fall recipe

Apples, Apples Everywhere!

Breakfast/Smoothies, Dessert, Gluten-Free, Paleo, Recipes, , , , , , , , , ,

apples

After a recent trip to Apple Hill, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with the mountain of apples I came home with. I bought Muzu, Pink Ladies, and Gala, totaling out at about 7lbs. That’s a lot of apples for a two-person household!

In addition to eating a bunch of them slathered with my homemade almond butter, I also baked this awesome bread!

Fall Apple Bread (inspired by this gem from Eating4Balance)

INGREDIENTS:
  • 3 small apples, chopped (I used 2 muzus and 1 pink lady and kept the peel on for extra fiber)
  • 4 large organic eggs, separated
  • 1/2 cup organic ghee (butter or coconut oil would probably work fine too)
  • 1/4 cup maple syrup
  • 1 ripe banana
  • 1 cup chopped walnuts
  • 2 cups nut flour (I used 1 cup almond flour and 1 cup hazelnut flour)
  • 1/3 cup coconut flour (Bob’s Red Mill is probably the easiest to find, but you can also run unsweetened shredded coconut through your food processor if you’re having trouble getting Bob’s)
  • 2 tsp ceylon cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp clove
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • 1/4 tsp ginger
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a 9×5 loaf pan with parchment paper.
  2. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl.
  3. After separating the eggs, place the egg whites in a food processor and blend until stiff.
  4. Add the egg yolks, ghee, honey, banana, and vanilla. Blend until smooth
  5. Toss about two-thirds of the chopped apples into the dry mixture. Then pour in the wet mixture and combine well.
  6. Pour the bread batter into the loaf pan. Top with remaining apple chunks.
  7. Bake for 90 minutes or until it springs back when touched. (If the top starts to get too dark, cover with aluminum foil to slow down browning).
applebread

great for breakfast or a midday snack, packed with nutrition and full of flavor. this loaf lasted less than a week — maybe I’ll make double next time!

Kitchen Alchemy: Cran-Strawberry Sorbet

Dairy-Free, Dessert, Gluten-Free, Kitchen Hacks, Life Lessons, Paleo, Recipes, , , , , , ,

I have to admit, I don’t like cranberry sauce. Every year at Thanksgiving, I try it, and every year I don’t like it. Whether it comes right out of the can or someone offers me a “family recipe” that’s been perfected over the years, it’s just not my favorite thing. But for some reason, when I was wandering through the produce section at Berkeley Bowl, I felt compelled to buy a box of fresh organic cranberries.

cran2

When I brought them home, my husband asked what I’d planned on doing with them. I said maybe I’d make a holiday smoothie, and he laughed, suggesting that I try a raw cranberry before making that commitment. SOUR!!!

I decided that if anyone could make a cranberry sauce that I’d like, it would be me. Even though I’ve never made one before. Even though I had no idea what I was doing.

Because I was doing 4 things at once, and because my heart wasn’t really in it, I threw the cranberries into a pot, filled it with water, turned on the stove, and proceeded with my other kitchen tasks (baking muffins, mixing homemade humus, and making chicken salad out of leftover chicken breasts). As a result of this unplanned process, the recipe will read more like a story. Hopefully it will inspire creativity when something doesn’t go quite right in your kitchen. This post is about a poorly thought out experiment, so the measurements will be very approximate. But my mess of an attempt at cranberry sauce transformed into something delicious! Creamy sorbet!

After about 30 minutes on the stove in a covered pot, my cranberry sauce was a red soup. I uncovered it and let it cook a bit longer and then I gave up and poured it into a glass bowl. I squeezed the juice of 1/2 a lemon in and tasted. SOUR!!! And really really soupy.

Crans1

I thought maybe I could add some gelatin and leave it in the fridge over night to see if I could turn it into a “healthy jello” type concoction. The gelatin I use comes from grass-fed cows on pasture and is designed to dissolve in cold water. I’ve only ever used it in smoothies, and only very recently, so I had no idea how much to add and no idea what it would do.  I would guess that I used about 3 or 4 tablespoons.

gelatin

I also added in roughly 1/4 cup maple syrup, 1/2 a box of my favorite coconut milk (Arroy D).crans2

After dinner the following night, I pulled my bowl out of the fridge, and it was still soup, although it tasted pretty good. After a few soupy spoons a lightbulb went off. Freeze it! I poured what was left in a silicone ice tray and stuck it in the freezer for a while.
crans4

My impatience got the best of me, so I pulled out the ice tray and threw some frozen strawberries (maybe like 10) and about half of the not-quite frozen cubes into the food processor, and voilà!

Cran-Strawberry Sorbet was born!

crans5

I still have the other half of the cranberry coconut gelatin in the freezer. I think when I do this again, it will be a more solid sorbet because the cubes will be completely frozen, but this was definitely delicious, creamy, and refreshing. I’d say that my fresh cranberry purchase turned out to be a success after all!

Last updated by at .