We are growing lots of herbs in our garden. And guess which herb is already spreading?
Yes, it is MINT. Mint really grows like weed but I don’t mind them cuz I love the smell of mint in our garden. Also Mint gives so much flavor to dressing, marinate, drinks, and dessert!

When I was looking at our weedy mints this morning, I wanted to use them to bake a cake today. I surfed through the recipe sites and landed to Giada de Laurentiis Lemon Mint Cake! It had great rating and looked pretty easy.

But of course, I have to modify the recipe cuz I am working really hard to cut Wheat based flour as much as possible. Also we are trying to cut sugar in our diet. Instead, we use more honey and agave nectar and we love it.

So, I read through the recipe and reviews (Reviews often give me good ideas of ingredients substitution), and modified the recipe to fit our diet!

Here is my version of Lemon Mint Cake GF/DF/SF!

Lemon Mint Cake – Gluten Free, Dairy Free, and Sugar Free

Ingredients

• Vegetable Oil for greasing
• Almond Flour for dusting
• Parchment Paper for line the pan

For Cake:
3 Eggs, separated, at room temperature
1/2 cup Agave nectar
1/4 cup Vegetable oil
1/4 cup chopped Mint
2 tablespoons Lemon juice (One Lemon / One Meyer Lemon)
1 tablespoon Lemon zest (One Lemon / One Meyer Lemon)
1 cup Almond Flour

For Syrup:
1/3 cup Agave nectar
1/4 cup Water
1/4 cup Lemon juice (One Lemon / One Meyer Lemon)
1 tablespoon Lemon zest (One Lemon / One Meyer Lemon)
1 tablespoon Orange Liquor

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 F. Oil and Almond flour 9-inch round cake pan.
I recommend putting the parchment paper on the bottom & side of round cake pan.

For the cake:
1. In a medium size bowl, with an electric mixer, beat the Egg Whites till stiff peaks.

2. In a separate large bowl, beat the Vegetable oil, Agave nectar and Egg Yolks. Add the chopped Mint, Lemon juice and Lemon zest. Add the Almond flour and mix until combined.

3. Slowly add 1/3 of the Egg White mixture into #2 mixture. With a rubber spatula, fold in another 1/3 of the Egg White mixture and repeat one more time.

4. Pour #3 mixture into the prepared cake pan and bake for 35 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Let the cake cool at least 10 minutes before moving to the platter.

For the syrup:

1. In a small saucepan, combine Agave nectar, Water, Lemon juice, and Lemon zest over medium heat about 5 minutes.

2. Remove the pan from the heat and add Orange Liquor. Let the syrup to cool, about 20 minutes.

When you serve the slice of cake, you drizzle this decadent syrup

This is light, fresh, and perfect Summer cake!

Enjoy!!!
Mrs. H

I remember growing up eating sweet or salty rice cracker, sweet or salty rice pancake, and sweet beans! Of course, I ate chocolate, cookies and cakes, but not as much as I eat now.

I think I can be innovative with western sweets recipe! West meets East or East meets West! I have been baking with Rice Flour a lot lately. And the final products came out pretty good so far. I like the texture of Rice Flour baked sweets. It is somehow very soft and fluffy inside and crunch outside! I love it!

My belief of Gluten Free baking is to avoid using Xanthan Gum. Some Gluten Free baking recipes require Xanthan Gum but I totally ignore it. I read recently that Xanthan Gum is usually made with corn and used as thickening agent. If I need thickening agent, I just add extra egg or something. I am a bit skeptical about product starts from “X”

Anyways, today I challenged myself baking SCONE. Gluten Free, Dairy Free, and Sugar Free Scone! I tweaked the amount of Agave Syrup and Milk. Just make sure your dough won’t get too soggy! This is very yummy ya’ll! Here we go!

Rice Flour Lemon Cranberry Scone – GF/DF/SF

Ingredients:

• White Rice Flour 150 g
• Brown Rice Flour 100 g
• Baking Powder 10 g
• Salt 1/4 teaspoon
• Agave Nectar 4 tablespoon
• Milk / Coconut Milk 140 – 150 ml (1/2 cup to 3/4 cup American Measuring Cup)
• Coconut Oil Solid 6 teaspoon
• Lemon Zest 1 Lemon
• Dried Cranberry 1/4 cup
• Coconut Sugar (option to sprinkle on top of scones)

Process:

1. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.

2. Mix together the White Rice Flour, Brown Rice Flour, Salt, Lemon Zest and Baking Powder.

3. To the Flour mixture bowl, put Agave Nectar and 6 teaspoon of Coconut Oil Solid and cut them in the Flour mixture till the mixture looks like peas.

4. Slowly pour a half of Milk / Coconut Milk to the Flour & Coconut Oil mixture. Use folk to mix all ingredients together. Do not over mix. Keep pouring the rest of Milk / Coconut Milk until the Flour & Coconut Oil mixture has enough moisture to form dough.

5. Put the dough on the work surface with some White Rice Flour, do not knead but pad it down to make about 18 cm scone disk. Cut the scone disk to 8 pieces.

6. Line 8 scones (mini scone) on the baking sheet.

8. Bake at 425F for 25 minutes.

Enjoy~!
Mrs. H