Banana and oat baby biscuits

Since I was making chocolatey adults-only treats, I figured baby S needed some treats too. He enjoyed some baby biscuits I'd bought for him recently, so I'd been thinking of making him some kind of sugar free biscuits. I was thinking banana and oat, so decided to start with this recipe.

(note that the quantities are a bit cumbersome because I was converting from Aussie/NZ cups and tbsps)

(makes approx. 20)

1 tbsp + 1 tsp (20 ml) chia seeds (or 1 beaten egg)
2 tbsp + 2 tsp (40 ml) water (or milk)
350 g fruit puree (ended up using 3 small bananas plus half a cup of apple puree this time - should work with wholly either, so long as the apple is not too liquidy)
1/2 tsp vanilla (or cinnamon)
310 ml oats
125 ml flour

Heat oven to 180C. Line a baking sheet with baking paper. Mix the chia seeds with the water/milk and let sit for 10-15 min. Meanwhile mash the bananas or prep other puree in a medium bowl. Add the chia mix and vanilla to the bananas and mix. Then add the oats and flour and mix some more - it will be moist and sticky. Scoop tablespoonfuls onto the tray, then bake for 25-30 min, until golden brown on bottom but still soft inside. Let cool. Store in the fridge or freezer.


He seems to like them! I tested them first and they tasted good to me too. And I don't feed bad giving them to him as the ingredients seem pretty wholesome... Think apple+cinnamon or banana+vanilla would be good combos - just didn't have enough bananas and wanted to use banana for this time.

Raspberry chia kombucha

I long meant to experiment with adding things to my kombucha. I also long meant to open and eat the bag of chia seeds in the drawer. Eventually I made this. It is the simplest ever, and it tastes amazing.

Approx. 250 ml kombucha
about 6 frozen raspberries
1 tbsp chia seeds

Pour the kombucha into a glass bottle with a lid. Crumble the frozen raspberries into the bottle, and pour in the chia seeds. Invert a few times to mix, and make sure the chia seeds are not clumping too much. Leave at room temperature or in the fridge for at least an hour. Keeps fine for at least a day in the fridge.


It's pink and full of gloopy chia seeds and sweet and tangy and lovely. And only takes a few seconds to assemble.

Flourless oat and seed bread

This was one of those recipes that cropped up one too many times. Eventually I could no longer resist and bought some psyllium seed husk, despite the fact I am supposed to be only using things up in the pantry these days. It is a sort of a gluten-free bread, but with no flour at all - it is packed with seeds and oats and the binding is purely by chia, flax and psyllium seed husk.

I made this shortly before leaving for Scotland (ten days ago), and froze some slices. I remembered it on the journey home and looked forward to its deliciousness all the rest of the way.

The first time I saw this recipe was here (thanks to LB), and the deciding time, the one that precipitated me making it at last (and the one I followed), was here.

2 1/4 cups (235g) oats (GF oats if you want it to be properly gluten free)
1 cup (160g) sunflower seeds
1/2 cup (65g) pumpkin seeds
3/4 cup (90g) almonds, roughly chopped
3/4 cup (120g) flax seeds
1/3 cup (25g) psyllium seed husks (I bought from Trader Joe's)
3 tbsp (25g) chia seeds
2 tsp (12g) sea salt
2 tbsp (40g) maple syrup
1/4 cup (55g) olive oil
2 1/2 cups (600g) water

Oil a loaf tin. If you like, toast the almonds, sunflower and pumpkin seeds. Put all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, then add the oil, maple syrup and water and mix well with your hands. Transfer to the oiled loaf tin and put in the fridge for somewhere between two and 24 hours (overnight might be convenient).

Take the loaf tin out of the fridge and let come to room temp. Heat the oven to 400F / 200C. Bake for about an hour, then take out and let cool a bit before tipping out onto a cooling rack and allowing to cool completely (at least two hours).


This reminds me of a seedy soda bread I used to make - dense and full of crunch and delicious toasty seeds. Basically, if you like toasted seeds, you'll like this. Toasts well (including from the freezer); good with hummus or avocado. I pretty much decided that toasting seeds is unnecessary faff. Lots of substitutions possible - the flax, chia and psyllium have to stay but the sunflower and pumpkin seeds could be mixed with other seeds, the almonds switched for hazelnuts or other nuts, dried fruit would probably be interesting, honey or brown sugar instead of maple, coconut or other oil instead of olive...

Buckwheat-coconut-blueberry pancakes

I woke up this morning and this pancake idea kept me awake: S really deserved a fancy Saturday morning breakfast - last night I was feeling a bit crappy and he went out to get Yoma (= one of our favourite food places) takeaway to try and sort me out.

This is another experiment with buckwheat: buckwheat flour crepes are obviously a classic, but I got into the idea of a thick, lumpy pancake full of whole buckwheat groats and other exciting, tasty bits and pieces.

(makes 5-6 medium size, thick pancakes)

1 banana, mashed with a fork
2 tsp coconut oil
3 tbsp plain flour*
3 tbsp wholewheat flour*
1 1/2 tbsp chickpea (gram) flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup cooked buckwheat groats
1/4 cup unsweetened shredded dried coconut
1 1/2 tbsp chia seeds
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 cup almond milk
1/4 cup water
pinch salt
1/2 cup frozen blueberries

coconut oil for cooking
maple syrup to serve

Mash the banana and coconut oil together in a bowl with a fork. Add the rest of the ingredients except the blueberries and mix together until well combined, adding a little more or less water until you get a good (American-style) pancake consistency (ie fairly thick). Add the blueberries, mix lightly and let sit for 5 min.

Heat some (~1 tsp) coconut oil in a frying pan. Add a big spoonful of pancake batter and spread it out to make a ~8mm thick pancake about 10cm across. Cook on the first side until it starts to look done at the edges, lift the edge to check it is brown underneath, then flip and cook on the other side until browned. Serve with maple syrup on the side.


I really liked these, and they went down well with S too: the buckwheat / coconut / cinnamon / blueberry go great together, and the texture is really sound (quite a dense kind of a pancake, but with so much texture that's fine). You only need a little maple syrup, but it really brings it all together.

*I like the idea of making these gluten free by subbing the plain and wholewheat flours with GF oat flour - I didn't feel like grinding the oat flour, otherwise I would have made them that way.

Chia pudding

I tried my first chia pudding in a hippy corner of Hawaii, and I wasn't convinced.  Nonetheless, I became intrigued by the thickening properties of the stuff (especially following my attempts at vegan and gluten-free baking), and so ended up buying a packet of seeds to make an Amazon order up to free shipping.  I've been using them ground in baking, and adding them whole to my muesli mixture, but yesterday I finally decided to bite the bullet and make something all about chia - following this recipe, with a few tweaks here and there to fit my store cupboard.

1/2 cup chia seeds
1/2 cup desiccated coconut
2 cups fake milk
1/3 cup raw cashews
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup cacao or cocoa powder
1 1/4 tsp cinnamon
pinches nutmeg, allspice
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
pinch sea salt

Mix the chia seeds and coconut in a bowl. Put the rest of the ingredients in a blender and blend til smooth.

Add the wet mix to the seed mix and stir. Wait 15 minutes and stir again. Then put the pudding into glasses or containers and refrigerate - ideally for at least 2-3 hours. Makes about 4 servings.


Simpler version
(2 servings)

1/4 cup chia seeds
2 tbsp shredded dried coconut*
1 cup fake milk
1 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp cocoa powder
few drops vanilla essence*
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon*
1/8 tsp grated nutmeg*
little pinch of sea salt*
* = optional

Mix chia seeds and coconut in a small bowl. In a bigger bowl, whisk together the milk, maple syrup, cocoa, vanilla and spices. Add the chia and coconut to the milk mixture and beat together a little. Cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours or overnight.


This was actually really good, I was surprised.  Although then not, since all the added goodness (cocoa, spices, coconut) does a good job of drowning out any taste the chia might have, and I usually do seem to like weird gelatinous things... The chia is amazing - just half a cup in 2 cups of liquid swelled up and stuck together so fast! Ends up with a consistency a bit like frogspawn, and surprisingly more-ish. I ate some after about half an hour's fridge time and it was fine, I think the only thing that changes with more time is it loses the crunch of the middles of the seeds.

Little chocolate-berry birthday cakes (gluten-free and vegan)

Little chocolate cake with blackberry jam centre and chocolate icing

It was Alvin's birthday on Monday.  Coincidentally, I had asked him when it was about a week before the day.  We had an abortive attempt to organize something for his actual birthday (turned out he already had plans), but ended up putting plans on hold til the next workday... which was today.  All pretty vague, but I decided to make some gluten-free cakes (he eats GF).

Chocolate cake:

Dry:
1/2 cup GF oat flour
1/3 cup rice flour
1/3 cup glutinous rice flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
3/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp custard powder
2 tbsp ground chia seed
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Wet:
1/2 cup fake milk
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp apple cider vinegar

Heat oven to 350F.  Mix dry ingredients well together with a fork.  Mix wet ingredients in a separate bowl.  Add wet to dry and mix til combined.  Prepare a muffin tin and put the mixture into muffin cups (this makes 12).  Put in oven and bake 25-30min / til a skewer comes out clean.  Allow to cool completely before icing.


Chocolate icing:
(recipe from here)

(makes 2 cups - a half quantity is plenty for icing 12 little cakes).

1 pack (12.3oz box eg Mori-Nu) firm silken tofu
1 tbsp canola oil
1/3 tsp salt
1/4 cup icing sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla
6 oz chocolate, melted
1-3 tbsp fake milk, for thinning, if required

Put tofu, oil and salt in blender and puree til smooth.  Add sugar, cocoa and vanilla and blend til smooth.  Add melted chocolate and blend til smooth.  Refrigerate until needed (1 hour to a day).  If it is too thick to spread easily add some fake milk until you get a good consistency.



Decoration:
~1/4 cup blackberry jam
6 glace cherries

Once the cakes are cooled and the icing chilled, assemble as follows:  cut a small piece out of the middle of each cake and put in ~ 1tsp blackberry jam.  Replace the cut-out piece as a lid.  Take 1 - 1 1/2 tbsp of frosting and spread out on top, trying to keep it neat and cover the whole surface.  Cut glace cherries in half and put half a cherry on top in the middle of each cake.


When I took the cakes out of the oven I thought it was a bit of a disaster - they really sank, and seemed to be undercooked although they'd been in for about 45min.  The batter was too wet I think (this is what happens when I make it up as I go along) - I've edited the quantities above a little to try and address this, although I might also consider taking out the applesauce and using 3/4 cup fake milk to make a simpler recipe.  But the recipe is definitely a work in progress.  I made the oat flour in my spice grinder, and that worked well.  The icing was good - you can't go wrong with melted chocolate - could simplify it a bit I think: maybe just chocolate, tofu, vanilla and sugar would be worth trying.

Despite the initial mini-cake-disaster, once the cakes were filled and iced they looked pretty good (somewhat less so by the time I'd biked across town with them, but they more-or-less survived).  And they went down very well!  I took candles, and we had cake and candles and a spontaneous singing of 'Happy Birthday' at the garden.  I made some black bean brownies as back-up, and all of both kinds of cake disappeared, which is usually a good sign.  Non-vegan / GF people didn't guess the cakes were lacking (the tofu in the icing was a particular success), and at least one GF girl was happily surprised that she could eat cake!  There was a good turn-out today - even Seb came along - and it was a good day.

Gluten-Free Wedding Desserts: Carrot+Pinenut Cake, Chocolate Black Bean Brownies, Lime Tart

Our friends Hannah and Orion got married this weekend.  So we were at Earthlands in Western Mass for the party (+camping Sat night).  H asked me to bring some gluten-free desserts as my contribution (she eats GF).  S and I decided that first up would be as many cherries as we could get from the Haymarket for $20 (below is about 2/3 of them).

I also decided it would be a good opportunity to test out some gluten-free dessert recipes I was curious to try.  Another advantage of vegan food, I have realised, is that it is typically pretty resistant to going off - all this stuff was kept at room temp on a sunny day and was absolutely fine. 

1) Nigella's carrot and pine-nut cake

I found this one on the BBC website, and figured Nigella would know good cake.  I got doubly excited when I realised I could use some carrots we harvested from the community garden last weekend (H+O and I met through the garden).  I also used 2 eggs Sadie gave me the other day when she had loads from her CSA - I feel like eggs are OK if I know they come from a good source, especially if they would otherwise go to waste!

3 tbsp pine nuts
2 medium carrots (approx. 200-250g/7-9oz)
75g/3oz golden sultanas
60ml/2¼fl oz rum (used Pimms instead)
150g/5oz caster sugar
125ml/4½fl oz regular olive oil, plus extra for greasing
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 free-range eggs (used 2 plus 1 flax egg (=1tbsp ground linseed+3tbsp warm water); reckon would work fine with 3 flax eggs)
250g/9oz ground almonds
½ tsp ground nutmeg, or to taste (forgot to put this in)
½ lemon, finely grated zest and juice

For the carrot cake, preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line the base of a 23cm/9in round springform cake tin with baking paper and grease the sides with olive oil.

Toast the pine nuts by browning in a dry frying pan; set aside.  Or use pre-toasted ones and skip this.

Coarsely grate the carrots, then sit them on kitchen paper to soak up excess liquid. Set aside.

Put the golden sultanas in a small saucepan with the rum / Pimms, bring to the boil, then turn down and simmer for 3 minutes.

Whisk the sugar and oil until airily mixed.

Whisk in the vanilla extract and eggs and, when well whisked, fold in the ground almonds, nutmeg, grated carrots, golden sultanas (with any rum that clings to them) and, finally, the lemon zest and juice.

Scrape the mixture into the prepared cake tin and smooth the surface with a rubber spatula. The batter will be very shallow in the tin.

Sprinkle the toasted pine nuts over the cake and put it into the oven for 30–40 minutes, or until the top is risen and golden and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out sticky but more or less clean.

Remove from the oven and let the cake sit in its tin on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then unspring and leave it on the rack to cool.  To serve, transfer the cake to a plate.

This was dense and sticky and yummy.


2) Chocolate Black Bean Brownies

Stumbled across this recipe (liked the blog too) and thought it would be worth testing...  Here's an alternative that might also be worth a try.

~1 1/2 cups black (or black-eyed) beans, defrosted
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup applesauce (edit: tried subbing this with blended silken tofu plus a little more sugar - worked fine)
1/4 cup flour (rice flour for GF)
1/4 cup ground linseed
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
good handful walnuts, coarsely chopped
handful chocolate, coarsely chopped

Heat oven to 350F, and lightly oil a baking pan.

Blend the beans until smooth.  Measure the dry ingredients (except nuts and chocolate) into a bowl and mix with a fork.  Add the applesauce and black-eyed beans and mix thoroughly with a fork.  Add 3/4 of the nuts and mix.

Spread mixture in pan, and bake ~35 minutes, until the edges start to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Sprinkle the top with chopped chocolate and nuts, and cool well so that the chocolate re-sets before eating.

These were really simple, and really, surprisingly tasty (quite solid though).  Might need to find an alternative to the applesauce as that's the one thing I don't often have in the cupboard.  I used black-eyed beans as I discovered I didn't actually have any black beans in the freezer, and they were fine.  Often rice flour can impart a nasty gritty texture to baking, but here I think it is in a small enough proportion that it doesn't matter.  I made this again already (since I'd opened the jar of applesauce...)!  This time I sprinkled some chopped walnuts on top as well as the chocolate, so it looked prettier.


3) Lime Tart

I was interested in making something with agar and found this recipe on ppk.  I needed a GF, vegan piecrust, and remembered a nice-looking pie here.  So...

For the crust:
2 cups ground almonds
1 cup ground linseed (used a mixture of linseed and chia)
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp water

For the filling:
1 tablespoon finely grated lime zest (~2 limes)
2/3 cups fresh lime juice (~6-8 limes)
1 1/2 cups unsweetened almond milk, at room temperature
2 tablespoons agar flakes (or two teaspoons agar powder and skip the soaking step... used powder)
1 16 oz can coconut milk at room temperature
2 tablespoons tapioca flour (used cornstarch)
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Heat the oven to 350F.  Mix the almonds, linseed and cornmeal with a fork, then blend as well as possible, while adding salt and cinnamon. Keep going until the mixture becomes forms crumbly clumps. Then add in the water and maple syrup and keep mixing until well combined.  Transfer the mixture to a 9 inch pie plate (lined with foil) and press it into the bottom and sides to form the crust. Make sure the tops of the sides are not too thin.  Bake the crust for 10 minutes, remove and set aside.

Mix the almond milk and agar powder in a saucepan (or soak agar flakes for 15 min).  Separately, mix together coconut milk, cornstarch, sugar and vanilla.  It’s important that the coconut milk is at room temperature so that it doesn’t affect the agar when you add it.

Turn up the heat on the agar and bring to a boil.  Keep a close eye so that it doesn’t boil over.  Immediately reduce heat and let simmer for about 15 minutes, until agar is dissolved.  If using powdered it will only take about 5 minutes to dissolve.

Once dissolved, slowly whisk in the coconut mixture and then the lime juice and zest (don't add too quick - that'll make the agar gel too soon).  Then whisk often for about 10 minutes, until it has thickened.  If it isn’t thickening, turn the heat up, but you don’t want it to boil.

Pour into the pie crust and let cool for about half an hour.  Then move to the fridge for at least 3 hours, until fully set.  Garnish with lime slices, if you like.

I wound up with about twice as much pie crust as I needed, so froze the other half.  I also had too much filling so poured the rest into a bowl and added some pink food colouring.  Probably half quantities would be fine for making one tart in future.  When it was all set I cut the pink stuff into 2cm cubes.  Then I cut some of those into thin hearts to make kitschy decorations.

I liked it, but the jellyish filling and robustly textured crust might not be to everyone's tastes?  The colour was a bit off - could have been more green.  I expected the crust to fall apart but it was fine.  It was quite a lot of work squeezing the limes!


Everything disappeared without trace, so I take that as a good sign!