A farewell to LOST

Sunday marked the end of one of the best television shows ever. Kevin and I are huge fans of LOST, and therefore we gathered our friends at our house to watch the finale. Of course, I made lots of food, which was almost completely gluten-free. One of my friends just recently was diagnosed with celiacs disease and I didn't want her to be surrounded by food that she couldn't eat. I was planning to make kebabs and sushi rice prior to her diagnosis. I wasn't worried about the main course.

Dessert was where I was worried. I had never made any gluten-free desserts. After doing a little research and some searching in the grocery store, I found GF oreos. I could make a cheesecake, I thought. I had been wanting to try this recipe I found in a magazine for a while, so it was settled. I was going to make a gluten-free cheesecake. After looking over the recipe, I found that it called for 2 tablespoons of flour. I realized that it was only in there as a thickener and stablizer. My initial thought was to subsitute corn starch, but on the day I used some tapioca flakes used in making fruit pies thicker. I flavored the cheesecake with white chocolate and used the GF oreos as the crust and topped it with homemade caramel. I love this flavor combination, which is why it's called the Cloud 9.

In addition to the cheesecake, Kevin wanted to decorate cupcakes with hieroglyphics and words significant to LOST. I had to make some sample cupcakes for a wedding cake, so it worked out well. I made vanilla cupcakes and red velvet. The bride really wanted to try the red velvet, but the groom really wants vanilla cake only. To top the remaining cupcakes, I made a white chocolate buttercream frosting and dyed some of the frosting black for the writing. They turned out pretty good.