SCD Almond and Cashew Flour Cookies with Walnuts and Raisins

Ingredients:
3/4 cup almond flour
1/2 cup cashew flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup coconut oil, softened
1/3 cup honey
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/3 cup raisins

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 310F. Mix together almond flour, cashew flour, baking soda, and salt.
2. Add coconut oil, honey, egg, and vanilla. Mix well.
3. Add chopped walnuts and raisins, mix together.
4. Bake for 14 minutes or until cookies are golden brown.

       

Note: These thin out a lot and come out rather delicate, but they taste awesome, so I wanted to blog them as they are. You might try adding a bit more almond or cashew flour so they're denser if you'd rather a thicker cookie.

SCD Simple Apricot Muffins

Hello! It's been a while. I had been cooking a lot of repeats and mediocre experiments, but finally ventured out and tried something new, with success. :) Alex gave it an 8/10. The recipe yielded 7 muffins for me, but could probably be 6 if I had filled each tin a little more.

Ingredients:
2 cups almond flour
1/3-1/2 cup  honey (I like 'em sweet and use 1/2 cup)
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
.5 tsp baking soda
.5 tsp salt
1/3 cup finely chopped dried apricots (We bought ours at TJ's, which lists apricots as the only ingredient. Obviously make sure they don't have any added sugar or starches.)

Directions:
Mix together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the eggs, vanilla, and honey and stir well. Add about 1/2 of the chopped apricot into the batter and stir until incorporated. Pour them into a muffin tin, not quite full (see the picture). Add the remaining apricot pieces on top of each muffin. Bake at 300 for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

SCD Zucchini (Courgette) Noodles with Peanut and Ginger Sauce

Zucchini noodles are easy. Super, super easy. And there are recipes from A-Z all over the web, from Alton Brown to AgainstAllGrain (I guess that just covers "A," actually). So, no surprises with crafting the zucchini noodles. Trouble is, I couldn't find anyone talking about how to dress them! Here's my first attempt. I really enjoyed it, and Alex did too. We gobbled 3 zukes worth in one meal.

If anyone hasn't made zucchini noodles before and is wondering whether they taste like real pasta... The answer is no. They don't. They're just a little bit crunchy in a way that veggies are and pasta isn't. But they're a pretty good substitute. They took to the peanut sauce very well.

Ingredients:
zukenoodles
3 zucchinis
.5 tsp salt
sauce
2 tbsp peanut butter
2 tbsp honey
.5 tbsp apple cider vinegar
.5 tbsp minced fresh ginger
.5 tsp sesame oil
salt, to taste

Directions:
1. For the noodles: Take a peeler and peel the green off. Then, peel off strips of zucchini, rotating the zuke so that you don't shave off one side while leaving the other with 'meat.' Stop when you start to hit seeds. Line a baking sheet with several layers of paper towels, set your oven to 200, and lay the zucchini strips on the sheet. Sprinkle with .5 tsp of salt (I almost over salted these, do not do it.) Then heat at 200 until they're dried out, which for me was about 35 minutes.
2. For the sauce: Mix all of the ingredients except for the sesame oil until smooth. If the peanut butter doesn't want to get smooth (like the peanut butter at the bottom of a natural peanut butter jar), you may want to put it in a sauce pan and melt it a bit.
3. For the meal: Put sauce into a pan and toss with the zuke noodles. Add the sesame oil just before serving.

SCD Egg and Cheese Breakfast Sandwich

This is easy. Silly easy. It barely warrants directions. I'm blogging about it because it's also good and I hadn't thought of making a sandwich until I found a good bun. I really recommend the Against All Grain Grain-free Hamburger bun. However, I made that recipe in a half batch and my buns are, therefore, smaller than the regular ones. The full batch might make buns a little big for this, but maybe not!

Interestingly, Alex not only hadn't had a breakfast sandwich in four years of SCD - he'd apparently never, ever had a breakfast sandwich. No McMuffins, nothing. Alex gives it a 7/10. He can't think of anything to make it better. I'll take that as a win.

Ingredients
SCD bun/biscuit/bread of your choice
1 egg, fried sunny side up
1 slice of cheese

Directions
Fry up your egg! Choose a bigger pan so you can also lay the bread (or cut in half bun) on the pan to toast it. When the bun is a little toasty, flip it over and add the cheese to the bottom half so it can start to melt. When the egg is cooked, add it to the sandwich, top, and enjoy.

SCD Coconut Chicken Strips with Honey Mustard Sauce

This was a fun but messy endeavor. Using the breading skills I learned from Alton Brown, I was able to create a really delicious coconut chicken recipe that had me cheating just a little bit on my vegetarianism. The breading is pretty good at staying on and the exterior gets brown and crunchy. The honey mustard sauce is really quick and brings the whole dish to that next level. I find this very similar to a coconut chicken dish I might get in a restaurant.

Ingredients
1 package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 3 large or 4 small breasts), sliced into strips
1 cup coconut flour
1.5 cups shredded coconut
2 eggs
1/2 cup coconut milk
1/2 tsp salt

4 tbsp honey
2 tbsp SCD legal dijon mustard (we use Trader Joe's, not surprisingly)
1.5 tbsp SCD legal mayo (Trader Joe's, Spectrum, or make your own)

Directions
Set your oven to 375. Beat the eggs until mixed and combine with the coconut milk. The general aim, here, is to set up a station for each step. You'll want a plate for the coconut flour, a bowl for the egg/coconut milk mixture, and another plate for the shredded coconut plus salt. Like so:

Get a baking or cookie sheet handy and line it, if you like, with foil or parchment paper. With each strip of chicken, you'll want to: (1) coat it completely, but finely, in coconut flour; (2) dredge in the egg/coconut milk mixture; (3) coat in shredded coconut; (4) set on the baking sheet. When you're done, you should have all the chicken strips ready on the baking sheet. Put them in the oven for 15-20 minutes depending on the size of your strips. Once they've baked for that long, switch from baking to a low broil. Broil for 5-10 minutes, or until brown. Keep a close eye on them during this part as I have a feeling they could burn.

Your sauce is made just by combining the honey, mayo, and mustard. If it's too sweet or too mustardy, add a little more honey or mustard to get it to your liking.

Recipe Review: Against All Grain Grain-free Hamburger Buns

Here is the recipe, which I will not reproduce.

Thoughts about the blog: I absolutely love Against All Grain. I discovered it a little bit late and have been trying all sorts of recipes since. We also tried the Meat Lover's Pizza (minus the meat) which we shared for our wedding anniversary last week. I didn't blog it because my crust wasn't behaving properly - do not bake it on aluminum foil instead of parchment paper, guys, it will stick - but it still tasted great. We also made the banana pancakes a while back, which we shared for breakfast one morning. This blog consistently turns it out. This is professional blogging. This isn't my little pastime. Danielle just finished her first cookbook. Her photography and her cooking inspire me. I am a real amateur compared to her!

Thoughts about this recipe: First, I've decided to start grading recipes on an 1 through 5 scale rather than simply beaming about them. Here's my first grade, a great one to start us off on:

Grade: 5/5

These buns took some work, but boy was it worth it. Breaking out the food processor makes me a little wary because the clean up will be greater, so I only do it for an exciting recipe. And beating egg whites into stiff peaks is serious arm work. I don't have a hand mixer. It's like making mayonnaise; my little forearm muscles are screaming by the end.

One challenge I had was getting my food processor to pulverize the raw cashews as finely as I think they should be. I'd scrape down the sides but it was still a challenge. That might have been my issue, though, as I made half batches both times I've made these so far. Alex was skeptical at first - he has cake with his dinner and proposing a dinner roll alternative made him shake his head. But I knew they'd be good.

When his first batch ran out, he asked me to make more. I said, "I thought you don't want rolls with your dinner." He said, "Well, I didn't know they'd be good!" That says it all. (And let's hope it's a commentary on most SCD breads rather than my cooking...)

For me, watching those rolls rise in the oven was exciting.

I added some dried garlic as well as fresh parsley and basil to the dough (as I mentioned, I had just made the Against All Grain pizza crust, which is somewhat similar and calls for those flavors). I served them as garlic rolls, cut in half, and toasted with some minced garlic and a pat of butter on each half.

 I also served them in one other way, which I'll blog about separately. Anyway, these are fantastic. Alex wants them to be in the regular rotation. I told him that if he doesn't mind spending money on a lot of cashews, I'll be happy to keep making them. Though I may need to invest in a hand mixer!

SCD Asparagus Chicken Wrap Ups

 

Hi guys! Long time, no see. I went for a family trip down to Florida and Alex *gasp* cooked for himself. But here's a nice chicken recipe I made him when I got back a couple of days ago. Alex said it was flavorful and I just love the brown on top.

Ingredients:
1 package of boneless/skinless chicken breasts (there were 3 in the package, about 1.25-1.5lbs)
24 pieces of asparagus
1/4 cup SCD mayo (Trader Joe's and Spectrum make SCD legal mayo, or you can make your own)
1 tsp SCD mustard (preferably dijon)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
6 thin slices of cheddar cheese (or a cheese of your choice)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven at 450. Slice the chicken breasts in half (so that they are half as thick). Pound them out until they're very thin, about 1/4 inch thick.
2. Sprinkle asparagus with a little salt (if desired) and wrap the asparagus in moist paper towel. Heat in microwave for about 3 minutes, until bright green but still crisp.
3. Mix the mustard, mayo, salt, and pepper - this is your sauce. Set aside, ready for assembly.
4. Place 4 pieces of asparagus, a squirt of the sauce, and cheese in the center of each chicken breast. Wrap them up (it was a little challenging for me) and place seam side down on a baking sheet. Cover in the rest of the sauce.
5. Cook at 450 for 20  minutes, or until juices run clear and brown on the top.