Thoughts and concepts...

I have not been posting here because I haven't really done much playing in the kitchen. Despite the lack of cooking, I have been doing a lot of thinking about what I want to try making next. I thought I would share those thoughts with you.

In my last post, I shared the revamped breakfast bar recipe. I truly love the results of that recipe, but as often as we eat breakfast bars, it would be really nice to have a few different flavors. I also think that the recipe might work better as a muffin, since it's very cake-like. A muffin might be a little more travel friendly.

The flavors I have been thinking of are:
tropical- replace the pumpkin seeds with chopped macadamia nuts and use dried pineapple, mango and papaya for the fruit
pumpkin- use pumpkin puree instead of banana, replace 1/3 of the ground almonds with ground pecans, and maybe use
raisins or currants for fruit
apple 1- use applesauce, diced apples and currants; maybe with a cinnamon crumble topping
Fluffernutter- eggless marshmallow fluff, replace ground almonds with ground peanuts, replace all fruit with diced apple

I'm also thinking that quick breads, such as carrot cake and zucchini bread would be good flavor bases to investigate. I've been considering doing one involving Nutella and hazelnuts, but I'm not sure what kind of fruit to incorporate.

I've also gotten the most recent issue of Living Without, a magazine for those with food allergies and sensitivities. This issue contains several recipes for cakes and a couple of different icings. At some point in the next week, I will be making one of the cakes, though I haven't decided which one yet. I have time to decide, though, since before I can make it I need to buy some xanthan gum.

What I really like about this issue is that they have a page of substitution suggestions. I'll cover that in a future post, though. I'd rather wait until I've tried some of them before discussing them in depth.

And that is a peak at what some future posts will involve.

Keep it simple, and keep on cookin'!