Citrus & Honey Braised Rhubarb (Paleo)

It has been a cold and grey spring, delivered with a dosed of rain and sleet and snow. This weather makes time for all sorts of time consuming activities. Board games. Turning the oven on for extended period of time. Brushing up on your old sketching habit. Curling up on the couch and watching the entire first season of Outlander. 

The grey chill has made me hungry for sun and time outside, even though I admit that sometimes it's nice to have an excuse to curl up on the couch and stay in. 

On sunny days, I lap up the heat and the rays almost as eagerly as I lapped up this rhubarb compote. This compote though, doesn't care how many clouds there are in the sky: its flavors are bright and light. It's blooming with flavor in a way that's akin to the flowers blooming outside.

This, my friends, is the spring dessert. Spoon it over vanilla ice cream while it's still warm. Pile it over yogurt the next morning. Top it with toasted almonds and eat it straight. Swirl it into tapioca pudding (recipe coming soon!). You really can't go wrong.  

Citrus & Honey Braised Rhubarb

Paleo, Gluten-Free, Grain-Free,    |   Caitlin Sherwood    

Orange juice brightens the flavor of the rhubarb in this dish. Honey is used to bring sweetness, which is needed to counteract how tart rhubarb juice is naturally.

Serves: 4   |    Total Time: 25 minutes

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Ingredients:

• 1/2 pound rhubarb (about 3 large stalks)
• Juice of 1 orange
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated on a microplane
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup honey

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400°F.
2. Chop the rhubarb into 1 to 2 inch pieces.
3. In a glass baking dish, toss the rhubarb in the honey, orange juice, salt, vanilla, and ginger until everything is well coated and combined. Then spread into an even layer.
4. Place in preheated oven and bake 18-20 minutes, until rhubarb is quite softened. Remove from oven, and allow to cool 5-10 minutes before serving. Serve in small bowls, or with vanilla ice cream, yogurt, or pudding.

Grain-Free Gingerbread Men

Holidays were sweet at my Mom's house--between the occasional sweet bread and a few biscotti, there was always a pile of sugar cookies, which we would decorate one by one with softly colored icing and plenty of sprinkles. 

Prompted by the holiday carols on the radio and the snow outside, I've been thinking about holiday cookies a lot lately. Is there anything sweeter than an afternoon inside, decorating cookies while humming little songs? 

These cookies are crispy and snappy. They're full of warm gingerbread spices, which makes them perfect for dipping in a cup of coffee or hot chocolate. Best of all, they'll fill any craving for holiday sweets or cookie decorating afternoons. 

While there are a lot of frosting recipes out there, and quite few recipes for Paleo Royal Icing, I actually just decorated these with straight coconut butter. It's simple, it's easy, and it's super creamy. Coconut butter on a spoon? Yuum! Coconut butter on a cookie? Double yum! Personally, I find the cookies sweet enough. If you want to decorate these cookies with something more traditional, go for it! To be totally honest: plenty of these cookies were eaten before they finished cooling down, which means they never got frosted at all! Oops. 

One last totally honest tidbit: one year I dressed up as a gingerbread man for Halloween. My parents had to talk me out of eating my candy buttons before the 31st. I couldn't have been any older than 5, what could you expect? #EmbarrassingMoments. 

Grain-Free Gingerbread Men

Paleo, Primal, Gluten-Free, Grain-Free    |   Caitlin Sherwood    

Thin and crispy, these gingerbread men have all of the snap of the traditional cookie.

Yields: 24   |    Total Time: 30 active minutes

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Ingredients:

• 1-3/4 cups almond flour
• 1/4 cup arrowroot powder, plus extra for rolling out cookies
• Pinch salt
• 2 tablespoons butter or coconut oil
• 1/3 cup coconut sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 cup coconut butter

Directions:

1. In a food processor, combine the dry ingredients (flour, arrowroot, baking soda, salt, spices, sugar).
2. When dry ingredients are well combined, add the butter/coconut oil to the food processor. Pulse several times, until butter is incorporated but not fully mixed in. Add the egg, and then continue to pulse until dough comes together into a sticky ball.
3. Remove dough from food processor. Roll into a ball and then flatten into a disk shape. Wrap in plastic wrap and place in fridge for 30 minutes.
4. When ready to bake cookies, preheat over to 350°F. Cut two pieces of parchment paper the size of your cookie sheet. Sprinkle one piece with arrowroot powder. Take dough out of the fridge, and unwrap. Place dough on piece of parchment paper, and sprinkle with more arrowroot powder — just a small amount, it keeps the dough from sticking too much. Place the second piece of parchment on top, and then use a rolling pin to roll dough out to a 1/4 of an inch thick. Peel off top parchment paper carefully. Now, using cookie cutters, cut cookie shapes about 1/2 inch apart from each other. I use the reverse cookie-cutting method to make my cookies, because this dough is fragile: Use cookie cutters, and then remove the excess bits (i.e., don’t try to move the cookies them selves) from the parchment. Then, transfer entire sheet of parchment paper to cookie sheet and bake until cookies are puffy and golden — 6-8 minutes. Allow to cool 5-10 minutes before moving to a cooling rack. Repeat this process until the dough has been used!
5. Once cookies are completely cool, melt the coconut butter. Spoon melted coconut butter into a frosting bag fitted with a fine frosting tip, and decorate cookies as desired.

Note: as coconut butter melts in warmed temperatures (around 76°F degrees, you may need to keep decorated cookies in the fridge. This will depend on how warm you keep your house (mine is much lower than 76°F, so I keep them on my counter top in an airtight container.

Paleo Banana Bread with Cacao Nibs

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Using almond flour in place of regular flour in banana bread makes for a soft, nutty, and moist loaf. One that’s satisfying, grain-free, and gluten-free, too!

A lot of bakers will tell you that in order to make bread, you need to pull out the scale. You need to measure twice, and be precise. I am not that baker. In fact, this recipe is a “base recipe” from which I’ve made many variations, including turning the slices into french toast, swapping out the cacao nibs for chocolate chips, and topping the whole thing with walnut streusel. My mom has reported replacing half of the almond flour with regular wheat flour. My point: be brave, experiment, and create.

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My advice: Don't be afraid to try test things out. Sometimes, a little experiment can lead to wonderful things. Even if it doesn't work, you'll learn more about your ingredients by giving it a shot.

Alternative flours are different, and bake differently than traditional flour — some experimentation and learning comes with baking with almond flour for the first time, too!

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Paleo Banana Bread with Cacao Nibs

Published April 17, 2015 by Caitlin Sherwood

Yields: 1 loaf   |    Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes

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Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup almond flour
• 1/2 cup coconut flour 
• 1 tablespoon arrowroot starch  
• 1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda 
• 1/2 teaspoon salt 
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons coconut oil or butter, softened or melted, plus more for greasing your pan
• 4 eggs 
• 4 very ripe bananas (if you are using bananas that are solid yellow (i.e., they do not yet have brown spots), you may wish to add 1-2 tablespoons of honey to this bread to increase it’s sweetness)
• 1/2 cup cacao nibs

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a standard 9-inch loaf pan with coconut oil (alternatively, you can line the pan with parchment paper). 
2. In a mixing bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients, until no clumps remain.
3. In a separate bowl, cream together the bananas, coconut oil, and vanilla. Once they are fully combined, stir in the eggs until incorporated. 
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, stirring it in with a spatula or electric mixer until a consistent batter forms. It may have a few small clumps but should be mostly smooth. Fold in the cacao nibs.  
5. Spread the batter into an even layer in the loaf pan. Optionally, sprinkle the top of the load with cacao nibs. Then, place the pan in the center of the oven. Bake for 45 - 55 minutes until golden on top, and a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the middle of the loaf. Allow to cool for 15 minutes before slicing.