Sweet Potato & Nut Butter Brownies

After spending so much time on nuts and nut butters, I thought I'd better try a nut butter related recipe.

Using Raw Almonds is a Pain in the Nut Butter

How to Make Raw Food Friendly Almond Butter...and Roasted Peanut Butter

My number one gift on my Christmas wish list this year was a food processor...a good one. I wanted one with making nut butters specifically in mind because almond butter can be a real pain to make. My old processor was doing just fine...until it starting spewing gold dust from the bottom and stopped working. Anyways, this is the beautiful machine Santa brought me!

Freezing Fruit is Berry Easy

How to Freeze Berries

Blueberries were on sale this week for $1.00...and I ended up buying 6 pints. I didn't know what to do with them all, so, I thought I'd better learn about freezing berries. I just Googled how to do it, in case there were some tricks I didn't know.

Perks of Owning a Dehydrator: Nuts

Soaking and Dehydrating Nuts

This is another Raw Food inspired post. During the summer, I worked with a couple people who were interested in the Raw Food Diet, which, naturally, rubbed off on me. While I spent hours Googling information, I stumbled upon some interesting information concerning brown skinned nuts (almond, pecans, walnuts, etc..). The articles/websites I read claimed that, to get the full, enzyme rich benefits of these nuts, you need to soak them for hours before consumption (and the same goes for lentils, chickpeas, and beans, which you normally fix by cooking). I read some raw foodists even go as far as to call un-soaked almonds empty calories! I had a hard time believing this at first and originally struggled to find reasons for why the enzymes were unavailable without soaking. I have since discovered the logic behind this claim...

Perks of Owning a Dehydrator: Fruit Leather

Strawberry, Vanilla & Honey

Fruit leathers are like homemade fruit roll ups and there are countless recipes out there, just Google it (there, I did it for you!). I think it's something you can also just fool around with and make up your own recipe...it's basically just mixing pureed fruit, how can it go wrong?

A Fridge too Far...Try Dehydrating

Over Christmas break, I was blessed with some extra time to use my Excalibur dehydrator! I bought her at the end of the summer as a reward for working my time away. At the beginning of the semester, I found time to occasionally cut up trays of strawberries or bananas about to go bad, however, as I became consumed by my school work, she sat...doing nothing.

Ooh! Ice Cream!

The banana ice cream recipe became very popular in my home. The first batch was gone within a few hours, so I was encouraged to make more.

Dad vs. the Granola Bar (Round Three)

Banana Pecan Granola Bars

This post has been a long time coming. This is the third attempt in the granola bar/breakfast experiment and I made these shortly after the first two granola bar attempts... I didn't just give up on my father after he poo-pooed the first two. This is the recipe my dad originally chose (from the list of recipe options I gave him), but I had to wait for my bananas to ripen. That is why I experimented with the other two first.

Makin' Macaroons

No Bake Macaroons

I made this recipe for the first time on Christmas Eve...

I substituted the cocoa powder for carob powder and used maple syrup instead of honey. Of course, I also added a splash of vanilla and a sprinkle of sea salt. They were very sweet, but I'm not complaining. That evening, I ate a couple of them with warm milk and honey while watching It's a Wonderful Life...

Baked Beans

Maple Baked Beans

I've made baked beans before, but not since giving up cane sugar. I like my baked beans sweet and thought it would be easy to find a recipe that just used maple syrup, but everything also called for molasses!

What about santa's cookies? I suppose parents eat those too?

Only something like 350 days until next Christmas!

Cookie Time

I have a couple of cookie recipes that I have tried over the last few months and thought I might as well just group them together into one big cookie post.

Peanut Butter Cookies

I've made these peanut butter cookies a couple of times and they are delicious...especially the dough, oh my god. I always use spelt flour and substitute the olive oil for softened coconut oil. You can just barely taste the coconut and I really love it. I have tried making this recipe with both smooth and chunky peanut butter, and find I prefer smooth. I like soft, chewy peanut butter cookies. I have also tried to substitute the maple syrup for honey, but found they didn't turn out as sweet and delicious, so I will stick to maple syrup, or a combination of the two. Finally, I always refrigerate them for a couple of hours before baking them. I find it makes them more manageable to roll and squish them, and they spread less.

Unfortunately, I never thought to take many pictures of the first couple of times I made them. For some reason, I did take pictures of my lastest batches, where I've been making them in a rush and they haven't turned out as nicely. As you can see, I crammed a few too many on a cookie sheet this time, trying to save time. I also halved the recipe (it makes a lot of cookies) but spaced out part way through and added the normal amount of salt and baking soda. I also kind of forgot about them and left the dough in my fridge for three or four days...whoopsydaisy! Anyways, when I finally got around the baking them, they spread a lot more than usual and were very chewy--I just so happen to love chewy peanut butter cookies and probably ate like 6 of them in one go. Unfortunately, I am not sure which of my many mistakes made that happen...

Oh, What a Perfect Day! Featuring cornbread, peanut butter cups and banana "ice cream"

Today was the first day in a long time where I did not have any commitments, so I used it to try a bunch of recipes I've been interested in.

Maple Banana Cornbread

Cornbread was the first recipe of the day! Conditions were perfect...we were having ham for dinner (well, the rest of the family was), my dad loves cornbread (I've been trying to convince him to eat my baking) and I also had a ridiculous amount of extremely ripe bananas that I needed to use up. I had bookmarked this recipe a long time ago and decided today was the day!