Several months ago I was in Borders looking at cookbooks. I saw this mouthwatering Blackbird Bakery Gluten Free. I even showed it to a friend who I was meeting there for coffee. I decided to go home and email the publisher. It was on 'backorder' and potentially I would never get it to review. So I looked at it when I was at the bookstore on my next visit.
But I resisted!
The next time I looked for it again and it wasn't there! So I went home and put it in my amazon shopping cart.
But still I resisted!!!!
And God's timing is everything.
Last week I received it in the mail and did a little happy dance. I have been wanting for a month to make lemon bars with meyer lemons that were burning a hole in my crisper drawer and they had a beautiful recipe in the book. I had all of the ingredients except sorghum flour so I picked it up and today was baking day.
It was quite a bit more work than your average 'quick bread' as I made the curd from scratch, squeezed the meyer lemons and had to do some quick thinking because I didn't have my mise-en-place.
I thought the results were incredible and I have a little God story to go along with it.
Our neighbor shovels our walk and driveway. We try and get him more substantial 'gifts' because he is so kind to do so, but I wanted to make sure I said 'thank you' immediately. I asked several hundred friends (on Facebook) for a good local bakery because you don't want to give someone gluten free who doesn't HAVE to be gluten free. So I took over the treats and he said thank you.
Today he was out shoveling again and I yelled out, "HEY! I have some fresh lemon squares. BUT they are gluten free. Still I think they are really good." He says, "I didn't have the heart to tell you when you dropped off the cookies but I have celiac." They were still warm but 'cut-able' when I put them on a paper plate. (Update one day later, in full disclosure, I asked my neighbor this morning if he liked them and he said, "yea, they were good." When I asked for further clarification he said, "yea. they were good." I thought they were very very good but I don't think he liked them quite as much. Hubby said they were OK. Hey. You can't please them all.)
So back to the cookbook...
It is great. The pictures are mouthwatering and I would buy it for that alone. I have only made the lemon bars but my next endeavor will be Rosa's coconut-date macarrons and maraschino marzipan kisses. (I may put chocolate chips in the middle instead of the cherries.) There are chapters from biscuits to show stopping party desserts. There is a fair amount of dairy in the book but I did use Earth Balance Buttery Sticks for the lemon bars and I think that could be substituted for easily. Eggs were in most recipes. For many of the baked goods you could do your standard egg substitution but in some (such as the lemon curd for the pie above) there are many eggs and it would be difficult. But most I think would be do-able. Us allergy folks, we are used to adapting!
They have a website and a Facebook group. You can purchase the book on Amazon.com for $16.47 and also get a peek inside the book there. Although I have only made one recipe from this book I do recommend it as it is chock full of various treats that I think I will enjoy for some time to come. Check back in later for an update!
I received this book as a review copy from Chronicle Books and am not obligated to give a positive review.
2 comments:
I don't think that is a whisper from God, but a shout!! How cool is that? We have a neighbor with celiac, but he did not get diagnosed until a few years ago.
I love eating sweets,any kind of sweets, especially dessert that I didn't tasted yet.
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