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Gluten Free Dairy Free Banana Cream Pie

Happy Holidays!

The title should read "Gluten free, dairy free, refined sugar free, banana cream pie", but that just seemed a little over the top long.

It was a good Christmas, with a nice brunch at my mom's -- where she made some delicious gluten free goodies for Mark.  We skipped dinner here, but did have a great banana cream pie. 

All right. I'll be honest - we didn't actually skip skip dinner. We ate bacon. And then banana cream pie. In a roundabout sort of way, we got at least a few food groups in.

The banana cream pie was a trial run for a lunch on Monday, as one of my friends is wheat intolerant as well.  So between the three of us we have two people who can't have wheat (one with no gluten either), and one dairy free person.  This pie has a custard made from light coconut milk, corn starch as thickener, maple syrup as sweetener, and meringue for the topping.

The crumb base is made from a crumbled cake I made using a recipe from the book "Babycakes: Vegan, mostly gluten free, mostly sugar free recipes from New York's most talked about bakery". I really, really wanted to like this cookbook, but have not had much luck with the recipes.

The recipe is after the jump, along with a mini-review of the book.

Bagels in New York City

 

So, after a long hiatus, some really inedible suppers, and lots of grocery store chicken, I am going to try to get back at my blog. And the first post for the new year isn't even a recipe of my own, it's a review of a bagel. I've included a recipe for Herb and Garlic cream cheese at the end of the review, just to keep on topic. My first trip ever to New York City was fantastic, and since I travel for food, I absolutely had to try a New York style bagel. That quest led me to Absolute Bagel on Broadway St. It's a little tiny shop on the edge of Harlem, and it served up some excellent bagels.

Suppertime Survival - Cookbook Review

(Suppertime Survival, Bev Callaghan and Lynn Roblin, 2005. Published by Suppertime Survival, Toronto Canada) The first thing that I loved about this book is that it is spiral bound so it lays flat on the counter, or rests nicely open in my cookbook stand. Nothing makes me crazier than a cookbook that closes itself. The spiral binding on this particular book is also covered, so the library clerk in me really appreciates that as well. I really enjoy this cookbook. Like I've said before, I read them like they are novels, so I pretty much read this one from cover to cover. One of the first things I noticed, besides the great binding, was that there are very few recipes that call for "Franken-foods" - like cream of something soup. There are a few recipes in the book that ask for more processed food, but most of us do use canned soup or packaged products every once in a while. I was impressed that most recipes called for regular foods that I had in my pantry.