Apple Crisp

Mmmm. Apples. Tastes like America.

Apple pie is the quintessential American dessert. You've heard the phrase "as American as apple pie," and I bet you swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Well, here's the dirty truth - apple pie predates America by at least four hundred years. Decent apples aren't even native to the new world. When European settlers got to America, they were a little dismayed to find that the only apples that grew natively were crab apples. (Just so you know, crab apples suck.) It wasn't until Johnny Appleseed came along that apples worth eating became widely available in America. (His legend is a little exaggerated, but he did plant a lot of trees and increase the American interest in growing apples.)

A much more accurate phrase might be "as American as apple crisp." For a long time, the idea of baking a pie crust in the new world was laughable. Pretty much no one had an oven, and building them wasn't exactly high on the list of priorities for the settlers until they moved out of the "likely to be eaten by bears" phase of settlement. Nonetheless, people want dessert, and cobblers, grunts, and crisps were quickly created by enterprising women who had the oh-so-pleasant task of trying to make entire meals using a fire and some cast iron pots. Until apples became available, other fruits were used, but after Mr. Appleseed worked his magic, apples quickly became a favorite crisp ingredient.

A paleo apple crisp isn't too hard, because you can use chopped nuts as the primary ingredient in the topping. Because apples have their own sweetness, you don't really need to add sugar to them. There is a little bit of honey in the recipe, but it falls well within the description, "an amount I'd be willing to steal from bees." I'm putting this in the indulgences category, but it's so close to the line that you'd probably be OK with eating it pretty often, just not every day.

I forgot to get the coconut oil and salt before I took the picture.
Just pretend they're behind the walnuts or something.

Ingredients

For the filling
1 lemon (you will need all of the juice and half of the zest)
1 tsp minced ginger
4 granny smith apples
1 tsp honey
1 tsp arrowroot powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon

For the topping
1 cup walnuts
1 cup pecans
2 tbsp coconut oil
2 tsp honey
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp arrowroot powder
a pinch of salt


Equipment

Large Bowl
9x9 Baking Dish
Food Processor (recommended)

Preheat your oven to 350.

Strip the zest from half of the lemon and mince it very finely. Also go ahead and mince the ginger.

Zest on the left, ginger on the right.

Before you start working on the apples, you should fill a large bowl about half full of water, and squeeze the juice of your lemon into it. As you chop the apples, place the pieces into the water. Doing this will keep them from turning brown.

Peel the apples, core them, and chop them into medium-sized pieces (I got 48 pieces per apple, if that helps with the definition of "medium-sized.") As you chop them, place the pieces into the bowl.

The acid in the lemon juice disables an enzyme that would otherwise cause the apples to brown.
Science - it's super fun!

Once all the pieces have been chopped, drain the water out of the bowl. (a colander is probably the easiest way to do it.) Add the lemon zest, ginger, honey, arrowroot powder, and cinnamon to the bowl, and mix them in with the apples so that everything is evenly coated. Place the apples into your baking dish.

I prefer a glass baking dish, because it heats everything just a little more slowly than a metal one.

To make the topping, you need to chop the walnuts and pecans into small pieces, and then mix in the coconut oil, honey, cinnamon, arrowroot powder, and salt. If you've got a food processor, you can just throw everything in and pulse it about 10 times (or until it looks like granola). If you don't, you can chop the nuts by hand, and then mix the other ingredients in with your hands or a spatula. Once you've got the topping prepared, place it evenly on top of the apples and press it down just a little.

Making it even will help prevent any nuts from burning.

Bake the crisp at 350 for 15 to 20 minutes. The apples will still be a little firm, and the topping will have started to toast, but not burn. Take the crisp out of the oven, and let it cool for at least 10 minutes before serving, so that any juices have a chance to gel.




You can see that the apples are still holding their shape.

  Notes

• Use granny smith apples for this recipe. They are, in my opinion, the best apples for making any kind of pie, crisp, cobbler, or crumble.
• When you serve this, the topping will get all mixed in with the apples. That's good, because some of the topping will be in every bite.
• Be careful when baking the crisp. It's very easy to let it go too long and burn the topping. I started checking it pretty often at the 15 minute mark, and it was exactly right at 20 minutes. If you start to see any bits of the topping get very dark, take the crisp out of the oven immediately.
• I like my apples to still be firm in a dessert like this. If you want your apples mushy, you can bake them by themselves for about 10 minutes before you put on the topping.
• One more piece of pie trivia: early pie crusts were so crappy that it was just expected that you wouldn't eat them. The filling was baked in one, but you'd eat the filling and throw away the disgusting crust.

Mint and Watermelon Salad

See how I put that sprig of mint right on top, there? Classy.

I learned this recipe from some friends of ours who are in the choir with Miriam and me. It's really simple, and it makes a great summertime dish, because it requires no cooking. It is a good idea to make it ahead of time, though, because the mint needs to sit with the watermelon for a while to really get its flavor out there.

This dish works as a good dessert. Watermelon is sweet, and the mint changes it up enough that you won't feel like it's something you've had a million times. You could also bring it to the neighborhood barbecue, because a whole watermelon is a lot of food. Nutritionally, you have to watch out for the sugar in watermelon, but it also has such a high water content that it's hard to eat too much. You also get a healthy dose of vitamins in the melon, so if you're looking for a sweet finish to your dinner, this is a pretty good way to go.

Also, this recipe is dead simple. You mix watermelon and mint together. Since that would be a dull post, I thought I'd take the opportunity to show how I cut up a whole watermelon, since that's the hardest part, and a fruit that size can be intimidating.

That mint was growing wild in my yard. It doesn't get much more paleo than that.

Ingredients

1 watermelon (I recommend a seedless watermelon)
Approximately 15 large mint leaves

Equipment

Large Knife
Large Bowl (A bowl with a lid is recommended)


Start cutting up the watermelon by using a large knife to cut a circle from each end of the melon. Try not to cut off any more of the red part of the melon than absolutely necessary.

This step will keep the melon from rolling all over the place while you try to cut it.

Stand the melon upright so that it is resting on one of the cut ends. Begin cutting slices of rind off of the melon by cutting from the edge of the top circle down toward the middle of the melon.

If the melon were a globe, you'd be cutting from the arctic circle to the equator.

Continue cutting slices of the rind off all the way around the melon. Remove as little of the red part of the melon as possible. When you're done, the rind should be completely removed from the top half of the melon.

You can also trim off any little bits of white.

Cut a slice horizontally at the top of the melon. For this dish, your slices should be about an inch thick.

A big knife helps when working with something as large as a watermelon.

Cut the slice into bite-sized chunks.

The slices on the very ends of the melon got cut into nine pieces. All the others I cut into 16.

Continue cutting slices until you have finished cutting up the top half of the melon.

You can see lines from where I cut the last slice into pieces without taking it off the top of the melon.

Now, remove the second half of the rind using the same technique that you used for the top half. This time, cut from the middle of the melon toward the bottom.

As always, remove as little of the red part as possible.

Place all of your watermelon chunks into a large bowl.

It's easiest if you add them to the bowl as you cut them.
Otherwise you have to deal with a mountain of chunks all at once.

Now it's time to chop the mint. It's easiest if you stack all of your leaves together and kind of roll them up. Then you can slice the leaves all at once.

Stacking them all up makes things go a lot faster.

The mint shouldn't be too finely chopped. If I had to describe it, I'd call it a "coarse chiffonade," but unless you're a food nerd, that phrase might not mean anything, so look at the picture:

See? "Coarse chiffonade." Right there.

Add the mint to the watermelon, and gently mix the two together to distribute the mint evenly. Be gentle, so that you don't crush the watermelon too badly.

I used a big spoon to mix everything. Choose your own favorite implement.

For best results, let the salad sit, covered, in the refrigerator overnight. The flavors will come together as it sits.


Notes

• This recipe makes a lot of food. If you're not making it for a large group, it will keep in the refrigerator for about a week.
• I wouldn't put this in the indulgences category, even though watermelon has sugar in it. That said, I wouldn't eat a ton of it at every meal. Luckily, it's hard to eat a ton of watermelon at once, so you'll probably naturally limit yourself to a reasonable portion.
• I definitely suggest using a seedless watermelon for this dish. Obviously, they don't have seeds, so it's easier to eat them in polite company. Also, they tend to be a little smaller than regular watermelons, so they're easier to handle, and you end up with a more reasonable amount of food.
• I don't know if it's just me, but mint grows all over my yard whether I want it to or not. If you don't have the same "problem," you can almost always find fresh mint in the grocery store. I've never tried this with dried mint. It might work, but I'd definitely let it sit a while to rehydrate the mint.
• If you do use "yard mint," make sure you wash it. You should probably also avoid using any mint from that corner of the yard where the dog likes to hang out.

Tropical Macaroons

Delicious, and so paleo they're bangin' rocks together.

This is a recipe from Everyday Paleo that is apparently a part of their Easter menu. I suggest that you read the article in that link. It's got three other recipes in it that you might be interested in. (I'm probably never going to make the smoked salmon casserole, but that's because I don't like salmon, not because it looks like a bad recipe)

Anyway, the macaroons caught my eye, and since I already have a bunch of shredded coconut from the coconut macadamia shrimp recipe, it seemed like a good time to give it a try. I'm also deviating from the original recipe just a little by using canned pineapple. Since we'll be cooking it down anyway, there won't be much (if any) difference in the final product, and canned pineapple is easier to work with. Just make sure that you get the kind that's in 100% pineapple juice.

Make sure you get free range, organic, non-GMO, grass-fed,  never-sworn-at eggs. Failure to do so will irreparably damage your health.

Ingredients
4 egg whites
3 cups finely shredded coconut (unsweetened)
2 tbsp coconut oil
1 20oz can of pineapple chunks
3 tbsp coconut milk

Equipment
Pan
Mixer
Large Bowl
Spatula
Cookie Sheet
Parchment Paper (recommended)
Potato masher (recommended)

Preheat your oven to 325, and go ahead and either grease your cookie sheet or cut a piece of parchment paper to fit it. I prefer using parchment paper because it makes cleanup so much easier, and cookies never stick to it.

Put a pan over medium heat and add the coconut oil to it. Drain as much liquid as you can from the pineapple chunks and add them to the pan. Standard sized canned pineapple chunks are a little too big for this recipe, so you need to break them up somehow. I recommend using a potato masher on them in the pan. You could also chop them with a knife after you drain them and before they go into the pan, but that sounds a little messy to me.

Be careful with the potato masher, or you might fling hot pineapple onto yourself. Part of the beauty of Technically Paleo is that I get to learn these things the hard way so that you don't have to.

Cook the pineapple until any liquid in it has evaporated, and it has turned golden brown. You'll need to stir it occasionally as it cooks. When it's done, remove it from the pan so that it can cool down while you make the rest of the batter. Hot pineapple will cook your egg whites. Then you'll have a nice pineapple and coconut omelet. If that's not what you're trying to make, let the pineapple cool.

This is what it should look like when it's done. The liquid is pretty much gone, and the pineapple has browned slightly.

In a large bowl, whip the egg whites with your mixer until they're stiff. Start on a slow speed for a few seconds, and then gradually increase the speed of the mixer. It will take a minute or two with a good mixer. When it's ready, it will look white, like uncooked merangue (because that's what it is).

See my spiffy stand mixer? It was a present from Miriam, and it gets used A LOT.

You can also do the "stiff peaks" test. If you pull your mixer directly out of the egg whites and turn it upside down, a little point of egg whites should be standing up on the beaters. If there's no point, you're not done.

See? Standing up straight. That means the egg whites are done.

Now, use a spatula to fold the coconut into the egg whites. When I say "fold them in," this is what I mean:

1. Put about half of the coconut into the bowl.
2. Use the edge of the spatula to cut down into the center of the egg whites and coconut.
3. Gently turn half of the batter over onto the other half, kind of like you're folding an omelet or flipping a pancake.
4. Add the rest of the coconut to the bowl.
5. Repeat step 3 about 10 times, while turning the bowl a quarter turn each time.

Being gentle like this preserves as much of the air as possible in the batter. The air is the only thing that will make the macaroons light and fluffy.

Be gentle.

Add the coconut milk to the pineapple and mix them together a little before adding both to the batter. Just like with the coconut, you want to fold this in.

You'll end up with a very loose, very dry batter.

Make little balls from the batter and place them on the cookie sheet. The balls should be about the size of a golf ball, and you should leave about an inch between each one. When you've filled up the cookie sheet, press each ball down a little. They should be kind of biscuit-shaped, not super flat.

How do you like my super-dramatic cookie angle?

Bake the macaroons for 20 minutes. They will firm up a little when they're done, and will have little golden-brown spots.

They're a little fragile, so be careful when you handle them.

 Notes

• The potato masher trick got the pineapple broken up into the right sized chunks, but I seriously flung pineapple all over myself by accident. You might want to mash the pineapple in the pan before you put the pan over the heat. That way, you'll at least only get cold pineapple on you.
• When you're forming the macaroons into balls, you'll have to press them together a little or they'll fall apart. Also be careful when you flatten them that you don't mush them into pieces.
• Usually, when a recipe asks you to fold ingredients into egg whites, it's super important that you don't stir all of the air out of them, because that air is there to make things light and fluffy. With this recipe, though, it's not actually that important. You're folding so much stuff into the egg whites that it probably doesn't matter what you do - they'll come out the same. It's still good practice to do it right, though.
• I'm going to go ahead and put these in the indulgences category, but only because coconut is pretty calorie-dense. Nutritionally, I'd say you should feel comfortable having one of these any time you'd feel comfortable with eating a handful of nuts.

As-Paleo-As-You-Want-It-To-Be Chocolate Mousse

Channel the lame new Cookie Monster and think of this as a "Sometimes Food"

Like the title implies, this dish is kind of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" paleo dessert. It only has three ingredients, but one of those three is chocolate. Chocolate is an ingredient that skirts the edges of the paleo diet. Completely unsweetened chocolate is completely paleo as far as I'm concerned, but it's also not very useful without some other sweetening added to it. A more practical, but slightly less paleo option is to use a high quality dark chocolate in the 85-90% cocoa range. Look for one where the ingredient list is pretty much chocolate and some sort of sweetener, and you're doing OK for a treat item. If you want to go sweeter, you could use a dark chocolate in the 60-70% cocoa family, but keep in mind that the lower you go on the cocoa percentage, the less paleo this becomes (because the sugar will be increased). It's your food, so I'll leave it up to you. This time, I used an 85% cocoa chocolate, and the dish worked out to about 10g carbs per serving.

Ingredients
1 can coconut milk (not light coconut milk, regular coconut milk)
1 cup chocolate pieces (I broke a chocolate bar into little pieces. Chocolate chips would also work)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Equipment
Pot
Whisk
Mixer (recommended)

This dessert is essentially a whipped ganache made with coconut milk instead of dairy. If that sentence made sense to you, you can basically stop reading, because you already know what to do.

For everyone else, start by heating the coconut milk over medium-low heat. You want it to get warm, but don't take it to boiling. It will take about 2 minutes. It probably won't even be too hot for you to dip your fingertip in (depending on how sensitive your fingers are.) Chocolate melts at something like 90 degrees farenheit, so anything above that will work fine.

You could also do this in the microwave, but it's probably easier on the stove.

Add the chocolate to the pot and start whisking slowly.

If you can break a chocolate bar into pieces like this and not eat any before they go in the pot, you are not made of flesh and blood.

At first, it will look like you  have chocolate bits floating in coconut milk, but keep whisking and the chocolate will slowly melt and the mixture will even out into what looks like a thick chocolate sauce (because that's what it is).

Like chocolate gravy.

Take the pot off of the heat and mix in the vanilla extract.

I like Trader Joe's vanilla. Make sure you use real vanilla, not imitation vanilla.

 
Transfer everything into a container that you can put into the fridge for a few hours (because you need to put it in the fridge for a few hours.)

Depending on the chocolate you used, everything will set up in the fridge to a consistency somewhere between pudding and frosting. If you're happy with the consistency right out of the fridge, then good. If you're worried that your dinner guests will think you handed them a bowl of cake frosting, then get out your mixer. I have a cool stand mixer, so I dumped everything into its bowl and mixed it with the whisk attachment for about a minute. If you've got a hand mixer, you'll want to mix things for a minute to two minutes. You can also pour on the elbow grease and whisk everything by hand for about two minutes. The point is to lighten the mousse by getting some air into it. Don't work on it for too long, because the heat from mixing it will make it thin out too much.

Now, place it into four serving dishes of your choice and enjoy. (Enjoy one of the servings, not all four)

Notes:

• Here's the rule on ganaches: the higher the chocolate to liquid ratio is, the firmer the ganache will be. My cup of chocolate pieces contained about 125 grams of chocolate. Depending on the types of pieces you use, you may fit more or less chocolate into the measuring cup, and you'll have to adjust on the fly.
• If your cooled ganache is way too thin, you can always reheat it and add more chocolate.
• If you whip the ganache like crazy and it's still too thick, you could reheat it and add more coconut milk.
• If you use 85% cocoa chocolate like I did, this will be an intensely chocolatey dessert. Serious chocolate lovers will really like it, but not everyone wants a mousse that intense.
• You could top this with some raspberries to cut the chocolate flavor a little bit.

Technically Paleo Chocolate Cake.

Is it a really big plate, or a really small cake?

Last year, Miriam's birthday happened to fall right in the middle of a paleo challenge that we were doing at the gym. She wanted to stay really strict on the diet, so we didn't have a cake. Instead, I made a key lime pie out of paleo ingredients. If I had been a more experienced paleo baker, I could have whipped up some of these little chocolate cakes instead. They have a texture somewhere between a cake and a brownie, and they're awesome on their own or with a small scoop of coconut milk ice cream on top.

Now, before I get started with the recipe, here's the caveat. These are definitely in the "indulgences" category. They make a great treat for you and your sweetie to split after a romantic dinner, and if it's your birthday you can totally have one guilt-free. However, if you're having one of these after dinner every night, you're not going to be happy with the results.  (Well, the long term results, anyway. The immediate result is that you eat chocolate cake, and you'll probably be OK with that.)

Without further adieu:

I like to get everything together first

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups almond meal
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg
1/2 cup grapeseed oil (or any neutral oil)
1/3 cup water
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract

Equipment
Whisk
Cookie Sheet
Miniature Tart Pans
Large bowl


Preheat your oven to 325.

Add the almond meal, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt to a large bowl, and whisk to combine.

A large bowl is the baker's best friend.

It won't be totally smooth, but that's OK. You're really just trying to distribute the baking powder evenly.

Now add the egg, oil, water, syrup, and vanilla to the bowl.

The maple syrup is what really pushes this into indulgence land

You really want to get it smooth. Remember, almond meal doesn't form gluten, so go nuts with the mixing. It should look like brownie batter when you're done.

Distribute the batter between four miniature tart pans (I think mine are 5 inch tart pans) on top of a cookie sheet.

It's really important to put the same amount of batter in each one. Otherwise you'll end up with a charcoal brick in some and chocolate pudding in others.

Now, bake the cakes at 325 for about 12-15 minutes. They're done if you can stick a toothpick in them and have it come back out clean.

You can kind of see the toothpick holes in the back two.

Getting these out of the tart pans is a little tricky. Most tart pans have removable bottoms, which helps a lot. I have good luck using a very thin-bladed knife to separate the cakes from the sides of the pans, then turning them upside down and popping the bottom out of the pan. Then the pan-bottom can be separated from the cake with the knife.

Notes

• These taste a lot like brownies. They're pretty dense, and very chocolatey.
• If you don't have tart pans with removable bottoms, you could try cutting a parchment paper circle to fit the bottom of the pan, so that the bottom of your cake won't stick to the bottom of the pan. I haven't tried it that way, but it might work.
• I have no idea whether or not you could just pour everything into one larger pan to make one larger cake. It might work OK in one nine inch pan, but I suspect you'd need to bake it for about 20 minutes. Maybe one day I'll give it a try.