Tag Archives: healthier

Coconut Flour Muffins

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I had a pumpkin that was rapidly approaching its ‘best by’ date so I pureed it through the food mill and then looked for recipes to consume the product (being – allegedly – summer, I wasn’t leaning towards soups) I also had a bag of coconut that was had yet to contribute meaningfully to my Green Journey. This recipe from Small Footprint Family helped solve part of my problem…

The Makin’s

  • 6 eggs, room temperature
  • 4 tablespoons of coconut oil or butter, melted
  • 1/2 cup of pumpkin puree
  • 1 cup of honey
  • 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon of ground mace or pumpkin spice
  • 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon of vanilla
  • 1/2 cup of sifted coconut flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder

The Making

Blend together the eggs, coconut oil, pumpkin puree, sweetener, cinnamon, mace, salt and vanilla.

Add the coconut flour and baking powder and blend into a batter until there are no lumps.

Pour the batter into greased muffin cups.

Decorate the muffin tops with a pecan or shredded coconut. I skipped this because I was in a hurry.

Bake at 400 degrees F for 18 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Insights

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Tasted OK.

Would have tasted better with a topping.

A bit heavy for my liking but my last exploration with coconut flour had a similar effect – I’m not sure if that is inherent in that sort of flour of if it’s just me..

No Cheese Cheese Cake #2

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My original intention for the ‘welcome back, firefighter‘ dessert had been to create two different ones but the logistics of that just didn’t pan out that Tuesday bake night…The filling had left me with quite an amount of greek yogurt and condensed milk _ which I don’t normally use that often – still to consume…

My selection for my second no cheese cheesecake was the New World Raw Blueberry Cheesecake slice but it didn’t use any of the greek yogurt of condensed milk that I still needed to burn up. I thought that this mousse from La Cocina Mexicana de Pily woulld make a good topping.

The base

  • ¾ cup (100 g) raw cashews
  • 1 cup (100 g) ground almonds
  • ½ cup (70 g) raisins
  • 2 cups (160 g) desiccated coconut
  • 3 tbsp coconut oil, melted

Grease a 20 cm x 30 cm slice tin and line with non-stick baking paper.I couldn’t find a slice tin and hand to make do with this:

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I worried all day that the base would disintegrate into a crumbly disaster when we served it up but it set hard and strong.

Place the cashews in a food processor and pulse in bursts until they turn into a fine, sandy, flour-like consistency, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl often.

When ready, add the ground almonds and pulse to combine. Add the raisins and pulse until lightly blended. Add the desiccated coconut and pulse again. In the future, I’ll just sub in the meal leftover from nut milks for the almond and coconut.

Lastly, add the coconut oil, blending until well combined.

Press the mixture into the prepared tin in an even layer.

Place in the refrigerator for 10 minutes to firm up.

The filling

  • ¼ cup (35 g) raw cashews
  • 6 tbsp (90 ml) lemon juice
  • 2 tbsp almond butter
  • 2 tbsp coconut cream
  • ½ cup maple syrup
  • ½ cup (70 g) frozen blueberries, defrosted
  • ½ tsp vanilla extract
  • ½ cup coconut oil, melted

 

Place the cashews in the food processor. Pulse in bursts until the nuts turn into a fine, sandy, flour-like consistency.

Add all the remaining ingredients except the coconut oil, and pulse again until combined.

Add the coconut oil and blend until well combined. Pour the mixture over the base.

The topping

  • 2 tablespoons unflavored gelatin
  • 1/2 cups hot water
  • 300mls of greek yoghurt
  • 100 grams condensed milk
  • 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
Puree the yogurt, condensed milk, and vanilla extract in a blender until smooth. I reduced the quantities of these items proportion to the amount of yogurt that was leftover.
Dissolve the gelatin in the hot water. I forgot to reduce these ingredients as I did the others so the amount of gelatin was about four times what it should have been. The topping was thus a tab rubbery but still tasted alright.
Add this to the blender and puree again.

Place in the refrigerator overnight to set. Once set, it will keep for 4–5 days in the refrigerator in an airtight container. Cut into slices when ready to serve.

The topping not used

The mousse recipe included a berry topping to be poured over the top but I was a bit rushed on Wednesday afternoon before fire training and didn’t get it done…next time…

  • 300 grams mixed berries
  • 3 teaspoons sugar
  • water (as needed)

Puree the berries, sugar, and water in the blender until smooth.

Pour over the top just before serving…

‘No Cheese’ Cheese Cake #1

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Our brigade is a foodie brigade. A couple of weeks ago one of our firefighters returned from her (successful) recruit firefighter course.  Dessert was my contribution to her welcome back .

I’m more savoury that sweet and while I like traditional cheesecake, only in small amounts: the overall cream cheese effect is too heavy and cloying for my taste…I also like the idea of a base that is a little closer to the raw materials  than ground up biscuits…that’s just like a bit of a Green Journey principle…

Googling provide a range of opportunities for a less cheesy cheesecake but nothing quite what I was after in a single recipe so this is a combination from two sources: the base is the coconut macaroon crust from Two Peas and Their Pod, and the filling is from A Baking Girl.

The base

  • 2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk
  • 1 large egg white
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 3 1/2 cups sweetened coconut

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C.

Spray a 10 inch springform pan with non-stick cooking spray. I heavily greased the tray, especially the base and still the base stuck quite a bit. Next I will line it with oven paper.

Stir together the sweetened condensed milk, egg white, vanilla extract, and salt until combined.

Add in the coconut and mix well. I bought a single bag of desiccated coconut – don’t normally have this in the pantry as I tend towards threaded and chunked coconut – but didn’t quite get the maths right and had to top this up with the meal leftover from my almond coconut milk.

Press coconut mixture into prepared pie pan. I was aiming for about a 5mm thickness and this left about a cup of base mix leftover – I knocked this into the sink and that was the end of that but next time I would press any leftover base into cookies and bake alongside the cheesecake.

One of the recipes I looked at during my research phase recommended prebaking the base for 5 minutes before adding the filling so I did this.

The filling

  • 2 cups fat free plain Greek yogurt
  • 1/2 cup sugar (I used ‘bad’ white sugar to eat into the remaining stock in the pantry)
  • pinch of salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 vanilla bean (seeds scraped out) or 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 tablespoon of cornstarch

Combine the eggs, sugar, yogurt and vanilla in a food processor. I think that this is where the leftover yolk from the base went as well.

Blend until smooth, then add the cornstarch and salt and blend again.

Pour the filling over the base and bake for 35 minutes.

When the cheesecake is done, it will still be jiggly in the centre but will have a “done” look to it. The edges of the cake will start to pull away from the sides of the pan. Make sure you don’t over-bake.

Let it cool then chill for 2-3 hours in the fridge before releasing the springform.

The topping

  • 1/2 cup of cream, beaten
  • 1 tablespoon of vanilla sugar (this worked to edge the edge off the cream taste but next time I would probably double it and/or add half a vanilla bean to add more of a flavour counterpoint to the filling and the base.

The filling set to a degree that the sliced strawberry topping would not stick to it. The sole purpose of the cream was to provide a layer for the strawberries to sink into slightly.

I’m keen to try this again with non-dairy yogurt to further de-dairy-ise it; it is wheat-free for those who have a genuine gluten issue; and, of course, to use an alternate sugar source once the last of the white is gone…