Grain Free Banana Bread

I found this website with some yummy gluten free recipes. I changed her Banana Cake recipe with what I had on hand. It's always scary experimenting when baking, but this time I think it came out pretty good!

Banana Cake/Bread

• 2 ¾ cups almond flour
• ½ teaspoon celtic sea salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ¼ cup raw honey
• ¼ cup coconut oil (warm)
• 3 eggs, whisked
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 bananas (about one cup) mashed
• ¼ cup crunchy peanut butter

1. In a large bowl, mix together almond flour, salt and baking soda
2. In a smaller bowl, combine honey, eggs and vanilla, then stir in bananas and peanut butter.
3. Mix wet ingredients into dry. Stir in coconut oil (Make sure you heat it up a bit so it doesn't become hard when it comes in contact with the cold ingredients.)
4. Place batter in cake pan
5. Bake at 350° for 25-30 minutes
6. Remove from oven and allow to cool

It wasn't as sweet as I thought it would be, so when sliced, I drizzled it with a bit of maple syrup...perfect!

Rich Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

Let's take a little break from all my baby related posts and get back into my other passion: baking. Oh how I've missed baking! This past weekend was my friend Christie's baby shower and I offered to bake something. I made vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting.

I got so many compliments, it felt nice :) Too bad I didn't make up the recipe, I'm sure anyone can be a good baker, you just need to have a good recipe and follow it, step by step. Anyhow, here's the recipe for this yummy frosting, it makes enough to frost a 2 layer cake, I had plenty of leftover after frosting 20 cupcakes. I also added food coloring, I made 4 different colors, but I'm only showing the yellow.

Here is the recipe, taken from The New Best Recipe Book.

4 large eggs

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

pinch of salt

1 lb (4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened but still cool, each stick cut into quarters.

1. Combine eggs, sugar, vanilla and salt in the bowl of a standing mixer; place the bowl over a pan of simmering water. (do not let the bottom of the bowl touch the water.) Whisking gently but constantly, heat the mixture until it is thin and foamy and registers 160 degrees on an instant read thermometer.

2. Beat the egg mixture at medium high speed until light, airy, and cooled to room temperature (about 5 min). Reduce the speed to medium and add the butter, one piece at a time. (it might look curdled at one point, but it will smooth out) Once all the butter is added, increase speed to high and beat 1 minute, until light, fluffy and throughly combined.

Edit: I forgot to mention, please use the frosting right after making it (on cool cake of course). I have tried to refrigerate after making it, but it gets very hard and when you try to mix it again, it curdles, not pretty! So frost away, then you can refrigerate. 

Enjoy!

♥ Happy Valentine's Day ♥

I hope everyone had a lovely day. After two days of being out and about, today we had a relaxing day watching movies, cooking chili and of course, baking something sweet. We made these easy individual fallen chocolate cakes, aka molten lava cakes. We had ours with a side of french vanilla ice cream. Here's the recipe that makes 4 individual cakes. Enjoy!

Ingredients

1/2 stick of butter
4 ounces bittersweet or semi sweet chocolate
2 eggs + 1 yolk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon flour + more for dusting
Confectioners sugar for sprinkling

Instructions:

- Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease and flour 4 ramekins. Melt the butter and chocolate in a heat proof medium bowl. Beat the eggs, yolk, vanilla, salt and sugar on high speed for 5 minutes.

- Scrape the egg mixture over the melted butter and chocolate. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture. Gently fold egg and flour into the chocolate until mixture is uniform in color.

- Pour batter into prepared ramekins. Bake for 11 minutes. Run a paring knife along the edges of the ramekins to loosen the cakes. Invert the ramekins onto serving plates and cool for 1 minute. Lift ramekin and sieve a light sprinkling of confectioners sugar. Serve immediately.

Taco Salad

One of our favorite quick and easy dinners to prepare is taco salad. When we went on our low carb diet, we started eating lots of salads, I don't know why we never had this one before. We used to have it without the corn chips when we were more strict about it.

My friend Candice recently decided to give the low carb lifestyle a try. I went grocery shopping with her and told her to get stuff to make taco salad. I don't really use a recipe, but I pretty much start by frying up diced onion in olive oil, then I add the garlic, then the beef, then all the spices. And garnish with everything else. This is what I put in mine:

For the meat: 1 small onion, ground beef, minced garlic, salt and pepper, chili powder, cumin, cayenne pepper and oregano. Serve it on top of chopped romaine lettuce, then add black beans, salsa, sour cream, cheddar cheese, guacamole and tortilla chips. You should try it!

Butter Pecan Cookies

These are probably the easiest cookies I've ever made. Simple and delicious! Yesterday I was in the mood for something with pecans and our usual cookbooks didn't have anything fast and easy... yes, I needed some instant gratification.

I was in a weird mood, probably caused by the fact that I fell over the opened door of my dishwasher. I hurt my shin, it was swollen and it bled a little, yes I'm a big wimp and well, it scared me, it still hurts...

Anyway, back to my cookies! I went online searching for a recipe and found this great one, thanks Martha Stewart! Here's the recipe taken from her website:

Ingredients:

-3/4 cup pecans
-1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
-1/3 cup sugar, plus more for coating
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-1/8 teaspoon salt
-1 cup all-purpose flour

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. On a baking sheet, toast pecans until fragrant, about 6 minutes. Let cool completely; finely chop.

2. With an electric mixer, cream butter and 1/3 cup sugar until light, about 1 minute. Beat in vanilla, salt, and flour, scraping down sides of bowl, just until dough comes together. Fold in pecans.

3. Separate dough into 12 pieces; squeeze dough to shape into balls. Roll in sugar. Place, 3 inches apart, on a baking sheet. Gently flatten with the bottom of a glass (reshape sides if necessary). Sprinkle with sugar.

4. Bake until golden brown, rotating sheet halfway through, about 15 minutes. Sprinkle with more sugar. Cool cookies on a wire rack

(Makes 12 according to her instructions, but you can just make the balls smaller and keep an eye on them so they don't burn)

I actually had to hide ours because Mike wouldn't stop eating them, and well, we are still following a low carb diet supposedly he he. Enjoy!

Bliss...

( I rolled the cookie dough log in chopped pecans before slicing. Someone wasn't lazy like me and wrote down the same recipe we used to make these yummies, click here to get it)

Coconut Macaroons

I know, not very Christmas-ee, but my mother in law likes coconut, so I made these for her as a gift. They are also super easy to make, here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

- 1 (14 ounce) package flake Coconut
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 6 tablespoons flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 4 egg whites
- 1 teaspoon almond extract

(As you can see, it's pretty easy to half the recipe, which is what I did)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour baking sheets; set aside. Mix coconut, sugar, flour and salt in large bowl. Stir in egg whites and almond extract until well blended. Drop coconut mixture into 36 mounds, 2 inches apart, on prepared baking sheets, using about 1 tablespoonful of the coconut mixture for each mound. Bake 20 min. or until edges are golden brown. Immediately remove from baking sheets to wire racks. Cool completely.

You can also melt some semi- sweet baking chocolate and dip or drizzle the macaroons in once they have cooled.

Spinach Souffle

I've been making souffles about once a week ever since we checked out Mastering the Art of French Cooking from the library. Here's my own version of Julia Child's Spinach Souffle recipe, I hope it makes sense... You will need the following:

1 pkg frozen chopped spinach (thawed)
1 TBL Minced Shallots or onions
4 TBL Butter
3 TBL Flour
1 cup of Milk
4 eggs (Yolks and Whites separated)
1/2 cup Shredded Cheese
Seasonings: Salt, pepper, cayenne pepper and nutmeg to taste

You will need: Souffle mold or square glass dish will do as well. Hand mixer, stainless steel saucepan, mixing bowl, whisk, wooden spoon.

-Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Measure out all your ingredients and grease the souffle mold.

-Melt 1 TBL butter and cook the shallots for a moment, then add spinach and some salt, stir over med-high heat for several minutes to evaporate as much moisture from the spinach as possible. Set aside and return empty sauce pan to medium heat.

-Melt 3 TBL butter in the saucepan. Stir in flour and cook for about 2 min, without browning.

-Remove from heat, when the mixture stops bubbling, pour in milk and whisk until blended. Mix in seasonings. Return to heat for 1 minute. Sauce will be very thick.

-Remove from heat and whisk in the egg yolks. Add the cheese and spinach mixture.

-Beat the eggs whites with a pinch of salt until stiff. Stir ¼ of egg whites into the sauce. Fold in gently the rest of the egg whites and pour into greased mold. Turn the heat down to 375 degrees and bake for 20-25 minutes. Enjoy!

Dessert of the week

We gave our fruit squares a little rest and started making these fabulous lemon bars. The recipe is a bit long but you can find it right here. Changing subjects, I think this might be the last week of work. I really hope so to because I'm starting to hate it. It has been exhausting and very stressful at times. I just want to be done with it. I could go on and on venting about that and other things from this past week but I won't, instead I'll just wish you a good and happy week :) PS Currently reading: Anyone But You by Jeniffer Cruise.

Spring forward

I've never heard of it called that before. All that comes to my mind is Tigger from Winnie the pooh, bouncing around on his tail. Good thing it doesn't really affect us that much, since lately we've been going to bed around 2am and waking up embarrassingly late.

Mike has had a lot of work lately, so today since he had to work, I decided to ignore my messy kitchen and other domestic duties and went to a few stores all by myself. I bought a small canvass to attempt a painting for my bathroom. I also had a hot dog and a coke, nothing like junk food to try to cheer myself up from the horrible mood I was in.

The more I think about starting my new job, the more nervous I get. Why did they have to give me so much time to think about it? I'm mostly worried about the driving part, it still doesn't "come natural" to me yet. I think a GPS would be an excellent idea. I also need a few work outfits.

We've been baking fruit squares every week now. Mike calls them his breakfast bars, since they are way healthier than all the other desserts we used to make. Although, we do plan on making some chocolate pudding from scratch soon, I'll let you know how that turns out. I have a loaf of bread in the oven as I type, I added rosemary and parmesan cheese to this one.

Well, I hope everyone has a great week, I know it's spring break for some, so have lots of fun! In the mean time, I will be working on an old bird painting that I never finished from a long time ago. I also have paintings for Sugar Village to work on. By the way, I'm having a sale on selected paintings in case you want to check them out. Good night!

Recipe for the fruit squares

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 cups quick cooking oats
1/3 cup granulated sugar ( You can use only half the sugar if you don't want them too sweet)
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup fine chopped pecans (or any nuts)
12 tablespoons softened butter in pieces
1 cup of your choice of fruit preserves (we usually use Bonne Maman)

Take butter out of the fridge to soften (about an hour before). Preheat oven to 350 F degrees. Mix all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Add the butter pieces to the flour mix and with a hand held mixer on low, mix until it resembles wet sand ( a few minutes). On a greased glass baking dish (we use the rectangle one for thinner squares, but you can also use the square one for thicker pieces), spread about 2/3 of the flour mix and press it into the dish. Bake for about 20 minutes. Take out the baking dish and spread the preserves on top, sprinkle with the remaining flour mix and bake for another 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.