Sunday, April 15, 2012

Trial and Error

At first when I started on this journey it was easy to contain my food change to just myself.  As much as I wanted my husband to jump on board, I didn't want to force it upon him.  The further I got, though, the more my cooking changes seeped into his "food world".  Luckily I am blessed to have an amazingly supportive husband.  Not only has he been very open to trying new things, new versions of old things, and just plain weird new things, he has also opened up and adopted a new way of eating, as well.  That being said, you can still find him cracking open a can of coke every now an then.

I knew from the beginning that the key to me successfully adapting to such a big change in the way that we ate, was to be able to incorporate things we have always eaten, but with a newer, healthier approach. Sure, we eat a lot more organic veggies, we cook with coconut oil, we loosely follow a Paleo diet, but what about when your sweet tooth comes a'callin?  As much as I would love to be, I am not someone that can satisfy a craving with a few almonds and peanut butter chips or something of that variation.  We want our future kids to eat even healthier than we do now, never knowing McDonald's and not rewarding themselves with food,  but we still want to celebrate occasions with cake, right!?   That has sparked the biggest motivation in me, I love a challenge.  Lately I have tried my hands at gluten and sugar free banana/chocolate muffins & banana muffins, GF, SF, and Dairy Free raspberry lemon bars, gluten free and sugar free sandwich bread and today I am taking my second crack at gluten and dairy free yellow cake.

The first time I made this cake, it turned out phenomenally well!  I want to keep trying it and changing it so I can make it GF, DF, and sugar free.  My first go-round, the only sugar was in the icing and the pudding mix I put inside the cake.  Today, I am trying the same recipe, however I subbed in sugar free pudding mix and subbed coconut oil for olive oil.  I also wanted to mix the flavors up a bit.  I have become a huge fan of our local Farmer's Market and I bought a pint of fresh strawberries from a vendor yesterday, so I decided to make it a strawberry cake and then try out some homemade strawberry buttercream frosting.

This has proven to be a day of lessons in the kitchen.  The cake has turned out great, once again....I think I have the recipe nailed down.  The icing, however, is a whole other, fishy story.  Lately I have been using Earth Balance Buttery Spread in place of any butter that we would have once used.  Anyone that has used this stuff, would probably agree with me that it has a bit...ok quite a bit, of a fishy taste and smell.  When cooking with it or spreading it on something, I don't really notice the taste or smell, so I figured I could easily sub it for usual butter in the buttercream recipe.  WRONG!  I creamed the "butter", cut up and added my fresh strawberries and then added the powdered sugar.  It looked delicious, for a moment I was quite proud of myself, I must say.  Then came the taste test.....fish food all the way!  I even added every last bit of strawberries that I had in hopes of the added flavor covering up the 'fish essence'-no such luck and my frosting became to liquid-y.  Thankfully, I have learned over the past few months of eating well that Pillbury icing is actually dairy free....even the buttercream!  Now, of course, this leads me to wonder what in the world they put in it then, but at this point, I just wanted to have my cake and eat it, too. 

The cake turned out great, other than being slightly overdone, but now I think my next challenge will be dairy free buttercream that doesn't taste like it came fresh from the nearest lake and then eventually sugar free icing of some sort.  I now sub Agave nectar in all recipes when they call for sugar, however since it is a liquid, I don't think it will make for good frosting.  Stay tuned!


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