Sunday 20 April 2014

Cashew-Almond Chocolate Easter Eggs

This time of the year is hard for me.  I struggle with the insane amount of chocolate everywhere.  It's like all of it is calling my name at the grocery store, in the checkout aisles and on the back counter at work.  I have a life-long love for chocolate, especially the extremely dark stuff, but like any long term relationship, sometimes things get a little out of control or over the top.  To me a good piece of chocolate is more than just a fine quality product, it just speaks to me and understands me in ways only a true love can.  To keep a flame like that going you need to take it easy sometimes and take a break from one another or just keep it casual, which is usually pretty hard for me. I rush into things, eating as much chocolate as I can, much like a sixteen year old girl falling head over heels in love.

Since I started eating the way I do (no refined sugars, no gluten, no legumes etc) I've been able to cut back my chocolate intake by quite a bit, that is until I figured out I could make amazing chocolate at home from scratch with only a few ingredients.  Making homemade chocolates is a lot of fun since you can play around with flavours and sweetness, but it means there are a lot of bowls to be licked clean once you're done!

This Easter I decided to make nut butter eggs after having a heated debate with someone about Reese's peanut butter cups.  I personally don't eat peanut butter anymore, but when I did, I still hated Reese's. Something about the filling was off to me so I would always try and pawn them off on my brother after we finished our Easter egg hunt or after trick or treating on Halloween.

If you're like me and agree that the Reese's egg isn't all that it's cracked up to be (sorry about the egg pun), then give these bad boys a try.  They're like Reese's older cousin who is just a little more sophisticated, slightly more accomplished and secretly the favourite in the family.


Happy Easter!

*Note: I was inspired to make a healthy version of The Brown Eyed Baker's recipe available here: http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2012/04/03/homemade-peanut-butter-eggs/




Cashew-Almond Chocolate Easter Eggs

To make Cashew-Almond butter:

1/2 cup cashews, lightly toasted
1/4 cup almond meal
1-2 tbs honey, to taste
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 vanilla
1 tbs coconut oil

To make filling:

1/2 cup homemade cashew-almond butter
4 tbs grass fed butter
5 tbs coconut palm sugar
4 tbs arrowroot powder


To make chocolate:

(You can also make from scratch using cacao powder, cacao butter and some sugar, but this works just as well)

75g 100% Organic Fair Trade Soy Free chocolate (I used Camino)
1-2 Tbs Raw Cacao Butter
1 tsp honey
1 tsp coconut palm sugar


In a food processor, combine almond flour and cashews until a paste forms. 3-5 min.  Add in oil.  You may need to add a bit more if your mix is crumbly and doesn't take on a smooth consistency.  Add honey salt and vanilla and blend 1 more minute. Store additional nut butter or eat immediately!

In a saucepan combine nut butter, butter and sugar.  Melt until a creamy mixture has formed.  Remove from heat and add in arrowroot powder.  Form into ball and place in fridge until set.

Once set, prepare your dipping chocolate by placing chocolate and cacao butter in a glass oven-proof bowl.

If you are using a mould to create your chocolates, skip to the next step. If you're like me and left this to the last minute only to find out that Michaels was sold out of chocolate egg moulds, simply roll the chilled filling into egg shapes and place on parchment. (Apparently I am no artist when it comes to rolling eggs so I don't have a photo of the end result.  Plus they somehow disappeared too quickly for me to take a good photo)

Set chocolate mixture over a pot of simmering water and melt.  Add in sugars until desired sweetness level is achieved (remember the filling is quite sweet).  Remove from heat and "temper" by stirring and letting the chocolate run off the spoon from a high height back into the bowl. This allows the mixture to cool down and creates a better "cracking" when you bite into your chocolate.

After a few minutes you can line the moulds with a small amount of chocolate and spread to cover the mould with a small pastry brush. Place in fridge for a minute or two then drop and spread a small amount of the filling in the egg and cover with chocolate to seal. Let set.  Or for us rogues who don't use moulds, dip your little eggs in the chocolate and place on a piece of parchment to dry.  Let rest until set and hard.  Store in the fridge.







Wednesday 9 April 2014

Vanilla Bean Macadamia Nut Butter

My dad turned 60 over the weekend.  Quite the big deal if you ask me.  But he's not a big deal kind of guy, so we kept it low key and took him out for a nice dinner at one of his favourite seafood restaurants in downtown Vancouver.  We had an amazing meal, with wonderfully creative dishes like torched hamachi with jalapenos, a candied salmon salad and a beautifully plated piece of sturgeon with crispy puffed black rice.  All in all I would say it was a success of a birthday.    

     

My father isn't a huge fan of cakes, but he sure loves to snack. He loves tropical flavours like pineapple, coconut and lime. (As bad as they are, the coconut cashews from Trader Joe's are his kryptonite)  Since he has been on a little bit of a health kick lately, I promised I would make him a healthier version of a key lime pie sometime soon, but for our little dinner outing he needed something to open.  Making thoughtful gifts means more than stuff to my family, so I went with a delicious and decadent nut butter.  On a family trip to Hawaii my father couldn't get enough macadamias and is still thrilled when people bring them back for him, so I decided that macadamia nut butter would be perfect.  He was so happy to open the little package and find a dainty jar full of buttery goodness.  I warned him not to go crazy with the stuff though, since this butter is extremely rich!




Vanilla Bean Macadamia Nut Butter

Makes 1 small mason jar full

2 handfuls raw organic macadamia nuts
2 tbs honey 
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
1/2 tsp salt


Optional: add 1-2 TBS coconut cream (from the top of the can) to make even smoother


Put nuts in food processor and grind until a paste forms. This happens quite quickly with macadamias since they are almost pure fat.  Add sweetener, vanilla bean, salt and milk if using.  Blend until the desired consistency has been reached, 2-4 minutes.  


The flavour is mild and buttery, with just enough sweetness to be eaten on its own.  Enjoy on toast, right off the spoon, or for me, on a crisp little cookie.


Saturday 5 April 2014

Coconut Flour Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies

The science behind baking has always fascinated me.  To a kid, adding a mix of ingredients together to make something complete new and delicious was magical, but I never really liked all the rules you had to follow.

As a child my home revolved around what was happening in the kitchen.  Both my brother and I spent a lot of time watching my mother cook.  The oldest child of three, she grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan where she would prepare a lot of the meals for her family.  My mother was raised on an all organic, free range meat, non-GMO diet before it was the cool thing to do.  Using her knowledge from her childhood, she would create amazing meals in our kitchen without a recipe in sight, with an almost perfect turnout. There were a couple memorable fails though, like the most bitter artichoke soup I have every tasted to this day. (Note to self, if I ever make an artichoke soup, it is best done by using the hearts only, rather than boiling the entire thistle, including the stem and petals.)  We were raised to love and appreciate good healthy food, which I still thank her for on a regular basis. 

Her baking however, wasn't quite as stellar. I don't mean any disrespect to my wonderful mother, to whom I owe almost all of my knowledge of the kitchen, but aside from her amazing lemon chiffon cakes topped with a thick layer of 7 minute frosting, her baking always required some "adjusting", to put it lightly.  My brother and I got creative though, softening rock hard cookies in the microwave or dunking them in milk to add to the browned and burnt flavour of her chocolate chip or ginger cookies. 

After one rock hard cookie too many, I decided to take the baking in that house into my own hands. I followed recipes with extreme caution, levelling teaspoons of soda and sifting flour to perfection.  I was rewarded with cakes and cookies which received rave reviews from friends and family.  My brother became my toughest critic.  If he ate them, knew it was good.

As my baking skills improved, my creativity felt stifled by the strictness of the recipes I followed.  I began to grow tired of my go-to recipes so I did what any curious baker would do - I started to make them up!  It started out quite innocent at first; a little less flour here, a little more vanilla there, but baking became much more fun when I started to throw recipes together based on my knowledge alone. Unfortunately, my success rate declined with all of my improvisation.  Sure, there were some fabulous desserts that made their way out of my oven, but also far too many epic fails to count.  The lack of success ate away at my motivation, which, combined with a more sedentary lifestyle after leaving the world of swimming,  caused me to lose my passion for baking. 

On to the present, where I swim for fun, coach an amazing team of young synchronized swimmers (yes you read that right) and lift on a regular basis.  In the past 12 months I've made a few major changes to my diet, along with many little ones that weren't that hard to give up.  I steer clear of refined sugars, most dairy products, gluten, legumes, processed foods and hydrogenated oils.  If you're interested in a baseline of the diet I follow, follow this link to learn more (http://www.bulletproofexec.com/the-complete-illustrated-one-page-bulletproof-diet/).  I didn't have to change my diet drastically as I ate quite similarly before hand, but we will save that for another post. 

The biggest challenge with my diet change was dessert.  I am a sucker for anything chocolate and a good chewy cookie.  Store bought gluten free baking didn't cut it, which typically contains a whole lot of potato flour, refined sugars and other yucky things.  Cut up fruit topped with nuts or coconut was boring, as were most desserts that the internet deems to be healthy and "paleo".  Frustrated and hungry, I wanted to know why you couldn't find a recipe that was made from a small list of good ingredients that would do your body good.  Dessert shouldn't be about sneaking a treat that harms the body, it should be about eating something tasty without worrying about where the residual effects will show up the next time you rock a swimsuit.  I knew I had to do something about it, since my chocolate and dessert cravings simply cannot be curbed.  That's why I started baking the way I bake.  Life should taste good and leave you energized. So snack away at these cookies, no guilt required. 



Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies

These little cookies are soft and chewy, with a spiciness that builds as you go along.  I like my cookies to be intense in flavour, so I've spiced them quite heavily. Taste them as you go, you never know how spicy you might want them!

Makes 12-15 cookies

1/2 cup grass-fed butter
3/4 cup coconut palm sugar
2 eggs at room temp.
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tbs maple syrup or honey

1/2 cup coconut flour
2 - 3 tbs almond flour
1/3 cup cocoa (or raw cacao)
2 - 3 tsp cinnamon
2 - 3 tsp cayenne ( I like em spicy)
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt if using unsalted butter
1/2 tsp soda
1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 - 3/4 cup 70% dark chocolate or a dark chili chocolate bar, chopped. (try to find chocolate without soy lecithin)

Preheat oven to 350. (My gas range is extremely hot so I bake everything at 300, so try a test cookie at 325 or 350)

Whip butter until pale and fluffy in a stand mixer or by hand if you want a really good arm workout. Approx. 3 - 4 minutes. Add sugar and whip another minute. Add in eggs, vanilla and honey. 

Sift together coconut flour, almond flour, cocoa, spices and sodas.  Add to wet ingredients at low speed in your mixer. Once combined, dough should look firm yet still quite pliable. Add in chocolate chunks and mix until just combined. 

Roll into 1.5 - 2 inch balls and arrange on a tray lined with parchment.  Press down to make circular cookies. Bake for 8-10 minutes.

Let cool on cookie rack. Enjoy with coffee or hot chocolate :)