Tag Archives: Coconut oil

Morning Glory muffins (Paleo)

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Paleo Morning Glory Muffins

I was willing to bake something and Keven pointed out today that our apples are going bad, so I decided to seize the moment and do something with apples. Of course, I have my favourite apple fritters muffins recipe that I love and could eat all the time, but also wanted to try sometihing new.

I went to check on PaleoOMG website to see if there are some ideas that I could use. I took her Morning Glory Nut free muffin recipe, twisted a lot and got my own version of Paleo Morning Glory Muffins. They came out very nice, feel a lot sunflower taste and misses a bit sweetness, so if you have sweet tooth, I would advice to put at least 3 TBSP of honey, but if you are trying to limit sugar then keep initial 1 TBSP.

Here comes the glorious recipe for 12 muffins:

Ingredients
  • 2 apples, peeled and cored, grated
  • 1 large or 2 medium carrots, peeled ir grated
  • ½ cup almond butter
  • 1 cup sunflower seeds
  • 3 eggs, whisked
  • ½ cup Walnut Oil or Coconut Oil(melted)
  • ¼ cup dried apricots or any toher dried fruits of your choice
  • ¼ cup pecans, roughly chopped
  • 1 tablespoon cinnamon
  • 1 tbsp Chocolate chips (Enjoy life) -optional
  • 1 tablespoon raw honey
  • ¼ teaspoon baking soda
  • pinch of salt
Instructions
  1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Toast sunflower seeds over medium heat with 1TBSP fat. I used regular olive oil, but you can go with coconut oil. Make sure that you don’t burn seeds, so keep mixing very frequently.
  3. Grate apples and carrot to a bowl and add  almond butter.
  4. Then add your roasted sunflower seeds to the food processor and puree until you get a flour/meal.
  5. Then add your sunflower seeds flour, eggs, walnut oil, honey, apricots, chocolate chips, pecans, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda. Mix well.
  6. Pour your batter into muffins tins. I lined my muffins tin with silicone muffin liners but paper would do just fine.
  7. Bake for 25-30 minutes until cooked through.
  8. Let cool slightly, but but best to eat them warm. ENJOY!
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Paleo Apple Fritter cupcakes

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Of course I was baking again…..How else it could be? And….as always…or at least almost always I get inspiration from PaleoOMG website 🙂

So…she was making doughnuts. I decided to make cupcakes….I increased a bit the amount of apples for topping, but everything else is pretty much the same and you can find original recipe here.

RECIPE:

Ingredients
For the donut
For the topping
  • 5 apples, cored and diced (I used honey crisp)
  • 2 tablespoons Coconut Oil, melted
  • 3 tablespoons almond butter
  • 2 tablespoons honey
  • 2 tablespoons coconut milk
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
  • pinch of salt
  • 3-4 tablespoons coconut sugar

 

Instructions
  1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Let’s get your toppings started early. Place a tablespoon or so of coconut oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
  3. Add your diced apples to the pan, mix around, then cover to help soften your apples.
  4. While your apples are cooking, make your dough for cupcakes.
  5.  Add your pecan meal, dates, honey, applesauce and coconut oil to food processor and puree.
  6. Then add your eggs and vanilla extract, and puree.
  7. Lastly add your coconut flour, baking soda and powder, cinnamon, and salt and puree until all incorporated.
  8. Grease your donut pan and pour in your donut mixture half way up (to keep room for your topping on top).
  9. Now finish off your toppings. To your apples that have been sauteeing up, add your coconut milk, almond butter, maple syrup, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and a bit of salt. Mix well.
  10. When your toppings are well combined, pour 1-2 tablespoons of your mixture onto each cupcakes, sprinkling each with a bit of coconut sugar.
  11. Place in oven for 30-35 minutes until cooked through.
  12. This made 12-15 cupcakes.

 

Paleo Chocolate Zucchini bread

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It has been a long time since I posted a recipe and it does not mean that I don’t cook 🙂 I do cook every day, as this is what we have to do being in pale wagon if we want to survive, but I haven’t been doing something new or exciting. However, I saw a recipe on http://paleomg.com and of course I wanted to try it, just because I always like any desserts that I make from this website. I tweaked it a bit and I think next time I will not squeeze zucchini to make sure that moisture stays in. The cake was good, but a bit too dry for my taste. Sorry for the quality of the picture (taken with iPod)

Shred zucchini, squeeze a bit of water and mix in a bowl with all the rest ingredients. Be careful adding coconut flour because it is very liquid absorbent to make sure that your dough is not too dry. Grease you bread loaf with coconut oil and bake 375F for 25-35mins. It took me 29mins to have toothpick come out dry. Enjoy!

Paleo crunch bars

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So, I wanted to order some stuff from Steve’s Paleo, but the shipping is super expensive, so I decided to make a research on all mighty google.com and find a recipe to make it myself. Anyways, I am so used to make everything myself that I kind of lost hope and interest to buy. Well, I try to ind something, but there is always some ingredients that I don’t like or if it’s all clean, then it is super expensive and it is much cheaper to make it myself.

I took a recipe from here and I basically repost the recipe:
Ingredients

1/2 cup Raw Pumpkin Seeds
1/2 cup Pecans ( I used 1/4 cup of Pecan meal, because I had it and found it much cheaper to buy pecan meal than actual pecans. Anyways, I usually use them for baking and have to make into meal, so saving expenses and extra work)
1/2 cup Shredded (raw, unsweetened) Coconut
3/4 cup Almond Meal
1/2 cup Raw Sunflower Seeds
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
1/4 cup Coconut Oil (plus a little to grease the pan)
1/4 cup Honey
2 tbsp of 100% Cacao

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Grind the pumpkin seeds, pecans, and coconut in a food processor until it’s a coarse flour.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the pumpkin/pecan/coconut flour with the almond meal and sunflower seeds. Use your hand. This is also when you add the cinnamon.
Add in the vanilla and the coconut oil stir with a spatula until the mix is evenly coated.
Add the honey and fold the mixture together until it is consistent throughout.
Grease your baking pan. I actually used two bread pans and divided mixture in half. I first pan I put and pressed so that it would be all equal the original mixture, then to the rest I added cacao and put that into second pan. I wanted to try two variations and did not want to cook twice 🙂 Both came out good. If you make just one variation, use square pan, for the convenience. Bake for about 15-20 minutes. Keep an eye on it though. Once it is golden brown and the aroma fills your kitchen, it’s ready. Remove it from the oven and use the spatula to cut it into 20 bars. Let it cool though before you take them out of the pan.

Chocolate love – weekend desserts

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I LOVE chocolate. I used to love milk chocolate. Not anymore….I still remember days when I was teenager and I could eat 200-300g of chocolate in one sit. Seriously…I liked it that much…But, since I went paleo, I find it difficult to find chocolate that would not have soya lecithin in it and it is impossible to find chocolate without sugar. Well, in best case scenario you get chocolate with cane sugar and no soya lecithin and it might be pricey 🙂 But I prefer not to have sugar at all, so I prefer to make desserts by myself and explore different ways to enjoy it while making desserts with 100% cocoa.  I love richness of chocolate and I think I couldn’t live without it, but the sweetness was replaced by bitterness. That’s where the problem lies is making desserts, because Keven is sugar fan. So, this weekend for me was chocolate dessert weekend…I almost always make desserts on weekends to have what to enjoy during the week 🙂

This weekend I made paleo candies, sun butter chocolate fudge and sweet potato chocolate brownies. Actually, brownies are still in the oven, so pictures for all desserts will follow. My favourite easy to make dessert that I must have in freezer is pale candies. So easy to make and I started to separate now in a half. First half I make almost unsweetened (for me) and second half triple  sweetened (for Keven). The good thing about these candies is that you can mix in whatever I want. Sometimes I make them only with coconut flakes, sometimes make half nuts and half coconut flakes, sometimes I add a little bit of nuts. The one that is in recipe has maybe 1/4 cup of chopped walnuts and rest is coconut flakes, so experiment to find the best combination for you. I like this recipe because it doesn’t have as much of coconut oil and/or almond butter. I love both, but I also love to have something not that expensive to make, so these candies are good budget solution 🙂

Paleo Chocolate Bars

  • 2-3 Tbs coconut oil (depends on how crunchy you can you bars to be)    
  • 1/4 cup 100% cocoa
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped nuts (if not just replace them by shredded coconut)
  • 1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
  • 1 Tbs raw honey (add more if you want it sweeter)
  • parchment paper or pyrex

Then comes the easiest part. Over medium heat in small saucepan heat oil and honey until melted. Add cocoa, nuts    and coconut and mix everything. Pour the mixture on a parchment paper or in a pyrex and form a square. Put in a freezer until set. Cut into desired sizes. Enjoy! I keep them in a freezer not to eat all at once. It is easier if you don’t see it, because it would be gone much faster 🙂

Sunflower Fudge

I found this recipe through Dessert Stalker and I chose to make it, because it did not relied heavily on either butter or coconut oil. Plus it offered to make your own sun butter (which I did, but I think I toasted seeds a bit too much, so my fudge has some little taste of burn….oh well…next time it will be perfect). Whether you choose to make your own sun butter or not, it is up to you, I think you will be satisfied with result. It is really nice and filling dessert (adopted from Erin).

Ingredients:

  • 2oz  100% cacao unsweetened chocolate (if you don’t have, just replace by 1/3 cup of cacao)
  • 1/2 cup coconut milk
  • 1/4 cup organic sun butter (or make your own sunflower butter)
  • 3 Tbsp Maple syrup (or any other your preferred natural sweetener)
  • 6 drops stevia (I think next time I will not put stevia and maybe just add 1 tbsp of honey)

Over medium heat mix all ingredients in a medium saucepan until well combined. Pour into bread pan and freeze until set. Cut into desirable sizes and enjoy. What is good about this recipe that you can replace sun butter by any other nut or seed butter and have a great result, because the taste is really rich and I love the idea of using coconut milk instead of oil.

Last recipe came from my favourite dessert maker Juli 🙂 Needless to say it is really yummy, though less yummy than sweet potato pie 🙂 Anyways, when you have sweet potatoes around, very well worth to make.

Sweet Potato Brownies

  • 1 sweet potato
  • 3 eggs, whisked (I used 1 whole egg and 1/2 cup of egg whites)
  • 1/4 cup melted Coconut Oil
  • 1/3 cup unpasteurized honey
  • 1/4 cup Semi  Sweet Chocolate Chips
  • 3 tbsp Coconut Flour
  • 2 tbsp 100% cocoa
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
  • pinch of salt

Bake potato on 425F for around 30mins. or until soft. Then reduce heat to 350F for brownies. Peel and mash sweet potato. Add coconut oil, eggs, honey and vanilla. Mix well. Add dry ingredients: cocoa, baking soda, coconut flour, cinnamon, salt and chocolate chips. Mix all well. Pour into 8×8 or similar size pyrex and bake for 30-40mins. Cut into squares.

I served it with coconut ice cream and blueberries. Super nice 🙂

So, these are my treats for a week 🙂 I know that it might seem a lot, but brownies will be gone tomorrow and fudge will last a bit longer as it has burned sunflower seed taste :)))

Double Layer Fudge

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Ok. Now, we come to serious business. I have tried this recipe last week and it was so good that I think that I won’t make it very soon. It is just so good that is hard to stop eating and it is really fat. Though fats are good for us, right? When it comes to desserts, one of my favourite websites is Juli from PaleOMG, this girl goes hardcore and she does it really well. So, I saw this picture on website and just left page open in my iPod browser not to forget that I want to make this dessert (sorry for not having my own picture to upload). I hope Juli will forgive me for using her picture for this post, but I just did not have time to take my own picture and when I had, the fudge was gone 😦

Double Layer Fudge

    • 1 cup coconut oil
    • 1 cup almond butter
    • 1/4-1/3 cup raw honey (Juli offers to add 1/2 cup of honey, but I was scarred that for me it would be too sweet. And it was sweet enough) 
    • 1/3 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
    • 4-5 heaping tbsp of pure cacao (the more cacao you will add, the more bitterness it will bring)
    • 1 tsp vanilla extract
    • pick of salt
    • a handful of semi sweet chocolate chips (though not necessary)
    • extra of shredded coconut for sprinkling

Add coconut oil, honey, shredded coconut, vanilla extract, almond butter and pinch of salt to a food processor and mix until fully combined. Pour half of the mixture to a bread pan or some other pan and use spoon to make the surface even (I used pyrex, but then it was a bit hard to cut first part as it sticked to the bottom). Place it into the freezer to harden. Meanwhile, add cocoa step by step to the rest of mixture and mix throughly until you get the desired taste and not too bitter. Once cacao is all mixed in add a pinch of salt and mix it well, pour chocolate mixture over hardened light fudge. Sprinkle with chocolate chips, shredded coconut and some salt. I was really surprised about the salt, but it was actually working really nice once the fudge was done and brought up some unexpected nice addition to the sweetness. Place in freezer for 10-15mins. Cut in chunks and try not to eat all the chunks at once. I was keeping them in freezer and it was all gone in couple days. It is amazingly good with coffee. So far, my favorite dessert!

 

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Banana pudding aka Paleo Ice Cream

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I have been craving for ice cream lately, especially because it was really hot this weekend and everyone around were really enjoying ice creams all around me and it was hard to resist. However, going to the shop and buying one was not working for me as I could not see any organic (not sure if it’s better, should check labels) and when I looked at the consistence of all the other, I just had to put it back. I know it would not kill me, but somehow I really don’t feel like putting ingredients that I don’t know in my body and it would make me feel bad psychologically and remove all the pleasure of eating. I checked on internet for some ice cream recipes and though I could find some, it involved  either ice cream machine that I don’t have or lots of mixing every hour or so. I don’t have patience for that, so simply decided to go with banana pudding recipe from Paleo Comfort Foods book, especially as they even recommended to have it frozen as it reminds ice cream.

Banana Pudding

  • 1 can coconut milk
  • 2 large egg yolks (organic preferably)
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 2 tbsp coconut oil
  • 3 really ripe bananas (very important, because then they are softest and sweetest. If you don’t have, wait until it will ripen or you will miss all the point)
  • 1/2 tsp of cinnamon

Whisk coconut milk, egg yolks and vanilla over medium heat. Stir constantly until mixture starts to thicken, then set aside. In small frying pan heat coconut oil over medium heat and add slightly mashed bananas along with cinnamon. Cook until banana will start somewhat caramelize. Pour coconut milk and egg mixture along with bananas into food processor or blender and process until smooth. Pour content into a bowl and place a layer of plastic wrap directly on surface. Refrigerate to serve. As I was experimenting, I divided the mixture into few small bowl added different ingredients:

  • just banana pudding (really good as a pudding and has really nice texture frozen)
  • banana pudding+2 tbsp cacao= chocolate ice cream (same nice texture)
  • banana pudding + mashed raspberries = raspberry ice cream (took much longer to get texture as it was more liquid that just pudding. But after one day in freezer it was really nice)
  • Banana pudding + mashed raspberries + 1 tbsp cacao = raspberry chocolate ice cream or pudding. Actually it was least good, as the texture was more liquify that banana pudding and raspberries brought out the bitterness of cacao. And it tasted much more banana than the plain banana one 🙂

All in all, this is really easy recipe t make and I think we will have it often this summer in our freezer as an ice cream 🙂

Sweet Potato Pie

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I have been making quite lots of desserts lately. Well, after my Whole30 challenge I really missed making sweets and especially because Paleo is still new to me I love experimenting and trying out new stuff, especially free from all the inflammatory stuff 🙂 So, I have never made not Paleo sweet potato pie as well as I have never made pumpkin pie before in my life, so for me, this pie tasted amazing. Actually, all Paleo desserts tastes for me amazing, but this one is definitely worth trying, especially if you got couple sweet potatoes laying around.

This recipe is entirely from the book “Paleo Comfort Foods” and it has two parts: Nutty Crust and Sweet potato Pie filling itself.

Nutty Pie Crust:

  • 1 cup almond Flour
  • 1/2 cup pecans (chopped)
  • pinch of salt
  • 1/4 cup coconut oil (melted)
  • 2 tbsp honey (optional)
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix all the dry ingredients in one bowl and all wet in the other. Combine wet with dry until completely mixed. Using fingers  or spoon (for me with spoon was less hassle as it dough is quite sticky) press dough into 24cm pie pan. Bake for 12-14mins. or until browned. Let it cool completely before filling.

Sweet Potato Pie:

  • 1 Nutty Pie Crust
  • 2 cups (400 g) sweet potatoes, peeled, boiled and mashed
  • 1 tbsp of butter or coconut butter (melted)
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp baking powder (I did not use baking powder as the one that I have from old times contains starch, so I just added extra 1/2 tsp of baking soda. I always do that when recipe calls for baking powder. I know that they have different reactions, but I have been lazy to search for appropriate baking powder or simply don’t remember that when I am shopping)
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 2/3 cup coconut milk
  • 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
  • 1/4 cup honey (it is optional and I actually used maple syrup as I run out of sugar and as Keven still has huge sweet tooth I decided to please him by adding this extra sweetness to dessert)

Preheat the oven to 400F. In large bowl or food processor mix sweet potatoes and butter. Add in eggs and mix until fluffy. Combine cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, baking powder and salt in separate bowl. To the sweet potato mixture add coconut milk, vinegar and spices. Mix until fully combined and add honey if desired. Pour content into pie crust and bake for 10mins. at 400F and then reduce heat to 325F and bake for 30mins. or until set. Decorate with pecan halves 🙂
Super nice and everyone will be very pleased with this pie.

Paleo birthday cake

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As I decided to follow both Paleo and Zone diets, well, still more zone, as I am not ready totally to with to Paleo, so gonna take it slowly. However, I definitely took off wheat from my diet, except my friday night when we have pizza nights 🙂 but I will try to change that as well. So, of course, I could not find better way to star new year as with Paelo birthday cake. It took sometime of research to find one, but the result was AMAZING. For me it was the best chocolate cake that I ever ate, I took it from Paleo Spirit :))))

So, here it comes 🙂

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Place the medjool dates in a food processor and pulse until completely pureed (it might take some time and for me it is most tiring process as the dates are really sticky thing to deal with). Add applesauce (or banana or applesauce and banana) and continue to pulse until pureed and combined with the dates. Add the eggs, vanilla, coconut oil and coffee and mix on low-medium speed until well combined. Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and slowly add to wet ingredients until you have a smooth batter. Grease a 8×8 glass pan with coconut oil, pour in the batter and smooth it with the back of a spatula. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the middle comes out clean.

I also made a chocolate frosting, however, most that I checked were calling for too much oil, so I just created on the spot, combining some of the recipes:

  • around one cup of 72% organic cacao chips
  • 1-2 tbsp coconut oil
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

In a bowl over boiling water melt chocolate chips, add the rest of ingredients. When it is all mixed, pour it over the cake and let it sit. After this cake I am not worried anymore that baking will banish from my life as actually there are so much more sources than flour and that actually eating them makes you feel good 🙂

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