I have been having a major food crisis these past months; I have developed an intolerance to soy, so it’s no more soy milk or soy yogurts for me. I’m still eating some tofu and tempeh, but I don’t know for how long I can keep on eating them, I had to give up soy isolates some time ago, so this has been getting worse and I am preparing myself for a soy-free life; it will be hard giving up something that has been a staple in your diet for such a long time. This means that at the moment I can’t eat anything starchy including potatoes and white rice, oats, anything with gluten, any raw vegetables, margarine and soy. That’s a long list and I came to the conclusion that I will start eating some eggs and milk products from now on. Since this blog reflects my life, I will start including recipes with milk and eggs from this day forward.
It feels odd thinking about milk and eggs as food again; my milk- and egg-free life lasted for about ten years and so this still feels strange. Many celiacs seem to develop other kind of food problems and some autoimmune diseases and it seems I am one of them, I hope that eating as much organic foods as possible and avoiding refined foods will somehow prevent other allergies from raising their head.
I made some carrot cupcakes with eggs and they do turn out different than egg-free ones; the texture is somewhat harder and gummier, egg-free cupcakes are really soft and moist. The liquid in these comes from carrots boiled in orange juice which has then been puréed and pressed through a fine mesh. For the decoration I used some caramelized carrots which tasted really good and the frosting was made with cream cheese.
Carrot cupcakes
Makes 12 small cupcakes
-3/4 cup caster sugar
-3/4 cup butter
-3 eggs
-2 carrots
-3 cups orange juice
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-2 tsp baking powder
-1 1/2 cups flour, I used quinoa flour
Preheat the oven to 180 Celsius. Grate the carrots and put them into a saucepan on medium heat and add the orange juice. When the carrots are done purée them and then press them through a fine mesh, take 2/3 cup of the liquid and set aside.
Beat the sugar and the butter until creamy. Add the eggs and then add the orange juice and carrot mixture (2/3 cup), add the vanilla extract too and mix everything together. Sift the flour and the baking powder and fold them into the batter. Spoon the batter into cupcake papers, leave some room for it to rise.
Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.
The frosting
-400 grams cream cheese (tofutti makes a great soy based cream cheese which is milk-free)
-1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar
-1 tbls orange juice
Mix everything together and frost the cupcakes after they have cooled down.
Caramelized carrot slices
-2 carrots, slice them with a peeler so that you get nice long slices
-3 heaping tbls butter
-1/2 cup sugar
Place the sugar and the butter in a saucepan on medium heat, wait until they turn into a smooth paste, it should be a bit brown and everything should have dissolved. Add the carrot slices and quickly turn them around in the saucepan so that are coated, put them onto some kitchen paper and let them cool before decorating with them.
On a side note, I tried using quinoa flour in a roux and it worked, I was a bit suprised. I was making some qumbo and not béchamel, so I don’t know how it will behave in something like béchamel sauce.
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