Apple Cobpie

Spin me around and call me Sally!  Local apples were 39 cents a pound at the grocery store.  I nearly fainted.  Thirty-nine-cents-a-pound!  How is that even possible!  Oh, I am not even going to ask, lest the grocery gods swoop down and suck the pure joy out of this moment.  Thirty!  Nine!  Cents!  A!  Pound!
I bought enough to feed our entire apartment building.  So you know the old saying: when the grocery gods give you apples, make APPLE PIE!
The kids and I debated over this one: did we want a traditional crust, albeit gluten-free, or did we want more of a cobbler type topping?  It got pretty harry for a while there.  I thought little I.Ma, my youngest, was going to drench me in spit, her speech was so impassioned.  That's right.  Little I.Ma spits when she gets excited.  And she gets excited over apple pie.  In the end, it was Little Se, ever my diplomat, who solved the problem: "Why don't we just make a crust on the bottom and top it like a cobbler?"
Well, duh!  We checked with the grocery gods, who conferred with the apple demi-gods, and it passed their strict standards.
Do you know how wonderful it is to walk home after a day of errands, classes, and activities, open the door, and see a perfectly lovely apple cobpie sitting on your counter waiting for dessert?  It's so wonderful that, in our family at least, the apple cobpie must be promoted to meal-in-and-of-itself.
And so it was.  And now, with the permission of the apple demi-gods, I pass it on to you, in hopes that your own grocery gods have blessed your local grocery store with apple abundance!
Apple Cobpie
one recipe graham cracker dough
5 apples (your preference; we like them tart), sliced (you might want to peel them, but we like the peel on (because we are too lazy to peel them)
3 T. white rice flour
1 t. cinnamon
1/3 c. agave
1 T. balsamic vinegar
1/2 c. nuts (your choice; pecans and almonds work nicely)
1/4 c. corn meal
pinch nutmeg
Make the graham cracker dough per instructions, stopping before rolling into a ball.  Separate out 2/3 of the dough and roll that into a ball.  Keep the other 1/3 in a bowl for later.  Using flour on your surface and rolling pin, roll out the dough into a circle that is 1 1/2 inches larger in diameter than the bottom of your pie pan.  Carefully lift the dough and place in your pie pan, letting it go up the sides.  Gently press the dough into the pan and shape the sides as you wish.  Fork the dough every few centimeters.  Set aside.
In a clean bowl (as in, not the one with the rest of the dough), combine apples, flour, cinnamon, agave, and vinegar.  Pour mixture into pie pan.  Carefully cover the top ridge of the crust with foil (so you will have a circle of foil on the perimeter of the pie pan at the top of the crust, but not covering the pie).
In the bowl with the rest of the graham cracker dough, add nuts, cornmeal, and nutmeg.  Mix with a fork.  Put this topping on top of the pie.
Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.  Remove foil and bake another 5-10 minutes.  Let cool completely and serve as desert, the main meal, breakfast, or what have you.
Be sure to thank the apple demi-gods first.  As mere demi-gods, they get so little praise.

The sight that welcomed us after a long day of errands, classes, and such

FINALLY: Graham Crackers

The food I have most missed as a gluten-free mom is the handy dandy graham cracker.  Is there anything more succinct than a graham cracker?  It's part cookie, thereby satisfying the sweet teeth among us, and part cracker: compact, simple, and convenient.  With my two eldest children, I knew I could safely leave the house with a box of graham crackers and a container of peanut butter.  They would happily scoop up the peanut butter with the perfect little scoopers and not complain of hunger. They always satisfied longer than apples and peanut butter, carrots and hummus, and any other combination of carb and protein I could assemble.
Alas, those days of glory ended with my youngest, she of the gluten-free existence.  There was no way I was going to spend four dollars on a box of processed gluten-free graham crackers that didn't even contain enough servings to satisfy one child, much less three.  And then there is the shock that ran through my brain when I finally read the ingredient list on a box of regular graham crackers.  Seriously, I was feeding this to my children?  This is what they pass out at hospitals to hungry cardiac patients?
Unless you are willing to pay even more than four dollars for the organic version, you might as well be injecting the boxed graham crackers right into your kids' arteries.  Well, that might be a little dramatic.  Just a little (I tend to swing that way).  Still, I am not keen on feeding my kids hydrogenated fats and am somewhat ashamed that I had not noticed the ingredients a long time ago.  I just assumed that something so lovely and simple as a graham cracker had to be made with equally lovely and simple ingredients.
Not so.  At least not if you buy the cheap kind.  So, we have lived a grahamcrackerless existence.  A sad sad grahamcrackerless existence.
Until now...
I figured I could develop a part cookie/part cracker concoction that would surely cost me less than four dollars for half a snack.  I was right.  My kids love these things.  They are not quite as scoopulous as the boxed version (in regards to peanut butter), as they are a bit less solid, but they are fantastic alone or as a vehicle for various spreads: nut butters, my divine chocolate frosting, fruit spread.  You could even make a sweet little fruit pizza with a cracker, a little frosting, and some sliced strawberries or bananas.  Oh man.  I am so going to do that tomorrow.
Gluten-free Vegan Graham Crackers
1 1/2 c. brown rice flour
1/2 c. white rice flour
1/2 c. almond meal or flax meal (or 1/4 c. each OR, just for kicks, 1/4 c. Hemp Powder and 1/4 c. flax meal)
2 t. cinnamon
1 teaspoon gluten-free baking powder
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 T. soy-free Earth Balance (scooped in 1 T. increments)
5 T. agave
1 t. vanilla
3 T. cold water
Put dry ingredients in a bowl.  Cut butter into the dry ingredients with pastry cutter or a butter knife.  It will look somewhat like this

After cutting in the butter

Add water, agave and vanilla and then knead the dough to combine.  Form a large ball.

The big ball of graham crackery goodness

Smear a 10 X 13 (ish) baking dish (10 X 10 will yield thinker, more cookie-like crackers; the bigger your pan, the thinner and harder your crackers; 10 X 13 really yields the nicest crackers) with Earth Balance and dust some rice flour or corn meal all over it (I use corn meal because it is cheaper).   At this point you have two options:
1.  You can flour your work surface and use a floured rolling pin to flatten out the dough.   Next, transfer your dough ever so carefully to your baking dish.  It will not fit perfectly and there will be cracks in it.  So wet your hands with cold water and gently spread the dough to fit the dish. You can also use your wet hands to smooth the dough out.  This will make the cookies a bit softer.  If you don't want them to be softer, flour your hands to flatten and smooth.
OR
2.  Plop the big ball down into your baking dish and flatten with the palm of your hand.  Wet your hands with cold water and gently spread the dough to fit the dish. You can also use your wet hands to smooth the dough out.  This will make the cookies a bit softer.  If you don't want them to be softer, flour your hands to flatten and smooth.
As you can see, my 10 X 10 baking dish was otherwise occupied.  I used a large cookie sheet and let my daughter do the smoothing (because she said it looked fun).  There's no need for these yummy babies to look perfect.  They are scrumptious enough to hold their own.

Spread into a much larger baking dish by my chef daughter

Next, cut the dough with a sharp knife into 16 crackers.  Then fork it.  Poke the flattened dough with a fork about 2-4 times per cracker.  You can optionally sprinkle with cinnamon.

cut, forked, cinnamoned, and ready to bake

Bake at 325 degrees for 20-25 minutes.  Let cool partially and then separate (you might need a knife to help you).  Let cool completely before eating, if you can wait that long.  These freeze very well.
In the photo below, I used the hemp/flax meal combination to add extra protein and good fats.  I sprinkled it with the cinnamon just in case the hemp flavor came through.  It didn't, but the cinnamon added such a nice touch.

with a little strawberry fruit spread

Moist and Nutty Gluten-free Vegan Chocolate Cake

We home-school.  Actually, we lakeparklibrarymuseumartinstituteclubclasscoopteam-school.  But, I digress.  In an effort to curtail the constant requests for complicated projects just as I am about to prepare dinner or right before bed, I initiated what we call "Thomas Edison Time" (TET).  About 3 times a week, we dedicate 1-3 hours to all those complicated projects that require lots of supervision and one-on-one time.  The kids write down what they want to do during TET and we save those projects for then.
Today, we fulfilled my eldest and youngest's request to bake a chocolate cake.  Normally, my eldest, nine year old Little O, can run with a recipe and cook up a feast herself.  But I thought it might be nice to bake a cake that all of us can eat.  Since we were out of the ingredients needed to make my Vegan Chocolate Cake of Happiness, I needed to develop something new with what we had on hand.  It also needed to be simple enough for the kids to learn once and then create on their own in the future.
I came up with the recipe below.  Not only did it solidify the very confusing world of fractions for Little O (who exclaimed somewhere in the middle of the process, "You know Mamma, fractions are really making sense in my brain.  Before, it was all jumbled up.  Now it makes sense"), but it was also a huge hit.  My son, nearly eight year old Little S, has requested it for his upcoming birthday.  That is definitely success in the gluten-free, vegan world.
Sidebar:  I have been torturing myself over what to call the cake because of America's apparent abhorrence of the word "moist".  But, moist it is and thus, the name of the cake:
Moist and Nutty Gluten-free Vegan Chocolate Cake
Ingredients
3/4 c. cashew meal (We pulsed about 1 c. cashews in the food processor, leaving some coarse pieces in tact -- so as not to make cashew butter.  The tiny bits of cashews add to the delight of the cake)
1/4 c. flax meal
1 c. brown rice flour
1/2 c. white rice flour
1/3 c. cocoa powder
1/2 t. salt
1 t. baking soda
1.5 t. xanthan gum
1 t. vanilla
1 T. vinegar (apple cider might work best, but we used rice vinegar)
1 c. agave
1/3 c. Soy-free Earth Balance or vegan butter spread of choice (you can also use coconut oil or canola oil), softened
1/3 c. vegan milk of choice (we used So Delicious Unsweetened Cocount Milk)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare 9" round cake pan by greasing with vegan spread or coconut oil and dusting with white rice flour.
Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl.  Blend all wet ingredients in another bowl.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well.  Pour into pan and bake 25 minutes.  Let cool completely before frosting.
Frosting:
1/2 c. agave
a scant 3/4 c. cocoa
1/2 c. vegan butter spread of choice
optional 1 t. vanilla
Melt spread.  Whisk in other ingredients.  Cool in freezer or refrigerator until ready to frost.

Did I mention it is both moist AND nutty?

Fried Green Tomato Burgers

Let me just say from the outset that these will not in any way, shape, or form pass for real burgers.  Don't try it.  Just don't.  People will start to talk about you right there at the dinner table in hushed tones: "She's a vegan.  That's why she looks so waifish and anemic."  Now, I have never looked either waifish or anemic a day in my life, but people still think that about vegans.
It is best to tell people that these are a well-known southern delicacy about which books and movies have been made.  So there.
We serve them as burgers because they make a more filling, easy meal that way.  My kids LOVE them.  I prefer them without the gluten free bread-as-bun that my kids like.  I can taste more of the green tomato goodness that way.  They are delicious with ketchup, salsa, or mustard.  They are also just fine plain.  Today we had them with sweet potato fries.   They are much easier to make than hamburgers, much healthier, and just as filling (Okay, that last assertion is one of the big lies we vegans tell meat-eating folk in order to bring them over to our side.  It's not actually as filling as beef.  But then, beef is far more filling than the average human need consume.  So, there you have it -- tastes great, less filling).
Fried Green Tomato Burgers
Several big fat green tomatoes (not to be confused with tomatillos, which will yield an entirely different product), cut into 1/2 inch slices
olive oil for pan
1 1/2 T. powdered egg replacer (I use Ener-G brand)
4 T. warm water
1/2 c. corn meal
1 t. garlic powder
1/2 t. salt
pepper to taste
cajun spice to taste (optional)
Start to warm fry-pan on medium.  Meanwhile, whisk egg replacer and water in a pie pan (or shallow, flat dish).  In another pie pan, combine corn meal, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and spice.  Add a small amount of oil to the pan.  You really don't need a lot.  Dip tomato slice in egg replacer mixture, coating both sides.  Next dip in corn meal mixture, coating both sides.  Place in pan.  Repeat until the pan is filled.
The key at this point is patience.  Allow the tomatoes to bond in their warm fry-pan experience.  Make yourself a cup of coffee and chat with those lovely slices of green tomato that have spent their entire existence in preparation for this moment.  They are, after all, giving their life for you.  LOL.  I can't really pull that off.  I don't really believe eating vegetables is cruel.  I just thought you might like something to read while you are waiting.
When the tomato has started to brown on one side, dab, spray, rub, or brush a little olive oil on the top side and then flip that little baby over.  Now, be patient again.  I'm out of clever things to write so you'll just have to check your email or something.  Oh -- or you could chat with your guests/family.  That works.
Once both sides are slightly crispy and slightly golden, prepare as you desire and enjoy!
I will post a recipe for gluten-free bread-as-bun soon.

On the gluten-free bread-as-bun, prior to getting dressed

Fried Green Tomatoes of Goodness