It’s easy to spot new trends at the Fancy Food Show. The sales pitches are so obvious that it’s almost comical.
This year at the Javits Center it was “Hey, get your gluten-free stuff here!”
There were signs and setups everywhere I looked for everything “gluten-free” — from grains to cereals to, of course, all sorts of cakes, pastries, candies, cookies and even meat products and, not to be forgotten, every kind of chip in the food world: fava bean, quinoa, falafel and so on.
Btw, it’s also easy to notice the lack of once-fashionable-now-has-beens (at least as far as marketing is concerned). This year I only saw one itty-bitty new product with kale!
Only time will tell whether the ingredients and products of the moment will show themselves to be mere fads or enduring and valuable additions to the culinary coffers of our age. I think people will continue to eat kale because it has proven its worth. But we probably won’t see dozens more kale products in the future because our manufacturers have shifted their focus onto current trends. Like gluten-free.
I believe we will see more and more gluten-free products, a boon for people who actually require gluten-free food. Life can be difficult when you have a health problem, so making it easier to mitigate that problem is a good thing.
I tried out almond flour, which is gluten-free and very tasty, in a couple of recipes and these muffins, which include oat bran too, were among the winning recipes. They’re easy to bake and don’t require xanthan or guar gum to keep them from crumbling apart.
Gluten-Free Oat and Yogurt Muffins
1/4 cup coconut oil
3 tablespoons honey
1 cup almond flour
1 cup oat bran
2 teaspoons grated fresh orange peel
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup plain yogurt
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup raisins
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease 10 muffin tin cups. Heat the coconut oil and honey together in a small saucepan for about one minute or until the coconut oil has melted. Remove the pan from the heat and set it aside. In a bowl, combine the almond flour, oat bran, orange peel, baking powder, baking soda and salt, mix well and set aside. Place the yogurt, egg and vanilla extract in another bowl. Add the coconut oil mixture to the yogurt mixture and blend the ingredients thoroughly. Spoon this mixture into the bowl with the dry ingredients and gently combine the ingredients into a batter. Fold in the raisins. Spoon equal amounts of the batter into the muffin tins. Bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown and a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.
Makes 10