The Flatbread / Hamburger Buns

This is part four in a series of reviews where I’m sharing recipes and products I tried on my birthday this year.

One of my Facebook fans told me about this Grain Free Flat Bread recipe from Coconut Mama, and I decided to try making them to see if they would be a good substitute for buns.

I used all coconut flour (she gives an option for part almond flour and part coconut flour), I used butter instead of coconut oil, and she calls for baking powder which is not GAPS legal, so I used baking soda.

Her recipe makes two small flat breads, enough for one sandwich, so I tripled the recipe to make the six you see below.  See the little white dots in the bottom left bread?   That’s butter. I had smeared butter on my fingers to pat the batter into round shapes and got a little carried away with the butter.  If you leave it, you can see in the next photo there will be little craters.

Top right flat bread has the craters.

Matthew was thrilled and set about forming these babies:

I had grilled onions and mashed avocado on my burger.

Review on the flat bread:  Using the baking soda instead of baking powder worked out just fine as far as I could tell.  I even made one batch with no baking soda, and they were smoother in texture.  The baking soda batches had more bubbles in the finished product, I liked the bubbly version better.

These are definitely a good substitute for hamburger buns, but of course these aren’t exactly the processed wheat hamburger buns to which you might be accustomed.  I have a bad habit of taking big bites and coconut flour is a different texture than wheat in that it is much more dense.  I found myself reaching for a drink of water to help down the bites which were too big.  I love the idea of making these buns, and they were a big hit with Matthew who has missed having “real hamburgers” but I have to admit I will probably reserve them for special occasions.  But that is not because I don’t like them – I do like them, and in fact this morning considered eating two of the four that were left from last night (my husband was supposed to have four pieces but he forgot and ate his burgers without) to make a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich this morning.

Two reasons… it adds a few more time to the cooking process (and you know how much we are in the kitchen as it is) and number 2, they add a few more calories.  I don’t count calories, but I am still trying to help Matthew lose weight, and I would like to lose at least twenty more pounds.  If we have lettuce buns, that adds only a few calories in comparison to the flat breads – and they don’t add all that many calories.   Just a ballpark figure I would say around 200 calories for each two pieces of flat bread.   In comparison, lettuce leaves add what, 5 or 10 calories?

I will definitely make these again, but more than likely only for special occasions or maybe once a month.

 The Ice Cream

This is part three in a series of posts I’ve made reviewing recipes and products I tried out for my birthday.

This is my second try at making this French Vanilla Coconut Milk Ice Cream from Patty at Loving Our Guts.  As is true to my nature, I started to experiment with Patty’s recipe and separated the coconut cream from the water, and heated the eggs, honey and coconut water in a double boiler.  I learned that egg based puddings should be cooked to 170°F and then removed from the heat, and sometimes should be cooled immediately.  The double boiler took forever to heat, and I ended up putting the egg mixture into a heavy bottomed pan directly.  It was helpful to know to stop heating when it reached 170°F and I did use my new thermometer!

After cooling down the egg mixture, I stirred in the cream.  I don’t know that it changed anything, I would say just go with Patty’s instructions.

Matthew stirred the ice cream in our Donvier 1-Quart Ice Cream Maker which was a great help as I was running behind from all this cooking!  Hey, this was supposed to be my birthday and I was cooking like it was my full time job!

I also decided I wanted Pecan Pralines in mine.  I use this recipe: Honey Pecan Pralines from Cooking for Engineers.   I tweaked the recipe, since it called for brown sugar.  I used 3 Tablespoons of honey instead of two, and on the butter I used 2 Tablespoons instead of one.

Review on the pecan pralines: I’m not sure if my oven cooks hot, but the pecan pralines were slightly overcooked. Not burned, but very close. They are still yummy and I munched on them all day (even though the Leptin Reset says no snacking, ever, for the rest of your life, or you start getting leptin resistant again – can one day hurt that much?).

Review on the ice cream:  Creamy and delicious.  Thank you Patty for starting your blog and posting it!  It is a great base to add other flavors and Matthew asked me if we could do banana splits sometime.  That will be fun!  Now I guess I need some of those fancy banana split dishes.

The Frosting

This is part two of a series of posts reviewing recipes and products I tried out on my birthday.

So my most favorite frosting in the world right now is from Modern Alternative Mama and her post is called: Refined Sugar Free Vanilla Buttercream.  I made one full recipe to frost the cake above and was so completely thrilled when I sliced it to find that my frosting layers in the middle were nice and even.  I was worried while spreading on the frosting that I wasn’t putting on enough, and I also didn’t bother to shave the cake to make it completely flat so I was worried that some areas were not be as even. I know, who cares?  But I was concerned about it, and so happy when it came out so perfectly.  I added two tablespoons of cocoa powder to the recipe as shown to make it chocolate.

I had two new kitchen tools I got to use. One was my Polder Digital In-Oven Thermometer Timer, it worked great and it’s easy to figure out how to set it to alert me to the temperature of the honey (which needed to come up to 240°F).  The only problem was that the Brilliant Butter Warmer (which I impulsively splurged on for the sole purpose of making Buttercream Frosting!) was too small to hold the boiling honey.  It was slowly, slowly boiling up and almost over when I snatched it from the fire.  The instructions for the Buttercream Frosting say to get to soft ball stage, which is 240°F but I had to pull it off the heat at 235°F.  I figured how much can 5 degrees matter so I decided to just use it at 235°F and it worked out just fine.

If you are fortunate enough to have a stand mixer, do not hesitate to use it. I decided to haul out our Kitchenaid mixer and making the frosting became 10 times easier.  It’s like having another pair of hands!

The eggs were whipped so nicely they were soft peaks, something I had not come close to achieving with the hand mixer.

Because my hands were free, I was able to pay attention to some other details, like I happened to feel the side of the bowl when drizzling the hot honey into the eggs and I was surprised at how hot the mixture had become!  I used my new thermometer to check the temperature of the frosting to make sure it was at room temperature, and Modern Alternative Mama is right, it took just about five more minutes of mixing to cool down to room temperature, and then it was safe to begin adding in the room temperature butter.

If you are interested in watching most of the process of making this frosting using a hand mixer, watch my YouTube video here. I’ll let you in on a secret – I forgot to wait until the egg mixture was at room temperature so when we began dropping in the butter it was melting right away.  My youngest son considers himself a chef… and he was assisting me.  You’ll see him begin to dump in clumps of cold butter in an attempt to cool down the mixture. Eventually we succeed, and the frosting emulsifies.  Whew!  I would hate to waste all those ingredients.  And having made it with the stand mixer, definitely use a stand mixer if you have one.

My son stopped by the store on his way home from work to pick up my candles, and so of course he thought the gravestone would be the perfect touch.  The store clerk told him that 49 is NOT over the hill, and I would definitely agree.

I bought a Ateco 14-Piece Cake Decorating Set recently.  The stars on top of the cake were made using Wilton Open Star #32 Decorating Tip – which by the way is NOT included in the kit to which I linked. It is from a previous kit we have had.

Review on the frosting.  I have always preferred the whipped cream frosting on cakes as opposed to the super sugary shortening version, and when someone would buy a cake from the bakery I could never figure out why they would buy sugary shortening version, the one that left a thick layer of shortening on the roof of your mouth?  Why buy that, when you could get the whipped cream frosting which was light and airy and delicious?

This Buttercream frosting is even better.   It is lightly sweetened and very creamy. The fact that it’s GAPS legal makes it that much better. And the recipe is super simple, with just four ingredients (five if you add cocoa powder).   I have made this frosting four or five times now, and it is definitely a favorite around here.  It goes extremely well with the cake, if you ask me.

The Birthday Cake

I tried several new recipes on my birthday and used some new products.  I’m going to post each one in a series of posts.

First on the list, a recipe from Elana’s Pantry Chocolate Cake made with coconut flour.  I did not use the frosting she includes in that recipe because she calls for chocolate chips and while we can get these delicious semi-sweet chocolate chips from Enjoy Life which are gluten, dairy and soy free, they do contain evaporated cane syrup and are not GAPS legal.  This is the frosting I used and I added a couple of tablespoons of cocoa to make it chocolate: Refined Sugar Free Buttecream Frosting from Modern Alternative Mama. Dr. Natasha has approved cocoa powder if you are no longer having digestive problems, and baking soda is allowed when used for baking, according to the latest revision of the Gut and Psychology Syndrome book, so the rest of the ingredients are perfectly fine to have on full GAPS.

I followed Elana’s recipe except for the following:

• Hers contains agave which is not GAPS legal so I substituted an equal amount of honey
• I did not have orange zest on hand, so I omitted it
• Elana’s recipe called for two 9″ round pans, I used three 8″ pans
• Used a different frosting
• I subbed butter for the grapeseed oil (I’m sure you could also use ghee or coconut oil)

Review on the cake: Delicious. Moist. Nice chocolate flavor. Without a doubt, hands down THE BEST coconut flour cake I have EVER tasted thus far.  The texture is very light in comparison to other coconut flour based baked goods.  Definitely 5 stars.

In addition, I froze the remainder of the cake (which was almost all of it) so that I could see how it tastes after freezing.  I had a piece straight from the freezer this morning, and it was delicious.  I had a couple of reasons for freezing it.  First of all, out of sight, out of mind.  I do not need to be eating an entire cake. Although this cake is so dense and full of nutrients, and very rich tasting that one thin sliver is quite satisfying. My second reason is that I want to share my cake with my coworkers, and one coworker in particular who wants me to make a birthday cake for her upcoming birthday and I’d like for her to be able to taste test and see if she likes it enough for me to make this one for her.

I just love looking at the picture of this cake.