free.

It's basically my grandma's recipe for "cookie crust" coupled with this recipe for blueberry pie.

This isn't the picture of what I created.  It didn't last long enough to get a picture.

Blueberry pie

Crust:
1 cup gluten-free oat flour
4 tbl powered sugar
8 tbl soft margarine

Mix flour and powered sugar together. Add the margarine. Pat mixture into slightly greased pie pan. Bake at 350F for 10-15 minutes.

Filling:
2/3 cup granulated Sugar
7 Tablespoons corn starch
1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon (optional)
3 Tablespoons water
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
3 to 4 cups of Blueberries

Combine sugar, and corn starch in a bowl and mix well.  Some people like cinnamon mixed in, but if you don't...

Add the lemon juice, and water and stir it up.

Add the blueberries to the pie crust.  Just pour them in!  There's lots of air space and it will cook down, so don't worry if they mound up about an inch above the edge of the plate.

Just pour the mixture of sugar, juice, etc. into the pie all over the blueberries. If it is a gloppy liquid, don’t worry, just pour it somewhat evenly over the top. But it doesn't take perfection; it will smooth itself out in the oven.

Crumb topping:
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup gluten-free oat flour
1/4 cup butter or margarine

Mix together in a small bowl and sprinkle it over the pie.

Cook the pie at 375 F for 1 hour.

Let cool before cutting.

Mousse frosted cupcakes

But not just regular mousse, avocado chocolate mousse.

Since this was just an experiment, I went the easy way this time.  I started with 1 boxed cake recipe made according to the directions for 24 cup cakes.  Bake.  Then cool (yes, that's important).

While the cupcakes were baking, I make the Avocado Chocolate Mousse recipe from The Kitchn.  Then I put the mousse in the fridge. You must chill the mousse or it will be too runny.

Note that the avocados that I bought were very large, so I did adjust the amounts in the recipe to account for that.

I took my cooled cupcakes and poked a hole in the middle (to make room for extra mousse 8-)).  Then I took the chilled mousse and put into a frosting "gun" and frosted each cupcake (first filling the hole I made, of course).

Using 4 large avocados let me "frost" 23 cupcakes with a generous amount.  There was enough mousse left to make a sloppy looking cupcake - which was sacrificed to the taster gods to verify that they were good enough to serve.

You probably want to keep these chilled until served.  The mousse doesn't get really runny, but it will loosen up when warm.

I wouldn't say they are healthy from a calorie point of view.  But they do have significantly less sugar.

BBQ Chicken Pizza

New experiment.

1 Bob Red's Mill Gluten Free Pizza Dough mix
200 grams grilled chicken
Some BBQ sauce (about 1/4-1/2 cup - we didn't measure it)
1 cup baby spinach
1/2 cup chopped red onion

We made the pizza dough according to the instruction.  We divided it into 4 parts, putting each part into a 9" pan and patting down flat (we didn't want a bready pizza dough - we wanted a crackery crust).

Topped with about 1/2 of the BBQ sauce, then spinach, then chicken, then the rest of the BBQ sauce.

Bake at 425 for about 20 minutes.

Notes:

• We added minced garlic, but the BBQ sauce overpowered it, so it didn't make any impact.
• The BBQ sauce was very overpowering.  Next time we will water it down a bit.