Tag Archives: recipe

Homemade Raw Bars

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After giving up refined sugar I got hooked on these things.  They are an absolutely delicious, feel-good treat (Pulsin is on the ethical chocolate list) which is almost guilt-free.  Almost.  Unfortunately they’re wrapped in plastic.  So, to avoid that, I decided to make my own – and they are equally yummy, if I do say so myself 😀

I ordered my supplies from the Zero Waste Club – a wonderful new company from whom you can order all sorts of healthy staples without plastic wrapping.  The following is my first attempt and it made a lot of bars.  In future I’ll halve these measurements 🙂

Ingredients:

  • Almost 3 mugs full (500g) of organic pitted dates
  • About 2 mugs full (about 350g) of organic cashews
  • About 1 mug full of organic raisins
  • About half a mug full of organic cocoa powder (to be truly raw, substitute raw cacao)
  • About a mug full of organic cacao nibs
  • Some organic oats (to be truly raw, omit these)

First soak the dates and the cashews in water (separately) in the fridge for a couple of hours to soften.  Afterwards, drain and rinse the cashews in a colander.

I don’t have a food processor (I used to have one but it broke and I refuse to buy another one which will also break at some point and add more plastic to landfill) so I used my beloved manual juicer to process these ingredients.  This is a simple, hand-crank machine made of stainless steel which I believe will last me a life time.  I highly recommend it 😀 (BL-30 Manual Stainless Steel Wheat Grass and Vegetable Juicer)

  1.  Process the softened dates into mush and put them in a large mixing bowl.2.  Process the softened cashews into mush and add them to the bowl with the dates.3.  Mix the stiff mixture of dates and cashews until thoroughly combined.4.  Process the raisins into mush and mix them into the mixture.5.  Add the cocoa and the cacao nibs and mix until everything is fully combined into a lovely chocolatey mixture.6.  If you don’t want to add the oats, you’re finished so you can spread the mixture into a tin or onto a plate or container.  It is delicious now but you won’t be able to pick it up with your fingers to eat it, like a shop-bought bar.  You’ll need a plate and a fork coz it’s mushy.  So, I added a few oats to stiffen it up.  Just add a few at a time and mix them in until you’ve got the consistency you want.7.  When the mixture is the right consistency, spread it onto a lined cookie sheet (I lined it with eco-friendly grease proof paper from If You Care)  Flatten it with  the back of  a wet spoon.8.  Then cut it into bars and chill in the fridge.  Easy 😀 Yum 😀

 

Easy Gluten-Free Flatbread

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This is so easy and absolutely delicious 😀

No fat, no yeast, no gluten and no frying.  Just oats and water.  Baked.

You’ll need:

8 oz rolled oats

400 ml of water

parchment paper to line your baking trays so that you don’t need to oil them.

** For garlic bread version see bottom of post 🙂

First pre-heat your oven to 220°C (less if it’s a fan oven).

Then weigh out about 8 oz of rolled oats and mill it into a flour in your food processor (with the S blade).

Add 200ml of water, whiz to combine with the flour and then add another 200ml and whiz again so that you’ve got a runny, pour-able mixture.

Line two baking trays with parchment paper, and pour half the mixture onto each of them.

Then spread it thinly and evenly with the back of a spoon, and put the trays in the oven.

After about 20 minutes remove trays from the oven and turn the bread over.  Turn the trays around so that they get evenly baked and return to the oven for another 6 or 7 minutes.

Remove and put on plates 😀

If you want them crispier, bake them for a little longer but keep a close eye on them because there is a very fine line between crisp and burnt.

Now do what you like with them.  Add your favourite spreads, cover them with beans, use them as pizza bases, make sandwiches with them …. whatever you like.

** To make amazing garlic bread just add a few cloves of fresh garlic to the oats when you mill it into flour (I use 4 fat ones to this amount of oats but if you like your garlic stronger, add as much as you like).  The garlic will be finely minced and combined with the oat flour.  Then, instead of using parchment paper on the trays, generously grease them with vegetable oil and preheat the greased trays before adding the runny mixture.  This will produce delicious crispy garlic bread ready to eat with no need for margarine.

Chocolate Chip Banana Cookies: ORGANIC, FAIR TRADE, VEGAN, GLUTEN-FREE, NO ADDED SUGAR, NO ADDED FAT

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Now, these cookies look very healthy, but they don’t taste it 😉

Of course there is fat and sugar in the chocolate, but the truth is there’s only a couple of specks of chocolate in each cookie, so how can that hurt really?  If you’re being ever so strict you could leave the chocolate out and I’m sure the cookies would still be lovely, but since Miranda found a bar of Moo Free in the cupboard that we didn’t know we had, we decided we wouldn’t be 😉

To make these nutritious treats, this is what you’ll need:

  • 4 very ripe medium to large fair trade organic bananas
  • about 80g of fair trade organic vegan chocolate (optional)
  • 3 ounces of organic sultanas (or other dried fruit)
  • 8 ounces of organic rolled oats
  • a little water to make the mixture the right consistency

Preheat the oven to 180°C

Mash the bananas with a fork in a mixing bowl and then add the sultanas (or raisins or other dried fruit) and the chocolate cut into little chips.  Mix it all together well.

Put the oats into a food processor and mill them into a rough flour, then add it to the mixing bowl (or you can add the oats without making them into flour) and thoroughly combine with the other ingredients.  Add a little water, if needed, a tablespoon at a time, and mix it in to make a nice, moist cookie mixture.

Then put heaped teaspoons of mixture onto a lined baking tray and flatten them with the back of a wet spoon.

Bake them for about 20 minutes or until they are as golden as you like them,

keep an eye on them and rotate the tray if necessary 🙂

And there you have it: delicious and nutritious – they tick all the right boxes!

They’re a lot yummier than they look I promise you 😀

Chocolate chip peanut butter oat cookies

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vegan gluten free cookies

Peanut butter, chocolate chip, oat cookies – vegan, gluten-free, organic and fair trade: What more could you want? 😀

I just felt peckish so I raided the cupboard for ingredients and found what I needed:

  • Organic rolled oats
  • Organic Fair Trade sugar
  • Organic Fair Trade chocolate
  • Organic Fair Trade peanut butter
  • Organic Fair Trade Sunflower Oil
  • Water (not in the cupboard)

vegan gluten free cookies

These are so quick and easy 😀

Weigh out 8 ounces of oats and put them through the food processor to turn them into flour.

Put the oat flour in your mixing bowl and add 4 ounces of sugar.  Mix well.

Then break up about 60 grams of chocolate (I used Moo Free) and put it into the food processor with about 3 heaped spoons full of peanut butter, I think (it’s up to you how much you use, I can’t actually remember exactly how much I added this time 🙂 ).

Whiz the peanut butter and chocolate around with the ‘S’ blade for a few seconds until the chocolate is in little chips and beautifully combined with the soft peanut butter.  Of course you can do all this by hand, it’ll just take a little longer 🙂

By the way, the peanut butter is unsalted with nothing added – it’s nothing but organic roasted peanuts.

Leave the peanut butter and chocolate to one side while you add about 100 ml of sunflower oil and 5 tablespoons of water to the flour and sugar in the bowl and mix well.

Then add the peanut butter and chocolate chips and mix it in until you have your moist cookie mixture.

This is an oily mixture so you shouldn’t need to grease the baking trays but I lined them with eco-friendly greaseproof paper which is optional.

Put heaped teaspoons of the mixture onto your baking trays and then flatten them with the back of a wet spoon.  This recipe makes about 24 cookies.

Bake for 20 minutes at 180°c (in a pre-heated fan oven).

Remove and put on a rack to cool.

vegan gluten-free cookies

vegan gluten-free cookies

vegan gluten-free cookies

Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside.  Ooh, these are good!

vegan gluten-free cookies

Enjoy them with a cup of tea 😀

Presents!!!

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But before they sat down to tea, Kauri gave Grandpa his present.

“Happy Birthday Grandpa, I made this for you,” he said.

vegan children's story

“Oh thank you Kauri,” said Grandpa when he’d unwrapped it, “I just love it!”

vegan children's story

And Myrtle gave her present to Grandpa.

“Happy Birthday Grandpa,” she said, “I made this for you.”

vegan children's story

“Oh thank you Myrtle,” said Grandpa when he’d unwrapped it, “I absolutely love it!”

vegan children's story

And he was thrilled with the delicious birthday tea the children had made for him.  But Cedro was too excited to wait for everyone to finish the savouries before they got to his present …

vegan children's story

… so he cut a slice for Grandpa straight away and said

“Happy Birthday Grandpa, I made this for you.”

vegan children's story

And with a great big smile Grandpa took it and said,

“Oh thank you Cedro, I really really love it.”

vegan children's story

And he really REALLY did.

vegan children's story

vegan children's story

The End 😀

You can read the whole story here and it is available in paperback here 🙂

vegan story book

******************************************************

vegan children’s story, vegan cake, vegan recipe, vegan children’s book

Time for tea!

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By then it was time to get ready for Grandpa Wollemi’s Birthday tea.

Everyone was very excited.

vegan children's story

There were crisps and cookies and mini pizzas;

vegan children's story

there were crackers and pasta salad and pineapple on sticks;

vegan children's story

and the big birthday cake, made entirely by Cedro, was the centrepiece.

vegan children's story

*************

continues tomorrow 😀

but if you don’t want to wait you can read the whole story here now 🙂

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vegan children’s story, vegan children’s book, vegan cake, vegan party, vegan party tea, vegan birthday party

Buckwheat Brown and White Cookies

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Buckwheat flour

I’ve recently discovered buckwheat which is naturally gluten free as it is not actually a grain – it’s a fruit seed.  Buckwheat is related to rhubarb and the flour has a subtle sweet fruity taste to it which means you don’t need so much sugar.  This organic Doves Farm pack is not certified gluten free because it wasn’t bagged in a totally gluten-free environment, but I have been told they do do a certified gluten-free version for those who are highly sensitive.  My recipe is very simple:

8 ounces  organic buckwheat flour

3 ounces organic fair trade sugar

100 ml organic sunflower oil

4 tablespoons of water

organic fair trade cocoa

***

First pre-heat the oven to 180°c.  Weigh out half of your dry ingredients (ie 4 oz flour and 1.5 oz sugar) and place in a mixing bowl with a dessert spoon or two of sieved cocoa.  Mix well and then add half the wet ingredients (50 ml oil and 2 tablespoons of water).  You might need a dribble or two more of water to compensate for the cocoa and make a soft, moist cookie mixture.

buckwheat cookies

  (Bear in mind that I had doubled the recipe the day I photographed it so you won’t have this much mixture unless you do the same).  Put the chocolatey mixture to one side and mix up the other half of ingredients (minus the cocoa) in another bowl.

buckwheat cookies

Then spoon teaspoons full of ‘white’ mixture onto ungreased baking trays.  Flatten with the back of a spoon.  (These look quite big because I had doubled the recipe that day)

buckwheat cookies

Then add another teaspoon of chocolate brown mixture to each cookie and press it on like so:

buckwheat cookies

buckwheat cookies

Bake for 20 minutes and then remove to a cooling tray.  There is no need to double the mixture, the 8 oz mixture makes 20 to 24 cute little cookies, but if you want big fat ones like these you know what to do!  Oh, and if you do double it they’ll need cooking a bit longer – say 30 mins at 170° in a fan oven.

These are so yummy that I forgot to take any pictures of them after they came out of the oven.  When they’ve cooled they’re kind of hard, like a ginger nut, but a little bit chewy on the inside.

buckwheat cookies

O is for omelette

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Oo

Omelette    noun

Oxford Dictionary definition:  beaten eggs fried and often folded over filling.

Our definition:  Omelettes are made from eggs laid by birds (usually chickens) kept in unnatural, confined conditions, more often than not in over-crowded barns with no access to the outside and no natural light or fresh air.  Their miserable lives are short, ending when they begin to lay less eggs at about 12 to 18 months of age (naturally, healthy chickens could live into their teens if not taken by a predator, though those rescued from chicken farms don’t usually live longer than 4 years due to their harrowing start in life).  Contrary to popular opinion, buying free range is not the cruelty free option since these birds’ lives will also end in brutal slaughter by the tender age of 18 months.  NB farms can label their eggs free range if there is access to an outdoor area from the chickens’ barn even though most of the birds in the overcrowded barn are never able to reach the door.  Male chicks are horribly killed en masse shortly after hatching.

Buying tofu, on the other hand, is the cruelty free option and if you love eggs, you’ll really love tofu 😀

Spinach Tofu Scramble. Photo by Evelyn Oliver

Spinach Tofu Scramble. Photo by Evelyn Oliver

For the rest of the dictionary, click here

Being Resourceful

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It got to that time of week again – the day before food shopping.  The cupboards were looking quite bare and Miranda and I were feeling very peckish.  We’d finished off the last flapjack the day before and there were no munchies left in the house.  There must be something I could make, I said to myself, but what?  I had no flour left.

But I was determined.

What I did have was some rolled oats, some sugar, some olive oil, some cocoa and some sultanas.

*And this is what I did:

Weighed out 8 ounces of rolled oats and put them through the food processor to make a rough oat flour.  Put the flour in a bowl, added 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 1 ounce of cocoa, a generous load of sultanas and 4 ounces of sugar, and mixed it all together thoroughly.  Then I added 4 fluid ounces (120 ml) of olive oil and 5 tablespoons of water to the dry mixture and combined to form a very moist cookie mixture.  I put heaped teaspoons of this onto lined baking sheets and baked at 180°c for 20 minutes.

vegan chocolate cookies

Oh wow!

These are amazing!

Even better than when I make them with spelt.

vegan chocolate cookies

So quick.  So easy.

So beautifully crisp on the outside, moist on the inside, chocolatey, delicious, fair trade, organic,

vegan,

and gluten free 😀

Oh wow! These are amazing!

* Adapted from the chocolate chip cookie recipe in the brilliant Unqualified Education

Yummy Scrummy Crispy Cakes

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I used to make crispy cakes which were absolutely scrumptious but really not good for my health because of all the syrup in the recipe.  So I thought, I wonder if I can make these gorgeous treats healthier by leaving out the syrup and substituting dates.  Turns out – you can!  I am therefore very excited to share with you my recipe for yummy, scrummy, chocolatey, nutritious crispy cakes.

Here’s what you’ll need:

what you will need

Gluten-free, sugar-free, organic corn flakes; nothing-added organic peanut butter; pitted dates, soaked over-night; and chocolate (this one does have sugar in it admittedly, but you could use organic raw sugar-free chocolate instead if you prefer, I just didn’t have any today)

First get your chocolate melting in a little pot over some hot water.

Drain the water off your soggy dates and bung them in the food processor.  Process them to a smooth, moist consistency and place them in a mixing bowl like so:

date mush

Then add a couple of generous tablespoons of peanut butter:

add peanut butter

Combine thoroughly with a fork and then add your melted chocolate and mix that in too:

add melted chocolate

When that’s all well combined, it’s time to mix in the corn flakes.  Add a few at a time and keep adding them until you can’t mix any more in (ie until the mixture is too dry to add more):

add corn flakes

When I’d added all the cornflakes my mixture could take, I tasted it and felt it could do with a little more sweetness.  So I added sultanas.  You suit yourself:

optional add sultanas

When you’re satisfied with your mixture, spoon it into some paper cake cases :

fill paper cases

And chill until ….. you want to eat them:

Done!

Done!

Yum!

Yum!

Raw Chocolate Nut Truffles

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raw vegan choc nut truffles

You’ll need:

  • 1 cup of organic raw almonds (soaked over night; thoroughly rinsed, then spread on a clean tea towel to dry for a couple of hours)
  • 200g pitted fresh dates (soaked for 2 to 3 hours)
  • 1 tablespoon of raw cacao or carob powder
  • 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
  • Some sultanas
  • 60g of raw melted chocolate

1.  In a food processor/chopper/mixer process the dates and then transfer them to a mixing bowl.

2.  Then process the almonds until finely chopped and add to the dates in your bowl.

3.  Add the cacao/carob, vanilla, as many sultanas as you fancy, and the melted chocolate and mix with a spoon until thoroughly combined.

4.  Then return the mixture (a bit at a time if necessary) to your food processor and process together briefly until you have the right truffle consistency.

5.  Finally, with a teaspoon spoon little truffles onto a plate and decorate with walnuts (if you like)

Will keep in the fridge for a few days.

It’s as simple as that!

Absolutely scrummy! 🙂  

raw vegan chocolate nut truffles

No-Bake Blueberry Chocolate Flapjacks

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blueberry chocolate flapjacks

These are absolutely as good as they look!  I think they’re my best invention yet!

Want some?  This is what you’ll need:

 

200g of fresh dates (pits removed and soaked for 2 to 3 hours)

200g of organic fresh dates (pits removed and soaked for 2 to 3 hours)

125g of organic fresh blueberries

125g of organic fresh blueberries

organic raw cacao nibs

organic raw cacao nibs (optional)

organic jumbo oats

organic jumbo oats

dark chocolate

vegan organic fair trade chocolate – raw if you’ve got it

1.  Drain and rinse your soaked dates and chop them in your food processor, or by hand, until they’re well mushed up and combined.  Transfer them into a large mixing bowl.

2.  Add your fresh blueberries and mix well.

3.  Add as many cacao nibs as you want and mix well.

4.  Put the whole lot back into the food processor and chop/mix it into a smooth, wet, really quite runny, mixture.

5.  Return it to the mixing bowl and add oats.  Keep adding oats and mixing until you have a stiff flapjack mixture.  Then put the lot into a flat tin, lined with non-toxic parchment paper, and press it with the back of a spoon so that it fills the tin and is uniformly flat and smooth.

6.  Put your flapjacks in the fridge while you melt your chocolate.  Put some very hot water into a large bowl; break your chocolate into small pieces and put them in a small bowl; put the small bowl to float in the hot water; don’t get water in the chocolate.  Your chocolate will melt quite quickly – keep an eye on it 🙂

7.  Then remove your tin of flapjack mixture from the fridge and cover in melted chocolate.  Chill and cut into squares when set.

8.  Enjoy your gorgeous flapjacks 🙂

blueberry chocolate flapjacks close up

I know you will 😉

Sc-raw-umptious!

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raw cake

A cake is a cake

That you could make

And it’s unhealthy

Make no mistake

Unless it’s a cake

That you don’t bake

Made from fruits and nuts still raw!

raw cake

My first attempt at making raw cake and it’s deeelicious if I do say so myself 😉

*************

Having just finished reading 12 Steps to Raw Foods by Victoria Boutenko, I couldn’t wait to have a go at making raw cake.  At the back of the book are some really useful recipes which are designed to be adapted to suit your own tastes so, using the Generic Cake Recipe, I had a go.

For the chocolate base I combined 1 cup of ground walnuts, 1 tablespoon of flax oil, 1 tablespoon of agave nectar, and half a cup of cocoa (that should have been raw carob powder but I don’t have any of that yet).

This made a stiff, damp mixture which I formed into a cake shape on the plate.

Then for the topping I combined half a cup of fruit (banana in this case), half a cup of ground cashews, and half a cup of fresh coconut.  I put all these through my manual juicer (using the smooth screen) so that they were all ground and mushed, and then I mixed them together with a fork.

Then I spooned the topping onto the base and put it in the fridge to chill.  So easy.

Now I’m off to have another piece! 🙂

How about a strawberry one?

strawberry shortcake cut

For the strawberry version I just omitted the cocoa from the base and added a teaspoon of vanilla essence.

Then for the topping I combined half a cup of mushed strawberries, half a cup of ground cashews, (both of these were put through the manual juicer as above) and 1 tablespoon of agave nectar.

And voila:

raw strawberry shortcake

Make some sugar-free jam – you know you want to!

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sugar free jam

If you want jam but not sugar (nor other added sweetener either) then this is the recipe for you!

In the inventor’s own words “This recipe for strawberry jam does take some time to make in the absence of sugar or a natural sweetener, but the end result is pure strawberry goodness. It is definitely sweet enough and has an amazing buttery smooth and creamy consistency. I guarantee that if you like fresh strawberries, you will love this recipe.”

So go on, pop over to this website – Living Healthy with Chocolate dot com – and give it a go!

I know I’m going to! 🙂