Not my best cake in the picture above (read the story here), but the frosting was to-die-for. You do the real food math:

Real butter + real cream + real mineral-rich, tasty unrefined sugar
= really super good real food frosting

It is even better than frosting made from white sugar and “white” butter. (My butter is yellow, yellow, yellow.)

I advise caution. You won’t be able to stop licking your fingers, the bowl, the cake and anything this frosting touches.

Unless you’re like my sister, who would turn down cake for mashed potatoes and gravy any day. Nah. You’re not, right?

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

• 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks) — softened, but not melted
• 3-1/2 cups powdered rapadura or sucanat*
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• ~4 tablespoons cream or whole milk

*Whiz in blender until fine, fine, fine. It being fine is very important so you don’t have crystals in your frosting.

Cream butter in mixer or food processor. Sift together the sugar and cocoa powder, then add to the butter. Blend to mix in. Add salt, vanilla and cream. Blend for a few minutes until smooth. Add cream or milk, 1 tablespoon at a time for a thinner and smoother consistency. Add more sweetener for a stiffer frosting.

Use immediately, or refrigerate for later. If refrigerated, bring to room temperature to spread more easily. Delicious atop the Sourdough Chocolate Cake.

I’m at my friend Shannon’s Nourishing Days blog today, sharing how I make a big batch of cultured butter. How is this different than my cultured butter in the food processor? For one, it is a bigger batch, like 7 to 8 times bigger — instead of yielding 1 pound of butter, I get between 7 and 8. I like this because I can make more butter less often which equals less work. I also employ another time saver — culturing the cream while it’s still in the milk, as you’ve seen in this video.

I’m grateful to Marci from Amazing Graze Farm Store, who told me about using a mixer to increase how much cream I could culture into butter. It is really easy and saves alot of time. Thanks, Marci!

Here’s an excerpt from Making a Big Batch of Cultured Butter:

“With lots of cream around, I’ve got no choice but to make lots of butter! But I do have a choice about how often I make it — and I prefer to make it less often, in big batches and with less work. That’s how I do most of my cooking. Call me lazy or call me industrious, but that’s my style.”

Visit Nourishing Days to read the whole post. While you’re there, do catch up with Shannon and her family, who just moved to land in the south and are completely starting from scratch on an off-grid homestead. I love reading her inspiring, thoughtful and honest reflections.

I’m sharing this post in Simple Lives Thursday.

Please welcome Nikki from Project: Family Cookbook. I’ve been working on a big project myself, thus the lack of posts here for the past few months — more on that later. So Nikki volunteered this beautiful recipe to fill the gap. (Anyone else interested in guest posting? Contact me.) I’m so thankful — and so excited to make some of her Roma Fresca myself. Thanks, Nikki! –Wardeh

Salsa Fresca is one of my favorite condiments. I bought beautiful local ingredients and could not wait to go home and make it lacto-fermented. I quickly realized that I forgot to purchase any sort of pepper, be it Anaheim, jalapeno or even Bell. But I went ahead with my plan, as I did not want to lose any of the freshness of my Farmer’s Market produce. It turned out beautifully and my family loved it. The result? Roma Fresca. I could not be more excited to share it with you.

You need just a few ingredients:

• 5 large roma tomatoes (skins peeled*, seeded and chopped)
• 1 medium sweet onion, diced (you can use any onion, though sweet onions are easier on the eyes and taste just as good as a yellow onion)
• 1/2 bunch of cilantro, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 4 tablespoons whey
• 1/2 to 1 tablespoon sea salt (first time making it do 1/2 tablespoon as it is easier to add then take away!)

*To peel tomatoes, submerge in boiling water for 5 seconds. This skin will peel off nicely.

Makes 1 quart. Add all ingredients to a large bowl. Lightly mash/pound to release juices. Stir well. Fill a wide-mouth quart jar. Leave out at room temperature overnight to allow fermentation to begin before placing in fridge.

Use Roma Fresca on top of steaks, fish, or chicken for a mouth watering combination. Also use it with chips as a mild salsa. This tastes fresh and wonderful and lasts for 1 to 2 months in cold storage.

I’m sharing this post in Pennywise Platter Thursday.

We get around 4 gallons of milk per day from our Jersey cow. For our family, this is plenty to make cheese, butter, kefir, ice cream and more — plus we have some to share with friends AND some to clabber (spontaneously sour) for the chickens and dog. I figured out a really easy way to get both clabber for the chickens and sour cream for us, with hardly any work at all. This week’s free video shows you how I do it.

Easy Sour Cream: The Print Version

Here’s the quick run-down if you can’t or don’t want to watch a video.

Any time I’m going to clabber milk for the dog or chickens, I start it right after milking, when the milk is warm and the perfect temperature for culturing. I cover the jar of milk with a paper towel or cloth napkin and rubber band, then leave it to clabber (sour spontaneously) at room temperature for 1 to 2 days, or more in the winter when it is cooler.

(You can’t clabber pasteurized milk because it lacks naturally present organisms — though you can simulate clabber by adding a mesophilic cheese culture.)

After 1 to 2 to 3 days, both the cream and the milk are thickened from the acids produced by the proliferating organisms, and the cream has conveniently risen to the top. I skim off the cream for us and chill it until we need it. I take the clabbered milk to the animals. Voila — done! With hardly any effort at all. Except for milking the cow of course.

How did I used to do this? It was easy, too, but not quite so effortless. I used to refrigerate the milk, let the cream rise, skim off the cream, and let both the cream and milk sour separately. My new way allows me to skip the fridge stage entirely (saving about a day) and the cream and milk sour together (saving multiple containers and additional counter space). I love it! Hardly any work at all — which you’ll see in the video.

By the way, you don’t need to milk your own cow to try this. If you have an abundance of raw milk from a friend or co-op, just bring the chilled milk out of the fridge and let the milk and cream sour together before skimming the cream. If not time, you’ll be saving counter space and containers!

What do you think? Are you game to try this? Do you think it would help you?

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Summer — berries! Oh, we’re loving them. We found a great place to purchase organic berries at conventional prices, either U-pick or convenient flats. (For local readers, the place is The Berry Patch on Old Melrose Road in Roseburg.) I’ve stopped by each week for a few weeks to bring home flats of strawberries or raspberries. They will have strawberries all season, and various kinds of other berries all summer as well.

My favorite way to preserve berries is to use a tweaked lacto-fermented preserves recipe in Nourishing Traditions. The original recipe is “Berry Preserves” on page 11. Using lacto-fermentation increases vitamins, enzymes and probiotics, making these preserves even better than the berries alone. What conventional jam can boast that? I will demonstrate these preserves as well as a few variations in the fermenting class.

You’ll need Pomona’s Pectin — a wonderful, natural pectin that doesn’t depend having a certain amount of sugar or even a certain type of sugar for setting up. You can use no sugar, low sugar, or natural sweeteners such as honey or stevia! This pectin can be used in fermented recipes (such as below), but also in cooked or freezer recipes. It is extremely versatile and easy to use. Click here for Pomona’s free PDF of recipes and instructions — very handy, easy to read and a breeze to implement!

This doesn’t set up like your normal jam, but it does thicken. It spreads well on toast, pancakes, or as above, you can see we eat it by the spoonful with kefir. Delicious!

Lacto-Fermented Raspberry Preserves

Adapted from Nourishing Traditions. Makes 1 quart.

• 6 cups fresh raspberries, washed and drained (or any other berry except strawberries, which are too acidic for this method)
• 1/4 plus 1/8 cup sweetener of choice (recommended: palm sugar, sucanat, rapadura)
• 1-1/2 teaspoons sea salt
• 6 tablespoons whey (dripped from plain yogurt or kefir with active cultures — see directions here)
• 3 teaspoons Pomona’s Pectin
• 3 teaspoons calcium water (also included in Pomona’s Pectin)

Mash all ingredients together until all mixed and berries are crushed — though I like to leave them a little chunky. Put in a clean, quart-sized glass jar, leaving the top 1″ of the jar free. Cap tightly and ferment at room temperature for 2 days. If any mold or scum appears at the top, skim it off. Transfer to cold storage (refrigerator or cellar) for up to 2 months, or freeze for longer keeping.

What are you making with summer berries? What is your favorite way to preserve them?

This post is shared with Simple Lives Thursday, Pennywise Platter Thursday, and Fight Back Friday.

Learn to make your own homemade flavored cream cheese, and you’ll never buy another tub again. Sure, the grocery store flavors taste good — but these taste fabulous (and are more healthy). Plus, there’s no limit to what flavors you can try!

In this video excerpt from the Cultured Dairy & Basic Cheese eCourse, I show you how to make Onion-Chives or Cinnamon-Walnut cream cheese.

First, you have to know how to make cream cheese. That step is not included in the video above — but it is demonstrated on video in the eCourse. (Also — eCourse members — be sure to log in and download the detailed print notes which include more flavor ideas.)

1. How to Make Cream Cheese

This makes approximately 2 cups of cream cheese.

Combine 1 quart of cream (not heavy) with 1/8 teaspoon of mesophilic culture. You can also use 4 tablespoons of buttermilk or sour cream with active cultures. Cover the jar with a paper towel or cloth napkin and secure with a rubber band. Culture at room temperature for 8 to 24 hours until set up like firm yogurt or sour cream.

Drain the whey/buttermilk out of the cultured cream by hanging it in cheesecloth for 12 to 24 hours, or until the cheese is as dry as you’d like. Remove the cheese from the cheesecloth and put in a jar or glass storage container. Cover with an air-tight lid. Use plain, add sea salt to taste, or flavor (see below). Keeps for 2 weeks in the refrigerator.

Cream cheese from pastured cows eating rapidly growing green grass will be lightly to deeply yellow — from the carotene in the grass. One of the best real food sources of Vitamin A!

2. Cinnamon-Walnut Cream Cheese

By gently folding and mixing, combine 1 cup of cream cheese with 1/4 cup chopped walnuts (preferably soaked and dehydrated), 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 3 tablespoons of desired sweetener (such as palm sugar, date sugar, honey, maple syrup, rapadura or sucanat). Taste and add more of anything! Store in an air-tight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

Delicious with toast, pancakes, apple slices…

3. Onion-Chives Cream Cheese

By gently folding and mixing, combine 1 cup of cream cheese with 1/4 cup finely diced onions, 2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives, and 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon sea salt. Taste and add more of anything! Store in an air-tight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

Eat some up with crackers, on toast, or with cut up veggies!

Have you made homemade flavored cream cheese? What are your favorite flavors? What do you eat with cream cheese? Please share!

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I shared this post with Real Food Wednesday, Simple Lives Thursday, and Pennywise Platter Thursday.

Yesterday, I made our family’s traditional hummus — a recipe handed down from my grandmother and namesake, Tata Wardeh, to my mother and then to me. However, there was a difference: this time I lacto-fermented it. Yeah, yeah, by now you know that I try to ferment just about everything.

To do this with hummus (or almost any other condiment), just switch out some of the liquid for whey and give the mixture an overnight sit at room temperature to complete a fermentation. The beneficial organisms in the whey have a bit of a feast on the sugars in the food, and proliferate throughout. The result in hummus is that the organisms make it a little “fluffy” or “bubbly” from the gases they produce.

I found that my digestive system likes lacto-fermented hummus better than the regular kind — because sometimes garbanzo beans (or chickpeas, as they are also called) can be more gas-producing than other beans.

The darker flecks in my hummus are the result of using an Indian relation of chickpeas/garbanzos — the Chana Dal bean (and more info here at Azure Standard). They’re smaller with darker skins. I don’t bother to remove skins from garbanzo beans; that’s just too much work!

I highly recommend using toasted sesame tahini. Toasting is another means of reducing phytic acid in seeds, and it gives the hummus a darker, roasted flavor. Love it!

Our Family’s Traditional Hummus — Lacto-Fermented

• 2 cups cooked garbanzo beans (chickpeas)
• 3 rounded tablespoons roasted sesame tahini
• juice from 1 lemon
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt, or to taste
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup whey — with active cultures, such as from dripping off plain yogurt or kefir, or from raw cheesemaking

Put all ingredients in blender or food processor. Adjust water to desired consistency. Blend to make a smooth, thick, but sorta chunky paste. Transfer to an air-tight container and leave out at room temperature overnight, 7 to 12 hours. Transfer to refrigerator.

When serving, garnish with paprika, parsley and/or extra virgin olive oil. Pictured with sprouted spelt crackers.

How you eat your hummus? This morning, I served it with sprouted crackers, Middle Eastern cheese, two fried eggs, and kefir and fruit. Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

We’re in the midst of a two week lesson on kefir in the Cultured Dairy and Basic Cheese eCourse. I shared troubleshooting and tips, how to make kefir cream, how to make kefir ice cream (yeah — probiotic ice cream!), how to make kefir cheese, and how to make kefir cheese balls. The weekly free video is an excerpt from this lesson — you get to see how I make kefir (or yogurt) cheese balls.

By the way, did you know that my classes don’t close? Nope. They don’t. When you sign up, you get access to everything that’s been released prior — and you can sign up any time.

Like my weekly free videos? Please subscribe to the GNOWFGLINS Channel on YouTube — and give this or any other video a thumbs-up!

Traditional Cheese Preservation

What I show you in the video above, and the recipe below, is a traditional Middle Eastern method of preserving yogurt cheese that requires no refrigeration. My family still follows it to this day. My grandmother and namesake, Tata Wardeh, who has passed away, always had jars full of yogurt cheese balls available to add to our plates at breakfast, lunch and dinner!

The cheese is salted and soured, both of which are means of preservation — but then when fashioned into balls, the balls are submerged into extra virgin olive oil, a protective brine of sorts.

The kefir cheese for this method needs to hang and drip for over 2 days, so it will be quite dry. Otherwise, the balls won’t hold together in the brine. Because of this additional hanging time, it may be quite sour. If you are leery of the tang, try it with yogurt instead, which will always be more mild.

Or, if you have cold storage with room for a hanging bag of cheese, you can drip out the whey while fermentation is suspended — meaning sourness won’t develop during the hanging time.

Kefir/Yogurt Cheese Balls

• very dry kefir cheese, made from hanging* from 1/2 gallon of kefir
• 1/4 teaspoon+ sea salt (if not already salted)
• 1-1/2 cups+ of extra virgin olive oil
• quart size jar with tight-fitting lid

*Hanging Instructions: Put a colander inside a big pot or bowl. Line it with two layers of 90-count cheesecloth. Carefully pour the kefir into the cheesecloth-lined colander. Tie up the ends of the cheesecloth and tuck them inside the colander. Hang the bag of cheese up, over the pot (you can remove the colander) for more than 2 days, until the whey no longer drips out and until the cheese is quite dry.

If you have not already salted the kefir cheese, do so. Starting with 1/4 teaspoon of sea salt, salt to taste.

Put the olive oil into the jar. With your hands, create individual balls of kefir cheese, about a tablespoon each. Plunge the balls into the olive oil one at a time. When all balls are in the jar, top off with additional olive oil, as needed. Cover tightly. Store in a pantry cupboard. Burp as needed. Keeps for a few weeks, at least, under normal pantry conditions, but more likely longer.

Serve at breakfast with any kind of eggs or breakfast meat, as a fermented side dish with lunch sandwiches or salads, and even at dinner next to grilled meats and rice. Not to mention for a snack with veggies or fruit! The sky’s the limit how you can enjoy kefir cheese balls. I hope you do!

What About You?

Have you made yogurt/kefir cheese balls before? If not, are you willing to try them? When you do, come back and let me know what you think!

Want to make your guacamole just that much better for you? Lacto-ferment it! This natural fermentation process allows beneficial organisms to proliferate, and causes an explosion of vitamins and enzymes. The benefits to you? Better digestion and support for your immune system. Check out the recipe below, also demonstrated above in this week’s free video.

My family eats a a lacto-fermented food with each meal and then some — most of the time. This is easy to do when you consider the array of lacto-fermented foods available: raw cheeses and fermented dairy (yogurt, kefir or clabber), sauerkraut, natural pickled vegetables and fruits like relishes and chutneys, pickled meats, even desserts made from fermented food bases (like ice cream that uses kefir or cream cheese frosting using homemade raw cheese), and delicious beverages like water kefir.

Check out my series on Probiotics: Every Meal, where I and others shared breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and snack ideas using fermented or probiotic-rich foods!

So, let’s get to the recipe already (video demonstration above)…

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Lacto-Fermented Guacamole

This guacamole is somewhat probiotic immediately, when you stir in the whey. So you can forego the fermenting and serve it fresh, if you’d like.

• 2 avocados, ripe
• 3 to 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 tablespoons whey (leftover from making raw cheese, or dripped off of plain yogurt or kefir with active cultures)

Combine all ingredients together and mash well with a fork. Put in a bowl. Cover with plastic. Allow to sit at room temperature for about 7 hours. Transfer to refrigerator until serving.

Skim off browned top layer if you desire a bright, green guacamole. It is fine to eat what you skimmed off. You can also mix it in, which will discolor the rest of the guacamole slightly.

Enjoy! Serve with homemade (best ever) tortilla chips!

Want to learn more about natural fermentation? My online classes teach the fermentation of grain by means of sourdough (from cakes to crackers and more), fermentation of fruits and veggies through natural pickling and healthy fermented beverages like water kefir, and fermentation of dairy from buttermilk, sour cream, yogurt and kefir to basic cheeses!

How do you make your guacamole? Do you add any interesting ingredients to kick up the flavor?

Cranberries are in season. If only they were local (for me)! I recently tweaked my mom’s famous cranberry-orange-apple relish recipe to add a fermentation stage. Natural fermentation adds probiotic benefits and beneficial acids for the gut, as well as increases the vitamins and enzymes. As if that weren’t enough, this relish (like many other lacto-fermented foods) is incredibly yummy. If you start a batch early this week, it will be ready for Christmas dinner. And might I suggest doubling or tripling the recipe? You’ll like it that much.

Water kefir provides a dairy-free means of fermenting; even if one didn’t need dairy-free, I prefer the results over that of using whey!

I included this recipe in a recent weekly menu plan. I’m enjoying putting together the menu plans because it encourages me to work on at least one new fermentation project each week. Good for my family, and good for you.

Intrigued by lacto-fermentation? Learn more about its benefits in this post, in our Fundamentals eBook, or in our online Fundamentals class (includes instructional videos, audio and PDF).

Fermented Cranberry-Orange-Apple Relish Ingredients

• 2 oranges, peeled and quartered, seeds removed
• 2 apples, washed and quartered, cores removed
• 1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries
• 1 to 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/4 cup rapadura or sucanat
• 1/4 cup whey or water kefir

Fermented Cranberry-Orange-Apple Relish Method

Makes 1 quart. Combine all ingredients in food processor. Pulse to chop; don’t puree. Pack into a clean, quart-size, wide mouth jar. Wipe threads clean. Screw on a lid and band tightly.

Let sit out on a cloth at room temperature for one to three days. Daily, or as necessary, check for any mold growing on the surface and skim away, repacking carefully. Taste for desired texture.

If the weather is very hot, fermentation may only take a day or so. Burp the jar if necessary (to prevent explosions). When you’re happy with the taste and texture, transfer to the refrigerator in an airtight container. Will keep for a few weeks. Repack the storage container carefully after each dipping.

Enjoy mixed with kefir or yogurt (pictured, below). Put on top of breakfast porridge, toast, pancakes or waffles. Eat alongside baked or grilled poultry, beef, lamb, or pork.

Options: Vary the amount of fruit. One day I didn’t have so many oranges and apples, but lots of cranberries. And I made a cranberry-heavy relish. It was delicious! I had to use a bit more sweetener.