Gluten-Free Coffee Biscuits Recipe

Coffee laced cookies with chocolate chips

This is a cookie recipe for a grown up. Call them adult cookies. Or better yet, go a little UK and name them biscuits. It sounds a whisker more civilized when you declare to your co-workers, Excuse me while I fetch myself a coffee and a biscuit, Darling. Back in two shakes!

Much less Kindergarten, with all that grab your blankie from your cubbie business and the ritual involving tiny milk cartons and poking bendy straws through paper wrappers and the inevitable bad boy, Sully, who would blow on the straw and shoot the wrapper missile right at your ear (so annoying) and those graham crackers that never quite snap apart evenly and get stuck in your teeth (beyond annoying). Quiet time. With cookies.

A prelude to adult tea time, I suppose. But don't mention snuggies. I don't even know what a snuggie is, nor do I want to know why I would want to bring one to work with me and why they're making a day of it. It seems so. Let's see. The image of graham crackers and milk and that nasty snotty Sully shooting paper straw wrappers at my head comes to mind.

Kindergarten.

The word itself conjures that official classroom smell. Crayons and white paste and chalk. I'm snagged in the late trailing end of the Boomer Generation, can you tell? We had nap time on the floor with blankets and milk. I'm sure my sons have a their own '80's variation on this "time out" theme. (I'll have to ask them.)

What did you have for your Quite Time ritual?

Milk and cookies? Or Juice boxes and Cheetos? And why are cookies called cookies here in the States and biscuits in the UK? I ask you. Inquiring minds are scrambling to uncover these mysteries.

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Scalloped Potatoes - Vegan + Dairy-Free

Creamy vegan scalloped potatoes...

On a whim and out of nowhere (and at 2:54 AM, I'll have you know) I began conjuring images of creamy scalloped potatoes. Odd for someone who must avoid cheese and cream and butter and who- most days- is reconciled to her cheese-free life with a shrugging Lebowski-Zen detachment they write books about. Not to mention, it's been (literally) over a decade since I made this retro recipe, cream or no cream. Alas, I simply couldn't get the idea out of my sleepy Ewan McGregor-esque spiky head.

The vegan scalloped potato challenge bit me. And refused to let go.

To make my pre-dawn vision a reality this classic recipe would need some serious tweaking. I mean, it's not just cheese you have to replace (and I'm no fan of plastic vegan cheeses, let me tell you). There is cream. And sweet moo-cow butter. Three key ingredients that make this comfy dish so melt-in-your-mouth delicious. Lucky for me I happened to have some dairy-free cream sauce left over from a vegan pasta I had tossed together the night before. A thick and silky hemp based sauce featuring artichokes and wine.

Accident? Destiny? Or simply the collective unconscious zeroing in on post-midnight potato cravings when your serotonin is dropping so fast your heart beat skips and triggers a hot flash?

You decide.

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Karina's Gluten-Free Ryeless Rye Bread

My gluten-free ryeless rye bread recipe makes delicious toast.

Call me crazy but one of the comfort foods I miss most after living gluten-free for years is not some fancy French cookie or triple layer ganache swathed cake. Nope.

It's rye toast- piping hot and crunchy around the edges slathered with melting peanut butter.

My favorite tea time snack. There's something about that fragrant rye tang with caraway paired with sweet creamy peanut butter that sends my little endorphins into all's right with the world childlike bliss.

I'm easy, I know.

The snag is- ever since my celiac disease epiphany gluten-free rye bread has been playing hard to get. Recipes for ryeless rye bread have proved petulant and elusive. Rice flour or chick pea flour does not taste like rye, I'm sorry to tell you. And now peanut butter has gotten itself into all kinds of trouble with the whole e-coli thing (through no inherent fault of it's own-- the peanut is innocent, I tell you).

So what's a gluten-free goddess to do? Live without one of life's simple pleasures? (Aren't I already doing that, living sans bagels?!) Dear Zen Universe- honestly now- for the sake of calm detachment and flow must I give up all dreams of deli?

Not today.

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Make Your Own Potato Chips

Make your own potato chips.

Before I get to how to cook your own potato chips and avoid the game we food allergic individuals refer to as Le Chip Roulette, I'd like to mention dreaming. Because I woke from some very strange dreams this morning. Dreams involving caveman chest hair and glistening inky fish and long distance songs on some radio left behind in an abandoned mining shack perfect for a David Lynch location shoot. Spandau Ballet, in fact- crooning, I know this much is tru-hoo.

It's day fifteen of the tenacious head cold I picked up in Los Angeles. And it's Friday the thirteenth. But I'm not so easily spooked. Old ghosts got nothing on this morning's weirdness. This is kindergarten stuff. Amateur hour. So I shook it off and brewed some tea.

I'm blaming high altitude and not enough fresh fruit.

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Vegan Flourless Chocolate Cake

A dairy-free vegan flourless chocolate cake- no tofu.

A deep dark chocolate cake recipe. Just in time for Valentine's Day. And the best part? It's not only gluten-free, but vegan as well. And it's technically a flourless chocolate cake (which for some retro-fueled reason still conjures the term sexy thanks to Sarah Jessica Parker).

In full disclosure (hey, I vet my recipes okay?) I added a scant amount of buckwheat flour to help it set up without eggs, but buckwheat isn't technically a grain, is it? More of a groat, a fruit kernel. In fact, buckwheat is a cousin to sorrel and rhubarb. I could try to impress you with shout-outs to the Polygonaceae family, dropping botanical distinctions like actinomorphic and calyx as fast as Madonna drops post-Guy Ritchie boyfriends, but I'd rather leave all botany urges behind and get back to chocolate and celebrating the dream of true love.

All in the nick of time for Valentine's Day.

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Big Easy Chili- and some super recipes

Big easy soup with beans and spicy sausage.

I'm back from our jaunt to Los Angeles- an impromptu trip that was over far too quickly (where does time fly to, by the way? They say time flies but I always want to know, where?). I have a handful of juicy details to report, and I will, in an upcoming post, but today is apparently sort of a big deal.

There's a game goin' on? And rumor has it, today's a big chili day. So I am reprising a big easy chili recipe and sharing a link to Whole Foods- for healthy and tasty vegan and gluten-free menu ideas and recipes for pot lucks and Super Bowl parties. Me?

I'll be doing laundry. Lots of laundry.

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