Daily Ritual

A little over three years ago, when my life completely changed, and I do mean completely, doing a daily ritual kept me going. Some days when I was very ill my practice was simply lighting a candle with the prayer:

North, South
East and West
May all within the Circle of my heart Be Blessed.


It also corresponds beautifully with signing an equilateral cross from Third Eye to Heart Chakra to just above the left shoulder, then right shoulder, enclosing all four points with a deosil circle parallel before your body. End with hands clasped in prayer position over the Heart or Third Eye.

I list what I'm grateful for that day, opening my hands into an open V as I end my ritual with
So Mote it Be.

Teo Bishop's piece for the autumnal equinox in yesterday's Huffington Post describes the ease and benefits a daily ritual gives. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, and that you too experience the bright blessings of daily practice.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/teo-bishop/autumn-equinox-may-you-pray-with-a-good-fire_b_1903276.html

Blue Moon

For Wiccans full moon nights are a time worship, giving thanks for the fullness of blessings in our lives, spelling for something to come to fruition. This can be done in a coven, like going to church or a prayer group to worship with like-minded individuals; or as a solitaire, similar to a Buddhist's individual mediation practice. Spells are the Craft's prayers...we ask the Divine for guidance, assistance, respite, hope, give thanks for answers received, unexpected blessings.

Another full moon habit is cleansing and recharging crystals & stones used as focal points. All faiths rely on symbols, focus objects, and ritual to help shift our consciousness from the whirl of day to day. For some Wiccan's crystals are held in hand during a spell or placed on the altar by a lit candle as locus for the practioner's intentions. ie. smokey quartz crystals are associated with prayers for deceased loved ones. Tonight crystals will be gently washed with salty water, patted dried, and set on the window sill to rest in the moonlight. Others will simply be set in the moonlight. For newly acquired & heavily used crystals the cleansing ritual can be done for three nights in a row, full moon eve-full moon-waning full moon.

A Blue Moon is the second full moon in a calendar month. They happen every couple years. Various Pagan and Shamanistic lore classifies Blue Moons as a time of greater energy...a bigger spiritual spotlight. Sharing my faith, and my kitchen knowledge is what I'm seeing highlighted in my life. From the August 2nd full moon to tonight's, friends of friends are popping up in emails and in social networks with questions about going gluten free and one who is considering the Witchy Way. These opportunities to share a good dish or a book to light a path, are wonderful gifts they each give me.

My hope for you is tonight you'll walk with the moon, soak up the beauty of our world bathed in moonlight, a count the myriad of limmed blessings.

Getting Ready...the menu

With the most food-centric holiday just around the corner many emails, conversations, texts with friends are following suit: food-centric. For me it is also the most difficult holiday of all. Imagine the traditional feast without a butter-basted turkey, creamy mashed potatoes, bread-based stuffing, cream-based pies, rolls, corn, and more. Too many Thanksgiving meals ended with an allergic reaction or ravenous from not being able to eat anything at the table, topped off with a dollop of frustration from being exhorted to "just have a bite" of something allergen laden.

While Thanksgiving isn't a Wiccan/Pagan holiday the traditions are similar: gathering together friends, chosen family, and family to celebrate blessings with good food and drink. Before my food allergies it was my favorite holiday for the same reasons - feasting, blessings and friends - starting the holiday season together.

Tonight while listening to the Avalanche hockey game, I contemplated this year's menu, and roasted sweet spiced pecans in one oven, and balsamic glazed root vegetables in another oven. Pleased with the score, the scents radiating through the house, and the coalescent menu.

I prefer a generally regional menu that allows me to spend most of the day visiting with my guests, or given the vagaries of Colorado weather, out enjoying the day. Just enough leftovers to divvy up between guests, not a fridge full. Add in only having a couple hours of productive energy each day and a feast menu takes a bit of tactical planning.

Each day I'll post a recipe or two for the menu, why I chose each dish, and when to prepare it for maximum flavor, so you can pick and chose between dishes for your own feast. If the holiday is an intimate celebration for 2-4 people some dishes get deleted from the feast. More guests get added last minute, so do more dishes.

The Menu

Spinach salad with pomegranate and pine nuts

Roast pheasant with pan dripping gravy

Grand Marnier whipped sweet potatoes

Smashed Yukon Gold potatoes

Emperor purple rice

Sour milk biscuits

Herbed margarine

Cranberry relish

Pumpkin brulée

Bourbon chocolate pecan pie with bourbon whipped cream

Time to see how the pecans turned out...

Tricky Treats

A Tricky Treat…

My Halloween surprise came as the culmination of an odd combination. Usually I spend Samhain (Sa-wane) evening quietly honoring the people and companion critters in my life who have died. Given the visions of Dutch process cocoa clamoring in my waking and sleeping mind, for days leading up to all Hollow’s, apparently this year my offering would be brownies; dense, dark to the brink of black, moist brownies.

Receiving an email with the latest issue “Living Without” magazine recipe for gluten free brownies and a pending visit from a dieting girlfriend instigated these cocoa visions. We usually talk until 2am over a baked good and tea or wine. The recipe yields a mild, cake-textured brownie that is more similar to a German chocolate cake than my definition of brownie. Nice, and good enough to share but not a brownie.

Said girlfriend took that batch home. Another took a second batch, the product of melding my decades-old standard brownie recipe and the ‘Living Without” concept. So mine are inspired by “Living Without” they are a completely different recipe with double the cocoa, vanilla, brown sugar, and no flour at all.

Making the third batch my Treat.

Being Halloween there must be a Trick to go with the Treat.

Black beans replace most of the fat, all of the flour and reduce the sugar by half. Yielding brownies that are low-fat, anti-oxidant rich, high in fiber, dare I say even, healthy? And still a true, rich, moist, decadent brownie.

The key to these brownies is the black beans need to be hot when pureeing them with the cocoa, so does the small amount of olive oil. The heat releases the cocoa flavonoids allowing it to blend better with the other ingredients prior to baking. The steam wafting up from the food processor will make it all clear…

Also because of the beans this recipe is most easily measured in volume. Two cups of cooked beans actually weighs 10.125 oz, which is a 15oz can of beans drained, plus a third of another can.

Black Bean Brownies

2 cups hot, cooked black (turtle) beans, drained

5 tbsp olive oil, warm as well

1 cup Penzey’s Dutch cocoa, or other high-grade Dutch cocoa

4 tsp vanilla

1 cup light brown sugar

1 tsp kosher sea salt

1 tsp xanthan gum

1 tsp baking powder

3 eggs

¼ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and line a 6x8 baking pan with parchment. Don’t have a 6x8 pan? Double the recipe and bake in a 9x13.

Place the beans, cocoa, oil, and vanilla in food processor. Blend to a paste.

Add in sugar, salt, baking powder, and xanthan gum. Pulse until blended. Scrape down the bowl, especially the bottom edge – cocoa will try to cling there and not incorporate.

Pulse in eggs until barely blended, the dough with be very glossy and stiff. Spatula into pan. Sprinkle with semi-sweet chips.

Bake for 25 minutes.

Cool for ten minutes, devour at will.

Chocolate Balsamic Vinaigrette

Was there a time as a child that you imagined chocolate at every meal? In every dish? Life being a veritable candy land? For the next three posts I’ll share the dishes from our Lammas feast, each showcasing a different dark chocolate ingredient – cocoa, 72%, and 85%.

For celebration meals I ask the guest of honor to pick an ingredient they’d like to be in each course of the meal. The purpose is tri-fold: the celebrant receives a unique meal, I get a challenge, and we don’t get stuck in a rut.

For Lammas the boys (really, they are young men, but at half my age I’m prone to call them boys) chose chocolate. This spring one gave me an autographed copy of British chocolatier Paul Young’s book “Adventures with Chocolate.” If you can find this book on the internet and have it shipped here to the US it will be more than worth your effort.

A complete 180 degrees from Caesar salad, this dressing is sweet, tangy, dark and purely surprising. Be sure to use a real balsamic vinegar, not a cheap caramelized imitation, not only will it taste poor, it will probably be contaminated with gluten.

Perhaps this dressing will intrigue vegetable-indifferent kids to enjoy salads?

Chocolate Balsamic Vinaigrette

Converted from Paul Young’s “Adventures with Chocolate”

2 ¼ oz balsamic vinegar

1 oz light brown sugar

.6 oz 85% dark chocolate, broken into pieces

Place the vinegar and sugar in a glass measuring cup, heat in microwave to a scant simmer, just starting to bubble. Don’t boil it! Whisk until the sugar dissolves, add the chocolate, again whisking until emulsified.

Cool slightly, add extra-virgin olive oil at two parts vinegar mix to one part olive oil, or one to one if you want a lighter dressing. Shake or whisk until emulsified. This will a dark, glossy dressing. It doesn’t need to be stored in the fridge, but if you do the chocolate will solidify and need rewarming in the microwave or in a sunny spot.

If you can find some late season strawberries at the farmer’s market, try them dipped in a bit of this dressing.

Serve!

I used Bolivian extra dark eco bar for this batch. If you don’t have 85% on hand use ½ oz of 100% baking chocolate and increase the sugar by ½ a tsp. Using a lighter chocolate will make this dressing unbearably sweet and lose the rich under note that good dark chocolate provides.

German Chocolate Cake for Lammas

Each year Lammas sneaks up on me. Summer is usually very busy and this holiday doesn’t have a Christian or Catholic Saint counterpart. The beginning of August and the first harvest holiday always appear on schedule, yet surprise me none the less. This year cakes, instead of the more traditional bread, symbolize the holiday, endings as the harvest culminates a season and beginnings as the seasons shift.

On Lammas eve a good friend’s aunt came home to die. As a diabetic she hasn’t enjoyed cake in a long time. In what is expected to be her last week, her family gathers with her to reminisce and share a piece of her favorite, chocolate cake. The dark chocolate cake and icing from “The Flying Apron Kitchen Cook Book” is so decadent only her niece knows this final treat is gluten, dairy, corn and soy free. I hope it makes her passing richer and sweeter.

The next cake I baked this holiday is for another girl friend’s first gluten-free birthday. It begins a new, healthier season for her. Baked with the intent of celebration, of food being a pleasure again, not a mysterious source of migraines and pain, this cake is my gift to her.

Her favorite is German Chocolate, a mild, dark cake with a caramelly, lush coconut and pecan filling then wrapped in a bittersweet chocolate ganache. Without the sweetened condensed milk or high-sugar chocolate this cake is divine with champagne, hinting at longer nights and the coming autumn damp.

If you are baking in the morning to serve the cake that night, make the filling first so it has longer to cool. Then the ganache. Too warm filings are a misery when assembling a cake.

I adapted the cake and ganache from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s “Rose’s Heavenly Cakes.” Her aptly titled “The Cake Bible” was the only cook book I count on for the rare occasion I’d bake with wheat flour and dairy products for friends. Not being able to taste test the batters didn’t matter, her recipes always turn out, always. Since the recipe uses cocoa this cake is also suitable for folks allergic to chocolate or caffeine, by substituting a premium carob powder. On the off chance you’re thinking of just using normal wheat flour or cake flour, please don’t! The adaptations that make it a good gluten free cake will turn this into an oozing volcano of wheat dough in your oven.

The structure of this cake relies more on the eggs than the flour. The directions look longer and more complicated than they really are. Just be patient, rushing can mean doing something silly like forgetting the sugar. Think of the person or occasion you’re baking this for, focus your intent for them. Being a kitchen witch is part technical skill and part meditation.

I tried making a sweetened condensed milk substitute with soy milk powder. It was horrid, suitable only for patching the garage concrete. So the German Maple frosting is directly from the “Flying Apron Kitchen Cook Book” and better than I remember any other version tasting. I’m including it here with the hope it will inspire you to buy a copy of your own. Filled with straight forward ingredients, a wide variety or excellent recipes it reminds me of Marion Cunningham’s “Fannie Farmer Cook Book” that I originally started baking out of as teen. The cook book I turned to again and again, and still do for inspiration.

Harvest sweetness and joy this season. Eat cake with people you love.

German Chocolate Cake

Adapted from “Rose’s Heavenly Cakes”

2.3 oz Dutch process cocoa (I use Penzey’s)

4 oz boiling water (if you live in an area with highly chlorinated water consider using filtered water)

4 oz extra virgin olive oil

4 egg yolks – at room temperature

4 egg whites

1 tsp vanilla (Nielson Massey is gluten free, but made with corn alcohol)

4 oz Pamela’s gluten free flour mix

2.5 oz potato starch

1.5 oz organic cane sugar

3 tsp baking powder

1 1/3 tsp baking soda

3/8 tsp sea salt

Palm shortening the bottom of two 8’ round cake pans, then parchment line them, Don’t oil or line the sides.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees with the rack in the bottom third of the oven.

Boil the water, whisk in the cocoa, then cover with cling wrap and let sit until room temperature. This took a bit over a half hour in my warm kitchen.

While the cocoa is steeping, mix the egg yolks, oil in a stand mixer with the whisk attachment. Start the mixer out on low or it can fling ingredients everywhere. Work up to whisking on medium speed. Set a timer for a minute, scrape down the bowl. If the mixture is shiny and smooth like an icing, add the vanilla and whisk just long enough to incorporate. Then mix in the cooled cocoa concoction. Scrape down the bowl.

In a separate bowl whisk all the dry ingredients together. You can use a sifter, for me whisking is simpler. When you think you’ve whisked all the ingredients into a uniform mix, do yourself a favor and whisk for a bit longer.

With the mixer on low mix half the dry ingredients in with the egg and oil. Scrape down the sides, be sure to get the bottom of the bowl as sugar tends to settle.

Add the rest of the dry ingredients, again start on low, then bump the speed up to medium- high and mix for a minute.

Scrape the bowl again. Add in the egg whites, mixing on low then increase to medium high for two minutes. Set a timer, it is easy to rush and not let the beautiful batter beat long enough, or get distracted and over beat it to a rubbery mess.

Split the batter evenly between the pans. Weighing them on a scale is so easy, making even layers a snap.

Don’t tap the pans or wait to put them in the oven. Successful gluten free baking hinges on capturing the in-dough gasses as they form. Bake the cakes for 15 minutes, then turn the pans 180 degrees, and bake for another 15 minutes. Even if you have a convection oven, turn the pans.

Test with a tooth pick. The cake should be pulled away from the pan edge, and lightly spring back when pressed in the middle. Remove from oven.

Set the pans out to cool for a couple minutes, then invert onto racks. The cakes need to rest on the top crust formed during baking. Once they’ve cooled lay pieces of cling wrap big enough to wrap each cake. Invert them again onto the cling wrap on the bottom of a jelly roll pan. Finish wrapping the cakes. Place in freezer for a couple hours or overnight. Gluten free cakes are more fragile than regular cakes. Freezing them makes assembling the cake easier, less likely for a layer to shatter into earthquake cake (still tasty, but not as attractive.)

Flying Apron Kitchen’s Maple Coconut Frosting

20 oz coconut oil (an entire small tub of the NOW brand)

8 oz maple syrup

1 tsp sea salt (I use Penzey’s)

1 tbsp vanilla

9 oz fine shredded coconut, toasted

5 oz toasted pecans, broken into uniform bits

Toast the pecans in a jelly roll pan at 250 degrees. Watch the pan, occasionally turning the pieces with a flexible spatula, like a pancake turner. Do Not leave the oven. This should take about 10-12 minutes, but varies depending on the humidity that day, how accurate your oven is, the moisture content of this batch of nuts and if you store them in the freezer. They can go from lightly toasted to a burnt crisp in that one impatient moment. Remove from oven to cool.

Now spread the coconut into an even layer covering the jelly roll pan. The coconut is finer than the pecans so it toasts quicker. Again, turn occasionally with the soft spatula and don’t leave the oven. Once the coconut shows hints of golden color remove it from the oven. Continue to shift in the warm pan to help it cool.

While the pecans and coconut cool, place the rest of the ingredients into a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Start on low, easing the speed up to high. Beat the ingredients until inextricably incorporated. Add the coconut and pecans, beating on medium-high until fluffy.

I briefly chilled the frosting to make filling the cake easier. Cover the frosting in the bowl with cling wrap pressed onto the top of the fluff to prevent a skin forming.

Dark Chocolate Ganache (optional frosting for sides of cake)

Also adapted from “Rose’s Heavenly Cakes”

8 oz 64% bitter sweet chocolate (I use Sweet Earth Organic it is vegan and soy free)

9 oz Silk cream (use coconut milk cream if you’re allergic to soy)

½ tsp vanilla

The super easy way to make ganache is place the chocolate pieces into a food processor or blender, pulsing into fairly uniform, small pieces. Heat the cream in the microwave until it just starts to bubble. With the blades running pour the hot cream over the chocolate until a smooth liquid forms. Add vanilla. Pour into small bowl, cover with cling wrap, pressing to the top of the mixture to prevent a skin forming. Cool a couple minutes on the counter then place into the fridge. The rapid chill will give the ganache a suede or velvety texture instead of a glossy sheen.

If you don’t have a blender or food processor use a small to medium whisk in the bowl of chopped chocolate. Whisk continuously while slowly pouring the hot cream into the bowl. Add the vanilla and whisk until smooth. Follow the directions for chilling the ganache. Oh! Try not to eat it by the spoonful from the bowl.

To assemble the cake

Remove the cakes from the freezer. Place one layer on the serving dish, with wax paper strips lightly tucked under to keep the plate edges clean or be prepared to use a damp paper towel to clean the dish before presenting the cake.

Stir the maple coconut frosting, spread as thick or thin a layer you want on the top of the cake. Place it in the fridge for five minutes to set the frosting, that way the top layer is less likely to squish the filing down the cake sides.

Bring the cake back out of the fridge and repeat the process. Now is the perfect time to use a small, flexible frosting spreader to fill in any gaps in the filling. The frosting makes enough to fill a three layer cake. Store the rest in the freezer.

Hold the spreader parallel to the cake and smooth the ganache along the sides. By not using hot water on the spreader to smooth the ganache it will have a velvety texture instead of a glossy sheen.

There is enough ganache to pipe a top and bottom boarder on the cake, to play and decorate.

Alternatively, skip the ganache and serve the cake casual style with just the filling.