Sunday, June 9, 2013

Substitutiary Locomotion (cooking experiments)

Today my experiments are: How To Make Gluten/Dairy-Free Muffins Moist
And: Another Almond Cheese Failure

Muffins:
TM has very sensitive taste. She doesn't like quick breads. I think it might be the baking powder. The one I use doesn't have aluminum in it, but it still might be off for her. The last time I made muffins she actually ate them! I mean, like, ate 6-7 of them! Absolutely astounding. I'd substituted soda for powder and balanced the pH using lemon juice to taste. But they were very dry.

I read some suggestions here about how to make them moist. So today I:
Substituted homemade mayo for canola oil
Substituted soda water for almond milk
Added 1tsp pectin
Used baking soda instead of powder; lemon juice for pH

The flour mix I used is 50% washed double-milled basmati flour, 25% millet flour, 25% tapioca starch. I decided not to use more starch this time, though that might make them moist too. I wanted to try these first. But I didn't add 1T coconut flour like I did last time. Oops. And I couldn't find my chocolate chips! Sigh.

Then I ran out of muffin cups, and I have no baking spray, so I used the last of my parchment paper to make liners. They're in the oven! Here's hoping! .................Nope, they're still dry.

GRADE: C-

UPDATE June 15 2013
I think I got it! I used flour with 50% starch (mix of corn and tapioca), used 1/2C mayo and 1/4C oil instead of the listed oil amount, 1T coconut flour, 1tsp baking soda, and 1/4C lemon juice, no baking powder. Yum! Still a tad dry so I'll give it a B+. TM liked it! :)
GRADE: B+


Almond cheese:
Last time, I tried making almond milk, then heating it and coagulating it with lemon juice. I added tons and it didn't separate, so I added vinegar. Then I chilled it a couple days, then drained it. Turned out great! Except that it tastes like vinegar. Sigh.

Yesterday I made almond milk and just left it under a heating pad. It separated but I just got a tiny bit of goo out of it.

GRADE: F
UPDATE: I used lemon juice instead of vinegar. It's a little mealy but other than that, it's passable. I'll use it in lasagne.
GRADE: B

2 comments:

  1. Today I tried increasing the starch to 50% with Tapioca. They were chewier, which was good, but I got the pH wrong. I'm thinking maybe I'll switch to yeast muffins, if I can figure out how to make them...

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  2. The good news is I tried almond cheese by peeling the almonds first, then grinding them and not straining them before leaving them on the heating pad overnight. It's not bad, and Q says TM will like them...here's hoping!

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