Flourless, Nutless Bread....really

My two go to ingredients are: almond flour or white beans. The only downfall of beans is that you have to use corn starch, so its not grain free 100%, but it has a lot of other wonderful health qualities :-) This is an all purpose bread great for: toast, peanut butter and jelly-- all that normal eaters' stuff!

Ingredients:
1 1/3 cups Pureed white navy beans
2/3 cup Corn starch
2 Eggs
1 tablespoon Stevia
1 tablespoon Honey
1 teaspoon Baking soda
1 teaspoon Apple cider vinegar



Preheat oven to 350F. Combine beans, eggs, honey together and mix well. Next add stevia, corn starch, mixing again until smooth then add baking soda and apple cider vinegar. Pour batter into a parchment lined loaf pan and bake for 35-45 minutes or until tooth pick comes out clean. Let cool 30 minutes and enjoy!

Coconut Vanilla Double-Layer Cheese Cake

This is a bit decedent, so save it for a rainy day. This cheesecake has thick and distinctive layers. An almond crust is followed with a layer of sweet coconut cheesecake, once this is baked and cooled another thick layer of vanilla cream is added and cooled in the fridge. The coconut layer is a creamy lighter layer with a coconut taste, while the vanilla cream layer is a much thicker rich contrast. This recipe fits a bread loaf pan so keep that in mind when calculating your serving size.

Ingredients:
Crust
1/2 cup Almond butter
2 Egg
1/4 cup Coconut milk

Preheat oven to 350. Add all ingredients together in bowl and mix well. Line a bread pan with tin foil and grease well. Pour batter in pan and bake for 15 minutes.

Ingredients:
Coconut cream cheese layer
2 1/2 boxes of Cream cheese (room temp)
1 1/2 cups Coconut milk
5 Eggs
2.5 teaspoons Gelatin
2 1/2 teaspoons Stevia
1/4 cup Coconut extract

Place cream cheese into a sauce pan on low heat, stir constantly until cream cheese becomes smooth. Pour cream cheese into bowl and add coconut milk, stevia and coconut extract. Mix ingredients well then add gelatin and eggs and mix again. When crust is finished pour batter over the crust and return to oven for about 30 minutes or until top becomes a light brown color.
Let cool in fridge for 1 hour.

Ingredients:
Vanilla cream cheese layer
2 boxes of Cream cheese (room temp)
1 tablespoon Vanilla
2 teaspoons Gelatin
2 teaspoons Stevia

Place cream cheese in sauce pan and heat at low temperature until it becomes smooth, stir constantly. Add gelatin, vanilla and stevia to sauce pan and continue to stir. Pour mixture over coconut layer and return to fridge and chill for about 30 minutes before serving. Once chilled pick up sides of tin foil and lift cake out of the bread loaf and carefully remove tin foil from cake for a beautiful presentation.

Photo walk with Lulu

I'm starting to work on my photography a bit more so I went for a photo walk with my puppy Lulu. What's a photo walk? Well let me tell you! I take Lulu for a walk every day and always see things that I think would make a great picture or see small details that I find interesting. So I decided to start photo walks. I go out for about an hour and every block I walk I need to take a picture (of something on that block). Not every block has something interesting, so this is where you get creative and start to look at things a little differently. It helps me realize that it isn't the subject matter that needs to be interesting but the way its photographed and the way that it is approached. Yesterday was my first one and I really enjoyed it. It was relaxing, almost like a meditation.

LuLu's new rain coat

I just had to share this adorable picture of my 8 month old mini-poodle puppy LuLu. She seems to get cold very easily, especially when wet-- viola, a rain coat for LuLu :-)

Oscar Party Pizza Sliders

These are GREAT for get-togethers, when people are hanging out and noshing. Its also an occasion to get creative with flavors. We made: a deep dish slider, shrimp with pesto, garlic chicken and traditional veggie supreme. You could even have your guests build their own, for some active entertainment.
*To make a deep dish slider place the batter in a greased muffin tin and mold halfway up the side of tin.

Ingredients:
Crust (makes 4-6)
2 tablespoons White bean puree
2 tablespoons Corn starch
2 tablespoons Egg (whites or whole)
1 teaspoon honey

Preheat oven to 350. Combine ingredients together in bowl and mix until smooth. On a greased pan dollop batter into pan and place parchment paper over the batter. Over the parchment start to flatten out the batter dollops with your hands; I use the parchment so the batter does not stick to your hands and batter will smooth out. When pizzas are formed put in oven for about 10 minutes. When crusts begin to turn brown remove from oven and add your toppings.

Return pizzas to the oven and cook for another 10-15 minutes. Let cool, but not too much! Enjoy!!

Thin Mints: Girl Scout Cookies III

Ahhh my cookie tri-fecta is complete! I have manage to recreate all three of my favorite girl scout cookies. These were pretty easy to make and were so delicious I gave myself a stomach ache eating all of them!

Ingredients:
3/4 cup White bean puree (navy or great northern)
2/3 cup Cocoa powder
1/6 cup Butter (melted)
1/4 cup Honey
2 tablespoons Stevia
1 teaspoon+1 tablespoon Mint extract
1/2 teaspoon Baking soda
1 bag Dark chocolate chips
1 bag Milk chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325. Mix bean puree, cocoa, honey and butter together, mix until smooth. Next add remaining ingredients: stevia, mint and backing soda. The batter should be pretty thick, but not clumpy. Place small dollops of batter (about half tablespoon) on greased cookie sheets and bake at 325, after 10 minutes open oven and flatten out the top of the cookies with a spoon. Return to oven for another 30 minutes. Cookies should be relatively hard, if they are not then return to oven.

In a double broiler add 1/2 bag of dark chocolate chips and 1/2 bag of milk chocolate chips. Wait until chocolate melts and add 1 tablespoon of mint extract and mix well. Drop 1 cookie into the mixture and cover with chocolate. Pick up the cookie with a spoon, remove excess chocolate and place parchment to cool. Cover all of the cookies with chocolate and cool. Chocolate should harden when cookies are ready to eat! Enjoy!

Best Tasting (fill blank) = Best Job Ever

I am doing some mid-morning reading online; this begins with my usual gossip sites: Perez, Pink is the new, Pop-Sugar, etc. followed by my recipe perusing. I usually like the content of Yahoo's Shine, but am often annoyed with typos and mistakes (for example the picture in the link below... is sideways-- no big deal)-- not to say my blog is always perfect. This morning there was a "Best-tasting coffee to buy in stores" article with a list of other "best-tasting..." articles at the bottom.

This got me thinking that I really must re-think my career path. Who ARE these tasters and how did they get there-- WHAT are the qualifications!? I don't think that I am alone in this thought, so I did a little research, and like most things in life, it's not as easy as it sounds. Godiva Chocolate hires employees that have attended the "Chocolate School" in Montreal-- yes "Chocolate School". This is followed by intensive training at the Godiva factory. The taste is not just discovered with the bite. There is an aesthetic examination, sniffing, followed by a very conscious bite where a flavor's layers unfold. The taster must note each flavor, its strength, tone, etc. These tasters must be able to detect even the smallest deviation of flavor. Hmmm almost sounds stressful, then remember again its chocolate for God's sake! These tasters make $30-$60k on average with some senior level execs making six figures.

Coffee tasters usually begin their career by interning for a professional "coffee cupper". Cupping-- a coffee tasting ritual--is where six to ten small cups of coffee are presented for a tasting. The coffee must be prepared in a very ritualistic manner in order for the tasting experience to be perfect. Internships with a cupper can last up to four years-- more time than it takes to complete a masters or law school. A degree in food science is also helpful to get you in the door

So it may not be all rainbows and smiley faces, but still sounds better than a life in a cubicle with a deli sand which from down the block.

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/food/big-bite-taste-test-supermarket-coffee-895989/