My Birthday Tale

It’s been two days since my birthday and I’m just now getting around to writing about it. I know, I know, shame on me. But, in my defense, all of my writing energies have been put into applying for freelance writing jobs (which I probably won’t get) and dealing with Portuguese bureaucracy. Long story short, my residence permit was denied because they gave me the wrong answer to a question I specifically asked twice. Don’t worry though, everything can be sorted out with a change of name on my passport (phew).

So, to the birthday stuff. On Wednesday morning, I woke up, like any other day, except my hubby gave me a good morning kiss and sang Happy Birthday to me while I was still half asleep. To pass the morning, I did my usual chores around the house and attempted, with great success, to make no knead bread. “No knead bread?” you ask. Yes. No kneading. For reals.

Rather than me taking up a huge space of this post, get therecipe at The Italian Dish.

Dough all mixed up. This took about one minute.

Dough doubled in size after two hours.

Formed rolls. I slashed them right before baking to make them pretty :).

Fresh bread. The only thing better is fresh GF bread...

 Before you get scared by all of the instructions, it is a process that will take you about 15 minutes of actual work (not including rising time), and after that, you basically just pull off some dough whenever you feel like fresh bread.

The first rolls I made were a little underdone in the middle, so I had to cook them longer. I realized that I did not have quite enough flour in the mixture. But, today when I made more rolls, I simply kneaded in a little flour and, Voila! Perfect rolls. Miguel was raving.

The birthday fun came later in the day when Miguel and I made one of my favorite things in the world- homemade sushi!!!

I am a Japanese chef.

Miguel is a samurai making sushi.

Finished product

 We had so much fun making our dinner together and ate sitting on the floor with bandanas on our heads. The whole experience was such a good time, and we both thoroughly enjoyed it.

Later, we washed down our dinner with gluten-free brownies and ice-cream. Seriously, so good and hardly any flour in them (corn flour). We were both in love. With the brownies…

Gluten-Free Brownies (from David Lebovitz)

Ingredients:

• 6 tablespoons (85g) butter, salted
• 8 ounces (225g) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 3/4 cup (150g) sugar
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder 
• 3 tablespoons (30g) corn starch
• optional: 1 cup (135g) nuts, toasted and coarsely chopped

Method:

1. Line the inside of an 8-inch (23 cm) square pan with foil so that it goes up the sides to the rim. Lightly grease the foil with butter or non-stick cooking spray. Preheat the oven to 350º (180ºC).
2. Melt the butter and chocolate in a medium saucepan over very low heat on the stove top, stirring constantly until smooth.
3. Remove from heat and stir in the sugar, then the eggs, one at a time.
4. Sift together the cocoa powder and corn starch in a small bowl then stir them into the chocolate mixture. Beat the batter vigorously for at least one minute, until the batter is no longer grainy and nearly smooth. It will pull away from the sides of the pan a bit.
5. Add the nuts, if using, then scrape the batter into the prepared pan.
6. Bake for thirty minutes, or until the brownies feel just set in the center. Do not overbake. Remove from oven and let cool completely before removing from the pan and slicing.

And so is the tale of my birthday day. We made sushi, we ate sushi, we devoured brownies. It was fun. Super fun.