Baking extravaganza: Fluffy Pancakes

In my family pancakes used to always be the treat when the milk was going bad. Eating pancakes or well, more like crepes are specially good memories from childhood. And nothing beats a good pancake with some whipped cream and jam, nom! But I have modified pancakes so much that I don't think my mom would recognise them anymore. The oven made pancake that is on the list of recipes is a more traditional food. Very Finnish also. But my fluffy pancakes looks more like Hollywood versions, they're so big and fluffy.

I love traditional flavours. Something easy and simple is usually the yummiest. I think sushi is a good example of that. They can be easy and simple, but they can also be considered gourmet. But with my weird diet, it's sometimes hard to get the food to taste like it should. With these pancakes I kind of gave up. They don't taste like mom used to make them, but they taste wonderful. They don't need much sugar and I don't eat them with whipped cream and jam. The best part of them is that because the main ingredient is banana, they taste marvellous the next day and refrigerator cold.

Ingredients:
3 bananas
1 cup of flour
1 teaspoon of vanilla sugar
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of psyllium
sugar
3 eggs
almond milk until the dough is runny
oil for frying

Mash bananas. Many recipes suggest to do this with a fork, but I've found the best, fastest and most efficient way to do this is by hands. And it's fun also! So banana mush, mix with flour and everything dry, then add eggs. Last put something liquid enough to make the dough runny. Then fry on a pan with lots of grease until lovely brown.

Tips: The browner the bananas are, the sweeter the pancakes will be. If you have good, old and wrinkly bananas, you probably don't need sugar at all. Psyllium should be in the liquid five minutes before adding to the rest. If you use normal flour, skip the psyllium, but give the flour time to absorb the moisture. With gluten free flour the dough is ready right when you've put everything together. Almond milk gives the pancakes sweetness but you can use milk or cream or just water. If you want to add flavour to the pancakes, fry them in coconut oil.

You can actually make pancakes out of just bananas and eggs, maybe add some milk too if you have any. I think those are more banana omelettes and not so yummy, but if you wake up hungry one morning and bananas and eggs are the only thing you have, then go for it.

And chocolate makes everything better. Put lots of it! In the dough, chocolate chips, chocolate sauce, just put everything in it. Chocolaaaaaate!

Baking extravaganza: Muffins

I'm one of those irritating people who posts their food all over the internet. I do so for my outfits and nails too. My excuse is that I'm a girl. Not saying that all girls do it or no guy does it but I guess guys are not motherly proud of their pancakes as I can often be. Thank heavens I don't have pets! So. Much.Spam.

Sometimes some people ask me for the recipes especially if I have baked something. The problem is that I usually bake... well, out of my ass so to speak. I have few basic quidelines written down like how many eggs to which amount of flour. But I never stick with the recipes I read, I get inspired from them but then I just do as I feel like along the way. I trust my baking skills enough to know how the dough should look like when I want it to become buns or muffins (trust me, there's a big difference).

I thought it's time to "help a brother out" and make few of my favourite basic guideline recipes public. If you have abso-no-fucking-lutely any idea what you're supposed to do in the kitchen, then follow the instructions. If you are a wizard in the kitchen, you might find these too easy for you. The thing is though, because of my diet I bake with many untraditional ingredients. Even if you know what you do in the kitchen but you have never baked with gluten free flour, you might wanna get some basic idea out of these.
If I have to start listing to people what I don't eat, the answer usually is "what do you do eat then?". The answer is "less crap". Trying to avoid wheat will change anyone's life but for a sweet-tooth like me it has been a good struggle. But these days I appreciate fresh and natural flavours more than I used to and cooking isn't so much about the end product than it is about the ingredients. Soon it'll be summer again and the marketplace will be full of temptations. Fresh herbs! Summer potatoes, mmm. Strawberries! If you can't bake, you can never go wrong with strawberries and vanilla ice cream.

Entertaining guests can be tricky sometimes because you can never know who can eat what. That's why lactose-free vanilla icecream and fresh berries is a safe choice. But it might not always be available. My all time favourite thing to bake is:

You need roughly:
2 cups of flour
1 cup of sugar
2 teaspoons of baking powder
2 teaspoons of vanilla sugar
½ cup of cream
½ cup of other liquid
2 eggs
100g of margarine

Mix together the dry ingredients, then add the rest in order and mix well. Put in those little muffin paper thingies which name I don't know and bake in 200 celsius in the middle of the oven for around 15-20 minutes.

Tips: The dough should be creamy and runny. Careful not to put too much flour. Put two paper muffin thingies on top of each other so they won't lose their shape while baking. Use brown sugar instead of half of the original white sugar and the muffins will be beautiful in color and taste amazing. With brown sugar once again you don't have to worry about allergies. The cream can be milk, the additional liquid can be babyfood (like apple chutney), the margarine can be butter. The possibilities with muffins are endless. You can add real chocolate or chocolate powder, you can add nuts, fruits, berries, juice, vanilla sauce... Once I made muffins from lemon juice and salty liqourice, wasn't bad at all. Sky's the limit. If you don't want flat muffins, use regular flour or add a spoonful of psyllium to the glutenfree flour. You can check that the muffins are done by sticking a wooden toothpick in them. If something is stuck on it, the muffin is still too raw.

For the un-american bakers, a cup is roughly two desilitres. But everything in my recipes is "roughly" anyway.