Rebecca Wood´s Fig Compote

This time I am again going to share a recipe which is not my own but is way too awesome not to mention  in this blog! It´s taken from the website of Rebecca Wood, a wonderful holistic nutritionist and author of the phenomenal “The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia”. It´s the best reference book if you want to know as much as possible about one single ingredient coming from the natural world (whether it´s a banana, quinoa or fava beans) – how to pick the best item, how to use it in cooking, how to store it, what are the medicinal properties, possible contraindications for certain illnesses etc etc etc.

But onto the recipe! You can read it here. I made the version using red wine (no need to buy a fancy one, any will do!) which reduced into a lovely thick sweet-and-sour syrup. For spices I used all – a cinnamon stick, star anise and whole cloves. It´s nice especially warm, but even cold is not bad at all. Great also with dried prunes!

Apricot ice cream!

I´ve already posted a recipe for avocado chocolate mousse on this blog. In a very similar way you can create sugarfree vegan ice cream with all natural ingredients, which not only tastes delicious, is very easy and quick to make (no ice cream maker needed!), but also mimics the traditional dairy ice cream texture in a way that I found hard to believe.

All you need is a large ripe avocado (the flesh should be yellow, not too brown), a pinch of salt, a liquid sweetener of choice (lately I use honey, but I also had success with rice malt and you could definitely use also agave syrup, maple syrup etc.), an optional pinch of vanilla powder and a flavouring according to what strikes your fancy. Adding cocoa or carob powder is classical and divine… Cinnamon is totally amazing too. This time I used a couple of very ripe sweet apricots. Just throw all in the blender and blend until soft and creamy, using water to thin if needed (but only very little, try to avoid making the cream too watery!). Then transfer to a freezer-safe container and freeze for a couple hours. Now the important step is: stir well with a spoon roughly every half an hour to break up any created ice crystals. Only this way will the ice cream become smooth and creamy and not full of harsh ice pieces. Don´t freeze too long or it will get too hard, just wait until you achieve the consistency you desire. You can of course just freeze the ice cream for a couple days or weeks even for later use, but then you will have to let it sit outside to melt a bit and probably give it a good stir again once that´s possible. For best results I recommend eating it after only a few hours, I think it shouldn´t be a problem 😉

Pepernoten are here!

Many people asked me to share the recipe for pepernoten which I made last weekend, so here they are 🙂 It´s a typical Dutch treat made especially for Sinterklaas, that is St Nicholas Day. Of course, traditionally they are made with white flour, butter, dark sugar (“basterd suiker”) and milk, mine are naturally a macro version! 😀 It´s actually my own recipe based on reading several pepernoten recipes on (mostly) Dutch websites. I think I came pretty close to the real thing, but there definitely are many varieties of this gingerbread-like tiny cookie!

I used:

250 g spelt flour

3 g baking powder (aluminum-free)

100 g coconut oil

100 g mixture of barley malt and maple syrup (use more maple syrup if you want them sweet, mine are very mild! :-p)

a pinch of salt

3-4 TBSP rice milk (or other non-dairy milk)

1-2 TBSP speculaas spices mix (2 TBSP make for a rather spicy dough, so be careful!)

For the speculaas mix you can either buy “speculaaskruiden” in a shop (in Holland at least…) or make your own blend such as this one:

2 tsp cinnamon – 1 tsp ground cloves – 1 tsp ground cardamom – 1/2 tsp ginger powder – 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg – 1/2 tsp ground aniseed

First whisk the coconut oil until soft and creamy (mine was not liquid because it´s winter and the coconut oil is more solid than liquid, which is fine for this recipe I think, it sort of mimics butter). Add in all other ingredients and mix well with your hands. Knead into a ball. Wrap the ball in plastic and let it rest in the fridge for about half an hour. If you let it there longer, it will be a bit harder to work with, but kneading it again once more will solve this problem for the most part. When the dough is ready, chip off little pieces at a time and roll about 1 cm in diameter large “marbles”. Place them about 2 cm apart on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake them 15-20 minutes on 160°C in a preheated oven, until their bottoms are just slightly browned, I imagine they could burn easily 😀

Before being baked

after baking

I dipped some of my pepernoten in a chocolate dip, but I don´t have exact measurements for that one, as I was experimenting a little bit :-p Basically…I put a smaller steel pot into a larger one full of water, so that the smaller pot was partially submerged in the water (it´s called officially “bain- marie”) and I brought the bottom pot to a gentle boil. In the smaller pot I heated some coconut oil and slowly whisked in cocoa powder, maple syrup, corn starch (watch out for lumps!) and a tiny pinch of salt. The mixture shouldn´t boil but the starch has to thicken. The chocolate sauce should be shiny, smooth and thick enough so that you can dip the pepernoten in it and it doesn´t all drip off…you have to adjust that yourself! 😀

Happy baking!

Morning apple-flavoured millet

This is not really a recipe, just a little breakfast idea 😉

I had some organic unfiltered apple-apricot juice on hand, but you could definitely use just plain apple juice. I usually make my morning millet porridge just with water in a 1:3 ratio, but now I switched the water for above mentioned juice, keeping the same ratio. It was incredibly sweet and delicious, more a dessert than a breakfast porridge! 😀 And so creamy….

I topped the grain with toasted chopped almonds!

 

Baked pears stuffed with tahini-miso filling

This dessert is so amazing!! And prepared so quickly at the same time! If you like baked apples or pears, you will surely appreciate it…

Just cut a pear in half, scoop out the intestines  😀 and create “holes” big and deep enough to put some filling inside. Place the pears with the peel down into a baking dish with maybe half a cup of water in it, to prevent burning.

Mix one teaspoon of tahini with one teaspoon of rice malt and half a teaspoon of sweet white miso. Spoon the filling into the prepared holes. You can cover them with some of the scooped out pear flesh so that less of the filling spills during baking.

Cover the dish with tin foil and bake covered for 30 minutes on 190°C and then 15 minutes uncovered on just 175°C. The pears should be very soft, with a melt in your mouth quality 🙂 It might be a little bit messy with the filling, but I actually like a bit of a messy dessert 😀

Raw cacao avocado mousse

This utterly amazing and simple recipe can be found all over the internet, I checked a couple of recipes, including the one on Becky´s macro blog – http://snackrobiotic.blogspot.cz/2011/01/seasonally-inappropriate-chocolate.html .

All you need is:

one ripe avocado, flesh scooped into chunks

3-4 tbsp rice malt (you can use other liquid sweeteners)

a pinch of salt

a pinch of vanilla powder (you can also use essence)

3 tbsp cocoa powder (I used raw cacao which is not roasted and therefore more nutritious)

Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend until completely smooth, adding water as needed. Chill in the fridge.

Nobody will ever guess that avocado is the secret ingredient that makes this delighting dessert so creamy and rich! 😀

Macro birthday cake: Blueberry tofu cheesecake

For my birthday I decided to make a REAL fancy cake – of course within the macrobiotic standards! 🙂 I had quite a hard time finding a recipe I could use though…. In my mind I had a vision of a rich creamy (tofu) cheesecake with a flaky pastry crust and a fruity jelly on top. Somehow that proved to be not so easy to find, as there´s not a whole lot of macro cookbooks, whether printed or online…So I searched and searched and compiled my own recipe using and modifying several different crust/filling/topping recipes I have found 😀

For the crust you will need:

1 1/2 cup spelt flour (you could also use whole wheat flour, preferably 70% whole-grain)

1/4 tsp sea salt

1/4 cup melted coconut oil (or oil of choice)

1/4 cup cold water

Mix together flour, salt and oil with a fork until well combined, then slowly add cold(!) water, while steadily mixing. Use your hands to create a ball and knead it for about 1-2 minutes. Place the dough on a non-stick surface (I used my silicone baking mat) and make it flat using a wooden rollerpin. Make a circle about 1 cm thick, as large as your baking form is (you will probably have extra dough, so then you can make a bigger circle and cut off the excess dough afterwards). Carefully transfer the pie into a greased baking form, pressing it gently inside and up the sides of the form. Prickle the dough with a fork, cover tightly with a tinfoil and bake in a preheated oven on 190°C for about 15 minutes. Then remove tinfoil and bake for another about 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.

For the tofu filling prepare:

400 g firm tofu

pinch of salt

1/4 tsp vanilla powder

zest of one lemon

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/3 cup maple syrup

2 tbsp tahini (or other nut/seed butter)

1 tbsp arrowroot starch

Blend all in a blender until very smooth, add some water if necessary, but don´t make the filling watery! Pour the cream into the cooled crust, spread evenly and bake for about 25 minutes on 170°C, until light golden and set (but not too stiff, the filling should be very soft to the touch).

For the topping use:

about 1/2 cup blueberries

pinch of salt

splash of lemon juice

1 tbsp kuzu diluted in a tiny bit of cold water

1 tsp agar agar

1 or 2 tbsp rice malt

water

In a small pot, combine blueberries, salt, lemon juice, rice malt and enough water to just cover. Bring mixture to a boil and simmer for about 10-15 minutes until blueberries soften. Slowly add kuzu and agar agar, let boil and simmer for a minute. Pour hot topping over the cake and let cool and set. Serve cake chilled.

Note: This cake is not extremely sweet – for more sweetness add more maple syrup to the filling and/or rice malt to the topping. This recipe makes for quite a lot of cake, but depends on the size of your baking form, mine is roughly 25 cm in diameter. I had to make two cakes – one bigger and one smaller. Don´t overdo it with the filling, it should be the same level as the edge of the crust. Enjoy!

 

 

 

Chestnut mochi kanten

Ok, three things to say up front: finding a name for this recipe was really tough, it could also be called chestnut-mochi-kuzu-agar agar dessert. But I spared you and chose a simplified version 😀

Second, this dessert is ugly. It really is. It looks like wet grey concrete. Somehow chestnuts, at least the dried ones, don´t make for a pretty dessert. But who cares, right? It´s the taste that matters…

Third, this dessert is absolutely guilt-free. It´s even healthy! There is not a gram of added sweetener, no rice malt, maple syrup, fruit, nothing. Just chestnuts to make it sweet (which are really healthy for your blood sugar levels). This also means that this dessert is very mildly sweet. But for us who have sensitive taste budes and who are on a restricted diet with zero or very few desserts, this is still a blessing 😀

Now back to business. You just need to soak (preferrably overnight) about half a cup of dried chestnuts (add water to make the cup full). The next day pour it all into a pressure cooker and add about 1/4 cup of sweet brown rice. Add a pinch of salt, water to cover, bring to pressure and cook on a low flame and on a flame tamer for about an hour. Transfer to blender (you should have enough liquid, but adjust as needed) and puree. Bring back to the pot, add 1 tsp of kuzu diluted in a tiny bit of cold water and 1 tsp of agar agar powder (if using flakes or bars, you need to follow package instructions for the amount used). Bring mixture to boil while stirring, let simmer gently for a few minutes and then serve warm or let cool down and solidify. The texture is amazing…….

Simple rice-chestnut-apple pudding

This is a very simple, quick dessert which has no sweetener except for fruit, there´s not even a touch of rice syrup or maple syrup or such. Therefore it´s VERY mildly sweet, but good if you´re in the need of watching your dessert intake and still longing for something a bit sweeter than sweet vegetables 😀

I had some leftover shortgrain brown rice which I pressure cooked for 45 minutes with dried chestnuts (in a roughly 1:1 ratio, because it was a small amount only). It´s good to soak the chestnuts overnight before you cook them. The next day I blended this leftover rice/chestnut mix in a blender with a bit of water (just enough to make the blender work) and half of a bigger unpeeled apple cut into chunks. Then I transferred the puree into a pot, added a pinch of salt and simmered for maybe ten minutes. Towards the end I added a teaspoon of kuzu diluted in a little bit of cold water and brought to boil. You must make sure your kuzu went through boil. You can enjoy your dessert warm or let it cool and set a bit (it will resemble pudding more when the kuzu is allowed to cool). You can sprinkle the top with some cinnamon.

Glutenfree cinnamon-raisin cookies

Cookies are my passion. Unfortunately a passion I will have to shortly give up, because in about a week or so I am starting a much more strict macro regime…not such great news for this blog I´m afraid, but I am sure there will be stuff to blog about and some recipes to share! I just really have to put healing as my priority for some time (at least for a couple of months) even if that means making less decadent culinary creations and especially it will be a big limitation on all sweets.

So as you can imagine, I am now using the last days to cook and bake some of those soon-to-be-banned goodies (yep, that´s me, I always try to indulge while I can, even if that´s not the wisest thing on Earth to do :-D). These glutenfree cookies came out pretty well, I think, based on the judgement of a couple of friends as well…

I used

1 cup of white rice flour

about 3/4 cup of buckwheat flour

1/2 cup almond flour

a pinch of salt

1 tbsp cinnamon

about 1/2 tsp vanilla powder

3 tbsp rice malt

a handful of raisins

1/4 cup olive oil

Mix all together 😀 Most recipes say: mix dry ingredients, mix wet ingredients, mix dry and wet. Well, as you wish, I usually don´t give a damn, but it does make sense 😀

Bake in a preheated oven (180°C) for about 20 minutes.