Of Cakes and Flours
April 23, 2014 § 1 Comment
Clockwise from left: a huge mug of homemade hot chocolate from last weekend; at the Prohibition Pig is Waterbury, Vermont; a young sheep rolled in hay at the barn down the street from my office (the perfect lunch break!); at a sugar-shack in Vermont.
I’m sitting on the couch in utter defeat because I have failed, again, at cooking rice. Predictably, as I was chopping broccoli and snap peas, my rice turned into a gelatinous glob of sticky starch. And here I am once again struggling through several meals of mushy rice. What a mess. And hardly surprising by now.
I’ve recently become obsessed with the abundance bowl from My New Roots. I’ve tried several riffs with spring vegetables, tofu, avocado, and variants on both her spring and winter sauces. Buttermilk, garlic, parmesan, green onions, maple syrup, and lemon juice? Yes please. That was my riff on spring abundance. Pumpkin seeds, lime juice, maple syrup, and mint? Bring on the winter riffing. Now if I could just get the rice right. Until then, this girl is going to stick with quinoa.
My experimentation with grains tends to come and go in phases. I’ll occasionally go on a bender of “weirdo” flours and try to sneak buckwheat and oat flour into everything, but my cupboards are generally stocked only with white, wheat, and spelt flours. Spelt has made it into my regular rotation and is a staple in my weekend waffles. Aside from that, I’m a real butter, white flour kind of baker.
So Passover presented an exciting challenge. I picked up a bag of brown rice flour and started using it for everything! I made chive pancakes from 101 Cookbooks, and made a second batch of the batter several days later, repurposing it for a sweet breakfast of lemon-sugared crepes. And then I made a cake. That’s right, I made a gluten-free cake, something I never thought would appear on this blog.
Dense with almond meal, and moist even days later, this cake is a real winner. I used all olive oil in place of the vegetable oil and melted butter, and rice flour in place of the all-purpose flour, and served it with slices of grilled pineapple. The cake isn’t kosher for Passover because of the leavening ingredients, but hey, you win some you lose some.
Soufflé Days 
You need a rice expert such as myself 🙂