Paleo Chocolate & Cinnamon Banana Bread

When life hands you overly ripe bananas, it’s time to make banana bread. Or in my case, buy as many bananas as you can carry and wait until they turn properly spotty so that you can bake to your hearts content. I cringe thinking back on all the bananas I used to throw out after they went too soft to eat. If only I knew what I was missing out on all those times! 

I’ve tried a fair few variations of banana bread recipes over the last few months, but my current favourite has to be my cinnamon chocolate bake. I feel like this is a happy medium between the dominating chocolate flavour that Mike fancies and the cinnamon topping that I prefer.

INGREDIENTS

For the bread:

4 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup (85 grams) honey or maple syrup 

2 mashed ripe bananas - the darker/spottier, the better

1/2 cup (55 grams) melted butter (or coconut oil/ghee)

1/2 cup (48 grams) almond flour

1/2 cup (56 grams) coconut flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

For the chocolate cinnamon:

1/4 cup dark chocolate chips or semisweet chocolate

1 tablespoon honey

2 tablespoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon coconut oil

METHOD

1. Preheat your oven to 350F/178C

2. Beat the eggs in a medium sized bowl.

3. Add the vanilla, the maple syrup, and the butter/oil to the eggs, mixing thoroughly.

4. Combine the mashed bananas to the rest of the wet ingredients.

5. Mix the dry ingredients together in a small bowl, sifting to remove any clumps.

6. Pour the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until smooth. You can do this by hand, but I preferred using an electric mixer to achieve a smooth batter.

7. Grease your loaf pan, or line with parchment and scoop your batter into the pan. Set aside.

8. Place all of your chocolate cinnamon swirl into a small sauce pan on low heat until melted. Stir the entire time to keep the chocolate from from burning to the bottom. You can do this part in the microwave if you prefer - just set the time or 30 second intervals and stir in between until melted.

9. Pour half of your chocolate, cinnamon mixture over the banana batter and use a knife to swirl the mixture through the batter.

10. Place in the oven and bake for 40 minutes, or until a knife going into the center comes out clean.

11. After letting the bread cool for about 10 minutes, remelt your chocolate-cinnamon and drizzle it over the top of your loaf. 

This recipe suits experimenting with different add-ins. Try chopping up spare nuts, raisins, or better yet - more chocolate. 

February 14

Better yet, if you’re anti V-Day, Happy Organ Donor Day/Ferris Wheel Day/World Whale Day…according to my very brief Google search at least. No? Happy Saturday – who doesn’t love Saturday?

In an effort to practice my food photography/styling skills, I played around with my breakfast this morning and took these babies. I've always been one to play with my food. 

I promise I’ll put up the recipe soon, it just needs a teensy bit of tweaking. I just feel like our breakfast was too good not to share - which in the spirit of Valentine's Day is exactly what we did. After whipping up a bit of coconut cream (no pun intended) and throwing on some fruit, I may have stumbled upon a new favourite breakfast combination that’s quick, easy, and I think fairly healthy as far as breakfast foods go. 

So for the mean time, don't mind me leaving these here to salivate over as I continue working on getting my recipe up to par.

Thankfully, I think my culinary skills surpass my photography skills - that's still a bit of a work in progress. 

Plantain Brownies

Courtesy of my Colombian mother, I had an early exposure to plantains in life – along with arepas aka the greatest food in the entire world, but that is another love story entirely.

 Considering the number of Sunday mornings spent stuffing my face with fried plantains, I don’t quite know how I went 23 years without ever having cooked with them myself. All those years I had no idea just how versatile plantains could be. After getting a little too enthusiastic at a local market and purchasing as many plantains as I could carry, I quickly had to figure out different ways to use up my new fortune.

So tonight, we feast on brownies.

BONUS: I decided to make an almond butter drizzle to top off with because chocolate and nut butters make for such a happy union, why not? 

 

Brownie Ingredients

• 2 yellow- black plantains, peeled and chopped
• 2 eggs
• ¼ cup (57 grams) of coconut oil, melted (you can also sub for butter if you’d like)
• ¼ cup (85 grams)  honey
• ¼ cup (30 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• ½ tsp sea salt
• ½ cup cacao nibs (or chocolate chips)

Method

1.  Preheat your oven to 350F/177C
2. Throw everything except for the cacao nibs in a blender and blend until smooth before stirring in the nibs.
3. Pour your brownie batter into a greased 9x12 in baking glass
4. Set in the oven for 30-35 minutes.
5. Cool for at least 10 minutes before eating. 

Almond Drizzle Ingredients

• 1 ½ tablespoon almond butter
• ½ tablespoon maple syrup, or honey
• 1 teaspoon coconut oil

Method

1. Add everything to a small sauce pot and stir at low heat until the mixture becomes slightly runny.
2. Drizzle over cooled brownies. If you drizzle too soon, it will just melt into the chocolate.

No-Mato Marinara (Nightshade Free)

A life without marinara is hardly worth living…I’m only somewhat exaggerating that statement. Spaghetti and meatballs, margarita pizza, cheese ravioli: carbs have no meaning when you’re talking to me about Italian food. I have shared far too many happy memories with my family over a plate of my Grammy’s lasagna to ever think about giving up some of my favourite foods.

Thankfully, I came across a nightshade-free marinara that I can honestly say tastes nothing like squash or beets and 100% like the real, unadulterated tomatoes. Even if tomatoes weren’t something that we had to give up, I would still happily make this instead.

Ingredients

• 1 ½  cups 1" cubed carrots (about 2 medium)
• 3 cups peeled, 1" cubed Butternut squash (from a 1 1/2 lb/680g squash)
• 1 ½  cup 1" cubed red beets 
• 6-7 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 ½  cups diced yellow onion (1 medium)
• 3 tablespoons Ghee or other fat for frying 
• 1 ¾  cups water 
• ¼ cup  apple cider vinegar
• ¼ cup (60ml) lemon juice 
• 2 whole bay leaves
• 2 tablespoons dried Italian herbs (Rosemary, thyme, basil, oregano, sage)
• 2 teaspoons sea salt, or to taste
• 1 teaspoon fresh cracked pepper, or more to taste

Method

"Courgetti" and Meatballs
courgette = zucchini for my fellow Americans

Place the cubed carrots, squash, and beets in boiling water for 30-40 minutes on medium heat, or until they are soft enough to easily pierce with a fork. Use a steamer or pressure cooker to cook the carrots, butternut squash and beets together till soft.

As the veggie mixture is cooking, melt the ghee over medium heat adding the garlic and onions to caramelize.

Drain the water from the vegetables, then add the veggies along with the onion mixture, water, vinegar and lemon juice to either a blender or bowl depending on your blending tool of choice (I used my an immersion blender) and blend till smooth.

Pour the mixture into a saucepan when it’s smooth, adding the herbs and pepper. Simmer and stir over medium heat for 15-25 minutes.  

Remove from heat and enjoy! This makes about 1 US quart, so you may need to store/freeze for later use.

Paleo Pizza Dough & Vegan Mozzarella

*Recipe adapted from The Urban Poser

Paleo Cinnamon Coconut Granola

Mornings have always been my favourite. I love sitting down with a warm cup of coffee, mentally preparing myself for the day in store.

If you’re someone with PoTS, however, mornings are a downright bitch. Not in the typical, ‘I don’t want to leave the toasty confines of my bed’ kind of way. Not in the, ‘I’m just not a morning person, so there’ kind of way. Not even in the, ‘it’s 3AM and no one should have to get up this early for work?!’ kind of way.

Mornings with PoTS mean heightened symptoms of dizziness, palpitations, nausea, and zombie-like fatigue. From Mike’s experience, and from what I can gather here on the Internet reading about other people’s experience, the symptoms usually last the first couple hours after waking up.

For months, I woke up every morning and prepared breakfast for both Mike and I. It wouldn’t have been quite so tedious if we were able to have the same breakfast every morning, but as Mike was in the business of putting on weight, I was not. Eating a two egg omelette with four pieces of bacon and 1-2 potatoes would have put a serious damper on my own health goals, as tasty as it was.

I really don’t know why I didn’t think of making my own cereal before. Determined to find an easier way to enjoy my mornings once again, I started playing around with a few different grain free cereals and granolas. We’d seen a few Paleo granolas for sale online, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to spend £9 on a box of granola that would only last about three or four days.

So, equipped with the goal of making both of our mornings easier, to save a little in cost and convenience, and to satisfy the cravings of my inner child and her love for breakfast cereal without compromising calories or nutrition, I came up with this cinnamon and coconut granola. It’s grain, nut, and dairy free, and can easily be made vegan.

INGREDIENTS

•    1 1/4  cup unsweetened shredded/desiccated coconut
•       ½ cup sunflower seeds
•       ¼ cup chia seeds
•       1 Tablespoon cinnamon
•       Pinch of Sea Salt
•       1/3 cup honey/maple syrup
•       ½ Teaspoon vanilla extract
•     1 egg or egg substitute of choice. I actually prefer using a gelatin egg for this recipe.

Method

1.  Preheat the oven to 325F/162C
2. Mix together the dry ingredients.
3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry mixture.
4. Spread your mixture evenly onto a baking tray lined with parchment and bake in the oven for about 15 minutes or until it turns into a golden brown, turning the half way through.
5. Cool for about 15 minutes and store in an airtight container.
6. Enjoy!