If you can’t choose between gingerbread and chocolate for your holiday dessert, these are just for you! Make them even more festive with the addition of candied ginger, citrus peel and raisins or currants plumped in warm rum. These cupcakes are rich and intense, a perfect holiday dessert in a highly portable format. The recipe can also be made into an 8-inch square or 9-inch round cake, if that fits better with your menu!
Continue reading “Chocolate gingerbread cupcakes with chocolate icing”Tag: holiday
Easy and Wildly Inauthentic “Tilgul” (dairy-free, gluten-free sesame energy bites)
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Every other year or so I have attempted (and failed at) “Tilgul” – a sweet treat made with sesame seeds (“Til”), jaggery (“Gul”), coconut and a whiff of cardamom, sometimes rolled into balls (“Laddoos”), or formed into bars. There’s many different kinds too, with different levels of complexity (and corresponding failure rates). Some varieties are fudge-y and moist, while others are crunchy and almost brittle-like.
No matter the way, I find it tricky to make Tilgul at home especially with the variation in the jaggery available in the US. It seems to have a lower moisture content sometimes, and other times it liquifies too fast and hardens into a rock. It’s not that my Tilgul attempts have been complete disasters, but they haven’t been as perfect as they should be, or could be (unless you call dismantling it and eating it like granola with your cereal a success).
Gingerbread Cake
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Gingerbread is one of them Christmastime/December rituals, something you make when you are invited to a holiday party, or throw one. It’s a purely seasonal event – both it’s making and consumption. And usually if someone asks me to make Gingerbread in any of the remaining 11 months of the year, I politely decline and make something else instead. I’m very much like Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper that way; he has a clear rule about these type of things, in that he only drinks Hot Cocoa in months that have “R” in them. Take a minute to see that it makes total sense.
Gingerbread is only for December, only when it’s cold out, and you are enjoying it with a hot cup of coffee or hot chocolate or mulled wine, doing absolutely nothing. The ultimate year end treat. Second only to Black Forest Cake, Gingerbread is one of the best things to come from Germany.
![[for young chefs] Nutella Chocolate Chunk Cookies (gluten-free)](https://onepieatatime.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/img_9858.jpeg?w=924&h=0&crop=1)
[for young chefs] Nutella Chocolate Chunk Cookies (gluten-free)
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This is going to be a rather short post, as I need to get back to eating my cookies. Also because they are ridiculously easy to make so there’s nothing much to say about the whole “recipe” aspect of it. They are a great recipe to make with kids, that is, if you can get them to stop eating the Nutella straight from the jar!
The proof is in the pudding..err, cookie, because I made these with some delightful kiddos over the holidays (virtually no less), and they loved them.
My family can best be described as Nutella fiends (among other notorious foodie descriptions) so I’m always trying to sneak Nutella into cakes, muffins and frostings; why should cookies be left behind?
Especially if the cookies in question happen to be one-bowl, gluten-free, spanning 6 ingredients, and ready to go into the oven faster than it takes for the oven to preheat.
Continue reading “[for young chefs] Nutella Chocolate Chunk Cookies (gluten-free)”
Vegan Chai-spice Pumpkin Bundt Cake
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I wasn’t the biggest pumpkin purée fan all these years, and the culprit was definitely its association with cinnamon and “pumpkin spice”-everything. I don’t hate cinnamon but in the US, like clockwork, everyone craves cinnamon come September and it just don’t stop until New Years!. Anything made with pumpkin purée (store-bought) is just a cinnamon-scented assault.
But then I made pumpkin purée at home for the first time (thanks Instant Pot!) and ate a small portion of it warm, drizzled with coconut butter and just a dusting of cinnamon+nutmeg, and I was converted. I made pancakes with it, these brownies were wonderful too (vegan and gluten-free!), and then felt ready to graduate to cakes.
zezoo cooks 