I'm always on the hunt for healthy, sweet, chocolately snacks. Yes, I know you can buy versions of chocolate treats at your local whole foods/natural food stores but I'm always slightly dubious as I don't really know how much of each ingredient they have put in, plus the price is never worth it!
I've had puffed quinoa before and it reminds me of rice crispies, so when I saw a bag of quinoa for sale and knowing I had some left over raw cacao powder, I knew I wanted to make Deliciously Ella's Quinoa and Cacao Cripsy Treats.
Yay or Nay: Nay
I made the puffed quinoa myself three times, which is two times too many. It didn't look any different to regular quinoa, it was still hard to the bite and definitely did not look puffed! The chocolate mixture itself is ok, nothing special, I was excited about the addition of nut butter but I think the badly puffed quinoa put me off the whole thing. I'm glad I only made 6 of these!
TIP: I used almond butter but the recipe doesn't specify any in particular. Also, I made waaay less than the recipe stated as I wanted to try before making a ton of them!
While flicking through this month's Good Housekeeping magazine I was instantly inspired by this recipe for Best Outlaw Carrot Cake with Brown Sugar Buttercream by Daphne Oz. It conjured up memories of my friend's mum's version, plus I had a few leftover carrots which I would happily sacrifice!
If you don't know already, Daphne is Dr. Oz's daughter and is on the lineup for TV's The Chew. I have watched the show before but her recipes never really stuck out to me. Apparently this is from her book The Happy Chef which I have no real desire to get but worth looking at if this recipe is any good. Now,
I'm not usually a fan of celebrity/TV chef meals as I feel like they're
not that original and never end up being that tasty either but you
can't go wrong with carrot cake right?
Yay or Nay: Nay
I deliberately did not make the frosting as I am not a fan of it. There were a few ingredients missing such as the molasses and I subbed whole wheat flour for all plain flour, and dark brown sugar for light brown sugar which could have affected the final result. It didn't have a whole lot of carroty/cinnamon flavour, the cake was moist when it came out but dried up pretty quick. This recipe required quite a lot of ingredients and steps to it, I'm sure there are simpler recipes that are much tastier in my opinion!
A quick post as I've been battling jet lag/allergies/tiredness/getting back in a routine! I had a need to bake yesterday and had a flash of wanting to make brownies. I had seen a recipe for Black Bean Brownies a while back and had always wanted to make them to see how brownie-like they could be!
I had a reminder of brownies from Deliciously Ella's latest cookbook called...Deliciously Ella - highly inventive! The book was a bit of a dud as it didn't feature anything new or exciting so I returned it to the library. Although, I did see her recipe for Gooey Black Bean Brownies and her recipes are easy enough to follow so I went with it!
Yay or Nay: Yay
No every tells you whether these taste of beans or not - well I can attest that they don't! Yay! Pretty easy, whack everything in the blender and then bake. She does stress to let them cool and I forgot so poked my finger in (you can see the indent in the pic) and it was true to word soft. But seeing as it was late at night I let them set and woke up to solid brownies! I didn't have honey so I subbed brown sugar and didn't have any raisins either but I don't think that makes too much of a difference!
