Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Gluten-Free Zucchini Breakfast Cake

Gluten-Free Goddess Zucchini Quinoa Breakfast Cake
Karina's Gluten-Free Zucchini Quinoa Breakfast Cake

Breakfast! Let's Eat Cake.


Remember those maple sweetened almond zucchini mini-muffins? I do. They've become one of our favorite grab-and-go gluten-free treats. I tuck a bag of them- fresh out of the freezer- into my bulging purse knapsack beach bag tote whenever we venture far afield. Like. The Valley. Because, well. You never know. It can get crazy. In L.A. you might end up jammed on the 405. Stuck as in four lanes = a parking lot stuck. Stuck as in, Dude that's my hunger growling louder than Kurt Cobain's rasp on the rattling radio speaker pleading, What else could I be? All apologies.

I know this from experience. I learned the hard way (the way I learn most things in life). Driving in L.A. can lead to stop-n-go squatting in the baking sun. And a where is my nail file and why did I leave the apartment without food and water and ice in a cooler panic. Because the thirty-three minutes it took yesterday to get to Studio City is seventy-five minutes today.

That's when I started imagining a zucchini cake.

For breakfast.

On the 405.


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Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Gluten-Free Peach Muffins with Almond Flour

Tender gluten-free muffins with peaches and almond flour
Gluten-free peach muffins baked with almond flour.


Juicy Peach Muffins


Today is a total beach day. And here I am working. Editing photographs of peach muffins and writing up a gluten-free recipe. No rest for the wicked. Or the self-employed. We bloggers toil at our living daily, working through holidays, Sundays, football games, and oftentimes, dinner. We tend and tweak and pretty much live a tethered geek life. The opposite of glamorous.

Or maybe it's just me.

Because there are plenty of extroverted bloggers who travel and attend blogging conferences and hob nob. They dine together and smile brilliantly in group pictures, tweeting breathlessly their mutual squee and Instagram cocktails. 

And I envy them. Sometimes. Just a little.

But alas, it is not meant to be. I am destined, you see, to the role of wallflower. 

Because the mere, fleeting snippet of a thought about flying somewhere- alone- which, you know, entails the whole going through various humming x-ray machines and raising your arms for total strangers wielding wands up your inner thigh, not to mention, the whole taking one's shoes off and fumbling to put them back on (the right feet) so that the person (make that seventeen persons) behind you doesn't get impatient while you wrestle with your buckles and your unzipped purse and boarding pass and reading glasses and explain to the squinting security guy that the mystery wad of metal in your bag's side pocket is only dimes and quarters you collect for Santa Monica parking meters as he picks out all thirty-seven coins just to make sure and for good measure keeps your nail clippers (in all the excitement, you didn't confess you were also carrying nail clippers). 

And then there's the whole belting yourself into a hulking metal beast with wings that weighs goddess knows how many megatons, and snugging your post-baby pelvis to a polyester burnt orange float-able seat cushion between a shiny headed businessman who obviously ate raw onions for lunch and college professor reading the New York Times who you just know secretly wants to discuss Obama's clean energy policy. 

Where is Matthew McConaughey when you need him?

Such visions send spikes of fear and loathing down my duodenal canal.

So I imagine muffins.

I fondle peaches at the market admiring their curve and fuzz. I peel them gently and coax out the stone pit. I slice them into jewels that will fit on the tongue and give up a burst of sweet tart juice. I stir almond meal into powder soft flours and squeeze lime juice and sprinkle cinnamon.

I bake.


READ MORE and get the recipe ...