All Day Cake- Recipe

All Day Cake, because, let’s be honest, we’ll be eating it all day anyway.

• 1 cup oats
• 1 cup flour (I only had white, so I also added a few spoons of wheat bran and wheat germ)
• 1/2 cup fruit muesli
• 3 tsp baking powder
• about 1/4 c shredded, unsweetened coconut
• a couple spoons of corn flour (optional)
• 3/4 c honey
• a gigantic, heaping tablespoon of molasses
• 2 eggs (I strongly encourage you to use organic, free range, local, etc. etc. etc…)
• 2 containers of plain, unsweetened yogurt (1 cup total)
• 1/2 c oil (I always use olive oil, in spite of–or rather, embracing–the flavor)
• nutmeg, to taste
• cinnamon, to taste

1. Whisk the dry ingredients
2. Mix in the wet ingredients
3. Oil or butter and flour a big bundt cake pan (after flouring, I also tossed in some more coconut, for funsies and for a bit of insurance)
4. Pour the batter into the pan. Bake at 160-175 C (320-350 F) for about 50 minutes. Test with a toothpick.
5. Let cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes before turning out onto a serving plate. Flip over onto another plate so it is right side up– the top glazed surface is quite tasty!
6. Feel less guilty about eating cake all day. At least we kicked the refined sugars out of the equation and added some fiber and vitamins and minerals 😉

Let me know how this works for you! We had it for breakfast, and it is already a hit in the house. I think I will cut the honey back to 1/2 cup, but I wanted to be conservative for this first try. The sugars from the fruit muesli do add more than enough sweetness to compensate for the reduction, I think!

Notes on “Sneaky Cookies” recipe…go muffin tops!

I’ve been playing around a little with the Sneaky Cookies for the past couple days, and I thought I’d share a few notes…just in case you haven’t tried them yet.

If you are waiting for something a bit more decadent (but still pretty darned full of goodness), then hang on for my Gradíssimas …I like to think of Gradíssimas as the perfect chocolate chunk cookie with a choose-your-own-adventure variation, depending on your emotional state at the time of making them 😉

Until then-
Gradíssima

Sneaky cookies…healthy-ish, high-fiber, and full of goodness

I just made these, and My Man and I enjoy them. 🙂 The cookie is sweet and light, despite the spread in the oven, and the hidden square of chocolate has just the right burst of naughtiness without overloading your blood sugar 🙂

Let me know what you think of the recipe format…I’m using my iPad so much these days, and writing is much easier than typing on the screen…

Anyway, here goes! Perhaps I’ll get more of my back -logged recipes up soon if Grandíssimo helps me out a little 😉

Dinner and a movie- quick ‘n’ dirty

My Man had a work dinner tonight, which meant Grandíssimo, Puppy, and I were left to our own culinary devices. Do I even need to mention that I decided to make something super-easy?

Let me summarize:
This led to this:

I watched Bruce and Marie (Um Casal Surreal here in Portugal), which was a downer, and then balanced things out with an episode of Castle and some brownies.

Oh, yeah…I finally got around to making some experimental brownies this afternoon.

For a quinoa-based experiment, they aren’t bad…they turned out a little too ‘Asian’ for my liking, meaning they taste as though they were made with rice flour… Still, there is plenty of chocolate involved, and if you think you’d enjoy tapioca pudding brownies, they might be your thing…

Meanwhile, Grandíssimo is overtired and upset, so this post is getting cut short….

Another rough sketch in progress: savory high-fiber, high-protein bars

Another kitchen experiment gone well…

The rough lines of it are these:

Quinoa, bulgur, sesame seeds, amaranth, flax seeds, chia seeds, a sprinkling of sunflower seeds, all soaked in water overnight…
Put the pot of this goodness on the stove the next day and heated until remaining water was absorbed…
About a cup of this goes to the blender with some homemade olive oil (portuguese family)…
About a cup (puréed) of butternut squash and a garlic bulb (puréed along with the squash)
Cumin, chili powder, garlic powder, salt, curry powder…
Around two teaspoons baking powder added way too late, but in good faith…

Smoosh into baking pan….Bake for a while at 160C…
E voilá…

It is not unlike spicy, delicious, moist cornbread….my Man likes it, I like it (VERY snack able when I feel like some thing savory), and I can happily eat it cold from the refrigerator or microwave it…

So now my foodbrain is going wild…this weekend, when my Man is home, I’ll be playing with quinoa and frozen strawberries to make bars…I’ll also make more of those amazing chocolate bars that inspired this savory adventure…they are so good, and I love them more and more as the days go on…they feel like healthy brownies…and they really fill me up! I’m satisfied, my chocolate cravings are met, and my blood sugar doesn’t fluctuate like mad. I really feel great, which is impressive since I pretty much subsist on these two types or bars and coffee and water during the day.

I have grand plans to incorporate frozen spinach, peas, broccoli…at least into savory bars! Though I’ve heard that black bean brownies are really very good. Beans are an easier flavor to work with than spinach or broccoli, however, when it comes to sweets!

Have you had any recent food adventures you’d be willing to share? Particularly anything involving whole foods and healthy goodness in bar form?

A rough sketch of a recipe: Fiber Protein Chocolate Quick Bars

There’s bound to be a better name just begging to be used for these (names add so much to food…just think of the difference between “white bean purée” and “some …