Dark Chocolate Brownies

The brownies I used to bake had coconut shreds and gf rolled oats which created a very nice cake texture. Skipping the saturated fat level of the coconut, I decided to use cashews and gf rolled oats.

Ingredients:

1 cup raw cashew pieces

3 cups gf rolled oats

2 cups water

2 medium to large bananas

6 pitted dates

4 tbls cocoa powder

1/2 tsp salt

Grapeseed or olive oil to coat the 2.2 liter glass pan

Prep:

Coarse (or fine) grind the cashews with 1 cup of the oats. Oats in first helps keep it from caking too much. I use the Vita-Mix with the dry blender container for this.

Add that to the rest of the oats in a medium mixing bowl. Stir in the cocoa powder and salt until the mix is evenly coated.

In the same blender container, blend the water, bananas, and dates on high. Then blend a bit more at a lower speed to chop the dates better. You can tell the dates aren’t done if you turn the blender off and it sounds like it’s still chunking through something as the blades come to a stop. The dry Vita-Mix blender container isn’t the best tool for this part, but it’s good enough and doesn’t dirty a second blender container.

Pour into the mixing bowl and stir. Pour this into the greased glass pan.

Bake:

Preheat oven to 375 F

Bake for 1 hour with optional turn of the pan at 30 minutes. At the 1 hour mark, turn off the oven and leave it closed until you’re ready to eat and/or put in the fridge. 

Thoughts:

The oats and the banana are binders. No need for egg or flax. Banana also helps remove any chalky texture from the cocoa powder. That’s especially helpful if you’re making pudding with silken tofu, banana, cocoa powder, and a sweetener.

The brownies came out a touch dry. The oats absorb a lot of liquid while they cook. There are a few ways to fix that. One is easy - add more water. The other is to find the best balance between gf rolled oats and cashews. A third option is to add mini chocolate chips. I think my next batch will have 1 1/2 cups of cashews to 2 1/2 cups of oats. I also want to try making a nut-free version using raw sunflower seeds.

These hold together best when cold. They held together better warm than when I made them with coconut shreds.

Egg White Bites (Plus)

I’ve been altering my intake of food for the past 18 months in an effort to be on a more healthy path. So far, I’ve lost the 15 or so pandemic pounds plus a few more that fluctuate a bit. (This is really a recipe post, but I wanted to talk a little about this food journey too.)

First, I swapped foods I was eating for similar ones that had less fat, or less carbs, or less sugars, or a combination thereof. Did this until I was happy with the end result, which meant giving away some food that was a taste bridge too far.

Second, I added regular exercise. Semi-regular, regular exercise. My body was not always cooperative. Figured out a few things, like the pain in my knees was controllable by standing on foot wakers to make my foot muscles unclench. Amazing how connected everything is.

Third, even though I was losing weight, despite the plateaus that lasted 2 months or so, my bloodwork had one concerning value. I did a little research and have adopted slow eating. This basically means fully eating what’s in my mouth before getting more food on my fork or spoon. Remains to be seen if this helps with that one value. It definitely helped me get past the latest plateau.

And now for the recipe - egg whites are not a normal part of my diet, but I’ve had to make some different choices for the next 4-6 months.

Egg White Bites (short version)

Preheat oven at 350 F

1 32 oz carton of egg whites, 7-8 cloves of garlic, spinach, optional Beyond Beef, salt and pepper to taste

Put it all in a blender and rev that up to half speed. Let it blend while you prep the muffin tins.

Line a muffin tin (or two) with paper baking cups. Pour the blender mix into the paper baking cups. Fill about 2/3rds, maybe a little more. This should make 24 large bites. Bake for 40 minutes. The egg whites will sink and the spinach will rise, so these will be white on the bottom half and green on top. Let cool, stick them in the fridge to get them cold, then try to peel off the paper cup. It’ll peel easier when cold, but it still might be a bear.

The Baking Debate

I’ve thought about opening a bakery as a retirement business. A friend recommended I open one now so that it’s established by the time I retire - not that far distant of a future. The tricky bit to that idea is that I’ve already got a lot of irons in the fire. Adding a fairly major enterprise seems exhausting.

Another option is to create a cookbook. I originally started posting my recipes here as an alternative to creating a cookbook. Then I hit on a recipe I didn’t want to share - which surprised me. Apparently there is a part of me who really wants to be a chef (dessert chef most likely - major sweet tooth).

If I create a cookbook, I would start with the minimalist recipes - those that use very few kitchen appliances and/or very few ingredients. Most likely it would be self-published as I don’t have a baking platform to go the traditional route.

As things stand, I’ve opted to hide the dessert recipes here until I figure out what I’m doing next. Hopefully that won’t take long.

Carrot Ginger Soup - Personal Size

Feeling a bit under the weather today, so I decided to make a bowl of soup. I love having a Vita-Mix for this as it will make the ingredients smooth and cook the soup at the same time. I wasn’t planning on adding cashews but decided to in order to make the soup creamier. The amount of cashews can be adjusted to achieve the desired consistency or add more water as needed. Leave the cashews out for a nut-free version - you can add a little milk of your choice instead if desired.

13 Baby Carrots

2/3 cup Water

1/3 cup raw, unsalted Cashews

1/2 slice Onion

1 tsp chopped Ginger

1 tsp chopped Garlic

Salt and Pepper to taste

Blend these ingredients until smooth. With a Vita-Mix, blend on high for 3 minutes to cook the soup. Without a Vita-Mix, blend as best as possible and heat in a sauce pan.

Cashew Cream Sauce - Salad Dressing Base

I wanted both cashew cream sauce and salad dressing last night, so I made a base that could go either way. Starting with this cashew cream sauce recipe, I put it all together except for the nutritional yeast. Also didn’t add any water but you may need to depending on how well everything is blending together.

For the dressing, I separated 1/2 cup of the base and added 1/2 cup vinegar. With that much vinegar on top of the lemon juice, it packs a punch. I like it that way. You may need to adjust accordingly. Perhaps a 1/3 vinegar to 2/3 base combination.

I finished off the cream sauce with water and nutritional yeast and poured that into a container. After I rinsed out the blender, I poured in the dressing mixture and blended in 1/2 banana.

And that’s it. Pasta sauce and salad dressing done at the same time. This dressing - without any avocado - lasts 3-4 weeks.

Cashew Cream Sauce - Updated

This recipe is best if you have a mega-blender or a food processor. It can probably be done in a regular blender though you may get a more chunky sauce.

I’ve made several versions and posted some here. Today’s is my favorite, by far. Ingredient list first and then I’ll walk through the order that may be easiest.

Ingredients:

Juice of 1 Lemon

1 Zucchini - peeled and chopped

1-2 Carrots - peeled and chopped - yellow preferred but not required

1/3 medium yellow Onion

3-4 cloves Garlic

3 oz raw, unsalted Cashews

3/4 cup Nutritional Yeast

Salt & Black Pepper to taste (1/4 tsp @ as a suggestion)

Water as needed

If you’re using a regular blender, soak the cashews in water overnight so they soften for easier blending. Drain before adding them to the recipe. If your carrots are on the small side, then use two. Yellow carrots are preferred simply due to the effect on the final color of the sauce.

Put the lemon juice in first, then add the zucchini. If you notice lemon seeds have jumped into your blender, try to fish them out before adding the zucchini. Blend on low so the zucchini won’t hop away from the blades. It doesn’t have to be blended completely yet. Add a little water to help - probably less than 1/8 cup. 

Add the carrots, blend a little more, but this time work up to high briefly. Add the onion and garlic, salt and pepper. Blend all of this on high until it’s smooth. It should be fairly thin.

Add the cashews and the nutritional yeast. Work up to high slowly when blending so the yeast gets pulled into the mixture instead of decorating the inside of the lid. Blend on high until smooth.

At any point that it seems this will not blend nicely, try a tamper or add a little water.

If it’s too thin at the end, add more cashews and/or nutritional yeast. If it’s too thick, add more water or lemon juice.

Salad Dressing Basics

I’ve tinkered with the recipes a few times now and have found what works for me. The base of the dressing is a vinegar, an oil in the form of avocado and/or nuts, an optional sweetener (banana, dates), and water to achieve the desired consistency. The additions can vary pretty widely.

For some dressings, the vinegar/water measurements are: 1/2 cup vinegar, 1 cup water. When the mixture is thicker, then the measurements become: 1 cup vinegar, 2 cups water - especially if you have avocado, nuts, and banana in the recipe. Some vinegars may overwhelm the flavors if there’s more than a 1/2 cup. Lemon juice could be used instead of a vinegar as well.

In general the water is twice the vinegar.

Base:

1/2 cup Vinegar

1 cup Water

1/2 cup raw, unsalted Nuts (cashews, walnuts, etc) - optional

1 Avocado

1 Banana - optional

Equipment choices and preparation: If you have a Vita-Mix, food processor, or equivalent, then you can thoroughly blend in most ingredients. If you’re using a standard blender, some ingredients would work better with a little prep. Nuts may need to be soaked overnight to soften them for blending. Carrots will most likely make a chunkier dressing, but it’s not the end of the world. People often put carrots on salad. Onion, garlic, and harder veggies like carrots may need to be chopped before being added to the blender.

For the flavor profile, it depends on what you wish. I like to add zucchini and carrots to give it more depth of flavor and add more veggies to my day.

Zesty dressing:

1 peeled Zucchini

2 peeled Carrots

2 tsp chopped Garlic or 3-4 cloves Garlic

1/4 yellow Onion

1/2 tsp Salt

1/4 tsp Pepper

Mustard dressing:

(I’ve made this with Amy’s German mustard but not yet with the mustard seed)

4-5 tbl prepared Mustard or 1-2 tbl ground Mustard Seed

1 Banana (extra sweetener for the Honey Mustard idea)

Salt and Pepper to taste - optional

Balsamic dressing:

(contains sulfites)

For this dressing, I added nuts, avocado, and banana so the base had 1 cup Vinegar and 2 cups Water

2 tsp chopped Garlic or 3-4 cloves Garlic

Salt and Pepper to taste - optional

Fruit dressing:

(I haven’t tried this yet, but here are my thoughts of what this would look like)

5-6 oz Fruit - could be frozen or fresh

Banana or Apple to taste - depending on the sour/sweet aspect of the fruit

Salt and Pepper to taste - optional

Because the oil is also a thickener, these generally don’t separate. The fruit one might because some fruits like to do that.

These dressings last about 1 week.