Cashew Carob Coconut Butter

Posted on December 29, 2011 by

I have a confession. Secretly, I gave up sugar.

I know. Me! The cookie monster!

And not just sugar – that’s not that unusual – but also dried fruit, maple syrup, agave, honey, stevia, concentrated fruit juice…. You get the idea. It’s all out for 30 days while I let my tastebuds do a reset.

So that stuff I’ve been posting? Those cookies? Those truffles? That nutella? I did all that before I quit, and haven’t touched a bite since.

Did I mention it’s been 18 days?

The truffles and cookies are long-gone. But, that nutella? There’s still some in the jar in my fridge and every time I open the fridge, there it is. Staring at me.

No fair.

Last night, I’d had enough. And, with my already re-calibrating tastebuds, I determined to make my own version of nutella.

Except without the hazelnuts. Or chocolate.

It IS dark and creamy and goes really, really well on apples. Or bananas. And probably on pancakes. But, I’m not really eating those either….

(They’re just not worth it without maple syrup.)

Creamy, delicious and sugar-free carob cashew coconut butter

Creamy, delicious and sugar-free carob cashew coconut butter

Cashew Carob Coconut Butter (vegan, high-raw, grain-free, sugar-free)

1 cup (58 g) unsweetened shredded dried coconut
1/4 cup (26 g) carob powder *
1 1/2 cups (240 g) raw cashews
1/4 t. sea salt
1/2 t. vanilla extract *

Place coconut in the bowl of a food processor. Process until coconut breaks down enough to stick to the sides of the bowl. Add carob powder and continue to process until smooth, scraping the sides of the bowl occasionally. Add the rest of the ingredients. Process until very smooth. This takes quite a while. Note that it will clump up into a ball and roll around. Don’t fret! Just stop, break it up, and continue to process. You’re almost there. When it’s done, you should have a very smooth and creamy spreadable butter – like commercial natural peanut butter. Transfer to a jar with a lid.

If you use stevia, I’m fairly sure this would be awesome with some NuNaturals Chocolate Stevia extract.

* Note: My carob powder is probably the roasted variety. If you want to be totally raw, look for raw carob powder and raw vanilla extract, or use a small piece (1/2 inch) of vanilla bean and process that with a coffee grinder first.

For more wonderfully healthy recipes, visit Wellness Weekends at Diet, Dessert and Dogs.

Posted in breakfast, cashews, coconut, grain-free, nightshade-free, raw, snacks | Tagged , , , , | 33 Comments

SRC: Peanut Butter Nutella Cookies from Sweet and Savory Tooth

Posted on December 19, 2011 by

It’s Secret Recipe Club time again! This month I was introduced to Sweet and Savory Tooth, written by Heather – a stay-at-home mom and avid cookbook collector (not to mention Disney fanatic).

For the first go-round with Heather’s recipe index, I tasked the kiddo with coming up with his pick. He choose her Chunky Blonde Blondies. Of course, Heather is not gluten-free or dairy-free. So much swapping took place. And the kiddo made all the decisions, and he wanted to go whole hog – and make them not only gluten-free, but also grain-free. Consequently, we ended up with some delicious bars, but I didn’t really feel like they were close enough to the original recipe to be called just an adaptation.

Back to the recipe index we went.

This time I got to choose. And, because I’ve been eating far too many sweets, I choose something that I can’t eat. Something chock full of oats. See how I’m all sneaky that way?

Of course, making this recipe DID require coming up with a vegan version of nutella.

There’s no grain in that.

Mmmmm…..must stop eating it.

The cookies, as the report goes, are delicious, though a bit crumbly. Next time I might up the flax seed a bit, and go with more nutella and less peanut butter. But, I was trying to stick as close to the original as possible.

Thanks, Heather for providing oodles of recipe inspiration!

Peanut Butter Nutella Cookies - the gluten-free, vegan version

Peanut Butter Nutella Cookies - the gluten-free, vegan version

Peanut Butter Nutella Cookies

Adapted from Sweet and Savory Life.

1 cup gluten-free oat flour
1 cup old-fashioned gluten-free oats
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup Earth Balance Soy-Free, softened
3/4 cup palm sugar
1/2 cup natural peanut butter (crunchy preferred)
1 flax egg (1 T. ground flax seed + 3 T. hot water, mixed until thick)
1 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup Vegan Nutella

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Mix flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda and salt; set aside. Mix Earth Balance, sugars and peanut butter. Add flax egg and vanilla and mix well. Add flour mixture into wet ingredients and mix until just combined. Slowly stir Nutella into the mixture. Place batter in spoonfuls onto baking sheet. Bake 10 minutes or until lightly browned.

To see all the Secret Recipe Club assignments, please visit our blog hop:

If you’re looking for more gluten-free recipes (especially chocolate ones) check out Gluten-Free HomeMaker’s Gluten-Free Wednesdays.

Posted in chocolate, cookies, desserts, nuts, peanut butter, vegan | Tagged , , , , | 17 Comments

Nutella Truffles

Posted on December 15, 2011 by

I’m finding all sorts of fun things to do with my home made nutella.

Today, the kiddo put a spoonful of it in hot almond milk.

Instant nutella hot chocolate.

That kid is a genius, I tell ya.

Meanwhile, I was scooping #70 cookie dough scoops of it into my hand, rolling it in balls, and rolling it in cocoa.

Or ground nuts.

Or coconut.

You get the idea.

Are we having fun yet?

(Just don’t leave these truffles out at room temp. They’ll get too soft.)

Nutella Truffles

Nutella Truffles

Posted in chocolate, coconut, desserts, nuts, vegan | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

3 Ingredient Nutella

Posted on December 13, 2011 by

I remember when nutella wasn’t readily available on the shelf of every grocery store in town. My sister, the francophile, discovered it when she went to France as a foreign exchange student. She came back raving about nutella on croissants for breakfast. Nutella on baguette for snack. Nutella on cake for dessert. It was all nutella. All the time.

We had to make a special effort to buy it. And, we’d get it for her for Christmas. And she loved us for it.

Now, nutella is easy to find. But, sadly, I can’t eat it. See, it’s full of dairy, which is definitely out for me. It’s also full of sugar, which isn’t so spectacular for me, either.

My version is not sugar-free. But, it is dairy-free. And, it’s as simple as it gets – just three ingredients. Even better, it’s a ratio recipe – meaning you can make as much or as little as you like, as long as you measure by weight.

The kiddo suggested eating it on apples. There’s my health-conscious kiddo for ya. I said, “Um, how about on these leftover banana pancakes instead?” He didn’t argue.

3 Ingredient Bittersweet Nutella

3 Ingredient Bittersweet Nutella

3 Ingredient Bittersweet Vegan Nutella

When cooking with ratios, you typically have 1 ingredient as the “base” ingredient off of which others are based. In bread, that’s the flour. In this nutella recipe, I’ve chosen the hazelnuts. I’ve listed the weights I’ve used in parenthesis after each ingredient. This batch makes enough to fill a quart pint mason jar about 3/4 full. To scale the recipe up or down, choose your weight for the hazelnuts and then do 1 and a half times more chocolate and twice as much coconut milk. Make sense?

1 part hazelnuts (100 g)
1.5 parts dairy-free chocolate, chopped fine (150 g)
2 parts full fat canned coconut milk (200 g)

Preheat oven to 350°. Spread the nuts on a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes, until toasted. Pour nuts into a clean dish towel and rub vigorously. Most of the skins will fall off. You may have to pick out the ones that are skinless and repeat the rubbing several times.

Transfer nuts to a food processor. Process until they become a creamy nut butter. (This takes about 10 minutes.)

In a double boiler or metal bowl over a sauce pan, heat the chocolate and coconut milk until chocolate is completely melted. Pour into food processor and pulse until mixture is fully mixed. Transfer to jars and cool.

I keep mine in the fridge. It does harden a bit more than regular nutella in the fridge, but softens at room temp, and is still soft enough to spread on sturdy bread or apples straight from the fridge.

For more slightly indulgent goodies, check out Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays.

Posted in chocolate, coconut, desserts, grain-free, nightshade-free, nuts, vegan | Tagged , , , , | 38 Comments

Christmas Kolacky (grain-free, vegan)

Posted on December 11, 2011 by

Some holiday traditions start when you’re a kid. They’re instilled in you by your parents, and you carry them with you all your life.

Frosting faces after frosting cut-out cookies? That’s one of those traditions.

Other traditions are borrowed, adapted, chosen as an adult, or gifted to you. Kolacky is one of those traditions. I never had one until my sister started working at a law firm with an administrative assistant of Czech heritage and generous heart. And every year she would make walnut kolacky for my sister. And every year, I’d get to eat it when we went to visit for Christmas.

One year, in my pre-gluten-free days, I asked for the recipe, and she generously shared it with me. But, I’d never made them. Some things are best when made by other people.

It’s been a few years since I’ve had her kolacky, and I still had the recipe in my giant 3-ring binder of recipes I’ve yet to convert.

And then I saw Cara’s post for Jam-Filled Kolache. Kolache, kolacky – same thing, different spelling. (Check out her beautiful photos for how to fill and shape these puppies.)

And I knew, this was the year.

Christmas Kolacky or Kolache - however you spell it.

Christmas Kolacky or Kolache - however you spell it.

Czech Kolacky (grain-free, vegan)

6.25 oz coconut oil (softened)
1.5 cups (180 g) almond meal
1/2 cup (56 g) sifted coconut flour
1/4 t. salt
1/4 cup (28 g) arrowroot starch
1/2 cup warm almond milk
2 t. psyllium powder
2 1/2 t. yeast

The Night Before Baking:
In a measuring cup, mix together the warm almond milk, psyllium powder and yeast. Stir well and allow to sit for 5 minutes – until yeast starts to ferment and mixture (which will be very thick and gelatinous) starts to puff.

In the bowl of your food processor, pulse the coconut oil, almond meal, and coconut flour until crumbly. Add the proofed yeast mixture and process until well mixed. It will be sticky and wet. Scrape dough into a bowl. Lay plastic wrap on top of the dough and refrigerate overnight.

Walnut Filling
1/2 pound (8 ounces) walnuts
1 T. Earth Balance soy-free
2 T. almond milk
1/3 cup palm sugar
1/2 t. vanilla extract

In the bowl of your food processor, pulse walnuts until finely ground. In a small saucepan, heat Earth Balance, almond milk, and palm sugar until melted and sugar is just dissolved. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract and walnuts. Set aside until baking time.

(You don’t want to do this right before you bake, but you don’t have to do it the night before, either. You just want to make sure it’s fully cooled before filling the kolacky.)

On Baking Day
2/3 cup palm sugar – processed in a coffee mill until finely powdered

Preheat oven to 350°. Sprinkle a piece of parchment paper with powdered palm sugar. Roll out half of the dough at a time. Cut with round cookie cutters. Transfer cut dough to a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Put a spoon full of walnut filling in the center of each circle, and fold two sides up to meet in the middle. You’re making a little “bowtie” kind of shape. Gently press the edges of the dough together. If the dough cracks, gently smooth over any cracks.

Repeat until all the dough is rolled, cut and filled.

Bake each sheet for approximately 12-16 minutes, or until edges are browned. Cool until you can handle the kolacky. Dust with additional powdered sugar, dumping off any excess back into the bowl.

These are best the next day.

While these are far from healthy, they do have  a plethora of health-supporting ingredients – coconut oil, walnuts, almonds. And, it IS the holiday season. So, I’m thinking I MIGHT be able to get away with adding these to Ricki’s Wellness Weekend. Right, Ricki? :)

Posted in cookies, grain-free, nuts, vegan | Tagged , , , | 20 Comments

Grain-Free Vegan Cookie Bars

Posted on December 5, 2011 by

You know that saying, “best laid plans?” Well, that’s how things have been going around here lately. It’s December 5th and I haven’t made a single Christmas cookie.

Well, strike that. I made a raw cranberry almond pinwheel cookie. Um….no.

Anyway, this was going to be my post for the Secret Recipe Club. My reveal day isn’t for another 2 weeks. I was ahead of the game! I let the kiddo pick what he wanted us to make, and we got to baking. I let him make all the choices. And, by the end, we had something totally delicious. And totally, completely, unlike the original recipe, which was supposed to be a blondie.

Oops. Best laid plans….

These turned out dense and chewy and a whole lot like those date nut bars I remember from when I was a kid – the ones where you throw in a little of this and a little of that and come out with a chocolately, nutty, scrumptious thing.

Except this one doesn’t have any dates.

Anyway, it means I get to post this completely not holiday-esque, completely not Secret Recipe Club recipe today, instead of making you all wait 2 weeks.

That’s a bright side, right?

Magic, in a bar

Magic, in a bar (too bad I don't have magic sunlight for the photo)

Grain-Free Vegan Magic Bars

1/2 cup (96 g.) palm shortening
1 cup palm sugar
1/3 cup boiling water
1 T. ground flax seed
1 T. psyllium husk powder
2 t. vanilla
1 1/4 cups (150 g.) almond meal
1/4 cup (28 g.) sifted coconut flour
1/4 cup (30 g.) arrowroot starch
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1 cup mini chocolate chips
1/2 cup chocolate chips
3/4 cup salted cashews
1/4 cup unsalted almonds

Grease a 9 x 13 pan. Preheat oven to 350°.

In a large bowl, beat the shortening and sugar with a hand mixer until creamy. Mix the boiling water with the flax seed and psyllium powder. It will be very thick. Add it to the shortening and sugar and beat until smooth. Add vanilla and beat until incorporated. Add the almond meal, coconut flour, arrowroot starch, baking powder and salt. Mix well. Stir in the chocolate chips and cashews.

Spread the mixture into the greased pan. Press the almonds into the top of the dough.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until edges are golden brown. Cool completely before cutting. (It will be very crumbly while warm and will become quite solid and chewy after cooling.)

Try this with whatever mix-ins you like. Coconut, other nuts, white chocolate, craisins, etc.

This may be more than slightly indulgent, but ’tis the season, right? Check out Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays.

Posted in cashews, coconut, cookies, desserts, flax seed, grain-free, nuts, vegan | Tagged , , , | 25 Comments

Glass Dharma Winner

Posted on December 4, 2011 by

Thank you to everyone that entered the contest for the wonderful Glass Dharma straws gift certificate. I wish I could give you all a chance to try these great straws.

Glass Straw Fairy - If only she could visit all of us!

Glass Straw Fairy - If only she could visit all of us! (courtesy of Glass Dharma)

Sadly, I can’t. So, I’m pleased to announce that the winner is Andrea. Andrea said,

I like the lifetime guarantee against breakage and the fact that they are reusable!

Congratulations Andrea. I’ll be sending you an email soon to get your mailing information.

Posted in Contests | 1 Comment