Secret Recipe Club: Sweet Potato Rice Pudding

February 6, 2012 By

The Secret Recipe Club took a little break in January - which was kind of nice - but we are back in full swing now! Quick explanation for the uninitiated: we are each secretly assigned a different blog, and we choose a recipe from that blog to make and write about. (Sound like fun? Join the club here.)

This month, I was assigned Tea and Scones, written by Margaret, who loves trying out new recipes and sharing her adventures with the rest of us. She is an incredibly talented baker - look at this amazing Vienna Bread, and this Swedish Rye! Being on a buckwheat flour kick, I strongly considered making her Blueberry Buckwheat Pancakes but then I decided I wasn’t feeling up to the challenge of de-allergifying them (why, yes, I do believe I just made up a word!). Instead I went with her Pumpkin Rice Pudding.

I know; kind of a boring choice after all that amazing-ness, but what can I say?! We love us some rice pudding around here - for dessert AND for breakfast! And with pumpkin? Even better!

Only I didn’t have any pumpkin. Why yes, the queen of pumpkin was completely out of that commodity. I did, however, have plenty of sweet potato puree packed in the freezer, and sweet potato is orange, so sweet potato it was. Happy thought indeed! It was delicious. I even made a dairy-free version with rice milk that was just as good.

Sweet Potato Rice Pudding

Ingredients

  • 2 cups cooked brown rice
  • 3 cups milk (any kind)
  • 1 cup mashed sweet potato
  • 1/2 cup unrefined sugar or honey
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp freshly ground ginger
  • 1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
  • 1/4 tsp salt

Instructions

  1. Stir together all the ingredients in a 2qt casserole until well combined. Bake at 375F for 45-50 minutes or until bubbly. Remove from oven. Serve hot or cold; top with whipped cream if desired.


Since I had cooked rice and sweet potato in the freezer, this came together very QUICKly for me, but if you have to start those both from scratch, it can take a while.

It’s very EASY, though. It’s hard to mess up rice pudding! Well, as long as you can cook rice.

Rice is CHEAP, but rice pudding does take a lot of milk. That doesn’t stop me from making it, though!

It’s a very HEALTHY dessert and a passable breakfast (especially if made with honey rather than sugar). The sweet potato adds extra vitamins and fiber - as well as a lovely color and delicious flavor!

Sharing at Pennywise Platter, Superfood Sunday, and…

realfoodallergyfreeH2W



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19 Comments Filed Under: Breakfast, Dessert, Home, On The Table Tagged With: , ,

SRC: Triple (Yes, Triple!) Chocolate Banana Cookies.

December 5, 2011 By


As Raina of Connor’s Cooking says, “With this name, who wouldn’t want to make it?!” Not me! Or me. However that grammar goes. Point being, I wanted to make it!! So I did.

Welcome to another round of the Secret Recipe Club(Group A), folks! This is where we pick bloggers’ names out of a hat (digital style) and secretly cook up something from their blog. Meanwhile, some other merry blogger is secretly cooking from your blog, which makes Reveal Day (today!) so much fun. Definitely the highlight of my blogging calendar!

So in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I was assigned Connor’s Cooking for my secret blog this month, and had fun perusing Raina’s blog looking for the perfect recipe to try. Just like me, the kitchen is her favorite place to be, and it shows in the large quantity of recipes to browse through. Once I came across the words “triple chocolate“, though, there was no turning back. Chocolate is part of my creed. I refuse to believe anything except that chocolate is healthy, so don’t even try to tell me otherwise. Something so good must be good for me. Right?

Unfortunately for me, I had only one precious little egg sitting in my refrigerator when I set out to make this recipe, and I didn’t want to use it up in cookies. Weird, yes, but hear me out: I like to buy pastured eggs from a local farm, and those little babies cost over $4 a dozen! One does not use such pricey beauties casually! I prefer to eat them straight as part of a meal, and look for egg replacements whenever possible in my baking.

And replacing an egg is so much easier than you might think, which I have learned in the past couple years of baking egg-free (and dairy-free and wheat-free) goodies for my Certain Little Someone. I’ve got a few tricks tucked up my sleeve that keep me baking, egg or no.

The trick this time is banana. Banana goes so well with chocolate that it’s a perfect choice for an egg replacer in a recipe like this. I also decided to take Raina’s advice and double the recipe - double the triple chocolate sounded good to me!

One little problem: I forgot to double the sugar. Oops. The flavor wasn’t too bad, but I think additional sugar would have helped with the texture some. So I have kindly given you the appropriate amount of sugar in the following recipe.


Triple Chocolate Banana Cookies

from Connor’s Cooking

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1/2 cup palm shortening
  • 1 cup raw sugar
  • 1 banana, mashed
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 cup cocoa
  • 1/2 cup chocolate chips
  • 1/2 cup vanilla chips

Instructions

  1. In a mixer, beat together the butter, shortening and sugar until creamy. Add banana and vanilla, beat until well blended.
  2. In a separate bowl, whisk together flours, cocoa, and salt. Stir into liquid ingredients. Stir in chocolate chips.
  3. Drop by tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheets and bake at 350F for 10-12 minutes.


By the way, for the vanilla chips, I used Trader Joe’s brand, which is actually made with real milk, unlike other brands who essentially have created a chemical cocktail and called it “white chocolate”.

This is a great QUICK cookie recipe, just in time for these crazy holidays!

It’s also very EASY; nothin’ fancy goin’ on here, which is just how I like it.

Pretty CHEAP, over all, especially since I cheated on the egg!

HEALTHY-ish. It does have whole wheat flour, which is a plus. And a banana (although there is nothing unhealthy about an egg, so it’s not like that’s much of an improvement on the health scale). And, ummmm, well, that’s about all I can say for it. Enjoy in moderation, ‘K?



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Stuffed Shells… With Pumpkin, Naturally!

October 10, 2011 By

Even though I love stuffed shells - Who doesn’t? It’s pasta in a cute little package. - I have never actually made them, not even once in my entire life. I’ve collected quite a few recipes for different variations thereof - chicken, tuna, fish, and more - but I’ve never actually buckled down and really tried one of the recipes.

The only thing holding me back? The shells. I know, silly, right? For one thing, I usually prefer to buy pasta that is whole grain or semi-whole grain, and those varieties don’t usually come in the jumbo shell size. For another, I almost never buy anything at the grocery store unless it’s on sale, and for some reason, jumbo shell pasta never goes on sale. Soooo… I never bought shells, and therefore never made any stuffed shells.

pumpkin stuffed shells

The Secret Recipe Club this month was the impetus I needed to actually get to the store, buy some shells and try a stuffed shell recipe for once! Funny how a deadline will do that for you. I found an amazing recipe for butternut squash and sage cannelloni on my assigned blog, Katherine Martinelli, and knew instantly that it would work perfectly for my October theme of Pumpkins, Spice and Everything Nice.

What does that have to do with shells? Just do a mental leap with me from cannelloni to shells; it’s not really that far of a leap, both shapes of pasta having that desirable stuff-able quality. For one thing, my store didn’t have cannelloni, and for another, I decided to fulfill my lifelong dream of making stuffed shells.

And I did, only I didn’t use butternut squash, I used - and I know this just shocks you - pumpkin! And, um, I didn’t use sage either; I had a bottle of Chinese 5-spice in my cupboard that had been calling my name and seemed like the perfect enhancement for a savory pumpkin dish.

And, Katherine, I really did make your recipe, I swear it! But the adaptations didn’t end there. Since I am currently dairy-free right now, I had to come up with substitutions for the dairy products. What I used:

  • chicken broth instead of heavy cream
  • faux buttermilk instead of sour cream (I would have used plain non-dairy yogurt if I had it on hand)
  • extra-virgin olive oil for the butter
  • rice milk for the whole milk
  • mozzarella for my DH (because that’s what I had) instead of parmesan; no cheese for mine

I call my version of the Bechamel Sauce “Poor Man’s Bechamel”, not because rice milk is any cheaper than regular whole milk - unfortunately, that is not the case! - but because rice milk is a rather poor imitation of the real thing. If you drink cow’s milk, do yourself a favor and use that instead. But if you’re dairy-free for any reason, non-dairy milks make a fair representation of bechamel sauce.

pumpkin stuffed shells


Pumpkin Stuffed Shells with Chinese Five-Spice

adapted from Katherine Martinelli

Ingredients

Pumpkin Filling:

  • 2 small-medium pie pumpkins
  • 1/2 head garlic
  • 1 tsp Chinese Five-Spice Powder
  • 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
  • 1/2 cup “buttermilk” (milk or non-dairy milk with lemon juice) or plain yogurt or sour cream
  • salt and pepper to taste

Poor Man’s Bechamel:

  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1/4 cup flour
  • 4 cups rice milk
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp Chinese Five Spice Powder

Shells:

  • 6 oz. jumbo shells
  • 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese, optional

Instructions

  1. Use a sharp knife to poke holes in the pumpkin. Microwave for 1 or 2 minutes, and let cool. Using a sharp knife, cut each pumpkin in half; scoop out seeds and pulp. Place cut side down on a baking sheet. Wrap the garlic head in foil and place on the sheet with the pumpkins. Bake at 350F until pumpkin can easily be pierced with a paring knife, and garlic is cooked through, about half an hour.
  2. Scoop out the pumpkin flesh into a large bowl. Squeeze the roasted garlic, one clove at a time, into the bowl. Add Chinese Five-Spice Powder, and stir all together, mashing the pumpkin flesh as necessary until you have the texture you desire. (You can also use a stick blender to puree it.)
  3. Pour the pumpkin mixture into a pot, and stir in the broth and buttermilk or yogurt. Bring to a boil; then simmer until desired thickness and consistency is achieved. Salt and pepper to taste; set aside.
  4. Heat oil in a large deep skillet over medium-low heat; add flour one TBSP at a time, whisking until well blended. Slowly stir in rice milk until it is incorporated. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly and simmer until for about 10-15 minutes. Stir in seasonings.
  5. Cook and drain shells according to package directions.
  6. Spread a thin layer of the bechamel sauce in a 9×13 and a square pan. Place the shells on the sauce. Gently stuff each shell with a spoonful or two of the pumpkin filling. Spoon the remaining bechamel sauce over all the stuffed shells. Bake at 350F for about 20 minutes; add mozzarella cheese if using, and bake for 5 minutes or until cheese is melted and lightly browned.


I absolutely love Katherine’s whole concept of using squash as the filling for the pasta, and my next butternut squash is going to go to making this recipe with her chosen flavors of squash, sage, and nutmeg.

pumpkin stuffed shells

This is not my normal QUICK dinner recipe, which is what I love about the SRC: It forces you to step outside of your comfort zone on occasion and try something new.

It’s also not super EASY, with the multiple steps. Katherine’s cookery is a lot fancier than my usual lazy style, but I also love to have recipes like this for special occasions and guests.

It’s not CHEAP, either, that’s for sure. Like I said, pasta shells are not usually in the budget, and I had to use a whole carton of rice milk for the bechamel. Totally worth it, though!

As far as pasta recipes go, though, it’s pretty HEALTHY with the super-food pumpkin serving as the main component.

Does the Secret Recipe Club Sound like fun? Read more about it here.



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SRC: Chocolate Banana Cinnamon Roll Muffins

September 12, 2011 By

Welcome to the September edition of the Secret Recipe Club, where we get to secretly snoop out a fellow foodie blog and try new recipes on the sly. Today is the grand reveal, when we all find out who was snooping around our blog and trying out our recipes! I look forward to it all month long; it’s almost like Christmas once a month!

This month, I had the pleasure of snooping around Dinners, Dishes and Desserts, written by Erin, a SAHM to a little boy, and a “Midwest girl who loves to cook and bake”. She has a lot of Asian inspired recipes that I strongly considered, like Asian Meatballs for example, but in the end I went for a sweet breakfast treat. Silly of me, for someone who blogs about “healthy food”, I know! I had a good reason, though: I was attending a bridal shower brunch, and I purposely signed up to bring a baked good so that I knew there would be something there that I could eat (dairy-free and egg-free). And not that you care, but I’m glad I did, because pretty much I ended up eating my muffin and a ton of fruit! (mentally patting myself on the back for my think-ahead smarts)

Oh, which breakfast treat did I make, you ask? I started with Erin’s Cinnamon Roll Muffins (by the way, she has lots of awesome muffin recipes, this is just one of many that I considered!). Now, Cinnamon Roll Muffins would be perfect just like that, but I added my own special twist and turned them into Chocolate Banana Cinnamon Roll Muffins. I suppose a little over the top… but so worth it!

Here are the specific changes I made:

  • I replaced the egg with banana, mostly because I was getting a little tired of using flax gel as a substitute, but also because I wanted to add a little banana flavor. Smart move; the result was a delicious and flavorful muffin!
  • I used raw sugar instead of brown sugar, and reduced the amount of sugar in the filling (you know, so I can pretend it’s healthy).
  • I used part white whole wheat flour. See, healthy!
  • Added a little cocoa and doubled the cinnamon in the filling.
  • Swapped out the powdered sugar glaze for a decadent chocolate glaze that took the muffins over the top.


Chocolate Banana Cinnamon Roll Muffins

Ingredients

Dough:

  • ½ cup raw sugar
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ½ tsp vanilla
  • 1 banana, mashed
  • 1 cup buttermilk*
  • 1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
  • 1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

Filling:

  • 2 TBSP butter, melted
  • 1/2 cup raw sugar
  • 1 TBSP cocoa
  • 2 tsp cinnamon

Glaze:

  • 2 TBSP palm shortening (or softened butter)
  • 2 TBSP cocoa
  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • 2+ TBSP hot water

Instructions

Dough:

  1. Whisk together the sugar, baking soda and salt. Add banana and vanilla; stir together. Add buttermilk and stir again. Add flour and stir until blended. Place dough on a floured countertop and knead gently for about a minute until you have a soft roll-able dough. Roll the dough into a large rectangle.

Filling:

  1. Stir together all filling ingredients and spread over dough with a pastry brush or small silicone spatula.

Assembly:

  1. Roll the dough and filling up jelly-roll style. Slice into 12 pieces (I measured about 2-3 finger widths for each one), and place cut side up in lined muffin tin (or silicone muffin pan).

Bake:

  1. Bake at 375F for 15 minutes. Allow to cool in pan for a few minutes. Place a sheet of wax paper under a wire cooling rack; gently place slightly cooled muffins on wire rack to cool completely.

Glaze:

  1. Stir together the shortening, cocoa and powdered sugar in a small bowl with a fork until crumbly. Add hot water, 1 TBSP at a time, until you have achieved the desired consistency (mine took 2 1/2 TBSP). Drizzle over cooled muffins. Allow time to set before serving.


*I just added some lemon juice to non-dairy milk.
Considering that you have to roll out the dough and do the whole cinnamon roll, thing, this is not as QUICK as most muffin recipes.
It is much EASY-er, though, than regular cinnamon rolls, but with much of the same flavor, if not exactly the texture.
It’s pretty CHEAP, using mostly basic pantry ingredients that most people have on hand.

As for HEALTHY, well, no, not really. I feel good about the healthy swaps I made, but in the end, it’s still a treat that should be reserved for special occasions. Like bridal shower brunches, for example. Anybody getting married?

Want to join in on the Secret Recipe Club fun? It’s easy; just follow the instructions here . Many thanks to Amanda of Amanda’s Cookin‘ for organizing all of this, and hosting Group A this week!

I’m also posting at Your Recipe, My Kitchen, Sweet Indulgences Sunday, and These Chicks Cooked.

Check out the other Secret Recipe Club reveals below:



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28 Comments Filed Under: Bread, Breakfast, Home, On The Table Tagged With: ,

Gluten Free Vegan Samosas

August 15, 2011 By

I swear, it’s like having Christmas every month! Only the presents are all new friends and new foods to try… my kind of Christmas!
Secret Recipe Club
Just in case you’ve forgotten, the Secret Recipe Club, created by Amanda of Amanda’s Cookin’, is a group of bloggers who are assigned a blog from which to secretly browse and choose a new recipe to try, then write a post about it at the appointed time. My assignment this month was Gluten Free A-Z, written by Judee, who creates all kinds of gluten-free vegetarian dishes using healthy ingredients.

I was particularly pleased to find that many of her recipes were also dairy-free and egg-free, a plus for my Certain Little Someone who is allergic to both those things, plus wheat, and 4 other foods. It was easy to find several recipes on Judee’s blog to try, but I settled on her samosas. (I admit I was lured in by the tag line of “Quick, Easy and Delicious”!)

Back in the days when I taught other people’s children instead of my own, I had a co-worker whose mom occasionally would make huge batches of samosas and send them in with him to share. All of us teachers looked forward to those randomly occurring events and would devour the samosas almost instantly, leaving not even a trace of a crumb behind. I admit this version only faintly hints of those delicious treats, owing mostly to its gluten-free properties, as well as the fact that I didn’t have any cumin seeds or curry powder (I know, seriously. Who tries to make samosas without those ingredients? Um, me! In my defense, I thought I had curry powder before I started cooking and was halfway through before realizing I didn’t.)

The end result was a resemblance of the original, and tasty in its own right, but not authentic by any means. And I’m OK with that. I’m all for authenticity, but one’s insistence on that wears thin after a few years of dealing with allergen-free substitutes. The crust was kind of hard on the top surface, but surprisingly flaky and soft underneath; and the filling was mild (due to the lack of appropriate spices) and intriguingly sweet with just a hint of Indian flavor. With the proper ingredients, it would have been perfect. Ahem.

The pastry crust was rather difficult to work with, which is why I suspect Judee said she was still on the lookout for a good pastry recipe. In the end, it worked out pretty well, even better than I expected, but it did require gentle handling, lots of rice flour sprinkles, and wet fingertips. And of course, like a good little gluten-free egg-free dairy-free pastry recipe, it cracked all over the place on top while it baked, and I thought that brushing some water on top would solve that problem. It did, but then the water dripped down and sealed the dough to the pan, so that when I went to remove it, I had to bull-doze through the samosas and cracked the crust anyway.

Judee doesn’t specify which GF flour to use, but I thought it appropriate to use at least some chickpea flour, since it’s a flour native to India and therefore, would seem to fit right in. You can use whatever wheat flour or GF flour blend you desire.

{Scroll past the pictures for a printable version of the recipe.}

 

Assemble ingredients before beginning, so you have everything at hand when you need it.

Love the gorgeous spices! (would be even more gorgeous with curry powder!)

Chop all the vegetables into small pieces and pile them in a bowl.

 

Saute the veggies until softened.

Roll out two circles of dough; place 1/4 cup of vegetable filling in the middle of one.

 

Place the extra circle on top of the filling.

Use wet fingers to seal the edges of the dough rounds together.

 

Gluten-Free Vegan Samosas

Ingredients

For the crust:

  • 1 cup chickpea (garbanzo bean, or besan) flour
  • 1 cup brown rice flour
  • 1/2 cup tapioca starch
  • 1 cup coconut milk yogurt
  • 1/2 tsp salt

For the filling:

  • 2 medium potatoes, cooked and cubed
  • 1/2 cup chopped carrots, steamed
  • 1 TBSP cumin seeds, toasted
  • 1/2 cup onion, chopped small
  • 3/4 cup tomatoes, chopped small
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1 TBSP grated fresh ginger
  • 1 tsp turmeric
  • 1 tsp curry powder
  • 1 tsp cumin
  • dash of cayenne pepper
  • 1 TBSP fresh chopped cilantro (or 1 tsp dried)
  • 2 TBSP olive oil
  • 2 TBSP raisins, soaked for 20 minutes

Instructions

For the crust:

  1. Mix all ingredients together until it forms a soft ball. Refrigerate if too soft to handle. Divide dough into 8 balls. Divide each of those balls in half and roll each half into a circle.

For the filling:

  1. Mash potatoes and mix with the carrots. Set aside.
  2. Mix together remaining ingredients except for raisins. Heat additional oil in frying pan, and add onion mixture, sauteeing until vegetables are softened. Remove from heat, and mix together the sauteed vegetables with the mashed potato mixture. Stir in raisins.

To assemble:

  1. Place 1/4 cup of filling in the middle of pastry round. Use a spatula to lift another pastry round and set it gently on top. Working gently with the dough, fold it up around the filling, pressing the seam carefully closed with wet fingers. Carefully move each samosa onto a greased baking sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes at 350F until browned.


Despite the lengthy ingredient list and instructions, it doesn’t really take as long as you would think, but it’s not the QUICKest recipe I’ve ever made either.

I wouldn’t classify it as EASY, especially with the gluten-free and dairy-free substitutions.

It makes a great CHEAP non-meat-based meal that I would include in my recipe rotation if it weren’t for the fact that my DH doesn’t really like Indian spices (I know, seriously. What’s his problem, anyway?).

It’s definitely HEALTHY, with all those nutrient-packed veggies and antioxidant-rich spices. Even the crust is made with wholesome ingredients, so it’s a win all around in that department!

All in all, I was pleased with the success of my first attempt at samosas, gluten-free flour issues and all! They are much easier than I ever would have thought, even if they don’t come close to the “real” thing. I will definitely be making these again - even if my DH won’t enjoy them, my Certain Little Someone and I will have them all to ourselves at lunch time!

Check out what the other Secret Recipe Club bloggers were up to this month:

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SRC: Roasted Banana Ice Cream

July 18, 2011 By

Welcome to Ice Cream Week here at Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy!

Ice cream is the topic of the hour, all week long. I’ve got some sorbets to share, plus some fun ice cream flavors I’ve been experimenting with, and some other ideas for what to do with all the ice cream you make.(Note: All the recipes are intentionally dairy-free; but with the exception of the sorbets can be made with regular old cow’s milk and cream should you desire.) Come back every day this week for a new recipe!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s time again, folks, for the Secret Recipe Club, something I’ve looked forward to all month long! If you weren’t around for the last one, the Secret Recipe Club is where we are each secretly assigned another blog to browse, choose a recipe, make it and post about it. Kudos to Amanda, who organized this great event and manages it so well every month!

I do apologize, but this is another series of pictures I took that is on a memory card in a location yet to be determined. Which stinks, because those pictures were pretty good if I remember correctly!

My assigned blog this month was Join Us Pull Up a Chair (love the name!). I did indeed pull up a chair and enjoy myself browsing through Heather‘s collection of recipes, pulled from her “stacks and stacks” of magazines (I can so relate, Heather!). Although I drooled (at least mentally) over many of her recipes, I finally decided to go with her Bananas Foster Ice Cream Recipe, which is, in fact, what got me started on Ice Cream Week this week (Thanks, Heather, for the inspiration!).

I have decided that bananas in ice cream really add such a creamy quality, even after the ice cream has been sitting in the freezer for a few days. Most homemade ice cream tends to be rock hard, but I find that ice cream with bananas can be so creamy and delicious no matter when you decide to dig into it. It’s too bad that bananas have such a distinctive flavor, or I would add them to every batch of ice cream!

The good thing about this ice cream recipe is that the bananas are the star, so you can let their flavor shine unabashedly. I stuck to Heather’s basic recipe, but I used coconut milk (because of Baby Boy’s allergy) and added some chocolate. Because as good as banana ice cream is, it’s even better with chocolate.


Banana Chocolate Ice Cream

Ingredients

  • 3 medium bananas, peeled
  • 1/3 cup raw sugar
  • 1 TBSP butter, cut in pieces
  • 1 1/2 cups milk (or coconut milk)
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 1/2 tsp lemon juice
  • 1/4 tsp sea salt
  • 1/2 cup chocolate chips
  • 1 tsp coconut oil

Instructions

  1. Slice bananas into 1/2″ pieces and stir together with sugar and butter. Bake in a casserole dish at 400F for 40 minutes, stirring once, until bananas are browned and cooked through.
  2. Remove from oven, and add remaining ingredients, except for chocolate chips and coconut oil. Blend well with an immersion blender until smooth, then cool for several hours or overnight in the refrigerator.
  3. Pour into ice cream machine according to machine’s instructions.
  4. When the ice cream is close to the desired consistency, melt the chocolate chips in the microwave at 30-second intervals, stirring each time. When melted, stir in the oil. Pour the melted chocolate into the ice cream mixture while the machine is continuing to churn. Once all the chocolate has been added, remove ice cream into a freezer-safe container and freeze for a few hours before serving. Or eat it soft-serve as it is (I dare you to try to restrain yourself!).


Roasting bananas adds a little time to this recipe, so it’s not the QUICKest one in my repertoire. If you have a little extra time, however, it’s totally worth it, both for the texture and the taste.

It does have added steps of melting chocolate and roasting bananas, but it’s still pretty EASY. Roasting bananas and melting chocolate chips are not complicated tasks.

It’s pretty CHEAP, though, especially if you have some extra bananas that need eating before they go bad (which to be honest, is rarely a problem around here because the 4 people in this house go through bananas like crazy!).

It’s a pretty HEALTHY ice cream recipe: not THE healthiest, but fairly healthy. I did reduce the sugar by just a bit, but then I totally ruined that by adding chocolate chips. Chocolate has antioxidants, though, so it’s all good.



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Secret Recipe Club: “Clifford” Bars

June 13, 2011 By

It’s time again for the Secret Recipe Club, the part of the show where the bloggers come out and sing their favorite song. Um, I mean blog about their favorite recipe from another blog that has previously (and secretly) been assigned. Which is even more fun.

I was thrilled to be assigned to This Chick Cooks, This Chick being the fabulous Katie, who delivers lots of amazing culinary concoctions on a regular basis, my favorites being the ones that are inspired by store-bought treats and eats.

I’ve made a few of her recipes before and loved them; I even blogged about my allergen-free version of her Better-Than-Nutrigrain Bars, which were fabulous (and I need to make those again; just thinking about them makes me drool a bit).

This time around, I kind of went the same route, choosing another granola-bar-like recipe, her Homemade Clif bars, and adapting it to be allergen-free. I just eliminated the nuts, and switched out the peanut butter for sunflower seed butter, so it’s easy enough to make those changes if you desire.

Oh, and apparently, to a toddler, “Clif bars” just doesn’t cut it. No. They are “Clifford” bars. I am not sure why since they are neither big nor red nor a dog, but… that is what my Certain Little Someone called them and so that is what they are.


Allergen-Free “Clifford” Bars

Ingredients

  • 1 cup puffed rice
  • 1 cup oats
  • 3 TBSP ground flaxseed
  • 1/2 cup chopped dried mango
  • 1/4 cup honey
  • 2 TBSP raw sugar
  • 1/3 cup sunflower seed butter
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1/2 tsp dried ginger

Instructions

  1. Mix together the grains and fruit in a large bowl. In a small saucepan, bring the honey and sugar to a boil. Remove from the heat, and stir in the sunflower seed butter, vanilla and ginger. Pour over dry ingredients and stir until well combined. Press into a mini-muffin tin, or into a square pan. Refrigerate.

Preparation time: 10 minute(s)

Cooking time: o

The fact that these are no-bake makes them so QUICK! A nice alternative to traditional granola bars.

They are also super EASY!

It is definitely CHEAPer to make these than to buy their counterpart at the store, that’s for sure.

And, they are relatively HEALTHY as well. I feel good about giving them as a snack for my Certain Little Someone, especially if they take the place of a cookie or other sugary snack, because of the added nutritional elements like the dried fruit and whole grains.



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37 Comments Filed Under: Breakfast, Home, On The Table, Snacks Tagged With:

Secret Recipe Club and Sunbutter Surprises

May 16, 2011 By

This is my first time joining in the fun as part of the Secret Recipe Club, a fabulous blogging event kind of like Secret Santa, whereby each blogger is secretly assigned to blog about a recipe from another blogger, and all posts are unveiled at exactly the same time. I have no idea (yet) who is blogging about a recipe from my blog, and Dana at Food For Thought has no idea that I’ve been searching through all her recipes, trying to pick just one to try out for the grand reveal.

I was greatly intrigued by her incredible collection of internationally inspired recipes, and almost chose several of them. In the end, though, I settled on a sweet treat that presented a challenge to me: Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies. The whole idea of the cookie fascinated me, as the only ingredients are peanut butter, sugar, cinnamon and egg, topped with a Hershey’s kiss.

The challenging part came in the form of our dietary restrictions around here, due to allergies on the part of the little people. I wanted to make this cookie safe enough for both me and my son, which meant that I had to make it without:

  • peanut butter
  • egg
  • Hershey’s kisses

(Side note: I don’t think Hershey knows how to make chocolate without milk… even their dark chocolate products all have milk in them! Pffbbtt! Not that it really matters because I almost never buy chocolate candy anyway, but still.)

So exactly how does one make a recipe where 3 out of the 5 ingredients must be eliminated or substituted?

Turns out it was pretty easy.

I actually made these three times, each time slightly different, and each time delicious, but the best was the first attempt, and the recipe I give you below. I substituted:

  • sunflower seed butter for the peanut butter
  • flax gel for the egg
  • chocolate chips (dairy-free) for the Hershey’s kisses.

And instead of topping the cookie with the chocolate, I tucked a few chocolate chips inside it, taking them from Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies to Sunbutter Surprises.


It really is rather amazing that this conglomeration of ingredients actually forms a roll-able dough that bakes up perfectly! If you’re skeptical, try it for yourself. Then you’ll be eating cookie after cookie after cookie just to make sure they really did turn out as well as you thought after the first one. Not that I’m speaking from experience, of course. I would never eat that many cookies.


Sunbutter Surprises

1 TBSP ground flax seed

3 TBSP hot water

1 cup sunflower seed butter

1 cup raw sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

approx. 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Mix together the flax seed and water in a small bowl and set aside. In a large mixing bowl, beat together the sunflower seed butter and the sugar until well blended and smooth. Beat in cinnamon and flax gel. Roll dough into small balls, then push a few chocolate chips into the dough, rolling again around the chocolate chips until they are hidden. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 350F for about 10 minutes or until tops begin to crack. Cool for a minute or two before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

You can, of course, use peanut butter instead of the sunflower seed butter, and a real egg instead of the flax gel. If you want, you can even top with Hershey’s kisses instead of rolling chocolate chips inside.

However, I would not recommend toying with the sugar amount or attempting to use any other kind of chocolate on the inside. When I reduced the sugar even by just 1/4 cup, the consistency was too crumbly and the resulting cookie didn’t hold together quite as well. Which is a bummer, because that’s a lot of sugar, so these cookies are definitely relegated to special treat status. Also, I was out of chocolate chips the second time I wanted to try these, so I attempted to make my own… big mistake. The chocolate chips themselves were moderately successful, but they melted all over the place and seeped out of the cookie, making a big mess and a not very yummy final result.

One other thing: I had the most success with Trader Joe’s sunflower seed butter, which is unfortunate, because it has added sugar. I also tried these with the Maranatha brand, which is more natural and has no sugar, but it was for some reason too dry. I tried adding a little coconut oil to make up for that, but the consistency still didn’t come out right.

For a rolled cookie, these come together very QUICKly, aided, I am sure, by the minimal number of ingredients.

Despite the unorthodox ingredient list, these really are very EASY.

Not CHEAP by any stretch, though, considering the cost of sunflower seed butter. Regular peanut butter is a different story, as you can find it on sale with coupons for $1 or less. I suppose I could reduce the cost by making my own sunflower seed butter, but I don’t think I have a powerful enough grinder/food processor/blender.

It’s not really HEALTHY, either, because of the sugar.

Ingredient Spotlight

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