Tag: easy

Super Simple Muffins

This muffin recipe is a super simple, one bowl wonder that can take so many variations and substitutions there is sure to be something for everyone. The basis of the recipe is banana muffins but I’ve adapted it to also be berry muffins, chocolate muffins and carrot / zucchini muffins disguised as chocolate!

Cook times depending on the size of muffin you are making:
Regular muffin size: 18-20 minutes
Large mini muffin size: 15 mins
Mini muffins: 10 – 12 mins

Print Recipe

Super Simple Muffins

This muffin recipe is a super simple, one bowl wonder that can take so many variations and substitutions there is sure to be something for everyone.
Cook Time15 mins
Course: lunchbox
Cuisine: Gluten free
Keyword: allergy friendly, baking, dairy free, healthy

Ingredients

  • 2 bananas See notes for subsitutes
  • ¼ c milk almond, coconut, cows milk, rice milk
  • ¼ c oil light olive oil, coconut oil (melted, avocado oil – some sort of oil! – melted butter would probably work too.)
  • 1 egg or egg replacement
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 cup flour buckwheat, gluten free, wholemeal, white, spelt – whatever you use!
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • ¼ c sweetener sugar, coconut sugar, maple syrup, honey – whatever you use

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 180 deg c, fan-bake. Grease or line a 12 hole muffin tin, or two 12 hole mini muffin tins.
  • Mash the banana and mix together with all the wet ingredients. Alternatively, chuck them all in the blender and blend away until smooth – then put into a bowl.
  • Sift the dry ingredients over the wet and carefully fold everything together.
  • Spoon the mixture into muffin tin. See cook times below depending on your muffin tin size.

Notes

Choc muffins
Swap 1/4 c of the flour for 1/4 c of cocoa, i even swapped 1/2 cup flour for 1/2 cup cocoa once when i ran our of flour. I have also used carob powder, which worked great too. Cocoa is naturally a bit bitter, so you may need to add a little more sweetener
Zucchini & carrot muffins disguised as chocolate
I used the cocoa sub as above an also swapped one of the bananas for about 1 cup of very finely grated carrot and zucchini. I put a tiny sprinkle of coconut sugar on top of each muffin before baking since i swapped the sweet banana for veggies, just as insurance that they would get eaten!
Berry muffins
Add about 1/2 cup fresh or frozen berries to the mix with the flour.
Banana free
You can make these muffins banana free by replacing the bananas with 1 cup apple purée. You can also use 1 cup pumpkin purée – and be sure to add the sweetener to the pumpkin as well, taste the batter and adjust sweetness accordingly. I love to add cinnamon, orange juice (in place of the milk) and rind to the pumpkin muffins.
Egg free
My favourite egg replacer in these muffins is 1 Tablespoon of chia seeds + 1/4 cup water. Soak the chia seeds in the water for 5 mins, then add with the wet ingredients. You can find more egg replacement options Here.

Kayla

Chicken Noodle Soup

This meal is based on leftovers from the night before’s roast – which for us usually includes an organic / free range chicken, potatoes, kumara, pumpkin, parsnip, broccoli, cauli, mushrooms, roast garlic and carrots. I use the bones to make broth and the leftover veggies in the soup – so it only takes about 10 mins to put together!

serves 4-6

Ingredients

5-6 cups chicken broth or stock*

Oil (coconut or olive oil)

200g rice noodles (about half a standard size packet) – check ingredients to make sure GF (best is rice flour, water)

leftovers from roast chicken and veggies

Some extra greens if you have some handy – parsley, spinach, kale or silverbeet

what to do

*When you have removed all the meat from your roast chicken, simmer the bones in 1.5L water for around 3-4 hours. During the last hour you can add some garlic, tumeric, onion and veggie scraps like carrot tops, celery leaves, parsnip peels – whatever you have handy. Strain the liquid into a container to store in the fridge, and add a generous pinch of salt. Store your leftover chicken and veggies in a container in the fridge. Sometimes i save my veggie scraps, onion and garlic skins and freeze them to put in the broth.

In a deep pan or pot add a decent dollop of coconut oil or olive oil, add the leftover chicken and veggies – and some garlic and / or ginger if there wasn’t any with your leftovers.

Brown everything up a bit, then pour over the broth.

Bring to the boil. Add the rice noodles and simmer for 10 mins, or until cooked.

Stir the greens through last and season well with salt and pepper. If your broth tastes a bit lifeless, chances are it needs more salt!

This is one of my favorite breakfasts and when pulled together from the leftovers, doesn’t take any longer to make than a bowl of porridge!

Kayla

Zucchini Cheese – Dairy free, melty delicious cheese

I am a lover of all things cheese. Cheese is life. When cheese and life begin to clash, in my world, this is quite a problem. I am 99% dairy free, as my body does not love me eating dairy. The 1% allows for me to sometimes, eat cheese. I save my cheese eating for special occasions, like when we are at a function, event or family gathering and someone brings out the cheeseboard! I allow myself some cheese, and my body seems to be ok with this (and so i sternly tell it). But at home, when life calls for cheese, i am totally happy for this replacement.

Sincerely Yours,

A fellow Cheese Lover

Recipe Notes

coconut free

Use light olive oil instead

Vegan

Replace gelatine with an equal measure of agar-agar

Cheesy Flavour

I brought nutritional yeast to try in there because apparently it tastes cheesy, i’m more than happy to leave this out, it is not to my taste! So if you like nutritional yeast then some of that too.
Half a teaspoon onion and / or garlic powder can also make this next level, or sometimes I use garlic salt instead of regular. But i don’t always have these and it’s fine without. A pinch of smoked paprika can give a subtle smokey depth and a more yellowy colour. 

Gelatin

This ‘cheese’ is set with gelatin, make sure you choose a good quality, setting gelatin (I personally use Great Lakes Beef Gelatin) cheap supermarket gelatin can sometimes have a nasty flavour. I have tons of recipes on my blog that use good quality gelatin so you will have no trouble using it up! 

Storage

It stores in a sealed container in the fridge for about 5 days to a week. You can Freeze, but on defrosting it can be a little watery, so is best used for melting and adding to meals after that, rather than snacking. 

If you are after a delicious, cheesy dairy free meal, then my Mac and Cheese  is inspired by this recipe, I highly recommend you check it out! 

You could also use this cheese sauce recipe to make your cheese instead – (a few more ingredients but the flavour is next level!)  Use 2 Tablespoons gelatin to every 1.5 cups of cheese sauce. Heat the sauce, sprinkle the gelatin on and whisk through (or blitz in blender) until melted. Then set, as below in the recipe. 

Print Recipe

Dairy Free Zucchini Cheese

Prep Time10 mins
Cook Time10 mins
Keyword: AIP, allergy friendly, dairy free, easy recipe, egg free, grain free, paleo, SCD

Ingredients

  • 1 generous cup peeled diced raw zuchinni 2 small – med sized ones
  • 1 tablespoon coconut oil i use refined coconut oil here because i don’t want my ‘cheese’ to have lingering notes of coconut!*
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice this makes it quite lemony but i like it this way, you could reduce slightly
  • 2 tablespoons gelatine**
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • Good shake of white pepper

Instructions

  • Steam the zucchini until tender (about 5 mins if its diced small) drain all water off, and keep in the hot pan.
  • Add the coconut oil to melt. Sprinkle the gelatine over the top and let it melt and dissolve in while stirring.
  • Add the rest of the ingredients.
  • blend up everything in your blender, food processor or stick blender. I have a taste and adjust seasoning accordingly.
  • I set ours in a mini silicone loaf pan so it make about 2 mini blocks of ‘cheese’. But set in a lined container of choice, that your are happy to store and slice your ‘cheese’ from that shape.
  • Takes a couple hours to set in the fridge. Stores in there in a sealed container for about 5 days to a week.

Notes

*coconut free? – use light olive oil instead
**vegan? You can replace gelatine with an equal measure of agar-agar

Kayla

Veggie Nachoes

Nachoes without meat OR beans! I’m not a huge fan of beans, i’d rather just eat veggies, so this is how we created our veggie nachoes, which came along well before we had kids, and has been a recipe I can easily adapt to suit the ever changing allergy needs of the family. Win!

 

Ingredients

Some in season root veggies – Carrot, pumpkin, kumara, potato (or whatever is in season – other veggies that work are capsicum, eggplant, zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower)
Natural corn chips (ingredients corn & oil) or kumara chips

Sauce:
1 T chopped garlic
1/2 diced onion
1 diced capsicum (red, orange or yellow or a combo)
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp ground corriander
2 tsp smoked paprika
1 jar tomato puree
optional – chilli powder or fresh chilli
salt & pepper

Cheese or dairy free cheese
Sour cream / coconut yogurt / avocado

what to do

Dice veggies (carrot, pumpkin, Kumara, potato) into small cubes and roast them in olive oil until crispy.
Dice garlic, onion, capsicum and fry off in pan. Mix up equal parts cumin, smoked paprika and ground coriander (2tsp each) Add half to each the veggies in the pan and the veggies roasting in the oven and plenty of salt and pepper.
Add a jar of tomato purée to the onion capsicum mix on the stove and blend everything until smooth to make a tomato sauce (you can also leave chunky, but my small people would no doubt try and pick out the bits!)
Can also add some chilli, we prefer to so this at the table so the kids don’t moan in-case I make it too spicy!
Serve the roasted veggies on top of corn chips, covered in the tomato sauce, cheese and sour cream. – make dairy free by using zucchini cheese or dairy free cheese, and use coconut yoghurt with a squeeze of lemon and / or mashed avocado on top (pictured: zucchini cheese & coconut yoghurt)

Kayla

Party Food! Real food, allergy friendly party treats (gluten, dairy, soy, nut, egg free)

The one stop for real food birthday party food inspiration – find links to the stuff i made here! Every single thing on the party table is free from dairy, egg, soy, gluten, wheat, nuts, peanuts, refined sugar and vegetable oils. Most of the food is made from good quality wholefoods ingredients, without feeling like the party food is missing. No sugar highs or post cake meltdowns after this party! And best of all, one very happy two year old, who for the first time in his life could enjoy all the party food!

Here i used my almond cranberry bliss ball recipe, but instead of almonds i used 1/2 cup sunflower seeds and 1/2 cup pumpkin seeds to make them nut free.

this fruit creation was kindly put together by my Mum (i said she could do the fruit or some baking – good choice mother). she just used a bunch of fruit available at the supermarket, honeydew melon, pineapple, apple, grapes, strawberries and banana – a pretty impressive selection at this time of year. the the middle is half an orange (skin and all) where she stuck the skewers and threaded the fruit on. The kids loved grabbing a skewer of fruit to take to their plate.

The famous everything free chocolate cake, so delicious and fudgy. recipe here along with choc ganache and marshmallow icing.

Batman biscuits! Recipe courtesy of Mummy Made It – its the ‘healthy tiny teddy’ recipe cut with batman cookie cutter. Free from dairy, egg, soy, gluten, nut and refined sugar! Ive made this a few times and is my go to special occasion biscuit recipe.

This pancake recipe comes from Be Good Organics – it is free from gluten, dairy, soy, eggs and nuts! But not free from deliciousness! For the party i subbed the buckwheat flour for a standard gluten free flour mix, given that buckwheat can be an acquired taste to unsuspecting guests! It is also the recipe i use in our waffles. The icing is choc ganache left over from the cake and the sprinkles i found at countdown which claim to be naturally colored, perhaps I was scammed by the marketing but i was willing to forgo research on this one for the sake of the party.

this was one of my favourite platters of the party! A trio of hummus. I used our standard hummus recipe, then to one added a bit extra garlic, the other about 1/2 cup roasted carrot and a tsp curry powder and the third, two small cooked beetroot and a little honey. lots of cut up vege to dip and some of our seed crackers.

Home popped popcorn! and Proper Crisps – salted and smoked paprika flavour. I love proper crisps because they aren’t cooked in refined canola oil, and they taste so good! Best chips I’ve ever tasted, they have spoiled all other potato chips for me now! For the popcorn, i melt about 1 Tbsp coconut oil in a large pot, add 3 popcorn kernels and cover, as soon as they have all popped add half a cup of popcorn kernels, cover and keep on the heat until the first ones start to pop. then turn off the heat and take the pot off the shake it, then put back on the element (while its turned off but will still be hot) for 30 seconds, and repeat until all the popcorn is popped. add a knob of coconut oil or butter to the hot pot and let melt through the popcorn then turn out into a bowl and season to taste.

 

Jellies! i made three types of jellies about a week ahead and kept them in the freezer, then transferred to the fridge to defrost a day or two before the party. I made blueberry, strawberry and lime (sorry didn’t get a picture of those ones!) and peaches jellies. i got the heart, star, duck moulds from Kmart and the lego men from Aliexpress.

Chicken Nibbles – Bostocks organic free range chicken nibbles (my second favourite after their wings!) marinated in honey, garlic, ginger and coconut aminos. For ‘honey soy’ chicken nibbles. these were delicious!

Franks sausages – our go to for gluten free, preservative sausages, these were the chicken ones and lamb ones. They are so good, and the only sausage I’ve found with ingredients I’m happy to feed Felix. In the big drink dispenser there is soda water with frozen blueberries and orange slices, and in the glass bottle chilled water with lime wedges.

Kayla

Real Food Jelly Lollies

Ingredients

Strawberry & lime

1 cup strawberries (frozen is fine)
1/4 cup water x2
1 T lime juice

1 T maple syrup (optional)

2 T gelatin*

Blueberry

1 cup blueberries (Frozen is fine)
1/4 cup water x2
1 T maple syrup (optional)
2 T gelatin*

Peaches

1 cup peaches (i used tinned – rinsed and drained)
1/4 cup water x2
1 T maple syrup (optional)
2 T gelatin*

*(you can use up to 4 T gelatin for a firmer jelly / lolly like consistency)

what to do

Put the fruit, one lot of 1/4 cup water and sweetener for your your chosen flavour in a small pot and heat through.

While its heating add the gelatin to the other 1/4 cup water and stir. It will expand and soak up the water. Add this to the hot pot and stir through until dissolved.

Remove from the heat and blend the mixture in a blender, or with a handheld blender.

Pour into moulds, or line a tray with cling wrap and pour into the tray to cut into shapes when its set.

Set in the freezer for 20 – 60 mins depending on the size, or overnight. This part is essential for making sure the jellies come cleanly out of the moulds, especially if its a fiddly mould – like a lego man! you can store them in the freezer and defrost over night in the fridge before needed, or store in the fridge for a couple of days.

They should be able to handle being at room temperature for a couple hours, but are nicest when cold.

Kayla

Chocolate cake – real food and top 8 free!

So this recipe stems from an original recipe, a somewhat famous cake in the real food world – the 84th and 3rd chocolate cake! The original recipe calls for pumpkin and has eggs in it, so we have made some adjustments to the ratios and ingredients, by changing out for seasonal veggies and substituting the eggs. If you are not egg free then go check out the 84th and 3rd best real food chocolate cake recipe ever ! (but stick around here for the marshmallow icing!)

This recipe has been tried and tested half a dozen times between Justine at Our Kitchen Adventures and Myself. She was kind enough to adapt the original recipe first and share it with me! I have also made the original recipe, which isn’t egg free, for Ashton’s birthday, when Felix was too little to eat cake! I’ve made it with pumpkin, kumara (sweet potato) and carrot, i’m not a huge fan of the pumpkin version, but kumara and carrot are both delicious. This time i used carrot because kumara is like $10 a kilo right now!

Justine from Our Kitchen Adventures made the cake for her sons 2nd birthday dinosaur party.

And for her son’s Thunderbird’s birthday party

Ingredients

Cake:
1/2 c cocoa or cacao powder
1/4 c coconut flour
2 Tb psyllium husk
1 t cream of Tatar
2 t baking soda*
1/2 c maple syrup***
1/2 c water
1/2 c coconut oil
2 c Kumara, carrot or pumpkin finely grated
1 t vanilla extract
* or 1 t baking soda and 1 t baking powder

Chocolate Icing:
1 block dark dairy free chocolate (this part is not refined sugar free! the darker the chocolate the less sugar it has)**
1 400ml can coconut cream
1 t vanilla extract
** for a refined sugar free icing do try to the 84th and 3rd dairy free ‘buttercream’!)

what to do

Preheat oven 180 degrees c.

Cake

Put all the wet ingredients into a bowl and stir in the finely grated vege.

Sift the dry ingredients on top and then mix everything together, let sit for 5 mins for the mixture to thicken slightly.

line a cake tin with baking paper. I used a 18cm cake tin and split the mix in two to make two thin layers – so for the whole cake i made three batches of cake and 6 layers. (i made 1 batch a night and froze the layers to minimize the kitchen marathon!)

if you are doing two layers, bake each layer for 20 – 25 minutes, or a full cake batch for 35 minutes. lift out the baking paper and carefully place on a wire rack to cool. Without eggs to bind the cake is fragile so minimal handling works best. If you are wanting to layer or shape it, i recommend freezing for for easier handling. It freezes and defrosts beautifully, and actually tastes better after a couple days in the fridge!

icing

Melt the chocolate and add the coconut cream, refrigerate for an hour or so until firm then whip the mixture on high using an electric beater until fluffy and spreadable.

layer up with choc ganache icing between each layer, we also added strawberry chia-seed jam between each layer too, which was delicious!

If you want to add the marshmallow layer on the top then the instructions for that is here. Otherwise use this as your canvas to create whatever you want!

This part could be made a couple days in advance and stored in the fridge then the marshmallow icing added on the day or day before.

***for two of the cake batches i ran out of maple syrup! So i used coconut sugar made into a syrup, by measuring out half a cup of coconut sugar, then pouring boiling water over to reach the half cup measurement and stirring to dissolve.

Kayla

Marshmallow Icing

This is what I poured over the top of Felix’s birthday cake in the weekend, to get the yellow drizzle topping.  You can find lots of party snack photos on our facebook page and i’ll add more recipes for everything throughout the coming week.

Ingredients

1 cup water
3 Tbsp gelatin (we use great lakes or vital proteins)
100g honey or maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
pinch salt
Natural colour if you wish (i used 1/4 tsp turmeric, beetroot powder would probably work for pink – use your imagination im sure the natural colour options are endless.

what to do

put 1/2 the water in a large mixing bowl with the gelatin and leave to bloom while you prepare the honey.

In a saucepan heat the honey, water, vanilla, natural colour and salt until melted and combined.
Using an electric beater or stand mixer, start to beat the gelatin and water on low, while slowly pouring in the honey mix. Once combined turn the speed up to high and beat until it starts to become fluffy marshmallow texture, can take anywhere between 5 and 15 mins depending on the speed of your beater. Mine takes no longer than ten mins.

I’m not sure if i over beat it every time, but i find it sets too fast to ice a cake with, so i then melt it in the microwave ever so slightly (5 seconds at a time!) to make it a pour-able texture. Don’t worry if you melt it too much – it will firm back up on standing! But you need to make sure its loose enough or it won’t pour over the cake!

Depending on your climate it might set out of the fridge (its freezing at my house!) otherwise an hour or two in the fridge will firm it up.
Alternatively pour into a baking paper lined tin and cut into squares of marshmallow when set.

Kayla2 Comments

Choc Almond Cranberry Bliss Balls

Ingredients

1 c almonds
1 c dates
1/2 c dried cranberries
1 t vanilla extract
1 T coconut oil
1 T raw cacao or cocoa powder
1 c desiccated coconut

what to do

Put the almonds in the food processor and pulse until they are broken down. If you want almond chunks then leave them a bit chunky, if you want them all blended in then grind them to a powder. Add the rest of the ingredients and process on high until the dates are broken down and the mixture is clumping and sticky. Roll into balls and store in the fridge or freezer. I store them in the freezer and they get eaten straight from there.

Remember there is lots of dried fruit in these, even though they are wholefoods etc, they are still a ‘sometimes’ treat 🙂 they are especially good as an after dinner sweet or a high energy lunchbox treat.

Kayla

Waffles – Free from gluten, dairy, egg, nuts

So if you have been following me for a while, you will know that I’ve spent a good part of this year trying to create the perfect gluten, dairy, soy free but also egg and nut free waffle. And a month or so ago I finally cracked it. Well actually, that’s kind of a lie, I found this fantastic pancake recipe from one of my favourite real food blogs and decided to try and turn it into a waffle. Low and behold, it turned out perfect! there is nothing I could have done to make this recipe any better. So i really can’t take any credit for the everything free waffle recipe I spent so long trying to create, but I’m totally cool with that because it found me in the end!

All the credit goes to Buffy from Be Good Organics who created this stunning pancake recipe which I then turned into waffles. Here is the original pancake recipe, and below I will outline how I make it into waffles! The best part is I can serve this to the whole family and everyone loves it, gluten eating Dad and egg eating Chef Ashton included, and the best part is that our little guy Felix can enjoy the same breakfast as the rest of the family! He thinks its pretty cool and loves to partake in ‘build your own’ waffle Sunday when I lay out a bunch of condiments on the table and you can choose what to top your waffle with. (think blueberries, banana, kiwi fruit, maple syrup, seeds, dark chocolate, whipped coconut cream, coconut yoghurt, homemade chia jam, honey).

This makes 4 waffles and feeds our family of 4, with toppings.

Ingredients

1c buckwheat flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp himalayan pink salt
1 large ripe banana
1c + 1/4c coconut milk (or milk of choice)
1/4 lemon (juice & flesh)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 dates

Oil – for the waffle iron (this is the one and only place I use an oil spray)

what to do

Turn the waffle iron on and set to preheat. Grease the waffle iron, grease it real good, like i said this is the one time i use an oil spray instead of coconut oil because you really need to get into all the crevices. Trust me, you don’t want the waffle to stick!

Add all the ingredients into a blender or food processor, except the 1/4 cup milk – i put them all into a 1 litre glass jug and use my hand held blender. If it’s too thick add at the 1/4 cup milk. The consistency works best if its thick, but pour-able, with the help of a spoon.
Blend until all the ingredients are combined.

When the waffle iron is heated set it to your desired doneness (i like it a little brown, but not too much – which is about a 4 or 5 on my machine). Pour 1/4 of the mix in and close the lid. Obviously your waffle iron might be a different size to mine, so be the judge over whether that will be enough or too much. You don’t want it to overflow! I’m always so greedy and pour too much in the first two then the second two end up kinda stingy (the kids get those ones haha).

Remove each waffle with a spatula when done and place in a low temp oven until the others are cooked. While they cook, I chop and assemble the toppings (see above for suggestions) also some nice suggestions in the original recipe you could check out.

So there you have it, the most delicious egg and nut free (and all the other stuff free) waffle! I’m generally not a hue fan of a strong buckwheat flavour, but I don’t find the buckwheat flavour over powering at all in these.

If you are like us, and need options for egg free baking, you should definitely check out Be Good Organics, why reinvent the egg free baking wheel when you can just go there! Some seriously yum stuff, using good, quality, real food ingredients that I’m happy to feed my family.

Kayla