Gluten free Caramel Apple German Pancake

I got a suggestion from Stacy that the Thick German Pancake might work well in a gluten free form. Coming on the heels of the Caramel sauce experiment, I decided to do a double experiment: Gluten free Caramel Apple German Pancake.

Two tones of caramel sauce

Continuing to work my way through Cooking for Geeks. There are "dry" and "wet" approaches to making caramel. This is a dry approach and I am a fan. 

Assemble the team:

• 1 part sugar,
• 1 part cream.

In this case, 1 cup of each. (Later I add a pinch of salt and 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract).

Start with just the sugar in a cold pan. Put over medium-high heat. DO NOT STIR -- until the edges have started melting. Then stir to blend the melted and unmelted sugars.

Once it is melted through you have a choice:

• Add the cream now
• Let the sugar darken some more

Or, none of the above. Divide into two batches and do both! Whenever you decide, add the cream slowly and stir to incorporate as you go. BE CAREFUL -- THIS STUFF IS HOT and STICKY -- a DANGEROUS combination. Add a pinch of salt and vanilla if you are so inclined (which I am).

Since you get different flavors developed at different temperatures I was aiming for a blended sauce.

What is an experiment without evaluating the results? An accident. So we sampled the light sauce, the dark sauce, and the blended sauce. Sharon liked the light sauce. I liked the blend best. They were all good. There was much more depth to the dark sauce.

Next time: I really like the blended sauce. I think I would divide the sugar and cream into 3/4 cup for the light sauce and 1/3 cup for the darker sauce and cook them in separate pans. I might not go quite as dark on the dark sauce. And I would warm the cream before adding it.

I dividing the blended caramel sauces in two containers so I could heat a small batch to serve without having heat the whole batch.

And for clean up, I just couldn't stand the thought of losing any of that great flavor stuck to the pan. So I deglazed the pans with milk, then drank the warm caramel milk.

Update 2/12/13: I just made this again using two pans and a 2:1 relation of light caramel and medium caramel and it worked out great!

Spinach pecan bacon sautee

Spinach. Pecans. Bacon. Mmm.

Vegetable Shepherd's Pie

Sharon found me a nice recipe for Shepherd's Pie at Cooking For Engineers. Evidently it originates in the Joy of Cooking. I have made this a couple times in the traditional form -- with ground beef. Today I wanted to keep the form of the dish but make it vegetarian. So in place of the beef I thought I would use roast squash, apples, nuts, and maybe some cooked greens. What could happen?!

Purple carrots

Purple through and through. 

Our CSA basket included some carrots of various colors:

Part of this week's CSA basket

Featuring purple food

Sharon and I are big fans of "purple food", but so often purple veggies only have the pigment skin deep. In this case the purple went all the way through. I was so excited and I had to make a special salad just to show them off.

Apple Sausage Thick German Pancakes

Yet another variation on the Thick German Pancake this morning.

I had a bag of apples that I got to make a first attempt at Apple Cabbage Stew for the Skyrim party (more on this in a later post). So I got to thinking about making a traditional Apple German Pancake. But then I remembered having some breakfast sausage links in the freezer. And then I remembered how much I like apples and sausage together.

To wit, Apple Sausage Thick German Pancakes!

Winter Squash German Pancake

In the continuing saga of "things to cook with winter squash" I experimented with a roasted butternut squash German pancake.

For the topping I took some chunks of roasted butternut squash from the freezer and sauteed them in butter, brown sugar and a little fine spices. Then otherwise followed the recipe for the Thick German Pancake from The Best Recipe cookbook.

I thought they were tasty and passed my "qualified breakfast food" filter fine. Not as sweet as a pumpkin pie. I think I will do this again, but I'm not sure it will become a regular.