Carrot cake slice - Nut free, egg free and gluten free

Filling the lunchbox every day is a constant challenge, so I've been told!  I'll find that out first hand this year.  And so given I use nuts in most things I make, it has been a challenge for me to ditch the nuts (during the week anyway!) and to come up with some lunchbox friendly snacks that will still nourish and energize my little man as he takes on each of the days events.

This recipe has no highly processed ingredients, with the bulk of the mix coming from carrots, sunflower seeds and brown rice!  It is also low in added sugar, using dates to sweeten, with just a little help from one of the least processed sugars, rapadura.  Taste the mix before pouring into the tray and if your tastes say 'sweeter please', blend through another couple of dates, some grated apple or sultanas.
I experimented and made a coconut 'icing' to put on top of each slice however you could go more traditional with a cream cheese frosting or even a lemony type icing which would be yummy too!

Of course this isn't just for kids!  Given the ingredients, it would make an energising snack for busy days on the go, between meals, or even with a cuppa and a chat! (or breakfast!).

Carrot Cake Slice - Nut, egg and gluten free

Ingredients

150g brown rice (or brown rice flour if not using a TMX)
30g chia seeds
300g carrots
120g sunflower seeds
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
40g rapadura sugar
6 medjool dates (or 1/2 cup sultanas)
70g butter

Method - Conventional

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees.  Line a slice tray with baking paper.
2. Place carrots, sunflower seeds and dates in a food processor and blend until almost smooth.
3. Add remaining ingredients and blend until smooth.
4. Pour into prepared slice tray and place in preheated oven for 25-30 minutes, or until cooked through.
5. Cool in tray for 5 minutes then turn out onto a cooling rack.
6. When cool top with coconut icing (recipe below) or desired topping.

Method - Thermomix

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees.  Line a slice tray with baking paper.
2. Place rice and chia seeds in TM bowl and mill on speed 10 for 1 minute, scraping down once or twice if needed.  Set aside but no need to wash the bowl.
3. Add carrots, sunflower seeds and dates to TM bowl.  Blend on speed 6-7 for 30 seconds.  Scrape down and repeat.
4. Add remaining ingredients, including rice/chia flour and blend on speed 6 until completely combined (approx 20 seconds).
5. Follow steps 4-6 above.

COCONUT ICING

Place a 270g tin of coconut milk in the fridge for a couple of hours (I use Ayam brand).  Once it's cooled through, place 50g organic shredded coconut and 40g rapadura sugar in TM bowl.  Blend until a rough paste forms.  Open the coconut milk can without shaking and carefully spoon off just the solid part (the liquid will be down the bottom) and add to the coconut/sugar mix.  Add the finely grated rind of 1 lime and 1 tbs coconut oil and blend on speed 7 until creamy (there will still be some texture from the coconut), scraping a couple of times.Place in a piping bag and decorate individual cake squares as in the picture above or spread over the whole slice and cut into pieces.  

Nut and gluten free fudgy dark chocolate brownie slice

Hehehe I love you guys!!  A bit of chocolate splashed across my Facebook page and before I could blink again it had become one of the most popular posts since, well, the last chocolate recipe!!!  You and I have something in common that is for sure!  A LOVE of all things chocolate! And why not?!  A good quality chocolate recipe can fit perfectly well into a balanced diet.

Chocolate is mood food, comfort food, soul food, endorphin releasing smile food!  Chocolate lovers live it and breathe it.  And when the 'chips are down', chocolate has this uncanny knack of being able to give us a hug, turn up the corners of our mouth, pick us up, brush us off and keep us going.  Any wonder many health professionals out there are calling it a super food!  Damn right it is ( ;

And the closer you get to the natural cacao bean itself, the more you benefit from antioxidants, magnesium, flavenoids, iron, zinc, potassium, copper.....

As Mellymaks regulars know, these days I only use raw cacao powder (instead of the over heated and processed cocoa powder) and minimum 70% dark chocolate.  For Christmas a dear friend of mine gave me a sachet of Loving Earth Drinking Chocolate which is so amazing as it contain cacao nibs in it which gives these beautiful little crunchy pieces while drinking the chocolate milk!  YUM!  When I served this recipe up with homemade vanilla ice cream and strawberries, I sprinkled some of the drinking chocolate over the top which finished it off beautifully!

So given I am officially a new school mum this year, my mind is on nut free recipes at the moment!  This recipe therefore uses sunflower kernels and pepita seeds instead of the traditional walnuts or almonds.  Of course it is also gluten free.  I've also made it more bitter than sweet, but adding just a little more rapadura, or preferably some raspberries to the mix, will increase the sweetness!

If you like a really fudgy slice, reduce the cooking time by a few minutes.  I layered my slice up with ice cream, but a coconut cream, ganache or even a butterscotch sauce would be just as delicious.

I challenge you not to lick the bowl from this one! ( ;

Nut and gluten free Fudgy Dark Chocolate Brownie Slice

Ingredients

85g sunflower kernels
85g pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
140g butter
40g rapadura sugar
150g dark chocolate
35g raw cacao powder
3 eggs

Method - Conventional

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.  Line a slice tin with baking paper.      
2. Grind sunflower kernels and pepitas in a food processor until fine.  Set aside.
3. Melt butter, sugar and dark chocolate in a small saucepan over low heat until just melted.  Take off heat.
4. Add cacao powder and stir through. 
5. Add eggs and beat with electric beaters for approx 1 minute or until thickened.
6. Fold through ground seeds.  
7. Pour into prepared slice tray and smooth surface.  Bake for 25 minutes or until just cooked through.  Be sure not to over cook or you will lose the fudgy centre!
8. Serve in any of the ways suggested above.

Method - Thermomix

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.  Line a slice tin with baking paper.
2. Place sunflower kernels and pepitas in TM bowl and grind on speed 9 for 20 seconds.  Dont let it turn into a paste though.  Set aside.  No need to wash the bowl.
3. Place butter, sugar and dark chocolate into TM bowl and combine on speed 7-8 for approx 10 seconds - enough to break it all up. 
4. Scrape down sides of bowl and heat at 90 degrees, speed 2 for 2 minutes, ensuring all mixture has melted.
5. Add cacao and eggs and whip on speed 5 for 30 seconds.
6. Add ground seeds back into the mix and blend through on speed 4 for 15 seconds.
7. Follow steps 7-8 as above. 

Enjoy....

Gluten Free Shortbread

Although shortbread is available all year round, there is something about Christmas and those buttery sweet treats that goes so beautifully together.  Well, in fact, in Scotland it would be rude not to serve up a plate of shortbread at some point around Christmas and New Year!

Move over macaroons I say, because the humble shortbread is not only so much easier to make, but that buttery, soft, melt-in-the-mouth texture, combined with the nostalgia of home baked shortbread having adorned grandmas bikkie tin for years, makes these simple pleasures a beautiful gift for loved ones.

And for those of us avoiding gluten, the shortbread lends itself beautifully to a gluten free version due to the inherent crumbly and 'short' texture.  I don't find all that much of a difference between a wheat and gluten free version, which is a nice change!!

So whilst you can simply press the mix into a slice tin and run a knife through it straight after baking to make into fingers, this year I chose to make them extra Christmassy by pressing the mix out into Christmas shapes and making a hole in the top with a straw to create an ornament effect!    

Either way, get yourself some butter, GF flour and sugar and get cooking!

Gluten Free Shortbread (recipe sourced from 'Wheat & Gluten Free', Jody Vassallo

Gluten free shortbread

Ingredients

250g butter (softened if using conventional method)
125g pure icing sugar
375g gluten free plain flour
milk and sugar (if desired) for brushing over the biscuits

Royal icing ingredients

165g pure icing sugar, sieved
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1 egg white

Method - Conventional

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius.  Line two trays with baking paper.
2. Beat the butter and icing sugar until light and creamy.  Add the flour and stir until the mixture forms a soft dough.
3. Gently knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for 5 minutes.  Roll the dough between 2 sheets of baking paper until 1 cm thick. Using your preferred cookie cutters, cut out shapes and place on prepared trays.
4. Lightly brush the top of the shortbread with the milk and sprinkle with the sugar. (I didn't sprinkle with sugar as I iced mine with royal icing instead)
5. Bake for 15 minutes or until crisp and lightly golden.  Cool slightly on the trays, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Decorate with prepared royal icing if desired.
7. For royal icing, place sugar and cream of tartar in a medium bowl.  Gradually add egg white, whisking with an electric mixer until the mixture forms a thick white paste.  Spoon icing into a piping bag and decorate as desired.

Method - Thermomix

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius.  Line two trays with baking paper.
2. Place butter and sugar in TM bowl and whip on speed 7 for 30-40 seconds, or until lighter in colour.
3. Add flour and mix on speed 3 for 30 seconds.  Mixture will be quite crumbly but after some kneading and rolling out it will come together.
4. Follow steps 3-6 as above.
5. For royal icing, place all ingredients in clean and dry TM bowl.  Mix on speed 2 for 5 seconds to combine then whip on speed 9 for 30 seconds.  Add butterfly to bowl and whisk on speed 4 for another 30 seconds.  Spoon icing into a piping bag and decorate as desired.

Apricot and Coconut animals dipped in dark chocolate

Nawwww, now these are just toooooo cute! Hehehe I certainly can't take credit for how adorable these little guys are - the silicone mould can take the bow for that one!  But I felt the need to maximise the potential and whip up something beneficial for the kids.  

I'm sure we all remember eating those apricot and coconut snack bars/slices, touted as healthy and our well meaning parents smiled satisfactorily as we gobbled them down.  Problem is, the sugar and additives in these snacks actually outweigh any benefits from the apricot and coconut, and even these have the sulphur dioxide preservative added which, I don't know about you but I don't fancy my boys consuming this chemical!

Here's a leading brands ingredient list for Apricot and coconut bars.  What do you think?

Sugar, Coconut (42%), Dried Apricots (14%), Maltodextrin (From Wheat), Invert Syrup, Cocoa Butter, Acidity Regulator (330), Natural Colour (160c), Preservatives (202, 220, 224), Wheaten Cornflour (Gluten).

Ok.  Point made I think!

Utilising juicing pulp - Ricotta Cakes (gluten free, nut free)

And so it is that I am a huge convert to juicing, if you haven't already noticed on Mellymaks Facebook page!
Earlier this year my hubby and I completed a 3 day detox, created by the team at Food Matters.  It wasn't so much a detox for us but a door which we opened to find the wonderful world of juicing, among other things (such as how much nicer activated nuts are, how little hunger you feel when you actually feed your body with a barrage of nutrients, the deliciousness of chia puddings etc!!).

So back to juicing..... although I had tried it here and there in the past, and actually had a juicer in the cupboard gathering dust (as many of us do!!!) I hadn't felt the benefits of vegetable juice before, and the few commercial varieties that I had tried in the past definitely gave the idea of vegetable juice a bad name for me (think that terrible V8 juice in a can!!).

But a green juice was part of the detox and so we set about buying all the ingredients we needed - cucumber, parsley, lemon, apple, celery, kale and ginger.

Carrot loaded mini carrot cakes with a spiced honey butter! Gluten, Nut, and can be dairy and egg free.

Gee, it really has been a while between posts hasn't it?  I have to admit, having Mellymaks Facebook page has made me a little more lazy about blogging because it is so easy to type up a quick recipe with a photo and, click, its out there!
But here we are, back together again, having a good ol' chat at the kitchen bench.  With maybe a cuppa between us, or if its late enough in the day, maybe even a glass of wine!  Why not?

'What have you been up to?'
'Ah not much.  You know, nothing exciting enough to mention but enough to feel like I am run off my feet!'.
'Yep.  I hear ya!  Where does the time go?'

Creamy chocolate moussy pudding! (Gluten & Egg Free)

Yes, by the title of this post you can see that I had trouble defining exactly what this chocolate creation actually is!  I don't think you would be wrong to say it is a custard, a pudding or a mousse, as it has elements of each of these in one.