Something To Get You Through Monday Morning

I’m on a bit of a roll with banana-based recipes at the moment. I just hate chucking away over-ripe bananas when they are so perfect for baking. So this time I created a breakfast banana muffin recipe inspired by my beautiful friend’s recipe, thanks Kelsey!

Makes approximately 8 small muffins.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1/3 cup rolled oats
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/3 cup melted coconut oil
• 1/3 cup honey
• 2 eggs
• 2-3 over-ripe mashed bananas
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1tsp cinnamon

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 170 degrees and prepare your muffin tints with muffin holders.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the coconut oil and honey. Add the eggs and whisk well.
3. Add the mashed bananas and milk, followed by the banking soda, cinnamon and vanilla extract. Mix well.
4. Add the flour and oats to the mixture and mix together using a large spoon (mix until combined). You can add extra ingredients here if you like such as chocolate chips or nuts.
5. Fill your muffin holders about two-thirds of the way. Sprinkle a few oats on top.
6. Bake for about 20 minutes (or until a toothpick inserted into a muffin comes out clean).
7. Enjoy!!!

I loved serving these muffins with yogurt sprinkled with honey on the side. These are also great take-away snacks!

If you have any suggestions please feel free to shoot them to me!

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Who Can Say No to Banana Bread?

Who can say no to banana bread? Really… it’s just the best.

After finally handing in an assignment which had taken all of my energy over the past few days, I got the sudden urge to bake something yummy. I was pretty tired so wanted something nice and easy to make. After glancing at sad looking over-ripe bananas in my fruit ball I realised they were calling for me. I hate wasting food, so banana bread it was!

And here is the exciting news. I have made my own banana bread recipe which is low in sugar and also has dairy-free and gluten-free alternatives for those with allergies! Most banana bread recipes use so much sugar which is unnecessary because bananas themselves are naturally really quite sweet. So I hope you enjoy this recipe ;)

Tip: banana bread is best served toasted with a side of butter and accompanied by a hot drink like a cup of coffee or English breakfast tea. Yumzies!!

 

Dry Ingredients:

– ¾ cup of plain flour (use buckwheat flour for a gluten-free alternative)

– ½ cup of almond meal

– 1 ½ teaspoon of baking powder

– ½ teaspoon of baking soda

– 1 teaspoons of cinnamon

– 1 tablespoon of sugar (you can use more if you want, maybe ¼ or up to ½ cup)

– Pinch of salt

Wet Ingredients:

– 3 very ripe bananas (make sure they are very ripe – as in pretty yucky looking – because you will get most of the sweetness from these bad boys)

– 2 large eggs

– ¼ cup of milk (use nut milk for a dairy-free alternative)

– 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

– 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar

–  1/3 cup of melted butter (¼ cup of melted coconut oil if you are dairy-free)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line a rectangular loaf tin with baking paper.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine all the dry ingredients.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, vanilla extract, coconut oil and apple cider vinegar.
4. Mash up your bananas and then add them to the wet mixture. Mix well.
5. Add the wet mixture to the dry and fold through until combined.
6. Pour the mixture into the loaf tin and chuck in the oven for 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

My thoughts about Ora

Hi all!!

I apologise for my lack of posts lately. It really has been a while since I’ve written on my blog… Now that I am back at uni and getting into a bit of a routine again I promise I will be better!

Today, I would like to share my thoughts about a cafe which I discovered on the weekend called ‘Ora‘, located on Whistler street in Manly. Now Ora is not your typical cafe… Nope, definitely not. It is quite different actually, starting from the fact that no paper napkins nor plastic straws are to be found there for example.

So, what is Ora in a nutshell?

Ora is an organic cafe in Manly which thrives on the idea that you can eat yummy healthy food.

What type of food do they serve there?

The cafe serves breakfast and lunch, including drinks and snacks. Although the food options are rather limited, the menu caters for a range of taste buds and the drink list runs for a few pages. Whether you are more of a sweet tooth, enjoy a typical bacon and egg sandwich or fancy trying something different, Ora has got you covered. However, what struck out to me the most was the original meal options like the savoury porridge served with bacon for example (see photo below!). In terms of drinks, naturopathic teas are the cafe’s go-to as well as the novel ‘Tumeric Latte’ which I got the chance to try!

Overall experience?

I really enjoyed having breakfast there with my family on a fine Saturday morning. The vibe is relaxed, the staff is friendly and attentive and the design of the cafe rocks! Plus you will definitely feel nice and full after your meal as the portions are generous which is always a bonus.

Thumbs up?

What I liked the most about Ora is that the place definitely centres around serving organic and nice food but, most importantly, it is not about ‘cleansing’ or being ‘vegan’ or anything extreme like that. Ora genuinely aims to create yummy wholefood which is sustainable, makes you feel good and is delicious! The package deal really. And price wise, dishes costs $20 or under so not too bad!

So, Ora, you have my thumps up!!

Fluffy Pancake Recipe

Hi all!

I’m really excited to share this recipe with you today. My sister and I love eating pancakes on the weekend, in fact, it has become a bit of a ritual for us now. I’ve tried some of the ‘healthy’ pancake recipes out there but, let’s face it, those ‘everything-free super healthy’ recipes usually taste pretty damn crappy and they require you to use the most complicated/expensive ingredients. Ain’t nobody got time for that…

So, I’ve finally made my own recipe which I feel has a perfect balance of yumminess and healthiness. What I like the most about this recipe is that the pancakes have a very smooth, fluffy consistency (thanks to the beaten egg whites) which is awesome. I made my 13 year old brother try these out to test whether the recipe was tasty enough from his perspective. He gave me the thumbs up and ate the whole batch. I’m guessing that’s a good sign…

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Here are the ingredients you need to serve about 2 people:

• 1/4 cup of buckwheat flour
• 1/4 cup of almond meal
• 1 small teaspoon of baking powder
• 2 eggs (separated)
• 1/4 cup of milk
• 1 banana
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla paste (or vanilla essence)
• 1 tablespoon of brown sugar (which gives a really nice caramel taste but you can omit the sugar if you prefer)
• Butter (or coconut oil) to cook the pancakes
• Toppings (this is really personal but here’s the list of ingredients which I usually use): plain yogurt, maple syrup, desiccated coconut,  banana, blueberries, nutella, homemade chocolate sauce (1 tablespoon of cacao powder, 1 teaspoon of nut butter (e.g. peanut butter, almond butter or tahini), 1 teaspoon of maple syrup and a dash of hot water – from Healthsynergy).

Note: this is a gluten-free recipe which I personally really like but you can substitute the buckwheat flour for normal plain flour if you prefer!

Method:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together (buckwheat flour, almond meal, baking powder, brown sugar).
2. Mix together the banana, milk, two egg yolks and vanilla paste in a blender (this should make a smoothie-like consistency). You can add a dash of milk if you like your pancake mixture to be kind of runny.
3. Combine the wet and dry mixtures together.
4. Beat the egg whites until they get nice and fluffy.
5. Carefully fold the egg whites in the rest of the pancake mixture – you don’t need to mix too much here.
6. Cook the pancakes on medium heat with a dash of butter (or coconut oil if you prefer). It’s important to be a bit patient here and avoid putting the heat on too high. Wait until bubbles start to appear and then flip the pancake to cook onto the other side.
7. Make your homemade chocolate sauce while the pancake is cooking.
8. Add your yummy toppings. I like to make small pancakes and play around with different toppings for each pancake :)

Now who’s going to kick-start their weekend with pancakes for breakfast tomorrow? I know I will :P

Take-away Breakfast Idea

I’m often rushed in the morning which  unfortunately means I don’t get an opportunity to have a proper sit down breakfast. Although I love taking my sweet time during breakfast, ideally drinking tea while slowly munching away on tasty homemade food then reading a good book or flicking through a magazine, I have found the perfect on-the-go brekkie recipe which makes up for all of the above!

What I love about this recipe is that:

1) It is dead easy

2) It takes only 1 minute to prepare

3) It is very cheap (which is always a bonus for poor university students like me!)

This recipe was inspired from Sarah Wilson’s ‘I Quit Sugar For Life’ book. Although I have never done the full I Quit Sugar program myself, I have experimented with her recipes a great deal. In my opinion, it is very true that we consume far too much sugar each day and that a low sugar diet makes you feel 100% better. The less sugar you eat, the less you crave it. It’s crazy!! Although I am not particularly a strong advocate of Sarah Wilson I do have a great deal of respect for her and I really love her recipes and perspective about food. I strongly support her approach to food waste management as well as her overarching vision which I discussed in my last post ‘Supercharged Vegetarian Salad (and a note about food sustainability)‘. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about! If you want more information please head to her blog.

Here’s the basic recipe for my take-away breakfast:

Ingredients:

– About 1/4 cup of frozen blueberries

– 2 to 3 fresh or frozen strawberries

– Two/Three Weet-Bix (depending on how hungry you are)

– Milk (I used full-cream milk but any type of milk would do)

Method:

– Pour the blueberries at the bottom of your take away-container

– Crumble your Weet-Bix on top

– Cover the lot with milk

– Add strawberries as toppings (if frozen you might want to unfreeze them in the micro-wave)

– Let the milk soak and the blueberries unfreeze for about 20-30 minutes

– Eat your breakfast!

This is a very simple recipe. I really like the texture of ‘soggy’ Weet-Bix and find it sweet enough just like that, however, feel free to drizzle some honey or maple syrup on top for an extra boost of sweetness! I also like to add these various ingredients to it:

– a scoop of chia seeds (soaking the chia seeds in the milk with the Weet-Bix makes a more pudding-like texture)

– a few roasted almonds

– Greek yogurt

– a scoop of LSA

– extra berries such as raspberries and/blackberries

– sliced banana

– granola

– chocolate sauce which consists of one tsp of cacao, one tsp of maple syrup and one tsp of tahini mixed together with hot water (inspired from Healthsynergy)

So let’s get into it shall we!

Buckwheat Pancake With A Bit Of Everything

Following on from my last post about how to make delicious poached eggs at home (click here to access the post), I thought it would be a good idea to show you an example of how I incorporate my poached eggs to my meals. So today’s example is a bit of an original mix as I had an egg with a buckwheat pancake…

I literally made my breakfast with all the leftovers in my fridge. Because I did not have any bread I thought I would make a large ‘blini’ to go well with the smoked salmon so I made a buckwheat pancake. It is very easy to make.

Method to prepare buckwheat pancakes:

All you need it 50 grams of buckwheat flour, approx. 1/4 cup of milk (any kind of milk you want – I used normal full fat milk but almond milk also works very well for example) and one egg. Mix everything together until you reach a pancake like mixture, grease the pan with a tiny bit of butter or coconut oil and then cook over medium heat until nice and golden. The mixture should make 2-3 rather large pancakes.

I then put my perfectly poached egg (thanks to my secret method) onto the pancake and I added boiled spinach, smoked salmon, ham and a few cherry tomatoes.

Tip: once you’ve finished making your poached egg, turn the temperature down so the water is not boiling anymore and chuck a handful of spinach in for a minute or two. This is a really easy cooking method which gives them a nice soft texture.

Tip number two: enjoy your smoked salmon with a bit of cream cheese on top of the buckwheat pancake – it’s really yummy.

 

Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions!!

Brownie for Breakie? Let’s do it.

I discovered the BEST breakfast recipe!!!! If you are like me and could eat chocolate anytime of the day (this includes breakfast) then keep on reading.

I got this recipe from a new cookbook which I bought recently and became so hooked onto that I spent most of my weekend on my sofa reading instead of addressing the pile of uni work which was patiently waiting for me on my desk. You may have heard of Sarah Wilson’s ‘I Quit Sugar’ book? Here is a link to her blog for some more information about her and to access/order her cookbooks!

I don’t think it would be legal for me to disclose of the full recipe (copyright issues) but I will nonetheless list the ingredients which I used to make this delight as I actually tweaked the recipe a little bit!

– Almond meal

– Cacao powder

– Maple syrup (only a tiny bit)

– Full cream milk

– Desiccated coconut

– Greek Yogurt

– Fresh raspberries

==> YUMMY!!! (And still so healthy!) #winning

And the best part of it all was that it took about 3 minutes to prepare – just chuck all the ingredients (except the yogurt and berries) together in a mug then microwave for 1.5-2 minutes and voila!

Delicious Dairy-Free Muesli

When I woke up today I felt a bit tense/nervous because I had an interview for an internship later that morning. I’m not going to say which company I applied for because it is not guaranteed that I got the position so let’s not spill anything too early. But one thing is for sure, I was very excited to go to my first ‘proper’ interview (as opposed to casual bar job interviews or things like that) but I was also very anxious. I will be over the moon if I do get the internship though because the company works in the field of health and wellbeing and is tied up with charity work as well – couldn’t have wished for a more ideal workplace that matches my interests. So fingers crossed!!

But let’s not get too side tracked! The reason for which I wanted to write a blog post is because I made a delicious breakfast to fuel my body up with as much goodness as possible before my interview. Inspired from smoothie recipes from The Blonde Vegan and from the muesli I once had at Pure Wholefoods in Manly, this rather big breakfast is ideal to begin your day in a positive manner. I can guarantee that you will feel nice and refreshed after such a yummy dairy-free muesli.

Essentially, my breakfast comprised of a fruit salad with muesli but instead of having yogurt I blended some fruits (like I would when I make a smoothie) and I used the mixture as my yogurt – the result was fantastic to say the least!

Here is the recipe: (this is just a rough recipe, you can play around with the ingredients as much as you want, it is just to give you an idea!)

For the fruit blend

Ingredients:

– 1/2 banana

– small handful of frozen raspberries

– small handful or frozen blueberries

– 1/4 apple

– 1 tsp flax seed meal

– 1 tsp green powder

– 1 kale leaf

– 1/2 cup of coconut water

– 1/2 cup of almond milk

Method:

Blend all the ingredients together in a blender! Note that this will give you quite a large amount of mixture so you can use the left overs to sip on like a normal smoothie

 

Fruit salad and muesli

Ingredients:

You can use what ever fruit you like really but I personally used:

– 3/4 apple (note that it was a really small apple)

– 1/4 banana

– fresh blueberries

– fresh raspberries

– Homemade granola (for my ‘chocolate muesli’ recipe click here and for my normal granola recipe click here).

Method:

Place the muesli at the bottom of your bowl and then spread the fruit on top. Use the apple to segment the bowl in two parts so that once you pour the fruit blend it won’t go everywhere.

 

Tips: you can add some roasted almonds or coconut flakes on top for an extra crunch ;)

 

Enjoy!!

Chocolate muesli… Really?

Yes, I baked my first ‘chocolate muesli’ this morning inspired from a recipe I saw on the ‘thewholepantry’ app (TWP) Click here to download the app – I really recommend this app by the way! The app was founded by a women, Belle, who sadly suffers from brain cancer. TWP provides plant-based recipes with the aim to inspire people to live a healthier life. I have tried many of the recipes and I always love the end products!

Going back to what I was saying, I did not actually make the kind of ‘chocolate muesli’ that you may think of as you read the title of this post! I made my usual muesli but tweaked the ‘dressing’ a little bit. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients

– 2 cups Plain rolled oats
– Sliced dried figs (use as much as you like! I put about 1/2 cup)
– Dried cranberries (use as much as you like! I put about 1/2 cup)
– 1/4 cup Sesame seeds
– 1/4 cup Chia seeds
– 1/2 cup Pepitas
– 1/2 cup Sunflower seeds
– 1/3 cup Linseed
– 1 teaspoon Cinnamon
– 2 tablespoons cacao powder
– 60mL Honey or Agave syrup
– 40mL Coconut oil

Instructions

– Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees
– Pour all the ingredients (except the figs and cranberries!) together in a large mixing bowl.
– Using a spatula, mix all the ingredients well together.
– Pour the mixture in a pan with baking paper.
– Bake for about 20 minutes turning the mixture half-way through. Note: it’s always a good idea to keep an eye on the muesli while it is cooking to prevent it from burning!
– Once the muesli is nice and golden remove it from the oven and add the dried figs and cranberries while the mixture is still warm.
– Store in airtight container

Enjoy!!

For my original muesli recipe, head to Grumbling tummy… Hungry for some home-made granola

Breakfast with a hint of Christmas spirit

My mother bought me such cute little Christmas cookies (she is such an angel)! When I saw them on the kitchen bench this morning it put me in such a good mood. I decided to take my time to prepare a yummy nutritious breakfast for a busy day of work ahead. 

The juice was very easy to make. I used two oranges (peeled), 1/4 of lemon (peeled) and some kale which I put through a juicer. 

I then cut up half a banana and apple which I sprinkled with linseed meal and my home made granola. I also had some plain yogurt with a tiny bit of maple syrup which was delicious to mix with the fruits and granola. 

Note: see ‘Grumbling tummy… hungry for some homemade granola’ post from December 3rd in ‘Food’ section of my blog for granola recipe)