Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Grain Free Bagels



My family loves these bagels for breakfast, lunch and sometimes even dinner, and so I thought I would share the recipe. This is from Elana Amsterdam's book "Paleo Cooking from Elana's Pantry", I purchased the kindle version from Amazon. One of the things I like about her recipes is the simplicity of the ingredients which consequently makes clean up easy, which is always a plus in my opinion. :-) I also love that I can use my bagel/donut pan from USA Pans if you make baked bagels or donuts a lot and don't have one, I would highly recommend it! Anyway, here is the recipe with a few pictures. Enjoy!

Assemble your ingredients - Costco has just started carrying a lot of ingredients I use daily including almond flour and organic coconut flour which makes this kind of eating lifestyle even easier. 

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups blanched almond flour
1/4 cup golden flax meal
1T coconut flour
1t baking soda
1/4t sea salt 
5 eggs
2T apple cider vinegar or coconut vinegar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and if you are not using a USA Pan make sure to grease lightly with coconut oil, if you are no need to grease the pan.

Pulse all dry ingredients in food processor
Add eggs and vinegar, pulse until thoroughly combined


Pour mixture into a sandwich bag or quart size zip loc bag and seal top.
Snip off corner and "pipe" into bagel pan, dispose of bag (easy clean up again). Lightly tap pan to create uniform bagels, and place in oven.
Note: also if you want, you can sprinkle poppy seeds or sesame seeds on top before baking, my children don't appreciate the seeds ;-)

Bake for 20-25 minutes until knife or toothpick is inserted in the bagel and comes out clean.

Cool bagels in pan for one hour, then serve. I always toast these for my family as I think it really enhances the flavor and texture, but you can eat them without toasting too. If you are going to store them, allow them to remain uncovered at room temp for 24 hours and then store in the fridge.












Saturday, February 22, 2014

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins


It's been a long time since posting my last recipe, and while this is not dinner, I wanted to share it. The sweet potato bars/muffins are staples in my house, but the other day my oldest asked me for banana muffins. I stumbled upon this recipe which is originally from paleoonabudget.com and was only sweetened with bananas. It turned out great, and I added mini chocolate chips to it, which all my children loved. Enjoy!

I like to make mini muffins for my family, as they are the perfect size for little hands, but it will make 12 regular size muffins as well.
Mmm, mmm!

2 almost over-ripe bananas
1.5 cups almond flour
3 eggs
4T coconut oil
2t pure vanilla 
2t cinnamon
Pinch of salt
1/4 c (more or less) mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350
Mash your bananas in a bowl with a fork
Add in the rest of your ingredients and mix well. 
Grease your muffin tin (unless you have a USA Pan see note below)
These puff up a little bit but not too much so you can fill it pretty close to the top
Bake 15-18 minutes until toothpick is inserted in the center and comes out clean.
These are great with breakfast or for snacks
Now a word about this pan, I am a huge fan. It's called USA pan and has a special all natural coating that makes it so you don't have to grease your pan. The picture you see is what the pan looked like after I dumped the muffins out, it's amazing and makes clean up a breeze. I purchased from Amazon and am slowly adding to my collection. They have a wonderful bagel/donut pan that I also use all the time for making baked bagels. Just thought I'd pass that on :-).