GF Chocolate Mint Tea Infused Cake

I have been participating in the SABH Blog Hop for as long as I can remember, I think my first entry might have been the chocolate Pavlova recipe, with Pavlova being the theme. I was so excited to find other like minded food bloggers' and a place to share my passion/love of food. The monthly blog hop with a specific topic has at times challenged me, got my creative juices flowing. The third week of every month is definitely something that I look forward to every month.


http://84thand3rd.com/2012/05/21/macha-green-tea-cupcakes/
This month when JJ announced that the theme was tea, I have to admit I was a bit unsure, where to start, this wasn't your traditional ingredients in a cake. But I was excited it pushed me out of my comfort zone and encouraged me to extend myself with my cooking abilities. When I came to the conclusion of what I was cooking and shared the decision with one of my good friends, who is a chef, he was very impressed, it was then that I knew that I was onto a good thing, the flavour combination would work wonderful, a perfect marriage.
I had already settled on making a chocolate cake, this was not a recipe that I had made before I was adapting it from a plain cake recipe I had made previously, instead of adding vanilla I added 1/3 cup of sifted cocoa to the cake to make it chocolate.

Since I was a little girl I have loved peppermint, I always sifted through chocolate boxes looking for the peppermint ones. Now, as an adult I love to drink peppermint tea, particularly after a heavy meal, I find it quick refreshing and cleansing. I was fortunate enough to have a sample mix of Cool Mint Green Tea from A Touch of Tea in Bowral www.atouchoftea.com.au, I decided that instead of adding warm milk as the recipe called for, I added warm Cool Mint Green Tea. The original recipe called for 3 tablespoons of warm milk, I added 6 tablespoons of Cool Mint Green Tea, to ensure the cake was moist and not dry, like alot of gluten free cakes.

The consistency of the cake was like a thick fudge, don't worry this is how it is meant to be. The cake takes 20 minutes on 180 degrees Celsius, I made sure that I took the cake out when some of the crumbs were clinging to the skewer, this ensured that the cake was moist and stayed moist for more than one day.

I have to be honest and say that this was the most moist gluten free cake I have made since I have been baking gluten free! This is definitely a cake I recommend that you make, if you don't have access to the tea, I'm sure peppermint tea would make a nice mix.

GF Chocolate Mint Tea Infused Cake

Ingredients:
125g butter (softened)
1/2 cup caster
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup gf self raising flour
1/3 cup rice flour
1/3 cup gf cornflour
1 1/2 teaspoons gf baking powder
1/3 cup cocoa
6 tablespoons Cool Mint Green Tea

Method:
Preheat over to 180 degree Celsius. With electric mixer cream butter and sugar until smooth and light. Add eggs individually and beat well. Sift the flours, cocoa and baking powder into the butter mixture and mix, add tea to make a thick batter (the consistency of brownies, fairly thick). Spoon the mixture into a greased and lined 20cm tin. Bake for 20 minutes, until skewer comes out with cake clinging onto it, this means that it will be moist and delicious. Place on a wire rack, cool and ice.

Icing:
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup icing sugar
1 tablespoon sifted cocoa
2 tablespoons milk

Method:
With butter softened mix all the ingredients in a bowl, add icing sugar or milk if needed. Using a spoon and knife ice over the top and side of the cake. Leave to set and eat.

The lovely Jennifer at Delicieux is running a great comp to win a free stand mixer valued at $749, see her blog for details.

I am very excited to announce that in the next few days I will be running my 1st Birthday competition. Thanks to some amazing GF Food companies including Mammee, Basco, Bounce Bars, Florida's Natural Fruit Nuggets, Amaranth and Quinoa The Lost Cereal, and more I have a mammoth amount of food to give away. Unfortunately as it is food and due to custom laws it will only be available to my Australian readers, sorry to all my international readers. I wish that I was a reader of my blog so I could enter, it has taken temptation not to eat all the wonderful food that I have in my house for some very lucky readers!

Our Food Allergies Food Allergies Blog Hop!

Welcome to our very first Our Food Challenges Blog Hop. (This page won't officially open until 9am, so please don't try and post anything until then).With this month's focus being Food Allergies. Please follow the list of instructions to enter in our Blog Hop. This month's Blog Hop coincides with Australia's Allergies Awareness Week, so spread the word, share your allergy stories, pass on the link to this Blog Hop, create more awareness to allergies in Australia, this is also our mission. The Blog Hop will be happening monthly with a different focus each month, to cover all our various food challenges. Although this is not the first Blog Hop I'm participating in, it's the first that I'm running so please be patient with me, if I miss an instruction or a point here or there, just send me an email mmoagflife@gmail.com and I will endeavour to amend it asap. I cannot credit this Blog Hop without the wonderful support from Suzie from AusAllergy, who will be one of your host's in the upcoming months', the list of future host will be updated on Wednesday AEST. Please feel free to join us on AEST 8.30pm Tuesday nights to chat on Twitter, simply use the #ausallergy tag to join, we love new people and everyone is very friendly and caring.

Without further ado here is my story, dedicated to my oldest and dear friend;

I met my friend when we were just 8 years old, young children in primary school. I was drawn to her, her slight English accent and we just bonded as children do. It wasn't long into our friendship that I discovered that my friend had a severe anphylaxis reaction to peanuts.
So I was only young when I learnt just how dangerous food allergies could be, in the late 1980s, this was something that wasn't as common knowledge as it is today's society. I still recall going out to dinner and my friend eating a lolly (candy) which obviously contained some degree of peanuts or peanut oil in it. I sat there watching, as her face began to become blotchy and puffy, her lips swelled as did her eyes, and it was all from just one lolly.

Throughout primary and high school my friend was very cautious of what those around her ate and had to ensure to stay well away from anyone consuming peanut butter, at risk of cross contamination.

Thankfully in 2012, peanut allergies are taken very seriously and the organisation that my friend works for has taken on board a no peanut policy in the office, there is a no tolerance policy of staff bringing in peanuts, the government work place has taken this stance because if she digests peanuts it could be life threatening! There is an epi- pen not only in my friend's bag but at the office, this is so important because any accidental digestion of nuts could lead to a life threatening situation, and the epi- pen may very well save her life. She has pictures around her office stating that she cannot have peanuts. This visual approach has been supported by group memos that have been sent around to all staff informing them of my friends condition.

Please take all allergies seriously, particularly if you are a chef or in the industry. A slight cross contamination even on the smallest level can be result in death to a person and recent cases overseas at schools and in the public have. People death in anaphylaxis can literally occur in minutes!
For all those people who have anaphylaxis reactions please make sure you carry your epi-pen, and that it is in date, this could one day save your life. Also please contemplate wearing a medi- bracelet that informs people of your condition, in case of an extreme reaction; you may not have the opportunity to tell people what you are allergic too, this could again save your life.
I hope that you enjoy our first blog hop for Our Food Challenges; remember to participate all you need is a blog and a food allergy story to share.

Steps to participate (please be kind if I miss some I will fix them straight away!)

1. Copy and paste OFC  logo that appears before my story, our a link to my page, and paste it on your post so that your post will be able to link back to mine.
2. Grab the linky code,(in red at the bottom of the screen it will say get code here) and put your blog into edit HTML mode and put the code at the bottom of your post, once your click off HTML, you won't be able to see the code but it will allow all the other post from the Blog Hop to appear on your screen.
3. Enter your details into the Linky Tools Screen, your name is the name of your Blog, and your link is to copy and paste your blog.
4. The message will come to me for approval and I as soon as I click ok, you will be able to see your post come up with the other stories (I will endeavour to get to the computer as often as possible but please don't fret, your story will be published or if there is a problem I will be in contact with you).
5. The steps in Linky Tools are pretty much self explanatory, even for a beginner, when I did my first Blog Hop I managed to fill everything out without too much problem. But please remember I am an email away.

Let the Blog Hop begin. Happy Allergy Week, may everyone have an allergy/reaction free week!

This is a Blog Hop!

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The celebrity GF Diet Fad my thoughts

If you are like me and have watched the news today, you would be aware that reality TV star Kim Kardaishan has today claimed a dramatic weight loss to a GF diet!

No Kim is not suffering from Coeliac disease, or gluten intolerance, she has deemed like a small group of USA and UK celebrity's that going gluten free is the quickest way to weight loss.

Apart from my links to the diet and the postitive benefits of autism, I and most other GF Food bloggers that will not support the recent dietery claims by this branch of celebritys that a GF diet is the best way to loose weight.

Sure I lost a little bit of weight when I went on the diet, I thought mainly I lost the bloating that was happening from constantly eating gluten. Honestly I think that celebrity's putting light on such a serious diet and an autoimmunue disease make the general public take the disease and the diet less seriously.

There are lots of benefits in eating gluten, in the grain, in the fibre and other great dietary things that you benefit from while eating gluten. Not something that I would choose to remove from my diet.

Would I choose to sit hungry at parties as the finger food does not contain anything I can eat, whould I choose a diet, that makes me walk out of restaurants as there is nothing that I can eat.

I guess the benfeit these celebrities who choose a gf diet as a diet not due to a disease or intolerance, is they can honestly eat whatever they feel like eating, without suffering from a crippling reaction which can last up to days. At most they may feel a little bloated.

But as you can see this new diet fad has made me outraged, that such shallow people would put real diseases like coeliac disease and gluten intolerance as something that is not to be given any real stance, but a focus of a fad diet,not an autoimmune disease.



Grow up celebebrity dieters, think about the real people you are affecting, think that GF is related to an actually autoimmune diease