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June 19, 2013 in Muffins and Coffee Cakes, Snack Bars
If you aren’t familiar with monkey bars, they are a brownie-like or coffee cake-like treat with the magical combination of peanut butter, banana and chocolate. Kind of like a banana bread but with much more than a hint of peanut butter and chocolate. Yeah, I know… drool. Well, I though it was high time that I attempted a paleo adaptation of these treats.
I actually started working on this recipe last summer. It’s a recipe that I made a couple of times, with small variations to improve the texture or better balance the almond butter and banana flavors. Then, the recipe got shelved while I was working on The Paleo Approach. So, to celebrate turning in all of my material for the book, I decided to dust this one off for one final (delicious) iteration. The biggest challenge with this recipe was flavor balance. I didn’t want the banana flavor to overwhelm them (as banana tends to do), but I didn’t want to mask the flavor completely either. And I really wanted to keep these sweetened with just banana and semisweet mini chocolate chips, which made balancing flavor and sweetness a little trickier. Well, the end result has my kids’ seal of approval. Actually, my kids devoured them even though they really aren’t that sweet.
The secret to getting a good almondy flavor is to use a high quality almond butter and almond meal. I used NaturAlmond almond butter and almond flour. NaturAlmond makes hands down the best almond butter I’ve ever tasted (plus they are a local family-owned company and just plain ol’ good people so I love to support them!). NaturAlmond almond butter is a crunchy almond butter which works so well in this recipe too, giving just that wee bit of texture. Their almond flour is fairly coarsely ground, more like a meal and I absolutely love it in baking that can handle that texture (I use it in my yeast-based paleo bread recipe and it’s great in some cookie recipes too). You could easily make your own almond meal by grinding almonds in a food processor (I would suggest roasting the almonds first to boost the flavor).
If you need a nut-free version, I think these would work with sun butter or tahini in place of the almond butter and ground sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds instead of almond meal… but I haven’t tried.
Oh, and another tip: the riper your bananas, the sweeter these Monkey Bars will be. Also, I used 80% dark chocolate for the chocolate drizzle on top (my family’s taste buds are very adapted to much less sweet treats now). You could use bittersweet or even semisweet chocolate instead if you prefer. You could also double the drizzle recipe and actually do more like a frosting coating over the entire top of the bars instead too.
This is also a great recipe to mix/mash everything by hand. The slightly chunkier texture you get that way compared to using a food processor or mixer is perfect for these bars.
Yield: 20 large squares
Ingredients:
Directions:
April 9, 2013 in Muffins and Coffee Cakes, Paleo Bread
When I was a teenager, my Uncle Bill taught me how to make real cinnamon buns. You know, the kind with yeast-based bread? It was a revelation and became one of my favorite treats to make. One batch would make a whole delicious pan, full of thousands of gluten-filled calories. And last about an hour. To this day the smell of cinnamon reminds me of family vacations (which often ended up being adventures) to visit my uncle.
My oldest daughter especially loves cinnamon, so I was inspired to try and modify my yeast-based paleo bread recipes to create a paleo adaptation of my once famous cinnamon buns. It actually took some fairly major modifications to the bread recipes to make a dough elastic and solid enough to roll. Compared to the regular cinnamon buns that I used to make, these are not quite as fluffy nor as elastic (and capturing that texture wasn’t worth using a gut irritating ingredient like xanthum gum or psyllium husk, since they are pretty awesome as is). But, I was able to capture the flavor and a nice bready texture. My kids are in love.
I’ve made these twice now, once more generously filled with sugar and cinnamon and once more stingy. I think they work better when you’re more generous, but they do work if you want to cut the cinnamon filling in half and makes these a little less sweet. The photos are actually from the stingier batch, but the recipe reflects the more generous filling.
These roll fairly easily. They are a little tricky to cut though. If you want perfect looking cinnamon buns, I would suggests rolling out each one individually instead of making the usual big long role and slicing off individual rolls. But, as you can see from the pan, they still look yummy, and they still pull apart enticingly well.
Ingredients (filling):
Ingredients (bread):
March 4, 2013 in Cakes and Cupcakes, Decadent Desserts, Hidden Veggies, Muffins and Coffee Cakes, Nut-Free Baking, Treats
I haven’t made these brownies in a very long time; but over the weekend, I found myself promising my kids that I would make them a treat. For them, that means something with chocolate in it. So, I decided it was a good excuse to give an old recipe a bit of a revamp.
When I first developed this recipe, I was having some difficulty getting my kids to eat vegetables (and at the time, my oldest wasn’t even eating fruit), so hiding some spinach into this recipe was really about just plain old hiding spinach in something. But, I also discovered that the spinach really helped the texture of these brownies (we all know how tricky grain-free baking can be). The original recipe made for a very delicious, but very cake-like in texture, brownie. I had always intended on revisiting this recipe to see if I could get more of a chewy textured brownie, ideally with that slightly crisp top that traditional brownies have.
So, I gave this a go with my new found best friend: the plantain. I hadn’t intended on making this a nut-free recipe (although I was trying to steer clear of ground flaxseed and coconut flour), but by the time I needed to add any almond flour, the batter was quite thick and I decided to try it without. I’m glad I did because it worked perfectly! Also, while I was at it, I decided to tone down the sweetness a bit to accommodate our more sensitive palates.
A note on green plantains: Plantains look a little like large bananas and are often found close to bananas in the grocery store (they are also called raw bananas in some countries). Green plantains are, well, green and the greener the better typically (they are starchier and have a more neutral flavor). They can be a bit challenging to peel. I like to cut in half lengthwise and in half crosswise and hen pry off the peel with my fingers. I typically stock up on green plantains when they have them in the store. They will stay green in a crisper for about 5-7 days (the peel will look like they are ripening but they are still green on the inside). I often buy a bunch, puree them in my food processor and then freeze in 1 cup portions in freezer bags for easy use for making pancakes or baking. Plantains turn first yellow and then get black spots and then almost completely black as they ripen. For any recipe that uses ripe plantains, the blacker the better. Plantains can range from white to yellow to orangey pink inside, which doesn’t seem to affect how they cook but does affect the color of the baking (not relevant for this recipe but this is why people find their pancakes turning anywhere from white to dark brown). I have come to love plantains as a flour substitute, especially for anything I want to have a chewy texture.
A note on chocolate: I always look for organic chocolate (typically sweetened with evaporated cane juice) and am very picky about looking for chocolate that is completely dairy-free (usually pretty easy, as long as you stick with semisweet or darker) and soy-free (much more challenging). One of my Go To brands is Enjoy Life (which comes in chunks and in mini chocolate chips). I’m also a huge fan of Equal Exchange (their 80% is our Go To snacking chocolate, but I also use their 71% and 65% in baking). Typically semisweet chocolate is about 55-60% cocoa, which isn’t very difficult to find organic and dairy-free but a little harder to find soy-free. Most people tolerate the small amount of soy lecithin in chocolate, and if you are one of these people Dagoba brand is a good one to look for. I typically consider my 65% Equal Exchange close enough to semisweet for baking.
I’ve posted some very potently chocolatey recipes lately (like Decadent Double Chocolate Cookies (Nut-free, Coconut-free, Egg-free) and Dark Chocolate Shortbread Cookies (Sandies or Meltaways)), but these brownies are a bit more traditionally chocolatey (so, not the uber intense flavor of those other treats), which I think works well as a brownie and also as a treat for my kids.
This makes a 9″x13″ tray of brownies, which I cut into 24 generously sized squares. Store in an airtight container for a couple of days at room temperature or in the fridge or freezer for longer.
Ingredients:
December 17, 2012 in Muffins and Coffee Cakes
The inspiration for these muffins came from a coffee cake that my mom used to make every year during the holidays. Slices of orangey yellow cake with bright red cranberries were always so beautiful on any Christmas baking plate. My mom used to also make loaves of this bread and wrap in beautiful paper to give to neighbors. It’s just one of those flavors that makes me feel like it’s Christmas.
This simple holiday treat turned out to be a very challenging recipe to adapt to paleo ingredients. And I really wanted to make something that tasted like my mom’s orange-cranberry bread (which meant I wasn’t willing to give up any of the components of her recipe that contribute to that perfect combination of orange, cranberry and almond).
A whole lot of experimentation with this recipe as a coffee cake ended up with many failures (they either tasted great but were too crumbly to slice or they sliced well but didn’t taste great and a couple of variations were too crumbly and also tasted terrible!). The move to muffin form saved this recipe. These muffins are sweet but have a wonderful tart zing (yes, that’s the technical term).
If you want to eat these muffins warm (which is pretty wonderful), use paper or silicone muffin cup liners in your muffin pan. If you are patient enough to let them cool completely before removing from the pan, a well-greased muffin pan will suffice (I suggest greasing with palm shortening, but coconut oil works relatively well too).
Yields 12 muffins.
Ingredients:
October 6, 2012 in Muffins and Coffee Cakes
When our family went to pick apples at a local apple orchard this year, we made the same miscalculation we always make. Three pecks of apples doesn’t look like that many in the big open space of the orchard, but boy, does it every look like a lot of apples once you get them home! I had five fruit bowls on my dining room table until I eventually made a giant batch of applesauce for the freezer.
Apple is one of the flavors I associate with fall. And these muffins have a wonderful robust apple flavor and a texture reminiscent of oat muffins.
These muffins are best made with thick homemade applesauce, but unsweetened store-bought applesauce will do. If your applesauce is already seasoned, you may want to pull back on the spices in this recipe (the only ingredient in my homemade apple sauce is apples). Applesauce and fresh chopped apple are the only source of sweetener in this recipe!, so I suggest choosing sweeter varieties for making your homemade apple sauce (I used a mixture of mutsu and golden delicious for my apple sauce). For the fresh chopped apple, any good cooking apple will work (I used fuji). The best sweet varieties of cooking apples are fuji, mutsu (aka crispin) and rome beauty. Granny smith are also a great cooking variety but pack a bit of a tangier punch.
I have also become very fond of my silicone muffin pan and silicone muffin cups. One of the other make baking paleo muffins so much easier. These muffins hold together well enough that a greased muffin pan will also work. You could also use paper liners. Yield: 12 muffins
Ingredients:
July 6, 2012 in Hidden Veggies, Muffins and Coffee Cakes, Nut-Free Baking
I love the flavor of gingerbread and don’t see the need to restrict it to the winter holiday season. This is actually my first nut-free muffin recipe, created especially for my mother-in-law’s recent visit. My mother-in-law, who is allergic to nuts, loves ginger, which is great because she got to enjoy 4 different versions of these muffins before they were perfect!. Yields 12 muffins.
Ingredients:
(equivalent to one 15oz can)
1. Grease a muffin pan generously with palm shortening or line with paper liners or reusable Silicone Muffin Cups
2. Melt coconut oil in the microwave or in a small saucepan over low heat on the stovetop.
3. In a large bowl, combine pumpkin puree, eggs, flax meal, molasses, vanilla and coconut oil.
4. Sift coconut flour and combine with tapioca starch, spices and baking soda.
5. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients. Stir to combine. Spoon batter into prepared muffin pan.
6. Bake for 35 minutes. Remove from pan to cool. Enjoy!
Do you need help finding any ingredients? Check out Important Pantry Items for the Paleo Baker.
February 3, 2012 in Hidden Veggies, Muffins and Coffee Cakes
Don’t be afraid. You can’t taste the broccoli very strongly. But it’s there, adding wonderful nutrition to these delicious muffins. Both my girls adore these (the chocolate chips, maybe?) and, given that they normally think eating something green is akin to torture, I’m pretty pleased with my ability to slip some added nutrition into their diets. A good option with these muffins would be to substitute chopped walnuts for the chocolate chips, if you like. Makes: 12 muffins.
Ingredients:
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a muffin pan (or line with paper muffin cups).
2. Combine almond flour, coconut flour, baking soda and salt together in a small bowl.
3. Blend bananas, broccoli and egg together in a blender, food processor or with an immersion blender. Pour out into a large bowl.
4. Add honey, coconut oil, vanilla, lemon juice and flax meal to banana-broccoli mixture.
5. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and stir to combine.
6. Scoop mixture into muffin pan and bake for 30 minutes. Enjoy!
January 27, 2012 in Hidden Veggies, Muffins and Coffee Cakes
I love cooking muffins full of vegetables (both when I can sneak vegetables in and when that vegetable is the star of the muffin). This recipe is based on my mother’s zucchini bread recipe, which I grew up adoring. This paleofied version is not very sweet, but my toddler and husband love them and will argue over who gets to eat the last one (which is pretty much my gauge of kitchen success). I have also tried this recipe as a mini loaf and it seems to work well (not sure about how evenly it would bake as a regular sized loaf, so if you try it, leave a comment to let me know how it works!). Makes: 12 big muffins (you could easily stretch the batter to 14-15 muffins if you have more than one pan).
Ingredients:
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a muffin pan with coconut oil or palm shortening or use Silicone Muffin Cups
2. Grind walnuts in a Food Processor
3. Combine ground walnuts, almond flour, coconut flour, spices, baking soda and salt together in a small bowl.
4. Mix grated zucchini, sugar, egg and melted coconut oil together in a large bowl.
5. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and stir to combine.
6. Scoop mixture into prepared muffin pan and bake for 30 minutes. Enjoy!
December 28, 2011 in Cakes and Cupcakes, Decadent Desserts, Muffins and Coffee Cakes
The inspiration for this cake came from my daughter’s second birthday cake. I baked Elena Amsterdam’s chocolate layer cake with coconut flour recipe and frosted with a lacto-paleo chocolate fudge frosting (the kind that is mostly chocolate with a little cream and butter for good measure). Elena’s recipe produces a delightful spongy cake with a mild chocolate flavor. Combined with the intense flavor of the frosting, my daughter’s birthday cake was a resounding success. But, it got me thinking. What if I could develop a chocolate cake that had all the lovely spongy texture of this cake but enough chocolate flavor to stand on its own without frosting. This took quite a bit of tinkering and many iterations to boost the chocolate flavor sufficiently without giving up too much on the texture. The chocolate flavor is enhanced by the cayenne and cinnamon which give this cake a delightful “kick”.
A note on cocoa: There are three different “types” of cocoa that you can buy in stores. The easiest to find is “Alkalized”, also called “Dutch-Processed”. This cocoa powder has a darker color (and is considered easier to bake with) but also has many of the anti-oxidants stripped out in the alkalizing process. Avoiding this type of cocoa can be a challenge because it’s not always labeled, but most of the grocery store brands are alkalized. Look for either “Natural” or “Raw” Cacao Powder
Ingredients:
1. Preheat oven to 325F. Line 5”X9” loaf pan with wax paper. Grease wax paper with coconut oil.
2. Sift cocoa, coconut flour, cinnamon, cayenne, salt and baking soda into a small bowl.
3. In a food processor or blender, combine eggs, honey, molasses, and vanilla. Pulse a few times to beat together. Add melted coconut oil and chocolate and process/blend for 1 minute.
4. Add dry ingredients to food processor, and pulse to combine.
5. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and bake for 1 hour (not a very forgiving cake if you burn it, so you might want to test for doneness with a toothpick at the 55 minute mark).
6. Let cool completely in the pan. Remove from pan and carefully remove wax paper. Enjoy!
Do you need help finding any ingredients? Check out Important Pantry Items for the Paleo Baker.
December 3, 2011 in Hidden Veggies, Muffins and Coffee Cakes
This recipe starts with the carrot cake recipe that my mom found in the archives while doing a paper on traditional French Canadian cuisine for a college paper. The original recipe is approximately 400 years old. Over the last few years, I have played with this recipe to make it healthier, even substituting parsnip for some of the sugar (inspired by episode of Alton Brown’s Good Eats focused on sneaking vegetables into kids’ diets). Now, with my desire to get my girls eating paleo, I have played with this recipe even more. Although the ingredients vary substantially from the original recipe, the flavor and texture are remarkably preserved. Everyone in my family loves these muffins. They are probably my toddler’s favorite food! Yield: 1 dozen
Ingredients:
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a muffin pan.
2. Grate parsnip and carrot finely. I like to just pulse them in a food processor until finely ground.
3. Combine eggs, parsnip, carrot, oil, sugar and vanilla in a large bowl. Stir to form a batter.
4. Combine almond flour, coconut flour, baking soda, cream of tartar and spices in a small bowl.
5. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and stir until combined into a very thick batter. Fold in walnuts, if using.
6. Spoon into muffin cups and bake for 35 minutes.
7. Let cook a few minutes in the muffin pan before removing. Enjoy!
Do you need help finding any ingredients? Check out Important Pantry Items for the Paleo Baker.
November 20, 2011 in Muffins and Coffee Cakes
Both my daughters love bananas, but eating half a banana is a common occurrence. So, we tend to have alot of leftover bananas in our house. I take all those half bananas, peel them, and toss them into a resealable plastic bag in my freezer. When I have the equivalent of 3 bananas, I make paleo banana muffins. Here is my favorite variation (yield: 12 muffins):
Ingredients:
1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Toast macadamia nuts and coconut flakes on a baking sheet in the oven until starting to brown, about 6-8 minutes, stirring every 2-3 minutes.
3. In a medium bowl, combine almond flour, coconut flour, salt and baking soda. In a separate bowl, whisk eggs, mashed banana, honey, coconut oil, lemon juice and vanilla.
4. Pour wet mixture over dry mixture and stir to combine. Add toasted macadamia nuts and coconut.
5. Spoon batter into greased muffin tin and bake for 30 minutes.
Do you need help finding any ingredients? Check out Important Pantry Items for the Paleo Baker.
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