Tomorrow's Just an Excuse -- plus Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

One recent morning, as I sat down to write, Smashing Pumpkins' "Thirty-Three" played on one of my Spotify playlists. I didn't come to Smashing Pumpkins until I was an adult, or at least not really, even after listening to my friend Sanna talk about them pretty often when we were in 7th grade, and even after trying to listen to them around that same time.

I guess you could say I wasn't ready for that type of music then.

In fact, it took until a curly-haired friend with a big smile and always-a-twinkle-his-eye expressed amazement at  a bar in Iowa that I hadn't heard (or, as it turned out, didn't realize I had actually heard) "Tonight, tonight." He went up to the DJ and requested it, then as it came on, started rocking out at our table. This friend caused me to relax a lot around myself, and around him, because he seemed so comfortable in the man he was--and because of that, could act with kindness toward pretty much everyone he met. I admired this about him, and wanted to emulate it until it became part of the way I saw myself, and the world, as well.

Travels -- literally and figuratively -- made me ready for The Smashing Pumpkins, and for sitting down at the table, at the bar ($2.50 your call!) with that friend. That same night, he handed me a copy of the book Shantaram, a gift, the first time someone who didn't know me all that well had given a book that, when I read it (pretty much starting immediately), I liked. Or loved. I'm still not sure. It's a book I will need to revisit -- a book about travels, finding a place, learning about oneself, about, to some extent, the things I've been doing for the past four years (only on a more extreme level).

Listening to "Thirty-Three" also seems particularly appropriate for the season, because of the line "Deep in thought I forgive everyone," --what we should be doing this season, and every day.

Although I like to listen to music when I write, I also like to have music playing while I'm baking. Making these cookies, I listened to my Spotify mix that I titled simply The Stranger, after the Lord Huron song -- but it includes music from The Beatles and The National to Jonathan Coulton (re: Your Brains), Iron & Wine, and Chain of Lakes, among many others. The songs on the playlist are about distance, about the people we thought we knew (but discover we don't), about strangers, lost love, and missed connections, about becoming (or being) a stranger in the place you live. The songs explore the distances between us. Maybe I listen to this mix while I bake because I like to imagine that baking brings us together--even with people who have left us, even with people we never met--if nothing else, through the sharing of recipes.

This recipe is adapted from one by Deb from Smitten Kitchen so that it's gluten-free. Pretty much though, if I wasn't avoiding gluten, I would make these cookies as she describes. Oatmeal-raisin are among my favorite cookies (something like tied--depends on my mood--with spice cookies and/or gingersnaps). If you haven't checked out Deb's recipes, please do yourself the favor of exploring Smitten Kitchen. The photography is beautiful, the recipes tasty (and often quite innovative), and the writing wry, tight, and honest.

Remember, some people who are gluten-intolerant also react negatively to GF rolled oats (oats contain a different type of gluten than wheat--so many people are okay), so if you're making these for someone else please ask first.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies (Gluten-Free)

1/2 cup (1 stick or 4 ounces) butter, softened

2/3 cup light brown sugar, packed

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup GF oat flour

1/4 cup corn starch or tapioca flour

3/4 teaspoon guar gum

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon salt 

1 1/2 cups GF rolled oats soaked in 1/3 cup warm water

3/4 cup raisins

1/2 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, egg and vanilla until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk the flours, guar gum, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt together. Stir this into the butter/sugar mixture. Stir in the oats, raisins and walnuts, if using them.

At this point you can either chill the dough for a bit in the fridge and then scoop it, or scoop the cookies onto a sheet and then chill the whole tray before baking them. You could also bake them right away, if you’re impatient, but I do find that they end up slighly less thick.

The cookies should be two inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake them for 10 to 12 minutes (your baking time will vary, depending on your oven and how cold the cookies were going in), taking them out when golden at the edges but still a little undercooked-looking on top. Let them sit on the hot baking sheet for five minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool.

Roasted Carrot Carrot Cake (and muffins!), Gluten-Free

On a mountain

It must be fall. I'm in serious baking mode. French-style bread. Gluten-free risen bread. Monster cookies. Brownies (semi-failure). Chocolate pumpkin cake. Carrot cake. If only I had more time. The day I made this cake, I also hiked a nearby mountain with a co-worker and then volunteered to yank invasive species out of the ground at a local park for three hours in advance of Make-a-Difference Day since I'll be at work on the actual day. Then, I went home to walk S (okay, okay, hike with S) and call a couple of people who I've been playing phone tag with for a week or so. There's so much to cram into weekends.

I had this much carrot
when I gave up grating

To say the least, this cake was inspired by general feeling of "there's no way I'm going to stand here for 45 minutes and hand-grate carrots for this carrot cake," which I was making at the request of my supervisor for another co-worker who's birthday had recently passed. I said yes, because I love to bake (and I knew I could try and make it gluten-free) and when I said yes, I had no idea how much time I'd invest into other activities during my weekend.

Rather than grate the carrots, I decided to pan roast them (which I define as different from sauteing only because I didn't stir them very often at all) until they were very soft and then mash them before adding them into the cake batter. Pan roasting the carrots let me:

1) work on making dinner, which was good, since I'd only had a carrot since breakfast

2) do a little kitchen clean-up

3) mix up other cake ingredients
4) turn on Chain of Lakes because I had carrot-free hands

5) feel less irritated by the very slow process of hand-grating carrots (I did hand grate about 1/2 cup before I got fed up with the process and you could do this too, if you were so inclined--I just added the grated carrot with the mashed carrots to the cake batter.)

Roasting the carrots also makes them sweeter and deepens their carrot-y flavor.

Look at those brown sugar-spots

The base recipe for this carrot cake came from one of my favorite carrot cake recipes--a vegan recipe (though I used regular cream cheese in the images you see--I have made it the other way and actually prefer the way Tofutti  Better Than Cream Cheese tastes to regular cream cheese, but that's just me--because the person I'm making this for is neither GF or vegan).

I'm still experimenting with gluten-free flours and trying to avoid that not-so-lovely GF flavor. Since I started helping a friend out with her pie stand at the local growers market, I've heard several people say "I don't like anything gluten-free," to which I have a hard time not being snarky ("do you realize how much you eat that's naturally gluten-free?"). But to be fair, a lot of gluten-free baked things not only taste gluten-free, but they have a particularly grainy texture that's not so appealing. In this cake, I used a mixture of brown rice flour, GF oat flour, quinoa flour, and millet flour.

I poured the batter into an 8x8 pan and still had plenty of batter left to make a dozen cupcakes (muffins, I'm not adding extra sugar to them all and if I were to intentionally make them as muffins, rather than cake, I'd probably scale back the sugar by at least 1/2 a cup--I think it's far too sweet right now for muffins).

Vegan Roasted Carrot Carrot Cake (Gluten-Free)

2 pounds carrots, washed and sliced into coins

Olive oil

3/4 cup brown rice flour

3/4 cup oat flour

1/2 cup quinoa flour

1/4 cup millet flour

2 teaspoons guar gum

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon allspice

1/4 teaspoon each cardamom, cloves, nutmeg

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup light brown cane sugar 

3/4 cup cane sugar

3 egg equivalents (I've used both flax eggs and Ener-G Egg replacers with this recipe, both work fine)

1 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1 14-oz can crushed pineapple, drained

1 cup shredded coconut

nuts and raisins, optional

Faux Cream Cheese Frosting
(again, you could use regular cream cheese and butter if you're not vegan or preparing this for a vegan, but this is really good frosting)

1 8-oz package vegan cream cheese

1/3 cup vegan margarine, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups vegan powdered sugar, sifted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (really, you should do this after you've mashed the carrots to save energy, but this type of information is usually at the front of recipes, so here you go). Roast the carrots in a saute pan, lightly coated in oil, over medium heat, stirring occasionally until the carrots are beginning to caramelize and are very soft.

Carrots ready to pan roast

If you're under time constraints* or your carrots just don't seem to be getting soft, you can add a little water to the pan and cover it for a few minutes to steam them after they've begun to brown. Let the carrots cool a little and then mash them until you've got very few chunks. You will want about 1 1/2 cups of mashed carrots total.

Carrots, almost ready to mash--get them a little browner than this

While the carrots are roasting, in a medium bowl, mix flours, guar gum, baking soda, baking powder, spices, and salt.

In a large bowl, mix sugar and egg replacer until creamy (use an electric mixer if you can get your hands on one--it makes life so much easier). Add the vanilla and combine, then add the vegetable oil and mix well. Mix wet and dry ingredients together, combining well (one of the great things about gluten-free foods is that it's a bit harder to over mix). Stir in the carrots, pineapple, and coconut. Add nuts and/or raisins, if using.

Grease a pan (9" x  9" pan for a thicker cake--I promise it won't fit into an 8" x 8"--or 9" x 13" for a thinner cake) and smooth the batter into the prepared pan. Bake 40-45 minutes (for a thicker cake--reduce time if you're using a 9" x 13"), or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let the cake cool entirely before frosting.

Above and Below: Roasted Carrot Carrot Cake Muffins
(1/2 of which turn into cupcakes because E requested  it)

For the frosting:

Beat together the cream cheese and margarine in a medium-large bowl until smooth. Add the vanilla and incorporate well. 1/2 cup a a time, beat in the powdered sugar. Beat in the powdered sugar until smooth before adding more. The frosting should be very thick. On a humid day, you might have to add more powdered sugar.

Frosted Cupcake

*For my carrots to get soft enough to mash, it took about 45 minutes of pan roasting in a medium-large saute pan over medium to medium-high heat and I did add about 1/4 of water and let them steam for about 10 minutes at the end to make sure all the carrot coins would mash pretty well.