Too Much Sugar

Happy gluten-free cupcakes

 

You know that feeling, when you want one more cookie, chocolate, candy, bite of cake, and you know you shouldn't eat it?  You know it'll just send your blood sugar into over drive and make you skitter around the world.  But you go ahead.  And you wish you could take it back, almost immediately.

Toaster Tarts and Peanut Butter Cookies

 Well, that's how my life is, right now.  Sugar, sugar, everywhere!  Six days of baking things people don't need!  But want.  They want them because they make them happy.  And that's what I do, after all.  I make people happy.

  I've even learned how to make people who can't have gluten in their diets happy.  It's easy, really.  Substitute the flour with some of the many gluten free flours now available, and add xanthan gum, a bacteria that mimics the stick-to-it-iveness of gluten, and Voila!  A delicious cake!  Or cookie.  It doesn't work quite the same with bread.  But I don't really make bread for a living, so I don't have to cross that frontier.

Miles of chocolate cupcakes

 

 

  Jeffrey Steingarten wrote a lovely article in this month's Vogue magazine about the gluten free craze that's worth a read, if you're thinking about going gluten free.  I like a friend's term better:  gluten light, in which you simply consume less bread.  Kind of borrowing on Adkin's diet, but dressing it up in new clothes!

  I've learned a lot about baking for vegans, too, but I don't try as hard, I confess.  People who can't have gluten can die from eating gluten.  Vegans almost always choose to be vegan.  It's said to be helpful in cancer treatment, but that is just a theory.  That's really the only reason I know of to be vegan. 

  To bake for vegans, I have to use all sorts of chemically produced ingredients.  The taste and color and texture of things are never quite right.  But this week, I developed a vegan pastry "cream."  Tofu, powdered sugar, flavor and xanthan gum.  Blend to a fluffiness and let it set up for a few minutes.  If I put enough flavor in it, I can almost tell it doesn't have tofu in it! 

Friday at Flour Head means lots of cupcakes!

  All of which has left me no time to weave.  I've even had to buy my friends' wedding gift, having given up for the time being on the place mat warp. It still sits sadly draped over Tootsie, ignored.  Even as I write this, I'm getting ready for another day of bread and cupcakes. 

  So, do me a favor, dear reader:  Weave for at least a couple minutes this week for me!  Happy Weaving!

 

Maggie