Refined Sugar-Free Apple Fritters

I have a pretty fantastic Apple Fritter recipe, but I've been trying to limit my refined sugar intake...and these would just be an overload, and my digestive system would not enjoy that.  So, I made some the other night minus the white sugar and they were pretty good.  I glazed them with a homemade powdered coconut sugar glaze, but really they didn't even need it, they were sweet enough without.

This post is featured on Slightly Indulgent Tuesday, Allergy Free Wednesdays and Whole Food Fridays.

Refined Sugar-Free Apple Fritters
Fritter:
1 cup gluten free flour blend
2 tablespoons coconut sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup So Delicious Coconut milk
1 egg
1 tablespoon honey
1 cup chopped apple
canola oil or unrefined coconut oil for frying

Glaze:
1 cups powdered coconut sugar*
2 T So Delicious Coconut milk


Directions:  

Combine flour, coconut sugar, salt, baking powder, cinnamon.  Stir in milk, egg and honey until smooth.  Fold in apple. 

Heat oil on medium high.  If you are using coconut oil, make sure it doesn't get above 350F (that's the smoke point of the oil). Oil is ready when dough floats to top.  Carefully add dough to oil in heaping teaspoons.  Cook until brown, about 1-2 minutes, then flip.  Cook another 1-2 minutes, until both sides are browned.  Transfer briefly to paper towels to absorb excess oil, then transfer to cooling rack. 

Make glaze by stirring milk and powdered sugar together in a small bowl.  Dip warm donuts into glaze, and let set on a cooling rack (make sure paper towels are under the rack to catch the excess glaze).  Once set, dip the other side into the glaze and let set again.  Best served warm.

*To make homemade powdered sugar: blend together 1 cup coconut sugar and 1 tablespoon tapioca starch on high in a high powered blender (like a blendtec) for ~30 seconds.  This will make lots of dust, so let it settle for a few minutes before opening it up.

Apple Fritters

I know I was feeling better today when I woke up and thought, "I want apple fritters!"...and then proceeded to make them!  I adapted this recipe, and also put down directions for baking, if you want to do that instead.  Also, you can leave the apples out and it turns out just fine, the only reason I know this is because of my older son.  He took a bite of a fritter and said "Wow, Mom these are good except for these little yellow-green things...can you make these without those?"  I should have said no, eat your apples!  But, I was wanting to experiment with baking the batter....so, I made another batch.  And yes, these are so good you will make yourself sick on eating them, so hopefully you have more self control than I do. :)

Apple Fritters

Fritter:
1 cup gluten free flour blend
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup So Delicious Coconut milk
1 egg
1 cup chopped apple
canola oil

Glaze:
2 cups powdered sugar
3-4 T So Delicious Coconut milk


Directions:  

Combine flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, cinnamon.  Stir in milk and egg until just combined.  Fold in apple.  Heat oil on medium high.  Oil is ready when dough floats to top.  Carefully add dough to oil in heaping teaspoons.  Cook until brown, about 1-2 minutes, then flip.  Cook another 1-2 minutes, until both sides are browned.  Transfer briefly to paper towels to absorb excess oil, then transfer to cooling rack.  Make glaze by stirring milk and powdered sugar together in a small bowl.  Dip warm donuts into glaze, and let set on a cooling rack (make sure paper towels are under the rack to catch the excess glaze).  Once set, dip the other side into the glaze and let set again.  Best served warm, but they were still good tonight when I ate some for dessert. :)

Baking directions:

Preheat oven to 350F.  Grease donut pans and set aside.  Make batter same as above (of course you can omit apples if you want more of a regular cake donut). Fill each donut half full.  Cook for ~15 minutes.  Cool on cooling rack until able to handle, then dip tops in glaze and let set.

Udi's, Kinnikinnick, and Enjoy Life...Oh my!

Okay, I just realized how far behind I'm getting on product reviews...so here is my attempt to catch up, just a little.

First up is Udi's Double Chocolate Muffins.  My mother-in-law was nice enough to buy these for us, and they were awesome.  We kept them in the freezer, then popped them in the microwave when we wanted them, it was like eating warm chocolate cake.  Yes, they were a bit heavier than cake would be, but muffins are supposed to be.  They were the indulgence in chocolate that I needed...so, yes, they were dairy-free and soy-free, too!

Overall Rating 10 out of 10 I love Udi's, they make great products, that taste like they were meant to taste.



Next up is, of course, more donuts...I love Kinnikinnick donuts, we've tried the chocolate glazed and the vanilla glazed, so we just had to try the Kinnikinnick Cinnamon Sugar Donuts!  It actually all started on Monday, I went to take my boys out to dinner to the only place in town where we can all eat a decent meal, and I forgot that they are closed on Mondays. Well, our wonderful health food store, Shangri La, is right next door, so I treated them to donuts instead. :)  It took us all of maybe a day to devour the entire box...and that was with me trying to restrict how quickly we ate them.  I think these ones are the best we've tried so far, and we loved the other ones, so you know how good these ones are!

Overall Rating 10 out of 10 Thank you kinnikinnick for making amazing donuts and wonderful cookies, too!

And finally, we are to Enjoy Life Foods boom CHOCO boom Rice Milk Chocolate Bar.  I saw this at Walmart of all places (our Walmarts here in town really don't have the best gluten/dairy/soy-free selection), but it was back when I was still missing chocolate, especially milk chocolate, obviously.  So, I thought I'd splurge (and it's a splurge when you're paying over a $1.50 for a regular sized candy bar) and try it.  It definitely wasn't a Hershey bar.  It reminded me of those Palmer chocolates that you get around the holidays...you know those cheap ones that are waxy and don't have the right texture?  Well, that's what this was, but in spite of that, I still devoured the whole candy bar, so it wasn't that bad.  I won't buy them very often, maybe I'll get some for my little one to put in his stocking for Christmas, but that'll be about it.  I can take care of my chocolate cravings in other ways, like Silk Dark Chocolate Almond Milk or Kinnikinnick chocolate glazed donuts, or Udi's Double Chocolate Muffins, or...well you get the picture, I can still eat good chocolate while being dairy-free.

Overall Rating 6 out of 10  for the price I don't want to feel like I'm eating cheap chocolate, but it still works as a candy bar, and for little ones that don't get candy bars, it's a nice treat.

Good and Bad Kinnikinnick -- Reviews

So, I have been praising Kinnikinnick, everything we have tried, we've liked and even loved, until now.  Lee's didn't have any Udi's white sandwich bread in stock, so I thought we could try the Kinnikinnick white sandwich bread...bad idea.  It really wasn't that bad, but after having my homemade bread and the Udi's bread, it just wasn't going to cut it for us, especially with my older one being so incredibly picky with the gluten-free breads.  The texture is more like a sponge cake, so it's a really weird sensation to eat a sandwich with it...it just doesn't feel right on the tongue. My boys couldn't get past the texture of it to enjoy the sandwiches, so with more than half a loaf in the freezer, this ones not worth the price we paid.

Overall Rating 4 out of 10  The taste isn't bad if you can get past the texture, it just doesn't have a yeast bread texture.

Well, I didn't want to end the post with a bad vibe for Kinnikinnick, because everything we've tried we've liked...and to prove it, here is yet another product that was sooo good:  Kinnikinnick Chocolate Dipped Donuts.  Just like the vanilla glazed donuts we tried the other day, these tasted just like regular cake donuts.  Also, they are dairy-free, so I can actually enjoy the chocolate! YAY!  These donuts actually remind me of those chocolate glazed Hostess donettes...except the chocolate is much better and the donuts are bigger, so hey they are better!  They weren't cheap, it was $6.79 for a box of 6, but it was well worth the indulgence.

Overall Rating 10 out of 10  They were very scrumptious and more than made up for the white bread that we bought. :)

Kinnikinnick Cookies and Donuts -- Review

Oh, how I love Kinnikinnick, all of the snacks we have tried have been amazingly good, like addictive good.  I have already reviewed the K-toos Vanilla Sandwich Cookies, the S'moreables and the K-Kritters and all of those were fantastics, so of course we had to try more.  So first off to review is the Kinnikinnick K-toos Chocolate and Vanilla Sandwich Cookies (their version of the Oreo).  I couldn't ask for a better gluten-free dairy-free Oreo...I love it and so do my boys.  We have eaten way too many of them...we actually have downed to boxes before I had a chance to write the review.  The have a wonderful chocolate flavor, it definitely has curbed those chocolate cravings for me.  Now, if only they would make them in 'double stuf', then my life would be totally complete...at least for that moment.

Overall Rating: 10 out of 10  Kinnikinnick really does an amazing job with their cookies, they are simply scrumptious!

Now on to Donuts...I bought the Vanilla Glazed Donuts as a treat for my boys to help them with this first week of diet adjustments (my older one is going off gluten, my younger one who is already of gluten is now going off casein).  All I can say is holy cow, I'm in love!!  These taste just like regular cake donuts and with the amount of glaze on top every kid in the world will love these.  I am a big fan of cake donuts and these definitely satisfied my donut craving that I've been having since my big brother was going off about them, like a month ago (thanks, Dan :P).  They got the texture right and everything, they were delicious.  Just a warning, like most other gluten-free baked goods, these need to be kept in the freezer, then thawed right before use.  We stuck them in the microwave for a few seconds (15-20 seconds a piece, to be exact) and they came out perfect.  The nice thing with them in the freezer, I can't see them tempting me, and I have to thaw them before I indulge...it's much easier to limit myself that way. :)

Overall Rating: 10 out of 10  I am in love with these donuts and will definitely be buying them again.