Toothsome Tuesday

I’ve been experimenting with dairy substitutes. I discovered in the early 1990s that I was cow’s milk intolerant. Sheep and goat cheese are fine for me, and I use goat milk in my morning coffee. My husband can’t handle dairy very well either so when I need milk or cream or butter I use a substitute.

Some, like almond milk, are really good.
Others, like rice milk, are pretty good.
Cashew cream is wonderful. It’s thick and rich and creamy and is absolutely amazing on pumpkin pie. I’d live on it except for a really swell allergic reaction to cashews. I can live with it, though, and corn and pineapple do the same thing to me.

Tofu makes a good cream, especially if it’s in with a bit of tahini (sesame paste). Tahini is good on it’s own as a cream or thinned as a milk, and if mixed with a bit of coconut lard it makes a lovely butter substitute in baking.

Yesterday I made oat milk. The recipe called for simmering oats for an hour then draining off the water. Said water formed the milk. It’s quite slimy and smells like pasta water. The taste is okay.
I mashed some in potatoes. The taste was okay, but the consistency was gluey. I mixed a bit of sugar and vanilla in and used it on cobbler-crisp-bread pudding thing I’d thrown together a few days earlier. This was very tasty, but again, the consistency is very off-putting.

The leftover oats gave me an idea so I made up some fake cream cheese with tofu and, once everything had been around long enough to develop flavor, I made fake cheesecake. The cooked rolled oats became the cottage cheese called for in the recipe I was abusing, and I threw in some of the oat milk for liquid.
I insulted a second recipe so this is both a hybrid and an invention. Those are the best.
Said cheeseless cake is resting comfortably in the fridge now. I want to make sure it gets plenty of time for the flavors to gather.

Meanwhile, I found the formula for making potato milk. It will be today’s experiment. It sounds like I need to boil a potato and then blend it in its boiling water. It certainly sounds easy. But how will it taste? And is it something I’d want to dunk a cookie in?
Stay tuned.

Gratitude Monday – Baking Day

We had our first snowfall yesterday. It didn’t amount to much, but it reminded me that I have a roof over my head. Not everyone does. Edmonton has a significant homeless population and shelters are filled to capacity.

My husband shoveled the snow. Much of it melted, but this prevents ice buildup in the driveway and behind the garage. This is very thoughtful.

The weather meant it was a good baking day. It gave me a chance to make my first pecan pie. I’d looked up a simple cookie recipe so I could use it as a stepping point for making peanut butter-chocolate chip-Irish Whiskey cookies, and found the pecan tart recipe a few pages later.
I substituted maple syrup for corn syrup and a coconut lard-Tahini hybrid for butter in the pie. Inventing is fun and the pie turned out okay.

I’m grateful that I can reason out substitutes for dairy products and I’m even more grateful that they commonly work out.

I used Polish Wheat flour (a.k.a. Kamut) in the cookies and I had the sense to sift it first. It’s smoother this way.
I had to sift the Spelt flour for the piecrust. Some might find that annoying. Spelt is in the wheat family and I’m grateful that I can use this flour. Sifting takes only a few minutes.

So here it is Monday again. I’m in a warm home and I live a life where if I feel like taking a baking day I do so.