Spring has Sprung

So spring has sprung and I’ve started thinking about gardens and chicken coops and lambs. I am always a bit cautious about Spring in Dunedin, no sooner do the days get longer and the winds get warmer than a whole bunch of weather pops up from no-where to give us what for. This spring was no exception. No sooner had I got some seedlings in the ground than a cold front swept over Southern New Zealand bringing a dumping of snow and hail. Luverly.

For me, Spring is when we should be celebrating Easter. It feels wrong to me, to be celebrating new life and fertility in Autumn. Easter is now a Christian holiday but it’s no coincidence that we celebrate it with chocolate eggs and baby chicks, it was originally Eostre, a pagan celebration of the changing seasons and new life.  Spring is when chickens start laying cackleberries left right and centre and so it felt right to me to celebrate Eostre in the correct season, using recipes that utilise eggs. Eggs are also a nutritional powerhouse, I don’t know about you but whenever I find a recipe that uses egg yolks or egg whites I scour my recipe books for a complementary one that use the equivalent number of eggs so as not to waste any egg! That’s why my famous 8 egg black pavlova always comes with 8egg home made pasta or a luscious crème brulee.  Or when I make fluffy egg white pancakes I also make Jamie Oliver’s tomato and egg yolk soup. Yumm.

And as such here are 2 egg recipes for you!

What to do with 4 eggs

Spring Linzer Bikkies

Usually these biscuits are made in two circles, one with a hole in and then sandwiched together with jam in the middle. My spring version were plain and cut out in festive spring animal baby shapes. I like how easy these biscuits are and they have a delicious bite to them.

1 cup almonds

1 cup hazelnuts
1 cup sugar

4 cups flour

1 block butter – softened and cut into cubes

Pure vanilla

Zest of two lemons

4 egg yolks

Grind the almonds and the hazelnuts until they are a fine meal. I leave the skins on, it’s not as pretty but it has a better  flavour and nutrient value so looks shmooks! Then it’s a simple matter of placing everything in your food processor and pulsing until it starts to hold together.  If you don’t have a food processor then roll up your sleeves and get rubbing!

Bake the cookies at 160 degrees Celsius on paper lined baking sheets, they only need 10 minutes or so until they catch the barest hint of golden brown.

Dairy and Gluten free Coconut Chocolate Macaroons

4 egg whites

1 cup caster sugar

Vanilla

3 cups organic dessicated coconut, I prefer coconut threads for a more rustic texture

1 block dark Ghana whittakers chocolate (dairy free)

First off toast the coconut. You don’t have to but it improved the flavour a huge amount. A light toasting is all that is needed. Once it has been toasted, cool and set aside. Beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks  and then slowly add the caster sugar beating the whole time. A splash of vinegar at the egg white stage will prevent them from becoming overbeaten. Once the mixture becomes glossy and heavy and all of the sugar has dissolved stir in the coconut and vanilla being careful not to collapse the mixture too much. Dollop onto a paper lined baking tray (or pipe if you are a perfectionist, though this recipe is intentionally a little rustic) and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes at 165⁰C. Once they are cooked take them out to cool and prepare your ganache.

Melt one block of dark Ghana chocolate and whisk in 3/4 cup hot water until it becomes glossy and shiny. It might ‘catch’ and look a bit rough at first but if you keep mixing it should come together and smooth out. Once the macaroons are cooled and while your ganache is still warm, dip the bases of the macaroons in it and then sandwich them together base to base. Decadent!

And there you have it. 4 ways with eggs.

Icecream - Good for what ails you

My big boy is going through a notoriously picky eating stage, he has gone from being an adventurous devourer of everything to a selective grazer. I try not to stress out about it, everyone tells me it is a totally normal stage relating to palate and autonomy but I still get anxious and worry about nutrition. I swore I would never become one of those mothers who sneakily find 101 ways to hide spinach in everything but I am heading in that direction.

One thing that he never turns down is icecream! As a result I have developed a series of cunning ‘icecream’ recipes that help give him his 8+ a day. Currently he is avoiding meat and has an uncanny ability to detect and discard it. Which has led me to worry about his iron stores, he has a been a bit pale and tired lately and when I checked his eyelids they were a little pale so I decided to up his Vitamin C and iron intake. A tricky proposition when he has become bored of citrus fruit and refuses to eat his greens. As a result I have come up with some delicious smoothie recipes that become even more delectable icecreams.

To make these you need a blender and an iceblock mould as well as some popsicle sticks.. oh and a freezer.

Green Martian Pops – rich in vitamin C and iron

2 kiwifruit

Bunch of parsley

Kale if you have it

1 teaspoon spirulina powder

½ banana

1 teaspoon of manuka honey

Enough water to make it all blend

It’s important for optimum iron absorption to avoid adding milk or dairy products, I punched up the iron value by adding some floradix and the kiwifruit which is rich in vitamin C helps to absorb the maximum amount of iron. The banana helps make everything creamy and the honey makes it more palatable as well as making the ice crystals smaller. Sugar inhibits freezing which makes the end result easier to eat. A lot of people worry about savoury greens going into a sweet icecream but it’s amazing how well they mix in and how yummy they taste.

Coconut Yummies – a neat way of getting healthy fats in

1 can coconut cream

1 tablespoon virgin coconut oil

1 whole banana

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon manuka honey

8 fish oil capsules or 2 teaspoons of fish oil

½ can mango slices or one whole fresh mango (optional)

These sound a little revolting but something about the coconut cream, banana and cinnamon manages to emulsify and obscure the fish oil. Fish oil is great for little brains and this is a handy way of getting a dose in. The fish oil I get is tested for mercury and includes Vitamin D so is a fabulous immune booster in the winter months. Cinnamon is a great blood sugar regulator as well. If you have a child with gut issues then this is a great smoothie recipe to incorporate slippery elm which helps to line and protect the GIT

Real Fake Jellytip – my son loves these because they taste kinda like jellytip but oh so much better for you. Rich in vitamin C!

3 handfuls of frozen raspberries

1 teaspoon of honey

½ cup beetroot juice

2 juiced oranges

Zest and juice of one lime

I use this mix to make red ‘tips’ on other flavours. It’s a great way of bringing back a waning interest in other icecream flavours. It is a tangy delicious combo that I find hard to resist myself.

Tummy bug pops – gentle on sore tums and great for rehydrating along with fluids

1 can green coconut water (not to be confused with coconut milk)

1 banana

1 handful of blueberries

1 teaspoon squeezed juice from some grated ginger

Ginger helps with nausea and green coconut water is ideal for rehydrating because of its similarity to blood plasma. Green coconut water is brownish coloured, and not at all creamy, it also tastes a bit like arse but made into a smoothie it’s much more palatable. Banana is gentle on the tummy and helps with tender bellies, it is part of the B.R.A.T diet and suitable for reintroducing solid foods after a bout of the guts. Blueberries are a powerful antioxidant as well as a good source of potassium which is essential when rehydrating. These are great to make up and then have in the bottom of the freezer for cases of dire rear.

Chocsicles – a probiotic powerhouse

1 banana

1 avocado

½ cup kefir or yoghurt

1 heaping teaspoon raw cacao

1 teaspoon manuka honey

1 tablespoon probiotic powder suitable forchildren

Probiotics are great at preventing illnesses and restoring balance, fabulous for taking after a course of antibiotics. Freezing probiotic foods don’t kill all of the probiotics – simply slow them down. There is a bigger benefit of simply feeding the smoothie but iceblocks are a really handy way of doing it.

These recipes are all just ideas, of course there are thousands of variations you can use. I often make up smoothies with whatever is going and freeze them up in batches. Changing the colours and flavours on a regular basis keeps him interested. These iceblocks are usually served for dessert and in the bath! Sometimes they become impromptu wall crayons but most of the time they are devoured with glee.

Coconutella

After my spreadable butter success I have realised that making spreadable spreads is addictive. So is Pinterest. Finding recipes on Pinterest and making them is addictive. The nutella microwave mug cake recipe I found on pinterest is so addictive that it’s dangerous. I am not a massive nutella fan, but I did end up buying it simply to make the microwave mug cake. I’m that kind of person, I have an addictive kind of personality. I was pretty excited about my delicious nutella microwave mug cake, untilI read the ingredients list on Nutella.

Sugar, vegetable oil, hazelnuts (13%), cocoa powder (7.4%), non-fat milk solids, emulsifier (soy lecithin), flavour (vanillin)

Just in case you are wondering the vegetable oil listed is palm oil, and since there is nothing mentioning that it is fair trade I’m going to go ahead and assume that it is not fair trade and that it is also highly refined palm oil. If you’re wondering why the use of palm oil bothers me check out this info on orang-utans.

Finding out that a supposedly healthy spread is only 13% hazel nuts and primarily sugar and palm oil is not a happy moment. In saying that I would happily go without, but my husband has a bit of a crush on nutella and I feel he has been having a closed doors affair with it behind my back because the tub I bought was full one day and almost empty the next. My microwave nutella mug cake has nothing to do with it of course…

Luckily, Pinterest provided me with a solution in the form of a recipe for home made nutella. I was excited! Until I realised I didn’t have chocolate or hazelnuts in the house. I also did not have milk powder… and come to think of it, how healthy is chocolate anyway? Back to the drawing board.

I decided to make up my own recipe based on ingredients I had, hopefully not a recipe for disaster. I muddled around with ingredients I had in the fridge, I tried to stick to healthy or whole foods. The resulting spread was not much like nutella (lacking the essential hazelnuts and chocolate) but instead tasted like a creamy coconut rough spread. It was scrummy! Here is the recipe.

Coconutella Recipe

1.5 cups of toasted almonds

3 heaping teaspoons of cocoa powder

¾ cup of milk

50gms of butter

50gms of coconut oil, maybe less. I can’t be sure. It was a chunk.

½ cup honey

These measurements are all approximate, I tend to just lug things in and hope for the best. Depending on the temperature of your fridge you may want to play with the ratios a bit. More milk will make it softer and more butter or coconut oil will make it firmer.

I toasted the almonds until they were golden, okay that’s a bit of a lie, I almost burned them. But they were still nice. Then I used my coffee grinder to grind them as fine as possible. After that I put the almonds in my blender with the coconut oil, honey and butter. In a saucepan I heated up the milk with the cocoa powder until it was bubbling around the edges. It’s important to heat the cocoa powder so that it doesn’t taste awful and goes a nice dark colour. I poured the hot milk over the mix and blended it. And blended it. And blended it… and then my machine started smoking, so I stopped. The resulting mix was quite liquidy but set pretty well in the fridge. The coconut oil had given it an amazing taste, like bounty bars or coconut rough. Not at all like nutella but something familiar and chocolatey.

I consider it a success.

Pina Colada Nursing Cookies

I love nursing cookies, when I was pregnant I made up a few batches and froze them into a dough lots. This meant I could bake them up when I had the need for some oaty goodness. And don't worry, people who are not lactating can eat them too. My husband is a particular fan, he ate four in a row while massaging his chest and declaring he could feel the 'milk flowing'. 

Earlier on I had posted a recipe for nursing cookies which was basically a slightly altered version of the Lactation cookies that drifts around on various internet forums. Since this post I have refined my recipe to a point of amazing deliciousness. Pina Colada Cookies – mouth heaven! Here is the recipe.

Ingredients:

1 cup butter or 3/4 cup rice bran oil
1 cup white sugar 
1 cup  soft brown sugar
3 heaped tablespoons of golden syrup
4 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons flaxseed/linseed meal
2 large eggs
2 cups maida flour/stoneground wholewheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups whole oats, organic if you can get them
1 cup of white chocolate chips
1 cup of candied pineapple coarsely chopped
1 cup of shredded coconut
1 cup of almonds
4 tablespoons of brewers yeast
1 tsp cinnamon


Directions:

Preheat oven to 180 Celsius 

Combine linseed meal and water in a small cup (I usually grind my own linseed as ground linseed goes rancid very fast) and set to one side.

Cream butter or oil and sugar, slowly add the eggs once at a time and then stir in the linseed mixture, add your golden syrup

 Sift together dry ingredients except for the oats, chocolate chips and coconut and gently add to the creamed mixture. Then stir in the remaining oats, coconut and chocolate chips.

Scoop or drop onto baking sheet, preferably double lined with baking paper to prevent the bottoms burning and sticking, the dough can be crumbly so a scoop helps.

Bake 8-12 minutes, depending on size of cookies. If you have serious bottom burning issues then you can wrap your baking sheets in tinfoil top and bottom. Black trays attract heat and burn the bottoms. Who knew?