Honey Cake, also known as Lebkuchen, is a traditional Jewish dessert eaten during Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year); my family sometimes serves it during Yom Kippur Break Fast as well since it is a warming, comforting food. Traditionally, we eat honey during the High Holidays as this ritual sets the tone for a sweet new year. It is common to dip apples in honey at the Rosh Hashanah meals.

Most honey cake recipes include coffee, I left it out of this one to simplify the recipe and make it a couple of steps easier.

My husband loved this cake –as you can see from the photo above, a large piece has been devoured. And a friend said it was the best honey cake she had ever eaten, gluten free or not; however, I’ll let you all be the judge of that!

It seems that just about everyone at the synagogue we attend is gluten free and a number of the folks are Paleo as well. Given how many requests I received this past month from our congregation for a Paleo Honey Cake, I thought it made sense to share this recipe.

Here are some additional Paleo Dessert recipes for the festive Jewish caveman in all of us:

• Paleo Banana Bread
• Paleo Pumpkin Bread
• Paleo Fruitcake

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During the holidays I’m always looking for yummy treats to eat that won’t leave me with a high-carb hangover. This paleo dessert recipe for a moist, gluten free fruitcake fits the bill. Sweetened with one tablespoon of coconut sugar, along with dates, raisins and dried cherries, my Paleo version of this classic treat is great with a cup of tea, Dandelion Root Coffee, or makes a beautifully simple gift to give to friends and neighbors during the holidays.

According to Wikipedia, fruitcake is:

A cake made with chopped candied fruit and/or dried fruit, nuts, and spices, and (optionally) soaked in spirits. A cake that simply has fruit in it as an ingredient can also be colloquially called a fruitcake. In the United Kingdom, certain rich versions may be iced and decorated. Fruitcakes are often served in celebration of weddings and Christmas.

Along with visions of wacky people, the word “fruitcake” can also conjure thoughts of dry, icky cake. I think you’ll be pleased to find that this easy Paleo recipe is rich and moist –a Christmas Cake recipe that is versatile enough to use all year round.

I think this might be my first Paleo cake recipe. I could be wrong though. What Paleo grain-free, dairy-free desserts will you be serving this holiday season?

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One summer evening as I baked countless batches of gluten free cookies, my older son popped into the kitchen. Determined to join me in my culinary adventures, he decided to make gluten free strawberry shortcake from scratch (as in using no cookbook or recipe). The twist?  He’s a chocolate lover, so he made Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake.

As you may know, Jewish mothers tend to think of their sons as geniuses, and I am no exception. I love that my 12 year old boy could whip up a recipe from scratch with no help whatsoever. I think that the boys have learned this skill (my 11 year old specializes in omelets and pancakes), from hanging out with me while I cook.

My favorite thing about cooking is making mistakes. As a perfectionist, I find this very freeing. Strangely, my son created this cute little recipe on his first try. I have taught the boys to measure and write down all of the ingredients they use when cooking. This way, if they like something and it turns out well, they can make it again. Or I can make it and share it with you all.

So, I present you with my 12 year old son’s gluten free Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake. He did not want me to disclose his name, though said it was ok to use his first initial –”J.”

So this simple strawberry recipe is easy enough to make with your children. And if you have little ones that follow a gluten-free diet, well, this is even better.

Cooking with children can be a blast; here are some other quick and easy child friendly recipes you can make with your little ones:
-Chocolate Chip Cookies (with video!)
-Liberté, Egalité, Crudité
-Kale with Cranberries

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Looking for a quick and easy gluten free chocolate cake? This one is so simple that you can make it one pot and it doesn’t need a drop of frosting.  I’m hooked on this thick, fudgey, yet cakey treat.  I made it a couple of weeks ago during our Super Bowl party and it was gobbled up in mere minutes by our boisterous gang of guests.

If you are not in the mood for white chocolate, or wish to make a more Paleo/Primal treat, replace the white chocolate chips with dark chocolate chips.  Replacing the white chocolate with dark chocolate turns this dessert into a healthy treat with high fat coconut milk (great fat to anchor your blood sugar levels) as well as almond flour and eggs (full of good proteins that also anchor blood sugar levels and keep you satiated).

The recipe below is actually based on a brownie recipe by the lovely Marinka.  When I posted my Double Chocolate Walnut Brownies, she left a comment with a link to her brownies, which I then in turn based this cake upon.

Black and White CakeNote: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.
1 cup chocolate drops (if you want to use a bar, it’s about 6 ounces)
½ cup coconut milk
2 eggs
1 ¼ cups blanched almond flour
½ teaspoon celtic sea salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 cup white chocolate chips

1. Melt dark chocolate chips and coconut milk in a small saucepan over very low heat
2. When chocolate is completely melted, remove saucepan from heat
3. Stir eggs into saucepan containing chocolate/coconut milk mixture
4. Next, stir in almond flour, salt and baking soda
5. Fold in ½ cup of the white chocolate chips
6. Grease an 8 x 8 inch baking dish with oil of your choice
7. Pour batter into baking dish, then sprinkle remaining white chocolate chips over batter
8. Bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes
9. Cool and serve

In terms of substitution questions, feel free to try this replacing the eggs with some other ingredient of your choice.  If you replace the eggs, or any other ingredient in this recipe, for that matter, please leave a comment and let us know how it goes!  It took me quite a few tries to get this recipe just so, therefore I’m really not sure how it would work with various adaptations –the only way to find out is to give it the old college try.

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The recipe for this gluten free Cinnamon Apple Cake comes from one of my favorite bloggers, AndreAnna “The Primal Matriarch” and her food blog, Life as a Plate.  I adapted my version of her recipe, Apple Spice Bread, eliminating the step of pre-cooking the apples, adding a ton of cinnamon, and making a couple other changes as well.

I think that you’ll be delighted whether you go for her original recipe or my inerpretation of it below.  By the way, this is not a sweet cake, though it has a super cinnamon-y flavor, which my boys and I love.  And just a quick note, cinnamon is now considered a super-spice.  It just might regulate blood sugar and is touted in Ayurveda as fixing all kinds of ailments –cinnamon is now my go to spice and I sometimes add a tablespoon of it to my morning protein shake.

Cinnamon Apple CakeNote: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.
1 apple, peeled, cored and chopped
2 tablespoons orange juice, fresh squeezed
1 cup creamy roasted almond butter
¼ cup agave nectar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons cinnamon
½ teaspoon celtic sea salt

1. In a food processor combine apple, oj and almond butter and pulse until well blended
2. Pulse in agave, eggs, vanilla, cinnamon (yes 2 tablespoons) and salt
3. Pour batter into a greased 8 x 8 inch baking dish
4. Bake at 350° for 32 to 36 minutes
5. Cool and serve with whipped cream

You might also like these other apple dessert recipes:

-Fresh Apple Cake from Amy of Simply Sugar and Gluten-Free
-Apple Cake from Tamara Davis via GOOP
-Easy “Crustless” Apple Pie from Shirley of Gluten Free Easily

We are back in our house after a mandatory evacuation due to another Boulder fire, this one called the Dome Fire.  We were under an optional evacuation during the Four Mile Fire back in September, so this was the second time that we packed up the house in 2 months.  We’ve been busy over here!

This fire was frighteningly close to our house.  We could see it coming over the ridge at the end of our block, less than 1/4 mile away.  We are very grateful to our fabulous fire fighters for saving our neighborhood and thankful that we are ensconced back in our comfy home, all safe and sound.  We were relieved to stay in touch with friends and family via Facebook and Twitter during this surreal episode and want to thank all of you for the well wishes that you communicated to us via these social networks during this trying time.  Thank you.

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This gluten free Double Chocolate Orange Torte will make a nice treat for Passover, which is rapidly approaching!  My family, however, needed no holiday or excuse to devour the entire cake on a Sunday afternoon.  This treat is easy to make and even easier to eat.  Go ahead, try some and see for yourself.

Double Chocolate Orange TorteNote: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.
½ cup chocolate drops
½ cup blanched almond flour
¼ cup cacao powder
½ teaspoon celtic sea salt
3 eggs
½ cup agave nectar
½ cup grapeseed oil
1 tablespoon orange zest
½ cup chocolate drops

1. Place ½ cup chocolate chips in a food processor and pulse until coarsely ground to the texture of gravel
2. Pulse in almond flour, cacao powder and salt and process until well combined, about 10 seconds
3. Add eggs to food processor and pulse again, then add in agave, grapeseed oil and orange zest
4. Pulse all ingredients together until smooth
5. Remove “bowl” from food processor and stir in second ½ cup of chocolate chips using a spoon or spatula
6. Transfer batter into a well oiled 10 inch springform pan
7. Bake at 350° for 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean

Serves 6

I adapted this torte recipe from a site called Mandelininc.com which has yummy ideas for almond flour goodies.  The recipe I based mine on is called Chocolate Citrus Almond Torte.

Finally, I just wanted to share some disturbing information that I garnered from an article in this Sunday’s New York Times.  Nicholas D. Kristof wrote a very informative piece on the use of antibiotics in factory farming.  According to his article we, “need to curb the way modern agribusiness madly overuses antibiotics, leaving them ineffective for sick humans.”

Did you know that 70% of the antibiotics used in this country are administered to healthy farm animals.  Why is this done?  It helps the animals grow faster and bulk up, making them, of course, more valuable.  Meat is sold by the pound –think quantity, not quality.

The danger of this practice?  With antibiotics so prevalent, new “super bugs” are developing that are resistant to all existing anti-biotics.  According to Kristof, more than 18,000 people are dying each year from these new strains of disease that are now untreatable with even the most powerful antibiotics.  Pretty scary to think that after close to a century of antibiotic use we could slip back into a world where bacterial diseases (such as tuberculosis) are untreatable and ravage our population on a large scale as they once did.

What can we do?  First, if you can avoid all animal products from CAFO farms (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations).  These types of farms crowd animals into unsanitary conditions, creating infection and of course increasing the need for the administration of prophylactic antibiotics.  If you can, purchase organic meats/eggs/dairy from a farmer/rancher in your area (grass fed meat is actually best, however, that’s another story altogether).

And for all you vegans out there –kudos for not supporting the animal product industry in any way, however, these antibiotic resistant infections are contagious to everyone.  They originate in a farm and can mutate to our bodies in many ways, not just by eating meat.

I am hardly an expert on this issue, nor do I claim to be.  So please, those of you that have more information, leave a comment and let’s figure out what else we can do to change this frightening trend.

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My husband loves this simple, moist gluten free Cherry Apricot Cake. I make sure to use organic dried fruit in this dessert since pesticides levels tend to be high in conventional cherries and apricots and more concentrated in dried fruits. I often purchase my organic dried fruit at the local health food store, Vitamin Cottage; for more “hard to find” ingredients such as organic dried cherries (sans added sugar) one of my favorite sources is an online company called The Raw Choice.

Cherry Apricot CakeNote: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.
2 cups blanched almond flour
½ teaspoon celtic sea salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ cup agave nectar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
⅓ cup dried cherries
⅓ cup dried apricots, sliced into quarters

1. In a large bowl, combine almond flour, salt and baking soda
2. In a smaller bowl, combine agave, eggs and vanilla
3. Stir wet ingredients into dry
4. Gently mix in cherries and apricots
5. Pour batter into an 8 by 8 baking dish
6. Bake at 325° for 30-40 minutes, until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean
7. Cool and serve

Serves 8

It’s cold here and I’ve been getting a lot of exercise shoveling snow and chipping ice off the sidewalk in front of our house.  The boys and I had a great time yesterday walking around the neighborhood for an hour in the snow.  Today is bright and sunny –might be time to go out for a quick walk!

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As the weather is changing I’m leaning towards recipes that call for pumpkin, apples, cranberries and the like and am craving time in the kitchen to make lots of warm food for my family.  Along those lines, this Pumpkin Cinnamon Cheesecake is a winner.  This gluten free dessert doesn’t last long around the boys and their friends.

With so many healthy and nutritious ingredients, this pie style cheesecake could almost be part of the main course, though I prefer to save it for an after dinner treat in our house as I enjoy the dessert and tea ritual at the end of a meal (the boys love to make tea every evening and are now old enough to hold the kettle of hot water after it has boiled; they are growing up).

For those of you looking for a standard pumpkin pie, I do have a recipe for that dish in my gluten free cookbook, The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook. While the recipe below is casein lactose free if made with the right type of yogurt, the Pumpkin Pie recipe in my book is completely dairy free and is another family favorite.

Pumpkin Cinnamon CheesecakeNote: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.
1 medium pie pumpkin, acorn squash or butternut squash (how-to roast squash)
1 quart whole milk yogurt, strained overnight or up to 24 hours (discard whey)
½ cup agave nectar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon celtic sea salt

1. Fill the bottom of a baking dish with a little less than ¼ inch of water
2. Cut pumpkin in half, remove seeds, and place face down in baking dish
3. Roast pumpkin in the oven for 45-55 minutes until soft
4. Allow pumpkin to cool and scrape flesh into a bowl, then measure out 2 cups
5. In a food processor, combine 2 cups pumpkin, strained yogurt (minus the whey which was strained out), agave, vanilla and lemon juice and process until smooth, about 1-2 minutes
6. Process in cinnamon and salt
7. Pour batter into a 9-inch tart pan
8. Bake at 350° for 45-50 minutes, until firm
9. Remove from oven, cool and serve

Serves 8

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting Robyn O’Brien, another local author.  She penned an amazing book that is on my must read list called The Unhealthy Truth and gave me a copy to give to one of you.  Leave a comment for this Friday Freebie before next Wednesday and I will draw one of your names out of a Yankees hat to determine who wins.

UPDATE: this giveaway has ended and the winner was Danielle

Oh and don’t forget about Nourishing Days Food Roots for October! Submit a post about what you’re doing to find your food’s roots.

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During the last month Gluten Free Orange Cake has received a lot of play. And it’s certainly not because this tasty dessert is on my site.  Starbucks recently launched a classic Gluten Free Valencia Orange Cake to much fanfare from the gluten-free community.

A couple  of weeks ago I received this fabulous comment from LeAnne on my original Orange Cake post:

“Elana – have you tried the new Starbucks Gluten Free Valencia Orange Cake? It’s a copycat of your recipe. in a muffin form with sliced almonds and an orange syrup on top. All in an individual wrapper. Truly fabulous! They should re-name it Elana’s Gluten Free Valencia Orange Cake! So nice to have a gluten free alternative at Starbucks.”

Actually this cake was created by Claudia Roden; she called it Gateau a l’Orange, and it was made popular by Nigella Lawson. Nigella’s version was made with clementines, instead of oranges.

I hope you enjoy this DIY version of Starbucks Gluten Free Valencia Orange Cake.

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I’ve been on a quest this week for gluten-free, dairy-free healthy Twinkies and after several attempts (make that 7) I seem to have come up with a good approximation of this infamous Hostess treat.

Whenever the subject of Twinkies comes up in our house a certain Twinkie vandalism story is told (of which I was not a part!).  My husband likes to talk about the time (in his college days) when he and a buddy were coming home from a night out.  His friend had the munchies and procured a Twinkie.  Apparently his friend was feeling artistic/vandalistic/Keith Harringesque, and using his Twinkie wrote the initials “JS + NA” inside a heart on the outside wall of a building on campus.

Fast forward a decade and a half to their 15th college reunion.  The initials written in Twinkie were still there 15 years later.

Gluten-Free Dairy-Free Homemade TwinkiesNote: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.
3 eggs, separated
¼ cup grapeseed oil
¼ cup agave nectar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon lemon juice
6 tablespoons coconut flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon celtic sea salt

1. In a large bowl, whip egg whites to stiff peaks, then set aside
2. In a medium bowl, whip egg yolks until pale yellow, then whip in grapeseed oil and agave
3. Whip vanilla and lemon juice into egg yolk  mixture
4. In a medium bowl combine coconut flour, baking soda and salt
5. Blend flour mixture into egg yolk mixture, then whip ingredients together until smooth
6. Gently fold egg whites into yolk-flour mixture
7. Spoon batter into Twinkie molds until they are half full (you will get 8 Twinkies)
8. Bake at 350° for 11-12 minutes
9. Remove from oven and allow Twinkies to cool

Gluten-Free Dairy-Free Twinkie Filling
2 egg whites
¼ cup agave nectar

1. Whip egg whites to stiff peaks
2. Blend in agave and re-whip until stiff peaks form again
3. Place filling in Twinkie filling injector
4. Place cooled Twinkie flat side up and inject filling into Twinkie in 3 spots on its flat (bottom) side
5. Serve

Yes, this filling recipe includes raw egg whites and yes, my family and I eat raw egg on a fairly regular basis.  If that’s not your thing, then you could fill the Twinkies with agave sweetened whip cream, which I think would taste delicious.

Be sure to fill your Twinkies just before eating.  Why?  The sponginess of the Twinkie cakes quickly absorbs the filling.  When I left mine over night, all of the filling was absorbed into the cake.

Disclaimer: it is challenging to get a ton of filling into the Twinkie.  If you are striving to obtain the amount of filling in the  photo above, please don’t.  That photo is food-styled (by me) with extra Twinkie cream.  In any event, happy Twinkie time!

…And now for the winner of last weeks Friday Freebie (an Elana’s Pantry tote bag made of 100% recycled cotton)…merav! Congratulations!

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