A photo is worth 1,000 words, but you can have it for much less.

Your Gluten-Free Twinkie Dreams Are Answered

453 words

 

So with the recent closure of Hostess (which is really quite sad for most of us, but my wife and I actually had a hostess platter of cakey goodness at our wedding, so a bit more sad for us really) we decided to keep the Twinkie alive through the power of Gluten-Free Prairie bakeryness!

 

So using the power of our recipe for Gluten-Free vanilla cupcakes, our Gluten-Free Prairie toasted oat flour, a novelty Twinkie kit, and a meringue filling recipe of your choice we will keep the Twinkie alive and well!

 

Make sure your dog supervises the greasing of the Twinkie pan. This step is crucial for success.

 

Use an ice cream scooper to fill the Twinkie pans just under half way, these babies will rise like things that rise!

 

While your cupcakes... er... Twinkies, yeah... while your Twinkies bake in the oven (more like 12 minutes as opposed to the 15 the cupcake recipe calls for) make your filling. We made a really easy meringue from an old school cook book I had laying around.

 

Like I said, these babies rise like things that rise, so cut off the "dome" to give them a really authentic Twinkie flat bottom.

 

Since you bought that novelty Twinkie Set you'll get one of these "Twinkie The Kid" filling filler thingys. My mom said "here you go Twinkie guy". Don't worry, I corrected her for all of us.

 

Insert "Twinkie The Kid" filling filler thing and fill until it just starts to come back out at ya. That way you know it's filled as much as it can be filled. And really, this what we all love, other wise it's just a delicious vanilla cupcake shaped like a torpedo and wanting for some creamy thing to with it. Am I right?

 

Repeat two more times until you get three, yes three little filling holes filled with delicious filling goodness!

 

Eat one or four to make sure they aren't poisoned or whatever excuse you need to eat one immediately. That's your treat!

 

Be amazed at the Twinkie-esqueness going on there. It's truly amazing! BE AMAZED!

 

Cut. Fill. Repeat. Testing for poison whenever you feel it is needed.

 

Not wanting to have the "domes" just go to no use at all, you should probably apply some filling to the top of these little guys and enjoy the heck out of them. Save the Twinkies for your friends or your lunchbox or your pocket or whatever.

 

So there you go. Even if you're gluten-free, you too can enjoy Twinkies for years to come whenever you damn well feel like it. The whole process took my me and my parents a whopping 40 minutes from the word "I really want a Twinkie".

The birds, the bees, and Gluten Free makes 3!

Wow, it's been a while since we last spoke old friend. Let's get right into it.

 

Today was a big day around the Wheaton circle of interest, or at least what I paid attention to.

 

The Bees

Let's start with the bees since they started off our day. We already have chickens, so I thought it was high time we got some bees too. Let's hope it was a good thought. I've got my suit and smoker can at the ready just in case of an unruly rise up (2012 is supposed to be the end of the world, maybe I'm part of the real cause?)

 

Don't Drink And Fly

My wife and I are taking great steps towards raising a successful colony, so the first thing we did was wash out our backyard pond which Roscoe tends to frequent. Nonetheless, it's clean and ready for the girls to use now. And use it they did. After about ZERO seconds the first 10 or 12 bees were waiting for us to fill the pond back up. I happen to have my camera with me since I was taking photos of other things, keep reading, it will become apparent. I'm telling the story from the end, like a Quentin Tarantino flick, so stay with me.

 

CPR For Bees

Being a newbee myself and this being one of my new bees I didn't want to see her drown in the clean pond so I thought I'd give her a hand (or a large stick as it were). I gently pushed her toward the edge. Out she came, shook off her wings and off she went back to the hive. It's so awesome to be writing that!

 

The Birds

We have these adorable little Cassin's Finches everywhere out here. It's our doing though, we provide roughly 1 gallon of black oil sunflower seeds to them every week or so. These two were happily building a nest on top of one of our outdoor speakers. We called her Dumb-Dumb since it's right next to a major thoroughfare on our patio. But oh well, you can't help stupid. Just make fun of it I guess. Right Colbert?

That pic above is actually the parents of this little baby finch. Which is funny, because today is my sister's birthday too and she's pregnant. Man, big ol' circle of life there. So anyway. This little one hatched TODAY! So Happy Birthday to my sister Amy and happy birthday to this little Cassin's Finch too! Ah hell, if its your birthday today too, then happy birthday dear reader.

 

And Gluten Free Makes Three!

My mom, dad and I launched our new family owned business; Gluten Free Prairie!!! My mom and my sister both have been diagnosed with celiac disease (her blog post about it goes into greater detail). I had quit an IT job I had for over 11 years because it was no longer what I wanted to do with my life. My parents were thinking about retiring. We decided to work together and see if we can't have some fun with a family business and make delicious gluten free oat based products at the same time!

 

Our First Product

In recognition of May being Celiac Disease Awareness Month we are taking 25% off your order if you use the promo code "aware". We hope you'll join us on this journey!

Thank you!

Enough said. That's my mom and dad at our oat harvest last year!

 

Our Oat Harvest!