Three Chile Garlic Jam (Toast Topper #27)

What qualifies as a jam?  Does it have to be sweet? Fruity? Jelled at all? Or can any thick spread earn that label? 

Dictionary.com states that a "jam" is "a preserve of whole fruit, slightly crushed, boiled with sugar".  If that's the case, I stand corrected in my terminology. But I prefer my last definition above, allowing cooked-down, thick spreads the label. That definitely includes this one - a smooth, thick puree of ancho, guajillo and roasted hot cherry peppers laced with a whole lot of garlic and cooked until spoon-mounding thick. 

As many people reading this blog know, I love my garlic and my chiles whether they're raw, sauteed or roasted. In this case, the massive amount of garlic and fresh peppers are roasted until super soft and almost sweet, so when they combine with the hotter dried peppers, honey and vinegar the overall sensation is intense flavour first followed by a gentle (but noticeable) kick. A dash of olive oil smooths things out a bit, making it the perfect consistency for smearing on burger or hot dog buns, mixing into eggs or pasta salad (hot or cold), and even thinning out a bit for use as mashed potato gravy. Whatever you call it, it's just plain old good.

Have you ever made or eaten a savoury jam? How did you use it?

Shared with Gluten Free Fridays

Double Chocolate Zucchini Cookies

I remember the days when your status in school was solidified or broken by what you pulled out of your lunchbox at noon. Dunkaroos and homemade crisp rice treats would give you an automatic 1Up in your particular clique, Arrowroots, bananas or - gasp - nothing for dessert found you at the bottom of the totem pole. My sister and I were relatively lucky in this respect, our (storebought) chocolate chip cookies earning us "middle of the road" status. But nothing was more coveted than brownies. Particularly, the two-bite morsels of fudgy goodness that were carefully doled out by parents in ones and twos, ensuring the bag would last the week.

It wasn't until highschool (when I had my own money) that Two Bite Brownies graced my plate (or palate... I doubt they ever made it to a plate) with any regularity. But the allure of the thick cookie-brownie amalgams was, and still is, strong. Since then, I've made my fair share of brownies (from cakey to fudgy) but still prefer the range of texture "brownie cookies" bring. The ones I'm sharing today are decadently fudgy and rich, with a hint of crispness on the bottom and on the craggy tops. They'd be a hit in anyone's lunchbox... kids' or parents'. But the best part? They're healthy too.

Now, now, don't look away. Come on... these chocolate-packed things are all sorts of delicious! You can make them and mow down the whole batch guilt ridden if you prefer, but for the rest of you I'll go into a bit more detail: first, they're a good deal lower in sugar than standard cookies thanks to the Truvia I used. They're mostly whole grain, made with my favourite cookie flour - oat - and are lower fat thanks to unsweetened applesauce. They've also got a hefty dose of antioxidant-rich cocoa powder, but the real secret to their moisture and tender chew is the addition of two finely shredded zucchinis. Hey, they work in muffins and bread, why not cookies too? Thanks to Chow Vida, I can't think of a chocolatier, more portable vehicle for a veggie!

Shared with Foodie Friday

Carob Snack Cake

I love chocolate...the darker the better. Lucky for me, most of the people I bake for do too - meaning I get to use a lot of cocoa in the kitchen. I use cocoa more often than chocolate blocks when it comes to baking, preferring it's smoothness and almost tenderizing quality in batters, but when frosting, ganache or a candy coating is the order of the day, I am all about the good quality bittersweet (regardless of what the food bigwigs recommend... for our household it's 65% minimum). Chocolate chips, of course, find their own homes in cookies, brownies and pancakes, where they can hold their shape nicely. I actually hate working with melted chocolate as a rule (especially for coating candies... it's too messy!), but I can appreciate the richness and depth it adds to a brownie, cookie or cake.

What would you do with whole carob beans?

But this post is not about chocolate. Rather, it's about the most natural "chocolate alternative" I know of - carob. As a "real chocolate" fiend, I rarely venture into the realm of anything "mockolate", and depending on who you talk to (and what you buy) carob can easily be seen as a cheap, poor-quality knockoff of the "real" thing. But carob is a whole other animal entirely - never attempting to be anything but itself in it's natural state - and it's likeness to cocoa in any respect is really nothing more than a passing fancy in my opinion.

I've written about this issue before, and I thought I had treated carob with due reverence then. But I had never used (or seen) the bean as the major ingredient in anything until reading The Vegan Baker by Dunja Gulin. The book had a photo of what I thought were rich, intensely dark chocolate brownies cloaked in a shiny glaze, but when I flipped to the recipe page I was shocked to see that the bars were actually caffeine free, vegan and whole grain - thanks to the heavy use of carob in chip and powder form. I was intrigued, mostly because these bars didn't appear to be masquerading as brownies or chocolate cake. No, they were all about the fruity, exotic aroma and flavour of this pea-like legume, and in the end the cake was more like a lightly spiced snack cake than a fudgy brownie.

And the frosting... oh, the frosting! Definitely my favourite part of the whole thing, the cooked, pour-on mixture was so decadent I would have just eaten it with a spoon, no base required! However, paired with the moist and fragrant cake, the combination simply sang and neither I nor anyone who tried a piece could believe the whole thing was vegan or whole grain. Being so rich tasting, a small piece more than slakes a sweets craving, but the fibre and protein help keep that blood sugar from spiking and crashing before you finish the last crumb!

Chocolate & Jam Tea Cake

There isn't much in this world that doesn't pair well with chocolate. I'm a fan of both sweet (Brownies! Cookies! Cakes!) and savoury (Mole! Chili!) applications, and whether they realize it or not, most other people are too. I'm still occasionally bemused when I watch people finding out for the first time that their favourite rich Mexican enchiladas have a sauce laced with melted bittersweet chocolate, or that grandma and mom had always stirred a scoop of cocoa powder into their beef stew or meat sauce. 

Less surprising is the seemingly universal appeal that fruit and chocolate have for each other. Like wine and cheese, the quality and richness of the two flavours, particularly when in a cooked or baked dish, are the basis of how good the final outcome will be. When I found a recipe for a chocolate and jam cake on Simple Bites, I knew that after veganizing and sugar-reducing the batter I would have to re-add some of the decadence with a few pantry staples. Luckily, I had a head start with a bounty of homemade jam sitting on my shelves, which with a touch of mesquite flour and maca powder transformed the loaf into a sweet, spicy and almost exotic masterpiece. I added little pops of bittersweet chocolate chips that semi-melted into the cake too, and finally tossed in a handful of cacao nibs for crunch and a more intensive cocoa flavour. 

By using the less sugary-sweet Vanilla - Peach Jam with Chiles and Spicy Dried Fruit Jam, plus the "spoonable" form of Truvia, the cake wasn't so saccharine that the special ingredients lost their way. Rather, each whiff of the crumb while cutting it, and each little nibble while eating it, had something slightly different from the last - a chameleon if I ever saw one!

Toast Topper #26 Spicy Dried Fruit Jam (#RecipeRedux)

I never thought I'd take to canning the way I have. Preserve making was always something that I imagined Old World-style grandmothers doing, bound up in aprons with pots boiling and bushels of produce spread over every countertop - definitely not an activity that the average 20-something would devote an afternoon to.

But then again, I'm not the average 20-something. I guess you can say I fell into preserving out of my stubborn frugality - our garden every year is so plentiful that I hate to see any of the gorgeous vegetables go to waste! I had a bit of a learning curve at first, though. While my paternal grandmother used to make pickles, freezer jam and jellies when I was really young, she's since hung up the ladle (so to speak). My dad, while a great pancake maker and grill man (who occasionally branches into home smoking and turkey frying), is not what you'd call the homemade pantry type though. My mom is finally starting to emerge from years as a short-order cook for two (rather opposite) childhood palates, but with a relatively new (and ahem, picky) Italian family on the meal ticket plus three grown children and 8(!) pets at home (yeah, I'm one of the squatters) and a full time job, she doesn't have the time or energy to break out the antique drum-like canner and spend most of the day processing fruit and vegetables.

So I've become the next canner in the family. I was given a large canning pot by my grandma back in 2008, and with a little research I took the plunge into tomatoes and pickles - and I've never looked back. Now my repertoire grows bit by bit every year, depending on the crops we have growing and what I find at the farmers market, and I've been able to put up various tomato sauces, tomato paste, pickles, jellies and jams, mincemeats and more chutneys than I ever thought existed. With the availability of products like Pomona's Pectin, which sets jam and jelly with next to no sugar required (most pectins need a good deal of sucrose to activate), I've also been able to make preserves for those in my family looking to avoid sugar for whatever reason using stevia-based replacements like PureVia, Pyure and most recently Truvia.

It was this combination of Pomona's, Truvia and naturally rich dried fruit that created this sweet and spicy fig jam. It's a chunky-style topping that goes well with sharp cheese and a glass of wine, spooned over ice cream or simply spread on a slice of pumpernickel bread. I was able to cut the added sugar by over 50% from the original recipe, partially by replacing it with Truvia (a blend of stevia and erythritol that's 3 times as sweet as regular table sugar) and partially by simply eliminating it. There's also a decent dose of calcium, magnesium, iron and manganese (an important detoxifying agent), but most importantly there is a wallop of exotic and exciting flavour in each bite. 

This month's #RecipeRedux is all about Raising the Bar on Food in a Jar. Whether you're packing your lunchtime marinated salad, stashing your homemade granolas and trail mixes or (like me) canning up a storm, the Mason and Ball jars once recycled or shoved to the back of the cupboard are finally getting their well-deserved resurgence to the forefront. Check out the rest of the group's offerings below, and if you have a different innovative use for the container let me know in the comments!