I have not yet ended up baking anything from Babycakes cookbook, largely because I have not yet found a good local source for coconut oil, which is the stand in for butter in virtually all the recipes I'm interested in trying. So to the recipe book it was.
I actually have two recipe 'books', which are blue binders of clippings of all types of vegetarian recipes from the past 15 years or so. Needless to say, the 'dessert' book has not seen too much use so it was that one I hauled down to examine. I zeroed in on a few things to make: amaretti crisps, almond pound cake (yes, I have a major thing for almonds), sesame cookies and lemon pound cake. In all cases I substituted flour one-for-one with Bob's Red Mill GF Baking Flour plus a pinch of Xanthan Gum. I was able to find the links for these online and have included ghem below.
Here's what happened:
Almond Polenta Pound Cake
Almonds and corn, two of my favorite substances, together in a delicious baked confection? Bring it on! I eyed this recipe hopefully because it already had corn as an ingredient, and not too much flour. So, I got ready to make it, when I looked more carefully at the Almond Paste I'd picked up at Whole Foods....wheat paste? You've got to be kidding me! AAAUGH! I did not look at the ingredients before leaving the store and had to return the little log of almond paste because it most definitely contained gluten, bummer. (Apparently not all brands are made with gluten so read carefully, you may be in luck.)
So before I could proceed with the Almond Pound Cake, I had to detour and figure out the almond paste situation. I found a recipe online and it seems to have worked out well.
But first, a side trip for Almond Paste
I got the blanched almonds, egg white, confectioner's sugar and almond extract together, and the almond paste went together in a snap in the big food processor. I still have more to make something else with. I don't know if it's any more economical than buying almond paste, but a lot safer in that you know what is in it and where the ingredients came from!
now, back to the Almond Polenta Pound Cake
OK, I will confess that the recipe and putting-together of this cake was overly complex. Why so many separate bowls/piles of ingredients? Why not the simplicity of the Lemon Pound Cake? At any rate, I persisted. The first surprise was that there was way more batter than to fill a 9x5 pan (I filled two 8x4s). The big disappointment was that all the polenta sank to the bottom of the cake as it baked, so we were left with something in three layers - a cakelike fluffy top layer, a dense middle layer (where most of the almond paste stuck?) and a grainy bottom layer where the polenta went to live. Sigh. I was slightly crushed, I really wanted this one to work out. I may try it again as the flavor itself was good though. No photo of this one sorry.
Amaretti Crisps
Again with the almonds! This cookie is an italian classic. It starts out quite like the almond paste recipe, except that the almonds and confectioner's sugar are folded into beaten egg whites (rather than the unaltered egg white). I was most pleased with how these came out. I might experiment next time with a slightly lower oven temp, as they got a tad browner than I might ideally like. Chris liked these too. (NB: I did not pipe the cookies, but just dropped them from a spoon. That seemed to work OK but piping might be more elegant.) Bonus? These are easy and quick to put together (seemed to work well to toast the sesame seeds ahead of time, I whirred those together with the sugar one evening and then actually made the cookies the following morning).
Sesame Cookies
I like sesame a lot too, and had never gotten around to trying the non GF version of this recipe. I figured I'd give it a go as it had only one cup of flour in the recipe. The results were OK - the Amaretti Crisps were way better, but these were still good enough to eat. They ended up being rather doughy instead of crisp. Part of this I solved by making the cookies smaller in the later baking batches, but still, a reasonable experiment that won't be repeated. No photo of these.
Lemon Pound Cake
Finally, a real winner in the cake department after the disappointment of the Almond Polenta pound cake. This made a lovely light batter and a very tasty cake. We even brought it to brunch at our friends' house, they asked to keep the leftover pieces, they liked it so much. Delicious as a snack or with coffee. The real specialness of this cake and the POW lemon flavor comes from the glaze which is drizzed all over the cake top after it comes out of the oven. Yum. Oh - notwithstanding the notice about not rising, I found that my cake did.
What's next? Possibly a reprise of the Almond Polenta Pound cake, definitely a foray to french almond macaroons...stay tuned...
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