Month: December 2011

Grain-free St. Lucia Buns

~ Angel ~ 4 Comments

St. Lucia’s Day (December 13) is one of our favorite Advent feast days.  In fact, we joke that St. Lucia seems like a particularly good saint for our family, because my husband’s family is Swedish and one of my great-grandfathers was born in Sicily.  St. Lucia (or Lucy) is a Sicilian saint beloved by Swedes.  Who could be more appropriate?

Since we try to follow a grain-free or very grain-reduced diet in our home, however, I knew that St. Lucia’s Day was going to present a problem.  The Swedish tradition is for the oldest daughter to serve everyone saffron-spiced yeast buns called Lussekatter or “Lucy Cats” for breakfast. (Why are they called “Lucy Cats?” I don’t really know, but after a quick google it appears that it may be that the traditional S or somewhat cross shape of the buns resembles a cat’s tail.)  In Sicily, food made from wheat flour isn’t eaten on St. Lucia’s Day in remembrance of how the saint saved the city of Syracuse from a famine by sending ships full of grain, which seemed promising, but instead Sicilians eat a porridge made from wheat berries (called cuccia).  And all of the gluten-free options I could find contained starch of some kind… and xantham gum, which is derived from corn.  I’m allergic to corn.  No xantham gum for me.

My daughter was still most adamant about having Lucia buns, in their traditional Swedish shape, for St. Lucia’s Day.  So I decided I would have to make my own.

I started out with this recipe for Lois Lang’s Luscious Bread, a Specific Carbohydrate Diet staple recipe, because I read… somewhere… that it could be rolled.  If it could be rolled, I thought, it could certainly be shaped.  To feed my large family, I began by doubling it.  The dough was rather sticky after I got done adding my sweet additions and adjusting the amount of almond flour to compensate for the increased liquid (in the form of honey), but Katydid and I rolled it in our hands (dusted with almond flour) and it puffed quite nicely in the oven.  No, the buns didn’t taste exactly like yeast buns, but the boys didn’t seem to care.  And Katydid pronounced them a success as well.

Please ignore the child sitting on top of the coffee table.

Before I give you the recipe, though, I should tell you… I am not the kind of cook who follows directions well.  So when I say that this is a “recipe”… consider it more a set of guidelines.  All right?  Good.  Here goes:

Makes approximately 2 dozen buns
(The recipe should half well)

*6-7 cups almond flour, depending on how much honey you use and the size of your eggs
(If the dough is too gooey, it will be hard to shape and will not hold together when baked)
*1/2 c. melted butter
*2 c. dry curd cottage cheese (more on this in a minute)
*5-6 eggs
*1/2 c. honey 
*juice of 1 lemon
*1-2 tbsp lemon zest (depending on how much you like lemon)
*2 tsp. baking soda
*1/2 tsp. salt
* 1/2 tsp. cardamom

For the topping:

*raisins
*1/2 c. honey (this is only an approximation)
*2 tbsp cinnamon (or cardamom, which I will try next time)

You will also need parchment paper.  Almond flour baked goods stick to pans like crazy. Parchment paper will save your sanity.

Also, oven temperature really matters when using almond flour.  If your oven is too hot, the bottoms of the buns will burn before the insides are done.  The original Lois Lang bread recipe calls for a 350 degree oven, but my oven runs hot.  If your oven runs hot, preheat your oven to 325 degrees.

Directions:

Combine everything but the almond flour (and the topping ingredients) together using a stand mixer or a food processor.  Remember that you’re not using yeast, so beat the mixture until it’s fairly smooth.  Now add the almond flour.  Start with a lower amount and add more until the dough looks like you will be able to roll it in your hands.  It won’t look dry like regular bread dough, though — more like a sticky cookie dough.

Lay out a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet.  Butter it and dust it with almond flour.  Take a gob of dough and roll it between your hands to form an S shape, or also you might want to roll two logs and form the buns into crosses.  At either end of the S, place a raisin.  Leave enough space between buns for them to spread a little, because they will puff up when you bake them.

Combine the topping ingredients and drizzle over each bun.  Bake for about 15 minutes, but start checking at 10.  (It took about 18 minutes in my oven at 325.) 

Substitutions
At this point you are probably wondering what the heck is dry curd cottage cheese and where do I get it.  Dry curd cottage cheese is probably more commonly called Farmer’s Cheese in the US.

It is sold under the Friendship Farms brand here, and the SCD website maintains a list of sources in various US states, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel.  I recently splurged and ordered a grass-fed, raw milk Farmer’s Cheese from US Wellness.  I think it is the same thing, but we’ll see.  The main problem with this stuff — aside from where to get it — is that it’s expensive (especially when combined with the cost of the almond flour.)  I do think there are substitutions you can make if you can’t find farmer’s cheese, are looking to keep your costs down, or can’t have dairy.  I did use the farmer’s cheese in this recipe, though, so if you use a substitute, you’ll have to experiment a little with the amount of almond flour, eggs, and honey you include in your own recipe.

Some ideas:

*yogurt cheese (homemade from your own or storebought yogurt or kefir), probably closest
*yogurt
*pureed prunes (as suggested in the Lois Lang recipe)
*applesauce

The recipe for Lois Lang bread also suggests using ghee or coconut oil for the butter if you are dairy free.

(If you want a dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, nut-free St. Lucia bun, check out the Spunky Coconut’s St. Lucia buns.     They do contain xantham gum, tapioca starch, and flax meal, though, and so are not strictly GAPS- legal if that makes a difference.) 

  

Versatile Blogger Award

~ Angel ~ 7 Comments

My friend Erin at Seven Little Australians surprised me today with a Versatile Blogger Award.  It’s kind of ironic, I guess, that at a blog called “And the Kitchen Sink” all my posts so far have been about books.  But in defense of versatility I am working on a post that involves smoked turkey, an ER visit, and the New Translation.  Maybe that one will be worthy of the award.

Thanks, Erin! 🙂

Here are the rules:

Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them.

  • Tell your readers 7 things about yourself.
  • Give this award to 15 recently discovered bloggers.
  • Contact those bloggers and let them in on the news.

So, seven things completely random things about me…

1. NOVA is one of my favorite television shows.  I think that makes me a nerd, but I don’t care. And I’ve passed my interests to my kids. Sometimes I think that NOVA forms the bulk of our science curriculum.


2.  I eat grain-free most of the time, but I am still ordering pizza on Friday nights.  Not every Friday night, but… a lot of Friday nights.  I know that this creates more problems than it solves, but still… hooked on pizza.  Especially with bacon.  Almond flour crusts do not cut it, in my opinion.


3.  I’m finally learning to knit!  It’s going very slowly because I have little people who like to pull on the yarn while I’m working, but one day I may have an actual washcloth.  This is not to say that it will be square, but I do hope that it will be finished. 


4.  One of my favorite ages to parent is 18 months.  I think 18 month olds are just a lot of fun. Busy, but fun.  My youngest is just about 18 months old now and has finally started walking.  He toddles across the floor, laughing in delight.  Just because he finds walking so much fun. I wish I found walking that much fun.


5.  I like the idea of having a milk cow, but so far the reality of having a milk cow still intimidates me. We inherited this giant barn, though, and it seems like some kind of animal bigger than a chicken should live in it.


6.  I like to draw, but I’ve never been able to consistently keep a sketchbook.  Mostly I like to do botanical illustration.  When I was a kid I used to spend hours drawing, but I quit when I started writing, and then in high school I thought I couldn’t draw, so it took homeschooling to show me that drawing is a skill anyone can learn and now I enjoy it again.


7.  I am hooked on the Real-Food Kitchen Tours at Cheeseslave.  


Now, for 15 recently discovered blogs… Hmmm.  Recent is going to be a relative term here, and I’m going to include blogs I have rediscovered because they’ve begun posting again after a break, or the subscription got knocked out of my Google reader for some reason for a while… not sure I can do 15, but here goes…

1. My Symphony 
2. Grace in Loving Chaos
3. Untrodden Paths
4. Family in Feast and Feria
5. Everyday Snapshots
6. Living Childhood (and her other blog, Those Northern Skies, is just gorgeous, too.)
7. The Careless Catholic 

Ok, going to have to stop at 7.  (Somewhat embarrassing.)  There are many, many more deserving blogs out there I know, but I must confess that I tend to stick with a pretty defined blog list for long periods of time. Right now I still have a lot of grocery/deal blogs in my reader, some of which are helpful and some of which are overwhelming.  I know I’m missing some great reading!


Coming soon: a “blogs which Angela was prompted to go out and discover when she realized that her Reader needed updating” post!