Tag Archives: gluten-free

Gluten-Free Tomato and Basil Primavera Pasta

One other recipe that caught my eye when I was reading Jacques Pépin’s The Apprentice, was for pasta primavera. (The first one was for eggs Jeannette.) One thing I love so much about M. Pépin’s recipes are their utter simplicity and ease; often this includes ingredients already in your kitchen.

This pasta was an instant hit with my family and it is on our repeat list. Everyone wanted seconds! The tomatoes and basil, with olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper, marinate for a time while the noodles cook. It flavours the pasta, giving a pleasant and satisfying taste.

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Shirley’s Perfect for All Occasions Pound Cake

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As may be evident by my recent posts, I’ve baked hardly a thing this summer. It’s been lovely and blissful, in its own way, to not turn the oven on. Instead I’ve thrown all that energy I would for baking into making ice cream and other frozen treats. (I have one more frozen treat recipe to share, for now.) One of the last things I baked before the summer heat settled in was Shirley’s perfect pound cake.

It’s a tall order to call something perfect and this pound cake is just so. In a chat on Twitter that I had with Shirley the first time I made her recipe, she told me that one of her readers had used it to make a birthday cake. So not only is it a perfect pound cake, but also perfect for all occasions as it is flexible. Like many gluten-free folks, Shirley uses a custom-made, gluten-free flour blend. I’ve yet to use a gluten-free flour blend – whether one made from scratch with someone’s recipe or my own, or store-bought – so I converted the amount with an equal ratio of cornstarch and brown rice flour (the only kind of rice flour I had on hand at the time), based on Shirley’s flour blend, and it worked really well.

Every time I’ve made it, the pound cake has been finished within one or two days (usually only making it to the second day if I’ve saved some and hidden it away).

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MimicCreme Healthy Top {Product Review}

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I was so excited to hear about this fabulous dessert topping from Mrs. S., one of the Moms who have made some of the recipes listed on Z’s Cup of Tea, that I had to try it – Thank You, Mrs. S!

If you’re looking for a great alternative to whipped cream, MimicCreme Healthy Top is the perfect substitute. My whole family loves it! It’s like a cross between whipped cream and marshmallow and it’s a cinch to whip up. Made with cashews, almonds, and coconut oil, it’s dairy-free and soy-free, but it doesn’t taste nutty or like coconut at all, and it’s not too sweet, either.

Use it as you would use whipped cream to accompany something. (It’s not suitable for freezing or cooking with, according to the instructions.) We’ve served it with fresh berries (raspberries go especially well with the Healthy Top’s flavour) and my brother has also blended it with strawberries to make a kind of milkshake that, in his words, “is like a milkshake you would find in a fast food restaurant”. It’s just as thick, too. It’s also great to use as a topping for pie.

We found it at our local Whole Foods. You can look where you can buy it in your country on MimicCreme’s website or online. You’ll also find instructions for how to whip the Healthy Top there as well.

All opinions expressed here are my own. MimicCreme did not pay or ask me to review their product and did not send it to me for free.