Some Recent Culinary Adventures--Carob Brownies, Gingerbread Two Ways

I promised a food post for today, and here it is! It's been well over a month since my last "Food as Pleasure" post, in the series of challenges where I set myself to make a 'goodie' without 'healthifying' it except inasfar as to remove allergens so that it's not poison to me.

With Amaranth goodies and Banana Bread, we were going nicely in alphabetical order.

And so, did I stop at "C," because "C" surely has to involve chocolate and I have come to the conclusion that I really do need to steer clear of chocolate except for very rare occasions?

Well, I guess something along those lines did happen. I've been kind of indisposed, too, which has made 'food as pleasure' a tougher concept to grasp. That said, here are a few things I've tried recently--the first two I would describe as only moderately successful; the third is a make-again.

Carob Brownies
As much as I hate the conflation of carob with chocolate, because it does such a disservice to carob (which is an entirely different and distinctly delicious (also super-nutritious) kind of food), I have been finding myself drawn to the idea of playing with carob more as a way to fill the chocolate gap. Not that I was eating any chocolate anyway--but I've done precious little playing with carob yet either, so maybe talking about it here will inspire me.

The recipe for these carob brownies came from this website.

 The only changes I made were to use gluten free flour and xanthan gum, and to omit the walnuts (I hate nuts in baking) and the coffee substitute (which I didn't have or care for).  Oh, and I used coconut syrup instead of rice syrup because it's what I had.

I was a little suspicious of the recipe just from looking at it: it struck me as potentially heavy and dry. And then I was out working in the garden, so it went for the full 30 minutes without my checking it a little earlier.

Yes, it was dry and dense--not much of a crumb to it, not very tasty generally. Not a success.

Gingerbread
Perhaps it was the quest for 'dense and moist' coupled with a dark color; perhaps it was my love of spice, but my next experiment was with gingerbread. I've actually made gingerbread using carob in the flour mix once--maybe I should try that again.

I used this recipe from Vegetarian Times and followed it precisely except that I made it gluten free. I used fresh-ground amaranth flour and tapioca starch with xanthan gum.

I loved the idea of lemon zest as a seasoning in this, but was suspicious with this recipe too: a whole cup of molasses seemed like an awful lot for two and a half cups of flour!

And as you can see, it was super-moist: the sort of gingerbread that leaves a sticky residue on your fingers (and everything else with which it comes into contact)! Which is a good thing, in some ways. It did taste great, but the molasses was a little overpowering (and I love molasses). It also didn't feel that great inside me--sugar shock, maybe?

I'd like to try this again with less molasses and perhaps some applesauce to displace it and some of the shortening.

Raw Gingerbread
Staying on the ginger theme, I had a desire to make raw ginger snaps in the dehydrator but ended up caught by the recipe for Gingerbread in Matthew Kenney's Everyday Raw Desserts.  Lisa generously shared this recipe on her blog about a year ago, if you don't have the book. I went with her suggestion of doubling the amount of grated ginger.

I was intrigued to see how a gingerbread would be with no molasses and using fresh-grated ginger instead of powdered dried ginger.

I used goji berries instead of raisins just because, and teff flour instead of almond flour because I didn't have any.

 Our work-in-progress kitchen...

 Pretty with the lemon glaze (which I almost didn't make but am glad I did)...

 I thought they looked lovely when they had dehydrated a few hours.

They were a little dense and dry, almost more like biscotti than bread. This was my first experiment making 'raw cake' in this style, and I probably have some things to learn in order to perfect the texture.

Verdict? I shared these with some friends and, to judge by their muted reactions (and in one case, frequent reapplications of whipped cream), they were distinctly underwhelmed. But 'my crowd' up here is about the most resistant to this kind of food of any that I've seen anywhere (and we had just had a big meal). On the other hand, I really liked them! They are dense without being overpowering, and the spiciness is great for me (maybe too much for some). They are really not very sweet, either.

I would like to try them again, with a little more moisture and maybe some molasses in there, and a shorter dehydration time (these had about six hours).

One of the fun parts of 'unbaking' is that you end up with leftover ingredients--like date paste

 and lemon glaze.

 What should I do with all that? Make some more gingerbread for starters, I guess!

Do you hate carob because of its unfortunate association with chocolate?