Trust me, I’m not using that title lightly! I’ve just made something quite amazing from a ridiculously small number of ingredients leaving me in a state of shock!
So this week I’ve been researching the benefits of soaking nuts and grains etc to remove toxins and make proteins and other good nutrients more easily absorbable by the body.
During the research I came across quite a few posts about ‘cream’ substitutes – especially when looking at vegan sites.
I tried to make Cashew Cream today and I’ve pretty much polished it off standing in the kitchen cooking dinner!
It’s super smooth as a result of soaking the cashews and the maple syrup is a great partner in crime. I’m going to have this as ‘Strawberries and cream’, it could easily be a ‘buttercream’ on top of GF cupcakes and might even work with my morning granola/compote concoction.
If you make anything from my blog, please make this.
Ingredients
1 cup plain cashews
1/4 cup water
2 tbsp maple syrup
Small pinch of sea salt
Soak the nuts covered in boiled water for 15 minutes.
Drain and add to a blender with all other ingredients and blitz for 3-4 minutes.
Add more water and blitz again if you want a thinner ‘cream’.
I heard this weekend that Nutella contains more sugar in it than hazelnuts.
I’m a big fan of substituting bad things with good things and this weekend I wanted to do a clean eating version of Nutella – for my own sake as well as my sons! I miss it!!
This recipe made a good jam jar size portion that will keep well in the fridge.
I’m having it for my 10am snack today slathered on a banana and I also added it to some ‘n-ice’ cream, but we’ll come to that later.
Ingredients
200g hazelnuts
50-70ml almond milk or other non-dairy milk
1tsp coconut oil
60g honey
40g of cacao or cocoa powder
A small pinch of salt
Roast the hazelnuts in an oven at 180 for ten minutes.
Let them cool a little.
Place in a good strong blender with all the other ingredients and blitz for 5-10 minutes until you have a consistency you are happy with. It may not be as smooth as shop bought but it will be delicious on toast (gluten-free) and will give you more health benefits than its shop bought counterpart.
‘N-ice cream’ is where you blitz frozen slices of banana with whatever flavour you like (peanut butter, notella, clean jam) and then re-freeze until solid. It’s a fantastic alternative to regular sugary ice cream and perfect to cool down on these hot summery days.
Here’s another granola recipe that I made this morning, similar flavours but a couple of new additions, I wanted it to be more fruity and nutty et voila – dried apricots go amazingly chewy when they’re cooked and replacing flaked almonds with chopped mixed nuts gives a really nice crunch.
Hot out of the oven
To make the compote I regularly have with it, I use half a tub of frozen mixed berries and 1-2 tablespoons of Agave with 1-2 tablespoons of water – all in a saucepan simmered for 5 minutes or so. Taste for tartness and pop in a tupperware container to go in the fridge once its cooled, it’ll keep for a week or so. If it is a little too sharp, add more agave.
Apricot Granola with natural yoghurt and frozen berry compote
Dry ingredients
2.5 cups oats
¼ cup flax seeds – I used Linwoods
¼ cup mixed seeds
¼ cup dried apricots chopped up small
¼ cup seedless raisins
¼ cup ground almonds
½ cup shredded coconut
Put all the dry ingredients in a big bowl and mix. Put the wet ingredients in a saucepan and heat until they all melt and mix together.
Melted down wet ingredients
Pour the wet onto the dry ingredients and mix really well. Put it all on a lined baking sheet and into the oven at 180 for 10 minutes. Remove and turn it all over with a fork so other parts get a chance to get brown. Put it back in the oven for another 10 minutes then remove, stir and leave to cool. Pop your amazing cereal in an airtight container ready to use in the morning.
Ok Sunday, finally the best day of the week arrives, we had the lovely and newly married Kavish and Keyasha round for lunch having just arrived from South Africa this morning. Obviously they need a good meal after such a long flight!
Cue clean cheating, clean eating with a couple of rogue additions to make life easier and to make it a little more palatable to people who are not yet initiated into the world of clean eating! Little do they know they’ll be my guinea pigs for the day 😜
‘Naughty’ snacks
We started off with some snacks, I baked some pittas in the oven for ten minutes sprinkled with cinnamon and made my sweet potato crisps, we also had some of those new Pringles nachos which were yummy with a dip made of spicy chilli sauce mixed with mayonnaise.
A delicious Sunday Roast
For main I roasted a leg of spring lamb. In a sauce pan, I melted coconut oil with cumin seeds, curry powder, chilli powder and salt. I sliced 4 garlic cloves lengthways and put them in slits I cut into the meat. Then poured the spice sauce over the top.
Then, I lined a roasting tin with foil and added sliced onion, carrots, parsnips and any other veggies I could lay my hands on! I poured in a glass of red wine and a glass of water added the leg of lamb and popped in my meat thermometer and off it went to oven heaven at 180 degrees.
I do not roast my meats in the oven based on time. I only ever use a thermometer, in my experience this provides a much more accurate result.
We only have one hob working at the moment so making a roast is an interesting challenge, I par boiled peeled potatoes for 10 minutes then did the same with peeled parsnips. I lined another tin with foil and added a tablespoon of coconut oil and melted it in the oven. Then I added some salt, drained the spuds and roughed them up a bit before adding them to the roasting tin for 1 hour, turning them every 20 minutes.
I put the parsnips in another roasting tin with 2 tablespoons of maple syrup and a tiny bit of coconut oil. I set aside to roast later.
I split Brussels Sprouts in half and lightly fried them on high in a little coconut oil to char them, then added a small amount of water and put the lid on to steam them through.
Then I boiled up some carrots and green beans and left them plain because of the flavours going on with the lamb and the to-be-gravy. I roasted the parsnips for about 20 minutes before everything else was ready.
I took the lamb out when my thermometer went off and left it wrapped up to rest, strained the liquid from theroastung tin into a saucepan and boiled it down to concentrate the flavours with a pinch of salt and pepper. Once the meat had rested, I sliced it up and poured any meat juices into the gravy. Everyone had seconds and thirds so I can only assume it was a good feed.
Sweet potato brownies with chocolate sauce and ice cream
For dessert I made Deliciously Ella’s sweet potato brownies adding flaked almonds for texture and with melted 75% dark chocolate sauce and a little bit of shop bought vanilla ice cream. I wanted to see if serving a healthy/clean dessert with dinner guests would work. I think it did (you’ll have to ask the guests😜) but I definitely wouldn’t do it every time – every now and then we all need a little bit of naughty but I’m glad I tried it.
Sweet potato brownies with chocolate sauce and ice creamHaving written this post, I’m not sure I agree with the title anymore, I don’t feel like I’ve really cheated because I don’t feel guilty and it’s not really a confession but you get my drift…
By knowing you’ve got a great tasting, healthy cereal to look forward to!!
This is a versatile cereal you can adapt and refine depending on your tastes. It’s a good feeling knowing exactly what has gone into your cereal in the morning, you can pair it with yoghurt and fresh fruit or soak it in almond milk overnight with chia seeds, it’s also really good as a topping to stewed apples – a la ‘Apple-not-Crumble’ 😜
Dry ingredients
2.5 cups oats
¼ cup flax seeds – I used Linwoods flax, sunflower, pumpkin & sesame seeds with goji berry mix
¼ cup flaked almonds
¼ cup of pecans, cashews or walnuts
1tbsp bee pollen
1 tbsp hemp seeds
½ cup shredded coconut
Small pinch of salt
Wet ingredients
1 tbsp coconut oil
1 tbsp tahini
1 tbsp honey
3 tbsp maple syrup
Put all the dry ingredients in a big bowl and mix them. Put the wet ingredients in a saucepan and heat until they all melt and mix together. Pour the wet onto the dry ingredients and mix really well. Put them on a lined baking sheet in the oven at 160 for 10 minutes. Remove and stir them. Put them back in the oven for another 10 minutes then remove, stir and leave to cool.
Pop your amazing cereal in an airtight container ready to use in the morning, go to bed feeling like a boss 👊😝☺️
I did this for a dinner party recently and had requests to post the recipe so here you go!!
Ingredients
500g mascarpone
284ml Double Cream
3 or 4 tbsp Icing Sugar (taste as you add)
2 punnets Strawberries
2tbsp Strawberry Jam
14 Digestive Biscuits
25g – 50g butter, melted
Pinch salt
Method
Smash up the biscuits and mix with the butter and a pinch of salt. Set aside.
Whip the double cream to soft peaks. Beat the mascarpone until soft then add the double cream and icing sugar and beat well. You could add some vanilla here too to add flavour.
Slice up the strawberries, reserving some to decorate the tops. Mix with the jam.
Get some glasses or jam jars and start with a layer of biscuits, make sure you smush them down with a spoon. Then a good thick layer of mascarpone and the strawberry mix. Repeat until you’ve run out of each.
I love sweet and salty flavours and the addition of a little heat makes these little beauties all the more interesting. These went down a treat at work! Its a quick and easy recipe that will impress. Add more cayenne if you like them hotter.
Ingredients
85g of plain chocolate – I used plain cooking chocolate
115g salted butter
250g caster sugar
2 large eggs
2 pinches of sea salt
85g plain flour
Half a tsp of cayenne pepper
Method
Melt the butter and chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water – make sure the bowl doesn’t touch the water.
Mix the sugar and eggs well with a whisk. Then add the melted chocolate and butter mix – once its cooled a little.
In a separate bowl add the flour, salt and cayenne and mix it well so the salt and cayenne is evenly distributed.
Pour into a cake pan lined with greaseproof and bake in the oven at 180 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Its done when it is set on top but still a bit wobbly.
I put mine in the fridge to get it all nice and fudgey!
Not sure I really need to do any work to sell this one…! The guys at work polish these off in minutes when I bring them in.
Ingredients: 400g Dark Chocolate – broken into pieces
1/2 tsp Maldon Sea Salt
394g Condensed Milk
200g Butter
Method:
Line a square tin with grease-proof paper and butter the sides.
On a low heat, melt all the ingredients except for the sea salt together. stirring regularly.
Once its all nicely melted, sprinkle in the sea salt and beat it really well with a wooden spoon or a balloon whisk. Taste it to see if it needs any more salt.
Pour into the square tin and refrigerate for 2 hours. Once set, remove from the tin and cut into small squares. Et voila! Its done!
You can go to town with flavours, replace the salt with vanilla or chilli flakes or some salted or plain nuts and raisins. Enjoy and please post how you get on with making it!
Laura of London 