Our prompt for September is gum free! Gluten free baking is often full of gums like xanthan and/or guar that help create structure, but not everyone can tolerate these gums. It can be difficult to find recipes or products without them, but it can be done. Flax meal, psyllium husk, and chia seeds are often used in their place, and sometimes the right mix of flours is all you need to go gum free.

To fill this prompt, you can:

1. Slide into the comments of this post and share a link to a recipe, product, or resource and why you like it.
2. Write up a favorite recipe and post it to the comm.
3. Post a review of a related product or cookbook to the comm.
4. Try someone's recipe and reply to their post (or comment) with any changes you made and how it turned out.

Monthly prompts are only for inspiration and not a requirement. You can post anything you like to the comm whenever you like as long as it meets the community guidelines.

Here's what's going on in the comments:

• Buckwheat groat and sushi/short grain rice breads from elainegrey

Miyoko's European Style Plant Milk Butter, Salted: I'm really happy with this! It spreads nicely straight out of the refrigerator, melts easily on toasted bread, and tasted appropriate on the fake bagel I put it on, with no coconut flavor. It does, however, have a slightly funky smell which is particularly noticeable if you melt a significant amount for cooking or baking. This is because it's cultured, like a cheese. I can't say I like the smell, but I do like the results as it successfully replicates some of the tanginess of dairy.

This can be used as a 1:1 replacement for dairy butter in baking, and so I gave that a spin as well, with these chewy chocolate chip cookies from My Gluten-Free Kitchen. They were indeed chewy and baked up nicely, though they didn't brown as much as I expected. (I used Bob's 1-to-1 Baking Flour, and, as the recipes warns, it was good but not great. Kind of gritty, even with a 24 hour chillin' in the fridge. But the cookies were still pretty damned good so I made them again with America's Test Kitchen flour blend (yes it contains milk powder my life is complicated) and that solved the grittiness problem, but I think my fiddling with the butter/cream cheese ratio in order to use up all the fake cream cheese caused them to spread more than the first batch. They were still excellent, but thinner and more crispy. I will continue to experiment with this as I am nothing but dedicated to finding the perfect chocolate chip cookie.)

Back to Miyoko's butter, I also used it in some vegan chocolate cream cheese frosting, but I didn't let it warm up enough on the counter so it was kind of in shards in there rather than fully blended into the mix. My bad. The next time I made regular vegan cream cheese frosting and I thought I let the butter warm up more, but I had the same problem. So I just let the mixer run and eventually everything became fluffy and smooth, and it worked out great. The butter itself is kind of an uneasy lard color, but not so much that it makes a white frosting look off. I'm going to try it in a buttercream next.

This product is very easy to find in my area and also comes in unsalted. I buy it at my local Kroger analogue, but I've also seen it at Target and Trader Joe's, and of course all the fancy grocery stores carry it. It's one of those slabs of butter, a wide, flat rectangle, and must be refrigerated. When I ate dairy butter I always kept the stick I was using on the counter so this is something new for me. I'm also a bit wary of how long this plant butter will last before it...goes bad? Anyone have intelligence on this? I know it has an expiration date on it but fake dairy products always last longer than those numbers do.

I'll definitely keep buying this, and I'm excited to finally try some of those recipes I've been hoarding that call for butter, vegan or otherwise. Dinner rolls! Scones!! PIE CRUST????

Current Ingredients: Organic Coconut Oil, Organic Cultured Cashew Milk (Filtered Water, Organic Cashews, Cultures), Filtered Water, Organic Sunflower Oil, Organic Sunflower Lecithin, Sea Salt.

Our prompt for July is fruit & veg!

To fill this prompt, you can:

1. Slide into the comments of this post and share a link to a recipe, product, or resource and why you like it.
2. Write up a favorite recipe and post it to the comm.
3. Post a review of a related product or cookbook to the comm.
4. Try someone's recipe and reply to their post (or comment) with any changes you made and how it turned out.

This prompt lasts all month, but it's only for inspiration and not a requirement. You can still post anything you like during this time as long as it meets the community guidelines.

Simple Truth Dairy Free Sweet Caramel Frozen Dessert Bars: These bars are a Kroger house brand and delicious. The caramel ice cream is smooth and sweet and creamy and has a hint of coconut to it that melds really well with the caramel, which tastes absolutely real and not at all like "caramel flavor." There's a little caramel swirl in the ice cream that you can't really appreciate until the chocolate shell snaps off in huge sheets, which, let's be real, it will. Though the shell is made of actual chocolate, it can be a bit greasy if you get too much of it in your mouth at once, but it's thin enough to bite into easily and the toffee bits embedded in it are crunchy and good. I'd buy these again.

Current Ingredients: Caramel Frozen Dessert: Water, Sugar, Coconut Oil, Soluble Maize Fiber, Coconut Cream (Coconut Extract, Water), Pea Protein, Inulin, Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids (Emulsifier), Stabilizers (Locust Bean Gum, Guar Gum), Natural Flavors, Caramelized Sugar Syrup, Beta Carotene (Color), Caramel Flavored Sauce: Sugar, Glucose Fructose Syrup, Water, Caramelized Sugar, Salt, Pectin (Gelling Agent), Sodium Citrate (Acidity Regulator), Natural Flavor, Sweet Chocolate and Vegetable Fat Coating: Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Cocoa Mass, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Lecithin (Emulsifier), Natural Vanilla Flavoring, Caramelized Sugar Pieces: Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Invert Sugar, Sodium Bicarbonate.