Banana Date Walnut Loaf

Here’s a great way to use up 3 over ripe bananas! Kids will love it and I love that it contains no concentrated sweeteners at all- just dates and bananas. Plus it’s gluten-free (and grain-free if you consider that buckwheat is technically a fruit and not a grain). Enjoy as a nutritious snack (with an inch of butter of course!), a dessert to tack on at the end of a meal or as part of your brekky. 

Ingredients:

3 small ripe bananas (approx 400-500g, weighed unpeeled) plus optional extra ½ banana, sliced, for decorating 
125g butter or coconut oil
245g (1 1/3 cup) activated cinnamon buckwheat
4 eggs
2 drops Young Living cinnamon oil or 1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
2 drops Young Living nutmeg oil or ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup, 190g, dates (weigh with seeds in then remove), roughly chopped 
1 cup, 90g, roughly chopped activated walnuts (I break them apart with my hands) plus extra for decorating

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 150 degrees Celsius.  Grease a loaf tin with olive oil and line it with baking paper on the base and all sides. 

Process activated buckwheat in a nut grinder or Thermomix (speed 9, 20 secs) until it resembles a soft fine flour and add it to a large mixing bowl.

Beat the eggs with stick blender, or process in a food processor or Thermomix (speed 6, 20 secs) until fluffy and add to the large mixing bowl.

Process butter and banana in food processor or Thermomix (speed 6, 20 secs) and add to the large mixing bowl.

Add cinnamon, nutmeg, dates and walnuts to the large mixing bowl and stir well to combine.  

Pour mixture into the loaf tin and decorate the top with a scattering of walnuts and sliced banana if desired.

Bake for 1 hour or until a skewer comes out clean. Bake for extra 10 minutes if baking 2 loaves. 

Allow to cool somewhat before removing from tin whe and place onto a serving platter or cutting board. 

Serve as is or toasted under the grill element and then smear with butter if desired. 

Store in an airtight container at room temperature for 3 days before refrigerating.

2-Ingredient Mango Jelly!

Super easy to make. Super delicious. Super nutritious. No added sugars. Perfect summer dessert. Kids love it (big ones too!).

There are 2 things you need to know about making jelly:

1. Using a quality source of gelatin powder is important. Gelatin is what makes the mixture gel or congeal. (It’s naturally found in the bones of animals and hence what makes a good bone broth look like jelly and stand on a spoon!). In terms of ready-made gelatin powders, I recommend Bernard Jensen or Great Lakes in the red container. I used the latter in this recipe.  Their beef gelatin powder is pure protein derived from the selective hydrolysis of collagen from the skin, connective tissue and/or bones of grass fed, free range beef cattle. This is the real deal. Just one ingredient: ground up collagen from pastured cows. No need to ever buy cheap processed imitation gelatin crap full of flavours, colours and preservatives from the supermarket again. Major brands will go unnamed.

2. Using the right amount of gelatin powder is important – and is a painstaking process of trial and error. Not adding enough makes a watery goo. Adding too much produces a hard rubbery texture that you could bounce a ball off (unless of course you’re after gummies or you could always simply say “Well, I intended to make gummies, of course”).  My mate Monty tells me that the consistency of jelly is all about tongue action. And then proceeded to give me a 10 minute explanation of how the tongue needs to be able to break the jelly apart with the right amount of effortless force. Indeed. Fortunately my mango jelly passed his test. Relief! But if you feel that the consistency of the jelly using my recipe is not to your liking (if your tongue just aint happy), then simply experiment by increasing or decreasing the amount of gelatin powder used.

Ok, let’s do it!

Ingredients:

1 cup of mango flesh 
1 tablespoon of 100% grass fed gelatin powder 

Directions:

Puree the mango flesh with a hand held blender. I do this in a measuring cup to determine the correct volume of mango.

Place pureed mango plus gelatin powder into a small saucepan over medium heat and mix ingredients with hand held blender until gelatin is dissolved and the ingredients are mixed well (this will only take a few minutes). The mixture should be warm – do not allow to simmer or boil. Pour into small vessels or a glass rectangular container and refrigerate until set (this only takes a couple of hours).

To serve:

Top with additional sliced mango segments and, if desired, thick mud cream or creme fraiche.

Serves approx 4.

Variations:

1. For a creamier version (akin to panacotta), add 100ml of cream to the saucepan. Experiment with volume of cream to obtain your desired creaminess; and/or

2. Add cubes of mango (and/or well-ripened pear) into the vessels/container after pouring in the mixture.

Health benefits:

Beef gelatin:

* Promotes healthy skin & hair.
* Improves joint & bone health.
* Improves quality of sleep when taken in the evening.
* Enhances digestion by strengthening the intestinal lining.

Adding a quality protein or fat source to fruit also helps to slow down the release of the fructose naturally found in fruit, avoiding the sugar high then crash.

I’ll be writing a post in the future on the difference between the Green and the Red containers of Great Lakes gelatin powder as I am asked about this frequently.

Activated Buckwheat Flour Pancakes

In one of my recent posts on some of my new products I talked about my activated cinnamon buckwheat. In that post I mentioned that one of the many recipes I use this ingredient for is my activated buckwheat pancakes which have become a weekend ritual in my family. As promised, here’s the recipe.  Apologies for the delay in getting this to you….it has involved many years of painstaking iterations…such is the life of a perfectionist…..

Ingredients:

1 cup (170g) activated cinnamon buckwheat or activated rice or a combination of the 2
1.5 cups of whole milk
4 pastured eggs
pinch of unrefined salt
1 ripe banana
approx 5 tablespoons coconut oil for frying

Directions:

Process activated buckwheat/rice in a nut grinder until it resembles a fine soft flour. For best results process in 2-3 batches. You will not get the same result by using an ordinary food processor unless you have a Thermomix.

Add the eggs to the food processor and process until very well beaten- their colour will change from yellow to almost white. This will take several minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients to the food processor and process until mixture is a smooth well-blended batter.

For this quantity of ingredients I like to have 1 small, 1 medium and 1 large frying pan on the go at once for efficiency and add 2 tablespoons of coconut oil to each of the medium and large frying pans and 1 tablespoon of oil to the smallest pan. When the oil has melted pour batter into each frying pan. When underside is cooked to golden brown, transfer frying pans to oven under heated grill element to cook top side until golden brown (this avoids flipping pancakes over in pan!). Be sure to position the pancakes a fair distance from the grill element to prevent burning ie about middle of the oven.

Transfer to plate and, if desired, add one or more toppings such as:

• crispy bacon

• fruit (eg stewed fruit, sliced banana, fresh berries, passionfruit)

• a dollop of cream

• drizzle of maple syrup, maple butter (which is whipped maple syrup) or raw honey

• a dollop of jam, choc coconut spread, chocolate sauce etc.

Leftovers can be refrigerated and used for kids school lunches/morning tea esp as ‘bread’ for a banana sandwhich.

Serves 3-4.

Variations: to make a berry pancake add some frozen berries to the batter after you have poured it into the frying pan and before transferring to grill element.

Tip: Across 3 frying pans this quantity of batter should produce pancakes that are quite thin. This is preferable to a thick pancake when using buckwheat flour as buckwheat is very dense so a thick pancake will end up doughy and uncooked in the centre. When pouring the batter into the frying pans if the batter at the end of the bowl is more coarse then that means that you have not processed your buckwheat into a fine enough flour.