Category: Recipe

Banana ice cream

On By CarynIn Recipe

I know, it is November, and I want to make ice cream?!? Well I had overripe bananas and I did not want to make banana bread (What?!? The horror!) because it wasn’t just one overripe banana, it was four. And before you say, well banana bread freezes, I want to let you know that frozen banana bread is delicious and I can hear it calling even through the closed freezer door. Muffin shapes are even better straight out of the freezer.

Anyway, searching for things to do with overripe bananas yielded a plethora of single ingredient ice cream recipes. You can google it, or just slice your ripe banana, freeze it, purée it in a blender, and eat it. I followed an instruction to freeze it again after processing, but it became very hard. I had to leave it on the counter for awhile before it softened. Maybe pin this for summer, though.

Sliced bananas ready for the freezer
Puréed frozen bananas (just keep going until it looks like soft serve)
Twice frozen banana ice cream, which tasted fine, but was too hard

Lower carb gluten-free chocolate chip cookies

On By CarynIn Recipe

That is a mouthful. My youngest wanted to make cookies again. In an effort to make the cookies slightly less of a carb load, I made some substitutions to my recipe. It turned out really well, so I am sharing. Sorry I didn’t run the calorie or nutrition info, I really don’t want to know. These were GOOD.

Almond pecan chocolate chip cookies

1 cup butter flavored Crisco
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup Splenda
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 1/4 cup almond flour
1 1/4 cup King Arthur Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 package semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Cream together Crisco and sugars. Add vanilla and eggs, mix until fluffy. Combine dry ingredients, slowly add to butter mixture. Stir in chocolate chips and pecans. Hand roll 1 Tablespoon balls of dough and place 2″ apart on parchment paper on cookie sheets. Bake at 350 degrees F for 10-12 minutes until edges are golden. Let cool on sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.

Pressure cooker

On By CarynIn Recipe
Perfect eggs

I was a dubious joiner on the pressure cooker parade. But after buying one, and hard boiling eggs in it, I am a convert. Even for the eggs alone it is worth the cabinet space in my kitchen. I am able to make other things with the pressure cooker, yes, but easily peeling a hard boiled egg, then having the yolk turn out like this… ahhh.

As an aside, I use egg stands to hold the eggs up out of the water in the pot, and I use the egg setting on my pressure cooker, which cooks the eggs for 5 minutes at high pressure. Then I manually release the pressure and immediately put the eggs into an ice bath (large bowl with ice and water) until they are cool.

Gluten-free Pecan cookies

On By CarynIn Recipe

When it is cold and yucky outside, it isn’t hard for my youngest to convince me to make cookies. She was upset that there were no chocolate chips in the house, but agreed to make these pecan cookies, as long as hers didn’t have nuts. Oh well! The rest of us enjoy these yummy pecan cookies.

1 cup butter flavored Crisco
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 1/2 cup King Arthur Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Cream together Crisco and sugars. Add vanilla and eggs, mix until fluffy. Combine dry ingredients, slowly add to butter mixture. Stir in pecans. Hand roll 1 Tablespoon balls of dough and place 2″ apart on parchment paper on cookie sheets. Bake at 350 degrees F for 10-12 minutes until edges are golden. Let cool on sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.


Almond Oat Pancakes

On By CarynIn Recipe

Making pancakes at our house is not a task for the faint of heart. Gluten makes my stomach hurt (within 30 minutes of eating it, and then no one wants to be around me because I’m grumpy). My husband has adult onset diabetes, so needs to keep the sugars and carbs down, and my kids are both picky eaters in their own way. Pulling a pancake mix off the shelf really isn’t an option. I’ve tweaked and fiddled with different pancake recipes over the years, and this one is now our favorite. It is even good without blueberries (original flavor, as my youngest says). It does use 3 eggs, and is another reason why we want chickens. We go through so many eggs in a week!

Almond Oat Pancakes

1 cup almond flour (or if you are allergic to almonds, cornmeal works too, just add a little more milk)
3/4 cup gluten-free oat flour
3 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
3 eggs
1 cup milk (half and half works too, but not full cream – too dry)
3 Tbsp melted butter
1 tsp vanilla
blueberries, washed (Optional. The blueberries, not the wash. If you use blueberries, please wash them first.)

  1. Melt the butter (I find 30 seconds, a stir, then 20 seconds does the job without frothing over)
  2. In a large bowl or measuring cup, stir together the dry ingredients.
  3. In a medium bowl or measuring cup, mix milk, eggs, butter, and vanilla.
  4. Combine wet and dry ingredients.
  5. On a griddle heated to medium heat, pour slightly less than a 1/4 cup batter for each pancake. Add seven blueberries per pancake. (Seven is a good number.)
  6. Flip when edges are slightly matt and the popped bubbles leave holes on the edge. Note: Nut flours burn easily, so flip the pancakes before you would flip other pancakes.

Nutritional Values per serving: Calories: 459, Carbs: 39g, Fat: 26g, Protein: 17g, Sodium: 449, Sugar: 17g ( I so didn’t need to know this.)