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Dollars to Donuts II- Chocolate Donuts

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For information on the pans and techniques for making these donuts, see our first post in this series, Dollars to Donuts. This recipe is grain-free and nutrient dense. There is one egg and over one tablespoon of fat in each donut, and the recipe has a low-sweetener option. I prefer making the low-sweetener variety using Nu Naturals Stevia. I get my stevia from Iherb.com. You can get a discount on your first order with coupon code KED184.

 

Chocolate Grain-Free Donut

 

Chocolate Donuts

1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/3 tsp salt
1/3 – 1/2 cup rapadura/sucanat and 1/4 tsp stevia or 1 cup rapadura (2 cups if your family has not adjusted to low-sugar)
6 eggs
1/2 cup coconut milk, dairy milk or water
1 Tbs vanilla extract
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
1/4 cup butter, melted (or additional coconut oil)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Generously grease your pan, if you are using stoneware, and set aside.

Sift together the coconut flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. If you are using powdered stevia, sift this in as well. Set the bowl aside. In a separate bowl, whisk together the rapadura, eggs, milk, vanilla and oil. Whisk the wet into the dry ingredients. Add a little extra water or milk, if needed, to get the batter to come together and be wet enough to pour. Quickly pour into the greased pan- I made this easier by transferring the batter to a pyrex measuring cup so I could measure and pour without blobbing the batter all over the little divet-thingie in the pan. The coconut flour will absorb the fluid as it sits, so get it into the pan so it is easier to work with. Jiggle the pan a little to get the batter to level out.

Bake for 20-22 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean for a stoneware mini-bundt pan. For a traditionally-sized donut pan, the baking time would be reduced to 15-18 minutes.

Glaze- I make my donuts to be very low sweetener, then mixed a little powdered sugar with some cocoa, vanilla extract and enough unsweetened almond milk to make a glaze and drizzled it over.

 

This post is part of Monday Mania, Traditional Tuesdays, Tasty Tuesdays, Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays, Grain Free Tuesdays and Show Me What Ya Got.

 

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Desserts- Nut Butter Cups

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This is a big hit here, and is my go-to recipe for a filling snack without a lot of carbs.  This recipe is from my Menu Mailer. These need to stay refrigerated or frozen, but they do great on the go or in a lunch box with an ice pack or in winter.   Kids like the mini cups best as they don’t melt before they can eat it all. I did both mini and regular sized cups and kept the layers fairly thin. A regular muffin cup-size makes a great size for an adult’s afternoon snack. These are only slightly sweet, if your family likes sweet things you’ll need to increase the honey or stevia or combine the two.

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Real Food Storage: Peppermint Patties

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There’s no shortage of holiday treats that can be made with food storage.  In fact, this is a favorite of mine for taking to parties. And having in the freezer for unexpected guests through the holidays. And to snack on before we go to an event. And for the mid-afternoon busy days where I need something fast without having a sugar crash afterwards. And to give to the kids so they think they’re getting a treat. And….

I’m a sucker for peppermint, especially anything that combines chocolate and peppermint. I feel no guilt for eating these. They’re loaded with good fat and they aren’t sweet. I use just 1/2 Tbs of honey and then sweeten them to taste with stevia.  They’re lower in carbs that way and I don’t get a sugar crash afterwards.  If you need a very low carb option, they can be made with stevia only.

Store these in the freezer. Make extra and hide them from the kids. I certainly do. 😀  If you like this recipe, consider making our peanut butter cups, too.  I also make almond joy, mounds and more using coconut oil.  At any one time, you can find two or three low-carb versions of these treats in my freezer.

If you want to make a more attractive presentation, you can make and freeze just the filling until completely firm then dip them in melted chocolate chips.  Return them to the freezer before the middles melt.

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What will you do when you get that call?

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A few days ago, my best friend got that phone call that everyone dreads.

Your daddy has had a heart attack. The doctors don’t think he’ll make it through the night.

GET. HERE. NOW.

She did what everyone would do. She grabbed enough for a road trip, threw it in the car and took off for a long drive. All she could think about was getting there as fast as possible.

On the way there, she called me to let me know what was going on. Trying to stay calm, she recounted the conversation and what details she knew. She told me later that she didn’t even think about food until she hung up the phone with me, about half-way through her drive. She was headed to a large military town, but it only has one grocery store chain and no health food stores. She has multiple food allergies and doesn’t fare well when exposed to an allergen.

Her daddy did make it through the night. She was having to go to her mom’s house do laundry and had to run by the store to buy basic necessities. She was then faced with the dilemma of having to go to the limited-selection grocery store and find safe food, figure out what to fix without having any of her recipes with her, find safe pots and pans to cook it in at her mom’s house, and keep it safe and segregated in the fridge while a trail of friends and family come through the home. It took time away from being at her daddy’s bedside and provided to be a considerable stress.

Of course, if you have a cast iron stomach and can handle fast food, pot-luck, or hospital cafeteria foods for as long as you need, you’re ok in the food department. But what about clothing? Toiletries? In a rush to get out the door, would you forget something? If you have children, would you have to suffer through their boredom and confusion while you’re going through what can arguably be considered one of the most stressful events in your life?

What would you do? You’re lucky if all of your family lives locally, you can just call a friend and have them swing by your house and drop off whatever you might need and you can run home for food and sleep. But if you have any family out of town, how can you prepare so that you don’t have to worry? Is it possible to just grab-and-go, knowing you have what you need?

You need a bug-out bag.

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Whoopie Pie

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This cute little guy is the whoopie pie that is in the Valentine’s Day Menu Mailer.  He’s about 2 inches tall, a portable treat that’s perfect for little hands.  They are gluten and dairy free, and they can easily be made egg-free by using an egg replacer for the cookie.  The whoopie pies are for the kid in all of us.  The frosting is thick but is low in sugar.  I am thrilled that I finally figured out a method to make frosting that doesn’t require white powdered sugar or dairy to thicken it, and this recipe only contains a small amount of powdered rapadura for the sweetener.  Another method is used to thicken the frosting.

The Valentine’s Day meal has a beef recipe, two side dishes and two desserts. The main meal is an Asian-inspired steak, pilaf and vegetable dish.  The steak was just as good cold on a salad the next day as it was hot.  This recipe is now my personal go-to recipe for all cuts of steak, we enjoyed it so much.

The other dessert is called Chocolate Euphoria.  It is an ingenious custard that will only take a few minutes to make and doesn’t require the oven or a water bath.  It’s a great finish to a meal where you’re hosting company because they’ll think it took you a lot of time, effort and fuss to make it. You can smile and thank them for the compliments instead of telling them it only took about 15 minutes to make!

The Mailer also contains four other dinners and one breakfast.  You can purchase the mailer here.

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KerryAnn Foster runs Cooking Traditional Foods, the longest running Traditional Foods Menu Mailer on the internet. KerryAnn has over nine years of traditional foods experience and is a former Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader. Founded in 2005, CTF helps you feed your family nourishing foods they will love. Each mailer contains one soup, five dinners, one breakfast, on dessert and extras. You can learn more about our Menu Mailers at the CTF website. For a free sample Menu Mailer, join our mailing list. You can also join our forum to chat with other traditional foodists and learn more.

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Strategies for Hidden Veggies I- Black Bean Brownies

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I periodically spend time thinking about ways to hide veggies in most foods, and I’m always on the look-out for ideas.  After looking into purees and the books that promote them, I decided that most of them were a lot of work for little vegetable content per serving in the finished product.  While I applaud any efforts to get veggies into children, I felt like many of these recipes were too much work for too little results to be the main thrust of my efforts.  Many of the published recipes I found only had 1/2 – 2 Tbs of puree per serving and the purees often have water added so you’re getting very little in the way of vegetables.  Many of them showed a remarkable lack of variety or weren’t recipes acceptable for a traditional foods diet as they contained unsoaked flours, soy flour, or other undesirable ingredients.  Many of the recipes used applesauce to replace the fat or a puree to replace the egg.  While it is better than nothing, I felt like I could use different methods to achieve better results while keeping the recipes true to traditional foods.  I decided for the most part that the recipes that didn’t try to hide the vegetable flavors but instead complimented them and recipes where the vegetable replaces the flour were good candidates. This is easily accomplished in many brownies, cakes, pies, blondies and even dishes such as custards and puddings.  Even some cookies, ice creams and sherbets will work!  For breakfast, many pancakes, waffles and other baked goods are a snap to convert, especially those with liquid batters.

By far, I feel the strategy of using vegetables to replace the flour in a recipe is the best way to get veggies into a recipe.  Many gluten-free recipes contain bean flours, so using pureed beans to replace the flour while reducing the liquid works very well.  It is possible to produce flourless recipes this way!  And, by soaking and cooking the beans correctly, you make the recipe traditional food and you eliminate the gastric distress that comes with using unsoaked bean flours. In some of these recipes, adding extra eggs is possible, further increasing the nutrition.  The beans increase the nutrition content while decreasing the carbs, so it is a wonderful strategy.  Especially good for filling little bellies and keeping them full until the next meal.

This recipe, using black beans, is the first recipe I will post in this series.  It is a plain, chocolate brownie. Cocoa powder covers the color of the black beans.   For blondies, a white beans such as navy or cannellini work beautifully. In the coming weeks, I will post cakes, blondies, dressed-up brownies and more using this method.

 

Black Bean Brownies

From the Menu Mailer Voume 4 Week 24

½ cup rapadura
4 large eggs
3 Tbs cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
2 Tbs coconut oil or butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla
1 (14.5 ounce) can or 1½ cups cooked black beans, drained and rinsed

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8×8 pan and set aside.

Place the eggs, rapadura, cocoa powder, baking powder, coconut oil and vanilla in a blender or food processor and blend until well-combined. Add the beans and blend until thoroughly combined and smooth. Pour into the pan and bake 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool before slicing.

 

This post is part of Food Trip Fridays and the Beans and Lentils Linky.

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