This post started with the idea of sharing a recipe redo, which we will, but it quickly turned into its own source of inpso when we gave it the title of The Creative Kitchen.
This is not an unlikely story – when one things leads to another – and continues to prove how everything is connected in the creative mind and process. Often we find we are connecting the dots from all over to bring you a cohesive post (replace the word “post” with brand, product, process all of which take from each other to create one another).
So buckle up, because if this post was an idea board there would be post-its all over it! You are about to go on a roller coaster through the creative kitchen fun house! You might be surprised as to where we will end up!
What do we talk about first?! The Creative Kitchen in terms of bringing products to market? Or the metaphor of what The Creative Kitchen is? This entire conversation might also start IN the actual kitchen as the kitchen is a central hub for most homes. While the bathroom may be “reserved” for personal creative insight, the kitchen is a place where EVERYTHING happens, the good, the bad and the ugly!
No matter what, as a entrepreneur you will see and participate in the Good the Bad and the Ugly. It’s a tricky balancing act that usually involves getting your hands dirty; including taking out the trash – the Bad.
The GOOD, the BAD, and the UGLY
Let’s get the Ugly out of the way first.
Things get Ugly, not unlike “the Bad”, in the kitchen. The kitchen is “known as the heart of the home but also the space in which tempers have a tendency to flare” according to this one study. Not only that, but the COLOR of the kitchen may inspire pots to boil over! The color of the walls in your living space have an effect on our psychology! Choosing color schemes when defining and building your brand is an integral component to the creative process.
The trash. Most always rotten. If you have to ask yourself if it is Bad, it probably is. What would happen if you “keep eating” and trying to digest Bad “food”? Are you catching onto the metaphor? Is it time to take out the trash? Is it time to remove the people or processes of products that are no longer working or adding value to your kitchen? You may have to remove yourself from the flames to gain some insight. With perspective comes growth and awareness of potential/s!
Now onto the Good.
The Good is the WHY to what keeps us going. Why do we keep doing what we love when we experience the Bad and the Ugly? Where and how can we use the Good, and see the Good we have created when we are in the muck of the bad and the ugly? (Reference perspective about, the Bad, above). Think of all the GOODies and fill yourself up with this perspective in the midst of the Bad and the ugly; also know as staying present and aware of what is going right. If we focus on the Bad and the Ugly nothing and no one will ever measure up. The Goodies may literally be sweet and baked confections or savory feasts or satisfaction received from a happy customer or meeting a financial goal. Simple “Goods” that come out of the kitchen look like connected conversations and meals shared whether you are standing over a counter or over stirring a pot of soup having a little dance with yourself.
The juices are always flowing in the creative kitchen. From flour wafting in the air to having a stimulating brainstorming conversation to bring a product to market, the creative kitchen is always cooking!
Your oil is always burning no matter how bright; the kitchen has seen it all, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. See each, know each, and use each to your advantage.
Have your cake and eat it too
Follow me, if you will, into a traditional creative kitchen. Below I share a modified Chocolate Pound Cake recipe to meet personal preferences for a gluten free and refined sugar free result
Had a hankering for some chocolate cake.
Of course my phone read my mind (I always feel like somebody’s watching me) and up popped some drippy, oooey, gooey frosted chocolate pound cake. We put a creative spin on the finished product because our preference is gluten free and refined sugar free. Piecing together some intel from flour substitute charts and a good dash of winging it, resulted in Goodie!
Hint: pound cake tastes better the next day.
Part of the flour substitution was a gluten free biscuit and baking mix. This may have given the cake a drier consistency. However, all in all I have to say that the cake filled the bill. gain pound cake tastes better the next day!
I did not make the glaze in this recipe as I had some homemade dark chocolate icing from another creative project in the kitchen. My recommendation is to glaze as you go; keep the cake and glaze separate until you are ready to eat it. You can freeze the cake and than defrost it and than “frost” it (put icing on it) as you wish!
Want to achieve the same gluten free and sugar free results?
Then click on the link above for the original chocolate pound cake recipe and then follow our recipe alterations. We have included explanations on how and why we made those choices!
(If you like this article so far and try our recipe suggestions you can support us by clicking on the paid links for products below. Thank in advance 🙂 ).
RECIPE ALTERATIONS
1 CUP FLOUR: was substituted with 1/2 C Bob’s Red Mill GLUTEN FREE Biscuit and BAKING MIX, 1/4 C Bob’s Red Mill COCONUT Flour, 1/4 C ALMOND flour. I’m sure some other gluten free baking 1:1 substitutes would work but we were working with what we had on hand. The addition of the nut and seed flours also add some fiber and protein and healthy fat as most gluten free mixes are heavy on the rice flour, aka carbs!
1/4 teaspoon salt vs 1/2 teaspoon. Diligently NOT SKIPPING the SIFTING process, I was able to see and measure the amount of SALT that was premixed into this baking mix. This resulted in decreasing the amount of salt used on the recipe to 1/4 teaspoon.
3/4 C Navitas Cacao powder: was used in place of the Dutch processed cocoa powder
FLAX EGGS
Flaxseed meal was used to create “flax eggs”
What the heck is a flax egg? Why do you need flax eggs?
The recipe already calls for 4 eggs. When substituting with nut and seed flours, and depending on the ones you use, it is recommend to double or triple the eggs! triple would have been 8 eggs?!? We thought 8 eggs was a bit much, even for a pound cake! They don’t call it a pound cake for nothing: a pound cake is called pound cake because it is said that there is a pound of each of these four ingredients butter, flour, eggs and sugar in each loaf!
While 8 eggs would have gotten us close to a pound this is eggsactly why we opted for some alternations.
We ended up with a 75/25 mix of eggs and flax eggs, that is using 6 eggs and 2 “flax eggs”. A flax egg is made by mixing 1 tablespoon of milled flaxseed and 3 tablespoons water (the suggestion is right on the bag!). It is a similar process using chia seeds for “chia eggs”. How can you replace eggs with flax and chia? These fascinating seeds offer a sticky mucilaginous quality, with a consistency and texture resembling the albumin of an egg after being mixed with water for a few minutes.
NO REFINED SUGAR
1 C sugar was substituted with 1/2C Monk Fruit & 1/2 C Coconut Sugar
BUTTERMILK FROM CREAM CHEESE
1/3 C buttermilk was substituted with a “watered down” cream cheese. This substitution is NOT tricky, but interesting with a little back story. I eyed up the hunk of cream cheese I took from the block. For all you fellow recipe-o-files I’d say it was about 1oz as the best closest measurement – you see I had already eaten some off the edge when I tasted and nearly spit out the cream cheese! More on that below!
Seriously, who has buttermilk in there fridge, ever? Unless it’s the holidays and you are making several items what call for it buttermilk is not somethings I use or drink on a daily basis. So the trick is turn what you have INTO buttermilk, this is the creative kitchen after all!
WHY CREAM CHEESE? Ok, honestly, we love Trader Joes and not sure what possessed me to pick up the LOW FAT CREAM CHEESE. I love cream cheese so much and eat it straight with crackers. It’s the best melting cheese for egg omelets, so not sure why I decided, yes decided to go with the LOW FAT.
I DO know better.
LOW FAT products are fluffed up with filers and flavors to help them taste like the full fat item. Well, that low fat cream cheese from Trader Joes was inedible. It was sweet and sour all at the same time. Wasting food is one of the hardest things for me to do. I knew if I returned the cream cheese it would just go in the garbage. In respect for the 1,000 thank you’s I’d have to give to all the people, animals and earth’s resources that brought that cream cheese to me, I decided to keep it. I thought I will just blend it into something baked and will hope to not be able to taste the difference! In forward-perspective, that weird sweet but sour flavor would be reminiscent of that acid flavor profile the buttermilk would have provided. Win-win I thought!
As it turned out the hankering for chocolate cake and the discovery of a new recipe was just the opportunity to use that cream cheese! A hunk of cream cheese and almond milk blended in the Ninja single serve cup delivered the consistency of buttermilk for the 1/3 C measurement. Added to the 1/3 C was 1 tablespoon of distilled white vinegar to create the “buttermilk”.
Buttermilk is usually made 1T distilled white vinegar to 1 C of milk. I went with the full tablespoon of vinegar in the 1/3 C. In my creative kitchen annuls I recalled another gluten free recipe, which was also made with MANY eggs and vinegar to make a bread rise. I’m in the creative kitchen, and this is all an experiment after all so 1 tablespoon to 1/3 C it was.
Recipe for success?
So this sounds like a whole lot of extra work. It wasn’t really.
The extra WORK is the years if EXPERIENCE and ACQUIRED RESEARCH. Blend that with a little bit of talent and spirit thrown in, and we are on the road for a recipe for success.
End result? Passion, persistence, desire, knowledge, all come from a creative kitchen. A kitchen that has seen the Good, the Bad and the Ugly so it knows how to handle the individual ingredients for the greatest result. Pivot to blend and mix people, products and processes, to get an edible, well rounded result that you keep on refining.
How does this statement ring true in the creative kitchen?
Do you keep count of the flops? burnt dishes? or the broken dishes or how many things were trashed? But here you are, still at it. That’s grit.
If at first you don’t succeed, try try again.
~ Edward Hickson.
You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try. ~Beverly Sills