In the palm of my hands
Dessert, Food & Drink Asha Dessert, Food & Drink Asha

In the palm of my hands

 Hand pies has always had a certain tug in my heart. The always bring to my mind the image of a child's hand in an adult, being lovingly carried through life. It brings vivid imaginations of baking together with your mom or grand mom, making little versions of adult people food. Having never had that experience in any form, I find this image entirely soothing and sweet. So, please do not shatter it with reality of them being just gimmicks or something of the sort. I will stick my dream of them being small people pies!

These pies are more biscuit like than flaky but I find that crunch a very alluring balance to the softness of poached fruit inside. My filling was a resilient, raw cane sugar and cardamom roasted small asian pears. But, you can just as easily use rhubarb or berries or other smaller fruits in season.

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Hello Weekend and Time Enough for Berries
Dessert, Food & Drink Asha Dessert, Food & Drink Asha

Hello Weekend and Time Enough for Berries

I have slowly been making headway into the fruits I had frozen from last year market season. As I type, I only have half a bag left! I cooked the first batch into a compote to top on Pavlova here and several breakfasts of crunchy granola. I love the textural balance of the crunch from the granola, melting yogurt, yielding into the fleshy softness of the fruit compote. That was the same allure that this combination of meringue crunch, strained thick yogurt laced with honey and cardamom topped with generous dollops of compote had for me. 

This pavlova - It is simple, delicious and yet decadent in a especially frivolous way! Perfect for a weekend when the weather is not quite warm but surely past the grasp of cold.... Like today.

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Banana Einkorn Cake with Nutella Swirls

Banana Einkorn Cake with Nutella Swirls

Einkorn is an heritage wheat strain that has been recently growing in popularity. The idea is that this is the unadulterated version of wheat, from when the wheat DNA was not being tampered with to create higher yield, larger kernel, pest-resistant crops. What I found with Einkorn is that I am still left with the same level of susceptibility but the amount of this wheat I can partake before flaring up on allergens is much higher. So, I am ok to have a large slice of cake made with this flour that I typically would not be able to indulge in (without fallout) with a regular white flour goodie. One would then think that this is such a manna and with a simple substitution, all would go back to the hegemonies days of indulgence. But, fortunately, that is not quite possible.

At the heart of it, it a very source of carbohydrates and one with mitigated side effects (for me). Balancing that is the price of this non-commodity. As it is not optimized for yield or resistance, it is a very natural grain that is well susceptible to the natural forces. It is not abundantly available and is priced as such. So, I have to be parsimonious in my use of it and as much conscious of how I incorporate it. Banana bread/cake is, I think, well worth this investment. As it is, it is memorable as one of the first from-scratch bakes from my kitchen. Over that, its functionality as both breakfast as well as dessert, makes it an ideal target for use. Also, a little flour goes a long way here as the bulk of the volume comes from the bananas.....

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A Cake Named Content
Dessert, Food & Drink Asha Dessert, Food & Drink Asha

A Cake Named Content

I was typing a really long draft post with a lot of questions and introspective comments, bordering on the existential. Then, I was going to connect how the current state of the food blogging world is representative of the chaotically complex we all seem to be leading. You know, it was going to a be an intense and verbose way of linking to why my cake today is.

Then, I realized, that this whole existentialism of the food blogging world was something that I want to write about separately. And, the point of this cake is the elegance of simple and I would complete shatter that with the verbosity of my expostulations.

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Gluten Free Carrot Cake-Do(ugh)-Nuts + Blood Orange Cream Frosting
Dessert, brunch, Food & Drink Asha Dessert, brunch, Food & Drink Asha

Gluten Free Carrot Cake-Do(ugh)-Nuts + Blood Orange Cream Frosting

Carrot cake is quite popular in my house. Consequently, several variations of it feature on this blog as well like frosted layered cakes to mini cakes to cup cakes and more. But, none of them have been gluten free, well, because I did not need to. I need to now.

So, recently, when the desire to have carrot cake set in again, it was the perfect opportunity to test how the recipe work when the chemistry of flour ingredients are changed on their head. Fortunately, I struck gold with the first recipe I tried and it was also the one that had worked best for regular flour and has been particularly popular with readers.

In this post, I catalog some of the factors that I work with when transforming recipes with regular flour to gluten free creations in my kitchen. In this recipe, I used a blend of oat and almond flours, which, I think works wonders for sweet stuff.

Continue reading to find out why and get the recipe for these adorable cake-do-nuts!

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