Picture it, my living room, three or so years ago. I was at the tail end of an elimination diet (no sugar, dairy, or gluten), which I’d undertaken in desperation after having been told by my doctor that nothing was wrong with me. Yeah, right.

My carb-loving self was having a mean craving for anything cakey, and I didn’t know how long I’d be able to last if I didn’t get a cupcake or muffin in the very immediate future. Apprehensively, but hungrily, I made my way to the kitchen cupboard that contained my then tiny supply of gluten free baking ingredients. Having never baked gluten free before, I wasn’t sure what to make, but after flipping through my only gluten free cookbook at the time, Gluten Free Baking Classics by Annalise Roberts (still a favorite!), I decided on the carrot spice muffins. It’s amazing how easily I can justify eating several muffins or cupcakes in one sitting when they have something healthy like carrots in them.

I mixed up the batter, using these strange new ingredients and agave nectar as the sweetener, popped the muffins into the oven, and hoped for the best. Looking back, I think I can say that I was extremely lucky to have tried such a great recipe for my first gluten free baking adventure, because I knew after taking my first bite of that slightly spiced, moist muffin that it was completely possible to make something that tasted just as good (or better) than what I was used to in my pre-gluten free days.

As a result of my first experience baking gluten free, carrot-y baked goods still hold a yummy place in my heart, and this time around I tried the prize carrot cake recipe from Bette Hagman’s The Gluten Free Gourmet Cooks Comfort Foods, which has become another of my cookbook favorites. Though I was intrigued by the fact that the original recipe called for a healthy amount of pureed green tomatoes, they’re not exactly easy to find in a city, so I replaced them with applesauce, which provided the same moistness, as well as a little bit of sweetness. I do wonder how different the flavor would’ve been if I would’ve used the tomatoes, because I can tell you that this cake was absolutely delicious even without them. Seriously, I think that this may rank in my top three favorite gluten free recipes. The texture was amazing, and boy was this cake ever moist, even after three days (that’s how long the cupcakes lasted) and even though I used the sugar free sweetener xylitol, which tends to suck the moisture out of baked goods.

I halved the recipe because I didn’t want to make a full cake, but you can double it if you want to make a three layer cake, which is what the original recipe made.

I’ve been trying to make a great gluten and sugar free brownie for at least two years, and nothing that I’ve tried has been anywhere near successful … until now. Texture, texture, texture. That’s always been my problem in the past. Pasty, leaden brownies are just not good and, unfortunately, I’ve had to toss a few pans of them because they were simply inedible. I really hate wasting food.

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with an ingredient called inulin, which has been incredibly helpful in giving my baked goods a texture more along the lines of something made with sugar. Inulin is one of the key ingredients in this brownie recipe.

So, what in the world is inulin*? It’s a subtly sweet fiber (about 1/10th as sweet as sugar) that can be used to replace sugar, fat, and flour in recipes, and has been shown to help the body absorb calcium and possibly magnesium. Inulin is also sometimes referred to as a prebiotic, which means that it helps promote the growth of intestinal bacteria (the good kind). So, it’s both helpful and healthful! I purchase my inulin at Whole Foods, where it can be found in the aisle with all of the sweeteners. It’s rather pricey, but it’s been more than worth it to me to get back some of the fudgy, chewy, gooey texture that is lost when I bake with my regular sugar replacements.

Okay, so these brownies are magnificent. I love them, and I don’t think that it would be an understatement for me to say that I love, love them. This is the texture that I’ve been after for so long — oh so fudgy. I think I may have even teared up a little when I tried the first one because it made me that happy. And I topped them off with a bit of flaky sea salt, which made for a fantastic, salty-sweet experience.

* If you have a sensitivity to fiber or have gastrointestinal issues with high fiber intake, please watch it with the inulin. I’ve read that it can have some pretty unpleasant side effects. Thankfully, I don’t seem to have any issues with it, though I do try to use it as sparingly as possible in recipes, just in case.

Sunbutter — the name alone just sounds friendly, doesn’t it? Actually, Sunbutter is a registered trademark, so I think that I have to call my version sunflower seed butter or something that isn’t Sunbutter.

I initially thought that I might be able to find the unsweetened version at Trader Joe’s, where lots of people on the interwebs said that the regular, sweetened type could be found, but my local Trader Joe’s only had the sugar-filled version, and I just couldn’t bring myself to pay $10+ (with shipping) per jar from the Sunbutter website. So, I picked up some roasted sunflower seeds — at around $2.99 for a pound, I think it was — and set out to make my own.

I am now a total sunflower seed butter convert. Not only was it easy to make, and much more economical to make myself, but it tastes totally yummy. If you haven’t tried sunflower seeds or sunflower seed butter before, then it’s difficult to describe the flavor. It’s kind of like peanut butter, but not really. As B said when I had him taste test my first batch, “it’s really a different kind of flavor, isn’t it?” Yes, it is, and it’s delicious with some of that sugar free jam, slathered on a banana, or just eaten with a spoon.

In addition, sunflower seed butter is rich in Vitamin E and Thiamine (B1) and is a great source of protein. It’s a great alternative to peanut butter, too!

I know that this may not look like much, but one bite instantly transports me back to my childhood summers. So, what is this weird, brownish food? In my family, we call it zucchini pudding, and my mum always made it during summer zucchini season. I was actually a bit surprised when I did a little bit of searching and found that pretty much all of the zucchini pudding recipes floating around are for savory puddings. Zucchini pudding, as I know it, is a cross between a custard-y pumpkin pie filling and zucchini bread, and it’s just wonderful served warm with a little milk — coconut milk in this instance — poured over the top.

My mum shared her recipe for the pudding, which I hadn’t eaten in ages and had never made myself, and I was nervous about translating the recipe into my own gluten and sugar free version. Would it taste the same? Would one of my childhood favorites be lost to me due to my dietary restrictions? I breathed a sigh of relief after I ate my first bite and knew that this was the zucchini pudding that I remembered, even though the ingredients weren’t quite the same as the original.

These days, I order most of my spices from Penzey’s, and a big thank you to Alton Brown and Good Eats for introducing me to this place. Penzey’s has pretty much every spice you can imagine, and I can really taste the difference between the quality in their spices and those that I pick up at the grocery store. I also appreciate the great prices that they have on bulk spices like ground ginger, cinnamon, and chili powder, which I seem to use by the bucketful.

Every season, I look forward to receiving the Penzey’s Spices catalog (you can read it online, too), not just because I love looking through all of the different spices and flavorings, but also because every catalog includes several recipes sent in by Penzey’s customers. Each recipe includes a heartwarming story that tells how a particular dish, dessert, or what have you became a part of the person’s life. I think that most of us can relate closely to these stories, as food is so much a part of all of our lives, and we all have recipes that are special to us.

The most recent Penzey’s catalog had a recipe for shrimp curry, and though I haven’t had much luck with Indian recipes, I had a good feeling about this one. Going with my gut definitely paid off because this curry is absolutely delicious. I shaved a few minutes off of the prep time here and there, and it was still wonderful. Plus, I’m almost giddy because I finally managed to concoct a coconut rice recipe that rivals the rice that I had years ago and have been trying to duplicate since. This was one of those meals where everything just came together in a magical way, and I know that I’ll be making it again. Next time, I think I’ll try chicken or sweet potato in place of the shrimp because I think that they’d both work well.

Now that you’ve made your own sweet, sweet jam, wouldn’t you love to slather it on a warm and fluffy biscuit with some butter? These biscuits have been a long time in the making and, when I say a long time, I mean over a year and a half of experimenting with the recipe, using every type of gluten free ingredient imaginable, and having several results that weren’t exactly edible. I’ve learned a lot about making gluten free biscuits along the way.

Here are just a few of my lessons learned: too much guar gum makes for nasty, chalk-tasting biscuits; glutinous rice flour tends to make the biscuit bottoms chewy; using glutinous rice flour and no xanthan gum leaves the biscuits dry and crumbly, but you’ll still have chewy bottoms; whipping an egg white and folding it into the biscuit dough doesn’t seem to add much in the way of fluffy (i.e., don’t waste your time); using shortening tends to make the biscuits very dense and heavy; and attempting to replace the buttermilk with coconut milk and a little lemon juice changes the texture in an ugly way and makes the biscuits taste not quite horrible but not very biscuit-y, either.

I also discovered that making the perfect biscuit, or at least my opinion thereof, doesn’t require a blend of half a dozen different types of gluten free flours and who knows what else. Thank goodness for that, right? When I simplified the ingredients, I got the results that I wanted. I realize that this isn’t always the case with gluten free recipes, but I knew it was a good omen when I picked up a cooled biscuit and it felt much lighter than it looked. Believe me, this was a rarity during my year and a half in search of my favorite gluten free biscuit.