The Ninja Baker - Francesca Lia Block

How to Please Everyone, 12 Holiday Ninja Treats

NinjaBaker — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 05:22:30 +0000

Are holidays more complicated these days? Budget and dietary considerations seem to be of paramount concern to many. So, the Ninja Baker went to work in the kitchen. 12 holiday treats that will please your gluten-free, dairy-free and vegan friends and family were produced. In addition, guaranteed American standards and Japanese sweets smile-makers were created. From the Ninja Baker’s selection, you are sure to find something to please everyone on your gift list. Love to have you add to my selection, too, and share your favorite homemade baked goods in the comments section.

1. Santa Strawberry Cupcakes

Whether calorie, gluten or dairy conscious, these merry Santas are smile-makers.

For the cupcakes I used Pamela’s gluten-free cake mix. I also tried her dairy free frosting mix for the first time with happy results. Inspired by a pin at Pinterest.com, I topped the cupcakes with Strawberry Santas. His eyes are sesame seeds. Santa’s belly is Cool Whip but for your lactose intolerant friends, use TruWhip. The buttons are mini chocolate chips.

2. Pumpkin Doughnut Wreaths

‘Tis the season of the pumpkin through December, right? King Arthur’s Flour promises with their recipe you’ll have a “Baked to Perfection Pumpkin Doughnut.” They’re not kidding. Especially when dipped in melted white chocolate and dotted with dark chocolate M & Ms. Again, I was stirred into action by a sighting on Pinterest. Specifically a sugar cookie wreath dotted with M & Ms on Liz Berg’s That Skinny Chick Can Bake Holiday/Seasonal board.

3. Francesca Lia Block’s Star Cupcakes

For the December birthday party of star author, Francesca Lia Block (who prefers gluten-free and non-dairy goods), using Pamela's mixes, I baked gluten-free vanilla cupcakes and frosted them with a dairy free frosting.

For the decoration: Make an impression in the center of each cupcake with a mini star. Keeping the cookie cutter on the cupcake, sprinkle gold sparkles into the impression. Remember coloring books? Instead of coloring with a crayon between the lines, go to town sprinkling gold sparkles. Or blue for the Star of David.

Note: To avoid frosting mess, cool the cupcakes in the freezer or refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before sprinkling with sparkles.

4. Bite-Size Christmas or Hanukah Blues

These minis frosted with marshmallow frosting tinted blue combat the blues every time. Make your favorite vanilla cake recipe and bake in a mini cupcake pan. Reduce the baking time by about 5 minutes and/or until a toothpick comes out clean. For the marshmallow frosting, see the recipe at AverieCooks.com. For the lactose intolerant, RiceMellow is an almost perfect replacement for marshmallow fluff.

5. Red Velvet

Red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting brought victory to Terri Wahl, owner of Auntie Em’s Kitchen, on the Food Network’s Throwdown with Bobby Flay. Easy and fun to make these cupcakes are a crowd pleaser every time. Visit FoodNetwork.com for the recipe.

Note: Make sure you have plenty of bottles of red food coloring.

6. Dark Chocolate Cupcakes with Ghirardelli Frosting & Matcha Cream

Dark chocolate according to the experts is good for you. In addition to antioxidants, the lovely sweet is allegedly good for your heart and brain. So, without an ounce of regret bake up a batch of the dark chocolate cupcakes featured at Two Peas and Their Pod. I made two kinds of topping for this divinely rich cupcake.

Matcha Green Tea Cream: Add 3 generous tablespoons of fine green tea matcha powder to a pint of heavy whipping cream. Whip until the cream shows peaks and is ready to pipe.

Ghirardelli Frosting: See the back of the Hot Chocolate container or click here for another Ghirardelli delight.

Note: The Ghirardelli frosting from the back of the cocoa container is delicious but tends to firm up pretty quickly. As you frost the cupcakes, you’ll want to keep some additional milk out to add to the mixture.

7. Gluten-Free Mini Matcha Santas

For the #SundaySupper bloggers’ virtual holiday cookie exchange on Twitter, I baked up gluten-free mini matcha Santas. Crisp, buttery and spiked with matcha: Perfect for the tea connoisseurs in your life. Click here for the recipe.

8. Gluten-Free Sugar Cookie Stars

Incorporating tips from Sweetopia.net’s Marian, I successfully baked sugar cookies which actually held its original shape. Yea! I used a gluten-free cookie mix. I’ve got to be honest; the taste was different from a “regular” sugar cookie…But it looked pretty!

Note: I discovered a time-saver; sprinkle the rolled out dough with sparkly sugar before cutting out the stars.

9. Green Tea Cupcakes with Chocolate Glaze

With a green tea cake recipe from Allrecipes.com as a foundation, I created cupcakes. In my oven, the magic baking time was 26 minutes. Also, I added an additional two teaspoons of matcha to the recipe.

Most adults love the combo of green tea and chocolate. So, I melted 6 ounces of milk chocolate in a tub of Cool Whip in a microwave for 1.5 minutes. Stirred. Waited 15 minutes. And dunked my green tea cupcakes into the rich concoction.

10. Vegan Sweet Potato Muffins with & without Averie’s Marshmallow Frosting

Joyce A. Kramer, Co-author of the national award-winning book
Saving the Best for Last: Creating Our Lives After 50, also runs the wildly popular Wholesome Table in Southern Florida. She kindly shared her Sweet Potato muffin recipe from her friend Ellen Jaffee Jones, author of Eat Vegan on $4 a Day.

The muffins are moist and you can taste the love from the wholesome ingredients. They aren’t super sweet so they serve as a great base for AverieCooks.com’s marshmallow frosting. Again, for vegans and those who are lactose intolerant, substitute RiceMellow for marshmallow fluff.

Vegan Sweet Potato Muffins

Makes 14 muffins

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
¼ c agave
1 T baking powder
½ t baking soda
1 t cinnamon
½ t salt
¼ t nutmeg
1 ¾ c cooked, mashed sweet potatoes (Joyce steams the sweet potatoes, but the canned type work well, too.)
½ c raisins
½ c water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine all ingredients and mix well.
Lightly coat 10 muffin tins. Fill each cup almost to top with batter.
Bake 25 to 30 minutes until tops bounce back when lightly pressed and a toothpick in the center comes out clean
Cool on rack.
Serve at room temperature.

11. Cranberry & White Chocolate Biscotti

with Bourbon and the Watkinson Boys
David talks to Santa at Wanamaker's Department Store in Philadelphia.
His older brother, Jim patiently waits.
(P.s. Grownup David married the Ninja Baker.)

Roz of La Bella Vita’s white chocolate drizzled cranberry and pistachio biscotti caught my attention as I searched for holiday cookie ideas. Although I always get rave reviews with Takako Nomi’s recipe for biscotti, I decided to try something different. Well, I forgot the amaretto liqueur, which is required in Roz’s recipe. So, I went back to my standard go-to biscotti recipe but added cranberries and white chocolate. The result? Delizioso!

12. Chef Falkner’s Ginger Cupcakes with Mini Gingerbread Men

Chef Elizabeth Falkner is one of the nicest and most talented chefs in the world. I had the privilege of being served cupcakes by Chef Falkner at her restaurant Citizen Cakes in San Francisco. The shop is now closed. But you can catch her on Food Network’s The Next Iron Chef: Redemption.

From Chef Falkner’s Demolition Desserts cookbook, I’ve enjoyed making and eating her ginger cake and cookie wonders filled with three different types of ginger. To make the pictured cupcakes, reduce the baking time of both the ginger cake and cookies to accommodate the smaller sizes.

Before you decorate with the gingerbread minis, slather the cupcakes with your favorite chocolate or cream cheese frosting.

Wishing you days of perfect holiday sweets, treats and blessings.

The Ninja Baker

© ™ Watkinson 2012

The Ninja Baker's recipes are also available at:

?Allrecipes.com:
The Ninja Baker's Japanese Plum Sweet Memories and Recipes

Bob's Red Mill:
Almond Oatmeal Apple Cookies

Bob's Red Mill:
The Ninja Baker's Gluten-Free Breakfast Cupcake

Wholesome Sweeteners:
The Ninja Baker's Gluten-Free Coconut Chocolate Cheesecake Minis with Espresso Cream

Wholesome Sweeteners:
The Ninja Baker's Gluten-Free Double Chocolate Cupcakes with Champagne Glaze & Optional Lemon Peach Marmalade Filling

?LifeKraze

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Chef Elizabeth Falkner

Francesca Lia Block

A Sumptuous Feast: Francesca Lia Block's The Elementals

NinjaBaker — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 23:40:39 +0000

Francesca Lia Block, renowned author of the Weetzie Bat (young adult) series, caring mother of two gorgeous children and one of my writing mentors, has a new novel entitled The Elementals, which is on sale at bookstores today. Pick up any of the books from her prolific list and one sees why Francesca has a huge fan base. Her characters and settings are delicious like ice cream but also have the ability to chill you to the bone.

Francesca Lia Block, author of the Weetzie Bat series.
Her newest novel is The Elementals.

The Elementals is published by St. Martin’s Press. Ariel, a UC Berkeley student, is the protagonist of the novel. Like Prospero’s spirit servant who works to unshackle the chains of servitude in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Francesca’s modern-day Ariel struggles to free herself from the grief of the guilt and sorrows associated with the ordeals of a dying mother and a missing best girl friend who is presumed dead. Similar to The Tempest, there’s also a lot of mist, mystery and a strong sense of the supernatural in Francesca’s story as most of the action takes place in the San Francisco Bay area.

The Elementals is already receiving accolades from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus and others. A few of the reviews are included here.

In addition to the reviews, insights about The Elementals can be gleaned from David Wilk’s WritersCast.com iTunes podcast interview. Francesca’s book has also prompted an online discussion at Gone Pecan.

The Kirkus reviewer communicated the essence of The Elementals by mirroring Francesca’s mastery in evoking the senses: “Silver rings, a profusion of flowers, hazy graveyards and perhaps the fae embroider this hypnotic tale...(Francesca Lia) Block (Pink Smog, 2012, etc.) returns with her distinctively smoldering style. ...shimmering imagery and nimble characterization.”

Inspired by Francesca’s sensuous settings and details of sumptuous foods, I created and consumed a few of the lovely dinners and desserts mentioned in The Elementals.

Add dried cranberries and slivered almonds to your favorite wild rice.
Light a few candles and savor the rich company of friends and food
like Ariel in The Elementals.

Ariel is also treated to an apple tart in Francesca's book. Here's the fast and easy Ninja Baker's version: Assemble mini phyllo cups, Brie goat cheese, organic mini crimson gold apples, and honey. Place a cube of cheese into each cup, top with 3 thin apple slices in a fleur-de-Lis formation as pictured below and drizzle with honey.

Bake at 350 degrees or until the cheese melts. Garnish with a cranberry.
Plate the piping hot on a dish.
Et voilà, enjoy The Ninja Baker's Fleur-de-Lis Apple Appetizer.

In Francesca's book, the main character, a college student also eats quite a lot of frozen yogurt. Top of the list of this Ninja's yumminess is Yogurtland's matcha green tea flavor. (Yogurtland also gets high marks for contributing 10 dollars to
Storm Sandy survivors for every 12 yogurts purchased by a customer.)

AND as a bonus to readers of NinjaBaking.com, Carmen Staton, Francesca’s co-author of Ruby has agreed to a preview of Weetzie's Vegetable Love Rice recipe from her soon-to-be released cookbook of Weetzie Bat recipes.

I made Weetzie's Vegetable Love Rice for my dad and stepmom
when I visited them last month. They loved it and requested an encore!

Weetzie's Vegetable Love Rice

Ingredients:
2 cups cooked jasmine rice prepared per package instructions
1 package firm tofu drained, patted dry and cubed
half of 1 large onion, chopped
2 tablespoons ghee or olive oil
3 tablespoons freshly grated or minced ginger
1 bunch kale or Swiss chard rinsed, stemmed and chopped
1 large carrot, shredded
half a package steamed ready to eat beets (can be found in most supermarkets), shredded
Tahini paste (optional)
Bragg's (optional)
toasted sesame seeds (optional)

Method:
In medium skillet sauté the onion and tofu adding just a bit of water (2 TBS or more if needed) to keep from sticking. Sauté just until onions soften and turn translucent. Remove from pan into a bowl. Set aside and keep warm. Using the same skillet, wipe out any remaining water then add the ghee (or oil). On medium high heat sauté the ginger until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add the kale or chard stirring to coat with ghee (oil) and ginger. Turn down heat to medium low and cover. Cook until greens wilt and soften a bit but are still bright green, about 10 minutes.

Assembly:
Using nice sized serving bowls, layer the ingredients starting with the rice, tofu and onions, greens, carrots, beets, tahini paste and ending with a couple of splashes of Bragg's or tamari and sesame seeds.

Ninja Baker Notes:

Some stores sell tofu that is already cubed
There are also markets which sell prewashed and chopped kale.
If you cannot find beets in a steam ready package, slicing and steaming beets sold in a jar works well.

As Rory O’Conner declares in her Fourth Street Review of The Elementals:
“Given the book is rather atmospheric, I thought a decadent dessert would be in order: Pumpkin Brownies with Chocolate Ganache.” Here's the link to the recipe from blogger Jamie at My Baking Addiction. Jamie's ganache recipe with heavy cream is undoubtedly divine. I melted 6 ounces of delicious dark chocolate with an 8 ounce Cool Whip Lite.

Rory of the Fourth Street Review describes The Elementals as “lushly imagined.”
One can say the same for the brownies from My Baking Addiction.
Best served hot, they are supernaturally superlative in flavor!

Wishing you a wonderful escape into Francesca Lia Block’s The Elementals.

The Ninja Baker

The Ninja Baker's recipes are also available at:

?Allrecipes.com:
The Ninja Baker's Japanese Plum Sweet Memories and Recipes

Bob's Red Mill

Wholesome Sweeteners:
The Ninja Baker's Gluten-Free Coconut Chocolate Cheesecake Minis with Espresso Cream

Wholesome Sweeteners:
The Ninja Baker's Gluten-Free Double Chocolate Cupcakes with Champagne Glaze & Optional Lemon Peach Marmalade Filling

?LifeKraze

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