A Calculated Whisk

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You are here: Home / Archives for maple

Chocolate Almond Butter Thumbprints with Maple Caramel (Gluten free, Grain free)

December 6, 2018 By Becky Leave a Comment

This post is sponsored by ALDI USA.

Chocolate Almond Butter Thumbprints with Maple Caramel (Gluten free, Grain free)

Who’s ready to make some cookies to share with Santa (or keep for yourself)? These chocolate almond butter thumbprints are easy to make and filled with a salty-sweet maple caramel. They’re perfect for sharing with loved ones who are following a grain-free or paleo diet!

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Filed Under: dessert, gluten free, recipe Tagged With: almond butter, caramel, chocolate, Christmas, cookies, grain free, maple, pecans, sponsored, winter

Smoky Maple Margarita

December 26, 2016 By Becky Leave a Comment

Smoky Maple Margaritas

If you’re looking for a uniquely delicious drink to ring in the new year, this smoky maple margarita is just the ticket!

If you celebrate, I hope you had a wonderful and Christmas and a fabulous first night of Hanukkah! My mom flew down to Chattanooga and arrived on Christmas Eve, and we have been having the best time hanging out with my in-laws and nieces. The girls are beyond excited because they got a trampoline yesterday. In between eating all the holiday treats, it was really nice to bounce a bit.

Smoky Maple Margarita

Today I’m just popping in quickly to let you know that I’m sharing a recipe for a smoky maple margarita over on SoFabFood. It’s pretty much a classic margarita with two important upgrades: it’s sweetened with maple syrup and laced with smoked paprika. It’s not enough to make the drink spicy, but just enough to give it an enticing smoky flavor and aroma that’s perfect for this time of year. Wishing you and yours a fabulous and delicious 2017!

Click here for the smoky maple margarita recipe!

Filed Under: drinks, gluten free, recipe Tagged With: cocktails, maple, margarita, tequila, winter

Maple Balsamic Chicken and Bacon Skewers

June 10, 2016 By Becky 26 Comments

Maple Balsamic Chicken and Bacon Skewers

 Chicken and bacon skewers are sure to become your next grilling obsession! These easy skewers feature chicken with a maple balsamic glaze, zucchini, summer squash, and peppers woven together with bacon.  This post is sponsored by Santa Rita.

Food on a stick is just more fun, right? Especially when there’s bacon involved. These skewers will be the star of your next cookout. Maple syrup, balsamic vinegar, and spices add flavor to the chicken, and the chicken and vegetables are super succulent because they’re nestled in between waves of bacon while they cook. The end result is a skewer with a perfect balance of sweet and salty, with plenty of protein and colorful pops of veggies.

Maple Balsamic Chicken and Bacon Skewers

Together with a glass of chilled white wine, these skewers just scream summer, and I recommend Santa Rita 120 Sauvignon Blanc. I absolutely love a good wine that doesn’t break the bank, and this one is perfect. All its citrusy notes make it super refreshing, the perfect counterpoint to a smoky skewer of grilled goodness. I also feel good about this wine because of Santa Rita’s commitment to sustainability–they’re working hard to measure and reduce their carbon footprint and implement technologies that reduce pollution and wasted water. Cheers to that!

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Filed Under: dinner, gluten free, paleo, recipe Tagged With: bacon, balsamic vinegar, chicken, grilling, maple, peppers, sponsored, summer, zucchini

Mocha Cream Paleo Truffles

May 10, 2016 By Becky 20 Comments

This post contains affiliate links.  As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. 

Mocha Cream Paleo Truffles (Vegan)

Mocha cream paleo truffles are an ideal no-bake dessert for the warmer months. And since they’re vegan, too, more of your friends can enjoy them!

I’ve been sick for the past few days and haven’t been able to stomach much other than these paleo truffles. I think it’s because I’ve been eating them frozen and they’re made with such wholesome ingredients–no dairy or anything like that to throw a wrench into things. My appetite has been really low and I haven’t even craved my morning coffee like I usually do, but a couple of these chilled truffles gives me a little bit of the caffeine boost I’d otherwise be missing out on.

These are also fabulous when you’re feeling great. In fact, the mocha cream filling is so good on its own that I didn’t even dip the first batch into chocolate. I dreamed up this filling a couple of weeks ago and it tasted even better than I’d hoped. Basically it’s cashews whirred to creamy perfection with some coffee (both brewed coffee and finely ground espresso powder), cocoa (I absolutely love this fair-trade, Dutch-processed cocoa and use it in all my recipes), maple syrup for sweetness, and a little bit of salt and vanilla because all desserts need those two flavor-boosters. Sometimes cashew-based desserts taste too much like cashews to me but these don’t at all–the flavor is pure mocha.

Mocha Cream Paleo Truffles (Vegan)

Maple syrup pairs especially well with mocha. The dark undertones of its sweetness blend in with the coffee and chocolate so you don’t detect the maple flavor; you just wonder what other mysterious taste is in there that deepens and complements the mocha taste so well (see also this no-churn mocha ice cream made with homemade maple-sweetened condensed milk).

Anyway, after I made the first batch of this filling and scooped it into balls, I stuck it into the freezer to firm up so I could dip the truffles into melted chocolate later. That was on a Sunday afternoon and things got so busy with preparing for the work week that I didn’t get to it, so I thought I’d do it some evening that week after work. I told Ben he could try one or two of the naked truffles to see how he liked the filling, but not to eat them all because I was going to coat them in chocolate later.

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Filed Under: dessert, gluten free, paleo, recipe, vegan Tagged With: candy, cashews, chocolate, coffee, grain free, maple, mocha, truffles

Strawberry-Peach Crisp with Hazelnut-Pepita Crumble

August 27, 2015 By Becky 12 Comments

This post contains affiliate links.  As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. 
 
Strawberry-Peach Crisp with Hazelnut-Pepita Crumble | acalculatedwhisk.com
This gluten-free strawberry-peach crisp is lightly sweetened with maple syrup 
and topped with a rich crumble made with hazelnut flour and pumpkin seeds.
 
Hello from Chattanooga, our new home! Ben and I packed everything up and drove from Boston to Tennessee across two days, arriving last night a little after midnight. I’m in love with my new city, which is Ben’s hometown, already. So far we’ve driven around a bit looking at houses, and had amazing burgers at Main Street Meats (see my bunless burger on Insta!). We’re also dogsitting for Ben’s sister, so I get to spend time with this guy.
 
I spent a while editing the photos of this fabulous strawberry-peach crisp with hazelnut-pepita crumble today. The photographs make me a little sad, because this was the last photo shoot I did in our apartment in Boston, where I’ve taken all the photos for the blog so far and all the photos for my cookbook, Paleo Planet. I hope our next apartment has light that I like just as much!
Strawberry-Peach Crisp with Hazelnut-Pepita Crumble | acalculatedwhisk.com
Anyway, enough wistful reminiscing about the natural light at my old apartment. We’re talking crisp today! I had some good-looking strawberries and peaches, but wanted to do more than just eat them. In part because I was trying to avoid packing, I decided to bake. (Yes, when I’m feeling stressed, I avoid whatever I’m worried about and bake instead. No, my fiancé has never complained!)
 
I put the freshly cut fruit right into the greased baking dish and added a little maple syrup, a tiny bit of tapioca flour to keep the juices under control, and a pinch of salt and the seeds of half a vanilla bean to bring out the natural sweetness of the fruit. I mixed it all together right in the dish to avoid having to wash an extra bowl. (I did have to wash the bowl I made the crumble in, but that’s it for this recipe: one bowl + the baking dish).

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Filed Under: dessert, gluten free, paleo, recipe, uncategorized Tagged With: baking, crisp, egg free, fruit, grain free, hazelnuts, maple, peach, pepitas, strawberry, summer, vanilla

No-Churn Mocha Ice Cream

August 16, 2015 By Becky 6 Comments

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. 
No-Churn Mocha Ice Cream (sweetened with maple syrup) | acalculatedwhisk.com
 

So, have you made Nigella Lawson’s no-churn coffee ice cream? It’s ridiculously easy and delicious, and when I discovered how simple it was to make really good ice cream with just a mixer, I was tempted to get rid of my ice cream machine!

To make the no-churn ice cream, you beat heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, and flavorings until it’s nice and thick, then freeze the ice cream. That’s all there is to it! The only thing is that I’m not a big fan of cooking with sweetened condensed milk–there’s so much refined sugar in it, and I try to avoid that whenever I can.

No-Churn Mocha Ice Cream (sweetened with maple syrup) | acalculatedwhisk.com

So I decided to try making my own sweetened condensed milk using maple syrup, with some guidance from this recipe from Gluten-Free on a Shoestring. The homemade sweetened condensed milk takes a while to make, but your house will smell amazing. You do have to watch it pretty closely but don’t have to stir it constantly, so it’s a good time to do some cleaning or other tasks around the kitchen. I got a lot of dishes done while I was making it! (Anything that gets me to do more dishes is good, and pretty rare.)

The results are so much more delicious than canned sweetened condensed milk! The maple flavor adds a caramel note to the ice cream that goes perfectly with the chocolate and coffee. In addition to working beautifully in this ice cream, the maple-sweetened condensed milk is amazing in hot or iced coffee.

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Filed Under: dessert, gluten free Tagged With: coffee, grain free, ice cream, maple, maple syrup, mocha, no-bake, summer, whipped cream

Maple Apple Spice Cake

October 20, 2014 By Becky 16 Comments

My boyfriend doesn’t like things made with apples, pumpkin, or squash, so fall is kind of a hard time for us.  I’m all like, “It’s time to apple-pumpkin-squashify all the things!” and he’s all like, “Oh, it looks like there’s some bread over there for toast.”  Literally, he had toast for lunch the other day.  I could not even get him to try a bite of this butternut squash soup with fried garlic and chili oil.

I’ve been a paleo food blogger for long enough that I feel like a little bit of a failure when my boyfriend has toast for lunch.

Things are going a little bit better on the apple front, though, because Ben really liked this cake.  Unless you’re the one to stir the grated apple into the batter, which would be a pretty major tipoff, you probably won’t know that there’s any apple in it.  It does help make the batter extra moist, though, kind of like the zucchini in zucchini bread, and also adds a little more sweetness.

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Filed Under: breakfast, dessert, gluten free, paleo, recipe, uncategorized Tagged With: ACW original, apple, baking, cake, fall, grain free, maple, pecans, primal, spice

Make Your Own Butter (plus Maple Spice Compound Butter)

October 12, 2013 By Becky Leave a Comment

When I was in kindergarten, my teacher brought in cream and we all made butter together.  I loved it, and butter-making became a Thanksgiving tradition for me–every year I make my own butter and use a cookie cutter to make it into a turkey shape.  I’ve also made butter with my own students and their families several times, and I’m always surprised at how many parents don’t know that you can easily make your own butter at home with just a jar and some heavy cream.
There is a bit of work involved, since you need to shake the jar like crazy for a while.  It’s easy with a group because you can pass the jar to the next person if you get tired, but I can still get from cream to butter in 15 minutes or less when I’m the only one shaking.
Of course, there is an easier method: pour the cream into a big bowl and beat it with an electric mixer.  However, there’s something really nice about doing it the old-fashioned way.

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Filed Under: gluten free, recipe, uncategorized, vegetarian Tagged With: butter, cream, DIY, fall, how-to, make your own, maple, pantry essentials, photo tutorial, spice

Maple Brown Butter Muffins (Paleo, Gluten-free)

October 6, 2013 By Becky 1 Comment

I’ve been having a lot of brownies for breakfast lately.  First salted caramel brownies, and then some pumpkin cheesecake brownies that I’m still working on.  I’m even willing to admit that one day, I had a salted caramel brownie sundae for breakfast.  I’m not sorry–it was a fabulous day!
But, after a while, I started wanting something a little more appropriate in the morning.  Something more like muffins.  Because, even though we all know that muffins are really just naked cupcakes, they are totally a legit breakfast food.
I like these muffins because they are simple, easy, and delicious.  There’s not even any streusel topping to worry about.  The most complicated part is browning the butter, which adds a great richness to the muffins.  However, you can use regular butter or coconut oil and still end up with scrumptious results.  The best part is that these muffins are gluten-free, paleo, nut-free, and lactose-free if you use ghee, so hopefully most of your friends and family can eat them!  Enjoy!

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Filed Under: breakfast, gluten free, paleo, recipe Tagged With: baking, brown butter, fall, maple, maple syrup, muffins, nut free, spice

Salted Maple Caramel Peach Bars (Gluten free, Paleo)

August 20, 2013 By Becky Leave a Comment

When I decided to try the paleo lifestyle, one of my main concerns was whether I would still be able to have salted caramel.  Salted caramel is an essential dessert flavor, one that I believe deserves a place right up there with chocolate and vanilla.  If there wasn’t a way to make paleo salted caramel, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle it.

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Filed Under: dessert, gluten free, paleo, recipe Tagged With: baking, bars, egg free, maple, peach, salted caramel

Hi, I’m Becky!

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