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Gluten Free Pumpkin Gnocchi

November 22, 2019 by lisahearts Leave a Comment

Gluten Free Pumpkin Gnocchi
Gluten Free Pumpkin Gnocchi
2/3 cup pumpkin puree (fresh or canned)
1/2 cup ricotta
1 1/4 cup Bob’s Red Mill 1-1 Gluten Free Flour
1/3 cup shredded parmesan
1 egg
1/2 tsp kosher salt

Brown Butter with Sage
1 tsp oil
3 1/3 tbsp butter
20-25 leaves of fresh sage

Measure 2/3 cup of pumpkin puree and place in cheesecloth. Squeeze out liquid until about 1/3 cup of puree remains. Add to your stand mixer along with ricotta and egg. Mix. Mixture will look grainy.

Next, add the flour, parmesan, and salt, and mix until everything comes together in a soft dough.

Tip dough out on to a lightly floured surface and slightly knead until it is smooth and all you can’t see any more clumps of ricotta. Divide into 8 equal pieces.

Roll out each piece into a long snake until it is roughly the circumference of a dime. Slice into 1/2″ bits and press lightly with a fork on the freshly cut edge to create a ridged pattern. Do this with the remaining dough until everything has been cut and patterned.

Bring a large pot of water to the boil and season with salt. Add gnocchi all at once into the pot and allow to cook until dough floats to the top. Stir gently once or twice at the start to make sure nothing is sticking to each other or the pot to prevent them from floating. Once they have come to the top, scoop out with a slotted spoon and place on a paper towel and/or sieve to drain. Cooking should take only 1-2 minutes.

Heat oil and butter in a large pan until butter is completely melted. Bubbles should disappear and butter will begin to turn brown and smell nutty. Add in gnocchi and sage leaves.

Cook in two or three batches to prevent overcrowding if necessary.

Toss gnocchi occasionally to get both sides cooked. Once they crisp up on the outside and turn golden brown, they’re cooked and ready to be plated. Top with shredded parmesan and season with salt and pepper.

What’s everyone been up to this Fall? Eating well, I hope. There’s still time to whip up some pumpkin goodness this season, and I think today is a great day to do it. There are leaves on the ground (so many leaves…) and it’s just chilly and rainy enough outside to have an excuse to stay in and snuggle. This gnocchi is a perfect earthy comfort food to put on the table tonight, so let me show you how.

I felt very weird not starting the instructions for this recipe with “Preheat the oven”. While savory foods aren’t my typical go-to, I could still tackle this one with a fair amount of skill since I still got to mix flour and eggs in my kitchenaid.

The first time I saw gnocchi was on Masterchef Australia, and they called the dough “pillows”. How can you not want to eat something with such a cute nickname? But, I didn’t expect I’d ever get the chance. It’s a pasta, and as you know, wheat and I are not friends. I’m comfortable enough to make desserts gluten free, but pasta felt a little out of my skill set. You know what though? I tried it. And the very first time I made it, it was amazing! I really thought these would be dense and tasteless and pretty much just a mess. I was so thrilled when the butter bubbled and turned nutty and the gnocchi went from soft to crisp and golden.

Ideally, you’ll have some cheesecloth laying around. Not a big deal if you don’t though. The idea is that you want to dry out some of the pumpkin puree so it isn’t so wet and soupy. With a cheesecloth, you can scoop the puree into the middle and squeeze out the liquid. You can accomplish the same thing with a couple paper towels, but you have to be much more gentle when squeezing so the paper towel doesn’t rip. Or, you can lay some paper towels out on a sieve and let the pumpkin sit in there for a bit and drip dry (hahaha oh man).

There isn’t an exact measurement of liquid I can tell you needs to come out, and that would be annoying to try to reach anyway, right? So you just have to eyeball it. You want the puree to be pretty tacky after some of the liquid is removed. In my testing, I always get about 1/3 cup puree left over.

You can toss out out the pumpkin juice (gross) and move the dried out puree to your mixing bowl. Add in the ricotta and egg and let it mix for a minute so it comes together. The ricotta won’t completely mix in, but that’s fine. We’re going to knead it in later. Right now it’s…really gross looking. Lumpy and smells like spaghetti-o’s.

Add in the flour, parmesan, and salt, and mix again. This time, the mixture will come together into a soft dough. Are there still ricotta lumps? Don’t worry, we’re getting to it.

Very lightly flour a large surface so we can begin shaping the dough into PILLOWS. When I say very lightly, I mean it. This dough needs to retain a bit of tackiness so it can grip the surface a little to be rolled out smoothly. Too much flour and it will just slide around. Want to know how I know? You know.

So, tip out the dough onto your floured surface and roll it up into a ball. By shaping it like this, you should be able to knock around whatever ricotta lumps were still poking through. If you can still spot some, just play with the dough a bit more and it should eventually come out smooth.

Divide up the dough into roughly 8 equal parts. Doing so will just make each piece easier to roll out into a long snake-like piece. I kind of just rolled until it felt right. If you have a dime handy, your snake should have about the same circumference as the dime (or 18mm in diameter for you nerds).

Now you want to slice the snake into equal pillows. I cut mine into about a 1/2 inch each. I was having trouble just doing it by eye, and since I apparently don’t own a ruler, I took a sheet of college-ruled paper and cut the length of two lines of space. There must be a name for this kind of ingenuity. Or is it just called being lazy…?

Once you have everything sliced, you can begin making the ridge pattern. While this is optional, the ridged like to hold things like yummy brown butter, and they look nice, so I recommend it. Holding your fork so the tines are flat against the dough, gently press down into the fresh cut edge of your gnocchi. This will squash the rectangle into more of a round shape. If the dough sticks to your fork, gently roll the dough off rather than trying to pull it off straight.

Have all of your gnocchi gathered together because when we go to put them in the pot, you want to try to get them all in at once. If you’re tossing in a handful at a time, they’re going to cook at different rates and you might get some under and overcooked gnocchi sneaking onto your plate.

Start a boil in a large pot and season the water with salt. When it has reach the boil, pour all of the gnocchi in and give them a gently stir so they don’t stick. It should only take a minute or two for them to cook. You’ll know they’re done when they float to the top of the water. Take a slated spoon and skim off whatever has come to the top and place them in a sieve lined with paper towels so they can drain off. Once they’re all out and drained, it’s time for the final cooking procedure.

Heat your oil and butter in a saucepan on the stove. The butter will first melt, then bubble, then it will become suspiciously still. When it settles down like this, it will start the browning process. Keep and eye on it and give it a stir here and there to keep it from burning. Once it has turned brown and you can smell a fragrant nuttiness, add in the gnocchi and sage. Please do not overcrowd the pan! I kept trying to cook them all at once, but it takes forever and they won’t cook evenly, so just do the cooking in a couple batches if you need to and give those poor little guys some room.

Stir and toss them around as they cook so they become completely coated in butter and both sides of the gnocchi get crispy and golden brown. This can take between 5-15 minutes depending on your heat and how full the pan is. Remember, you already boiled them, so you aren’t having to cook them all the way through. This is just to get them flavorful and crispy.

Don’t forget to season these once they’re done. I only keep unsalted butter in my house because I mainly use it for baking, so be sure to salt your gnocchi before serving if your butter is unsalted!

These little pillows are so addicting. I couldn’t stop myself from snacking on them while I was trying to shoot them! It was really dangerous. I seriously had to skip dinner a couple times because I had already eaten a full serving of these. Good luck my friend.

Filed Under: food photography, gluten free, recipes, savory Tagged With: butter, dinner, earthy, fall, gluten free, pasta, pumpkin, sage, seasonal

Gluten Free Double Chocolate Cookies – with a Halloween Twist

October 28, 2019 by lisahearts Leave a Comment

Gluten free double chocolate halloween cookies
Gluten Free Double Chocolate Cookies
1 cup Bob’s Red Mill 1-1 Gluten Free Flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2/3 cup white chocolate chips or M&M’S Halloween Candy Corn

Preheat oven to 350˚F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and sugars. Scrape the bowl to get everything combined and add salt, egg and vanilla. Mix until combined.

In a separate bowl, sift together dry ingredients; flour, cocoa powder and baking soda. Add to stand mixer and mix until everything comes together into a thick dough.

Add white chocolate chips or M&M’s and stir until distributed evenly (since the M&M’s are quite large, mixing with a stand mixer will break them up. If you want them to remain whole, stir together with a spatula or spoon by hand).

Form dough into small round balls and place on cookie sheets with room to spread. I put 6 balls of dough per tray. Place in oven and bake for 12-15 minutes. Allow to cool before serving.
Gluten free double chocolate halloween cookies

Ugh. You guys. I’m still sick. I feel like I’ve been sick for months. It’s like a combo allergies, flu, hormones, and medication, so there’s no way to really understand how much longer I’ll feel so bad. But, I’m seeing my doctor this week so hopefully I get sorted out soon.

Gluten free double chocolate halloween cookies

Honestly though, the hardest part of being sick is not being able to work. I have all these ideas in my head but my body is like bleh no way man. So today, I’m just pushing on. I’m taking lots of breaks and planning my energy use, so if I have to go to the kitchen, I make sure I have the list of things I need to do and what order to do them. I really wanted to get you these cookies in time for Halloween.

I made two options for you. First is chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips, and second is the candy corn M&M version for a little sweet Halloween fun.

Gluten free double chocolate halloween cookies

These are really simple and straight forward. No folding or whipping or boiling. They’re pretty quick too. I was able to finish a batch in one episode of Gravity Falls.

Start by creaming a stick of softened, unsalted butter with brown and white sugar. Yum. Add an egg, vanilla, and salt. The reason I’m having you add the salt here and not with the dry ingredients is because I’m having you use kosher salt, which will be too big to run through a sifter. Just toss it in here and continue mixing, and it will distribute fine.

Then, in a large bowl, you want to evenly distribute the dry ingredients before putting everything together. Make sure you run this through a sifter as cocoa powder likes to ball up. This will break it up and make sure you get even cocoa throughout. Add to your stand mixer ingredients and mix until everything combines into a nice, smooth and thick dough.

Gluten free double chocolate halloween cookies
Gluten free double chocolate halloween cookies
Gluten free double chocolate halloween cookies

Here is where you can either make them everyday cookies, or Halloween cookies. If you’re going for straight up cookie time, add your white chocolate chips and let your stand mixer spread them throughout the dough. If you want to go for Halloween magic, you can either mix in the M&M’s by hand or let the mixer do it. If you go with the mixer, the paddle will end up smashing up the candy a bit. This is good if you want smaller candy bits throughout, but if you want whole pieces, go with the by-hand method. It’s really not better or worse, it just depends on what you want. Personally, I like to have them smashed up, but I have a few candies to stick into the top of the dough when they’re ready for the oven so they come out looking all posh.

Posh is a fun word. So is bespoke. And short-shorts.

Gluten free double chocolate halloween cookies

My method for filling the cookie sheet involves this fun little tool, an ice cream scoop. My husband got it for me after researching what bakers generally agree is the “correct” cookie size. It’s a #40, purple handled ice cream disher. It will scoop up the perfect amount of batter in most cases, including this one. You can place the dough directly on your parchment paper from the scoop, or, for a more uniform edge, you can roll the scooped dough in the palms of your hands to create an even ball. Lightly press this down on your baking sheet and top with M&M’s (though, I do not recommend topping with the chips – they can get a little burnt).

Place in your oven at 350˚F and bake for 12-15 minutes. These cookies are rich, so I recommend a nice glass of milk on the side. Tada! You done.

Gluten free double chocolate halloween cookies

Have a fun Halloween! And send your kids to my house. I have so much candy!

-Lisa

Filed Under: food photography, gluten free, recipes, sweet Tagged With: baking, chocolate, cookies, cooking, food, gluten free, halloween, m&ms, recipes, white chocolate

Gluten Free Ginger Loaf with Blood Orange Icing

October 18, 2019 by lisahearts Leave a Comment

Gluten Free Ginger Loaf Cake
Gluten Free Ginger Loaf Cake
Gluten Free Ginger Loaf
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup softened, unsalted butter
3/4 cup honey
2 cups Bob’s Red Mill 1-1 Gluten Free Flour
4 tbsp ground ginger
1 tbsp crystallized ginger, finely diced
1 tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and grated
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
2 eggs, separated
zest of 1 blood orange

Blood Orange Icing
juice of 1 blood orange
2 cups powdered sugar
1-2 tbsp milk

Preheat your oven to 335˚F. Prepare a 9x5in loaf pan by greasing the bottom and sides and lining with parchment paper.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream brown sugar and butter together with the paddle attachment. Add honey and egg yolks and mix.

In a separate bowl, sift together flour, ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and baking soda. Add dry mixture, crystallized ginger, salt, and blood orange zest to the stand mixer bowl and mix until batter is smooth.

Whip eggs whites in a small bowl until light and foamy. Fold in to stand mixer bowl completely. Scoop batter into prepared loaf pan and bake for 55-65 minutes.

While ginger loaf is baking, prepare the icing.

In a small bowl, whisk together blood orange juice and sugar. Icing will be thick, so add 1 to 2 tablespoons of milk to loosen it to the appropriate consistency. Once the loaf has completely cooled, pour icing over the top and allow to set for a few minutes. Slice and serve!
Gluten Free Ginger Loaf Cake

Who’s ready for some spice?

This ginger cake has a powerful kick of warm ginger with a smooth and sweet (and cute) layer of pink icing on top. A loaf cake is such a warm, no nonsense dessert, and when you pop on a couple bobbles on top, you can make it look pretty posh. Who wants to try?

First of all, this is a ginger cake, not a gingerbread cake. Although there is cinnamon and cloves in here, it doesn’t have the sweet molasses pack that a gingerbread does. This is going to be a bit more fiery!

Since we’re using a lot of ginger, I recommend checking out your nearest Indian grocer. I live pretty close to Patel Brothers and I was able to find toooons of ginger products way cheaper than anywhere else.

Gluten Free Ginger Loaf Cake

You can, of course, use plain oranges in place of the blood oranges as well, since they aren’t super common. But if you can find them, they’re just so cool, right? I found mind at Patty’s Farm Market in Aspinwall. The oranges were what inspired this recipe actually. I always want to make something new when I spot blood oranges. My husband loves the flavor, and I love that they’re kind of weird and turn your icings pink. Win-win.

So, let me explain the baking temperature on this one. Usually, you bake nearly all cakes at 350˚F. However, when I baked this cake at 350, it cooked too quickly on the outside and not enough on the inside. So by the time the inside was done, the edges had burned. I’m also trying to get used to my new oven. We have a gas stove, which I’ve heard can be tricky for baking, but we’ll see how it goes. I have my temperature gauge in there, and it seems to fluctuate 15-25 degrees several times throughout baking, so I’m a little concerned that this is going to make things hard when developing recipes. So, my recommendation is to bake at 335˚F, but if your cake doesn’t rise in the middle, go ahead and increase the temp to 350˚F and let me know that it’s just my oven!

Gluten Free Ginger Loaf Cake

So here goes. Start by prepping everything. Turn on the oven, prep your loaf pan, and grab all your ingredients. I like to start by separating the eggs, but don’t whisk the egg whites yet because if you let them sit there too long, the foam will die and be useless. So just separate and set aside for now.

Next, peel and grate the ginger. You want roughly a tablespoon of fresh ginger so you want a nice big chunk. The piece I got for this was about 2 inches long so that’s a good place to start. Now, everyone says that the best way to peel ginger is with a spoon. I’m not going to say they’re wrong, but I prefer to peel with a knife. Everytime I’ve used the spoon method, there’s like 3 seconds where I’m like, “this is cool and so easy and wow so little waste!” but then the 4th second starts with the, “auuugh ginger in my eye!”
So, I’m gonna leave it up to you. Then, grate ginger into a bowl and you can measure out a tablespoon from there.

Then, chop up your crystallized ginger. This is the real good stuff. It packs a hit and remains in these chunks throughout the baking process, so make sure they’re pretty small pieces. Go ahead and chop up a little extra to sprinkle on top of the loaf to garnish and make it real cute.

Now you’re ready to go.

Gluten Free Ginger Loaf Cake

Cream together butter and sugar, and make sure to scrape the bowl so you get everything. Then, add the honey and egg yolks and mix. This is going to look disgusting. The eggs won’t 100% combine with the sugars, so it’s going to be a little lumpy. Just keep mixing while you work on the other stuff, and even then it won’t be totally smooth. No problem. It will all come together after we add more ingredients.

So now you can go ahead and sift together your dry ingredients and spices. Sift. Always sift. That way there aren’t any gross lumps in your batter. The kosher salt, orange zest, and various gingers can just go on top after since they won’t be able to get through the sifter.

Mix all that up and the gross, kind of curdled looking batter will finally come together smoothly. Nice!

From here, you want to whip up those egg whites. Since this loaf cake is gluten free, we want to pop in a little more air to give it some height. I found that folding in the egg whites after everything helps. This is another kind of gross looking process. It’s going to take a minute to fold the eggs whites in completely and until then, they’re going to just look all wet all over the batter. So, just be patient and keep folding and eventually it will come together.

Gluten Free Ginger Loaf Cake
Gluten Free Ginger Loaf Cake

Time to bake! Pour or scoop the batter into your loaf pan. It’s quite a thick so you’ll probably have to do a combo of scoop and pour. Smooth out the top of the batter in the pan with a spatula and then go ahead and place it in the oven. I like to put this loaf on the lower rack of my oven to keep the top from cooking too quickly.

At 55 minutes, check your cake with a skewer. If it comes out clean, your cake is ready to come out! But if it’s still a little gooey, leave it a bit longer.

To make the icing, you can use the same orange that you zested earlier. Cut in half and squeeze out the juice over a sieve to catch any seeds or fibers. Toss in some powdered sugar, whisk whisk whisk, and add milk a little bit at a time. Seriously. A LITTLE BIT. You can test the consistency by running a spoon through the icing and lifting it up. You want the icing to eventually pool back into itself, but you want this to happen slowly. Nailed it.

Gluten Free Ginger Loaf Cake

Once the loaf is done, take it out of the oven and let it cool. DO NOT try to take it out of the pan until it’s totally cool or you will risk breaking it. Just hold on. But, when you do eventually take it out, plop it on a cooling rack or plate and pour the icing on, sprinkle with chopped, crystallized ginger, and you’re done! Not bad, right?

I hope you like this cake!

-Lisa

Gluten Free Ginger Loaf Cake

Filed Under: food photography, gluten free, sweet Tagged With: autumn, baking, blood orange, citrus, dessert, fall, film, food, ginger, gluten free, moody, orange, photography, sweet

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Bio

I am a photographer living in Pittsburgh with my cute husband and my salty cat. Although I primarily advertise shooting weddings and food, I do a little bit of everything. I love people, stories, feelings, and donuts.

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lisaxhearts

🍪Pittsburgh photographer
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🍬I like my cat
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Instagram post 2195838186213975432_1017811064 Good morning pumpkins. It's so gloomy in Pittsburgh. Darkness and rain. I think I'll stay inside and make more donuts. They are gluten free and dairy free and so cute, which is maybe most important. I'm still working on writing up the recipe for you (yinz), so it will be in your inbox very soon.

Do you have any food allergies?

#pittsburghphotographer #foodphotography #food52grams #firstweeat #inmykitchen #foodblogger #allergyfriendly #glutenfree #dairyfree #donuts #foodstyling
Instagram post 2182965808853281148_1017811064 Who here is loving pumpkin season still?? HOW ABOUT GLUTEN FREE EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME SEASON?? 🙌

The link to this recipe is in my profile! Go get!

#feedfeed #pumpkinseason #glutenfree #gnocchi #foodstyling #pgheats #foodiegram #foodphotography #eeeeeats #Onthetable
Instagram post 2179920563391522961_1017811064 I wish I could remember his name, but it was something I couldn't pronounce. I think it meant blue lightning? Or blue claws. Either way, he was a perfect boy and helped take care of the sheep in the barn.

I'm also pretty stoked to have caught a blep on film.

#travelphotography #pittsburghphotographer #seekmoments #seekadventure #littlethings #travelbloggers #reykjavik #iceland #selfoss #litlihals #sheepdog #35mm #film
Instagram post 2175532977306737696_1017811064 Woke up to snow! Let's have Christmas now!

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Instagram post 2169799345762026860_1017811064 Hey Monday. Why are you always so sleepy?

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Instagram post 2167743004180608118_1017811064 New blog post! This one is a bit more personal where I talk about the small show I displayed at @commonplacecoffee

#pittsburghphotographer #seekmoments #seekadventure #littlethings #travelbloggers #reykjavik #iceland #selfoss #keridcrater #commonplacecoffee #travelphotography
Instagram post 2164827715008850658_1017811064 Cookie time on the blog! Gluten free, chocolate, and candy. All the best things!

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Instagram post 2162579887410774488_1017811064 -Where we drift and call it dreaming-

#pittsburghphotographer #seekmoments #weddingphotographer #burghbrides #pittsburgh #storytellingphotography #pittsburghwedding #realweddings #stylemepretty #loveintentionally #pittsburghweddingphotographer #steelcitygrammers #loveauthentic #forthewildlyinlove
Instagram post 2157718191345157946_1017811064 SPICEY YUMMY WARM HAPPY GINGER CAKE RECIPE ON MY BLOG GO MAKE YES LOVE FAMILY SUGAR TIME

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