Pumpkin Chocolate chip muffins

As most of you already know, I love Fall.  It's by far my favorite season. Give me a big comfy scarf, sweater, some boots, apples and pumpkins and I'm a happy girl.  But, I have been doing a lot of thinking lately and I've decided that when I turn 25, that will be my healthiest year yet.  Not that I am unhealthy now, or eat badly, but I've decided that I am going to really put in the effort to be super conscious of all of the things I put on or in my body.  Green Beauty and lots of green food :)  But for now, let's talk about one of my favorite orange foods.  Pumpkin :)

My mother used to always make pumpkin chocolate chip muffins when I was younger at this time of the year. There is an on going joke about "1 C means one can of pumpkin right?" instead of 1 cup in our house.  But that is a story for another day, my dad is so helpful sometimes lol ;)  Anyway, I decided I wanted to attempt making these delicious muffins not just allergy friendly, but also grain and refined sugar free.  They came out so delicious! and they are completely guilt free on top of it.  So here it goes :)

Pumpkin Chocolate chip muffins

2 1/2 cups of ground sunflower seeds (flour)

1 heaping tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbs pumpkin pie spice

(you can add more or less depending on how it smells to you)

2 eggs

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup pumpkin puree

1/4 cup oil (coconut or olive both worked fine)

1 tsp vanilla

chocolate chips :)

I can't tell you how addicted I am to these things.  The perfect snack with a cup of tea, or have them for breakfast.  Super yummy.  I may or may not be eating one as I sit here writing this... ;)

So first step, make your sunflower seed flour.  It is the easiest thing. I bought a bag of raw sunflower seeds without the shell from the supermarket.  Throw them in the blender in small amounts and blend until they are finely ground.  Just make sure you don't blend for too long or you will start to make sunflower seed butter!  Which is also delicious but not what we are going for.  After I blended the entire bag up, I let it sit out on the counter for a few hours so it could dry out a bit.  Then I transferred it to a jar so its ready to scoop out for whatever recipe I need it for. 

So, this recipe is super easy.  Combine all of your dry ingredients in one bowl, and all of your wet in another.  Then combine them together and mix in your desired amount of chocolate chips.  I would say 1/2 cup would probably do it. But be my guest to add more.  (There is sugar in the chocolate chips, so I guess this recipe is not 100 % refined sugar free, but you can definitely find certain chocolate chip brands that are healthier than others.) Then scoop your batter into greased muffin tins and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until lightly browned.  Wait until they are cooled to eat, if you try to remove them from the tin while they are still hot they tend to be a bit too gooey and get stuck.

I love these muffins, so I hope you do too.  I just wish it was appropriate to cook pumpkin things year round because I would totally eat this in every season. 

<3

Coconut Raspberry "Snow Scones"

So what better snack to have on a snow day than a scone?? Actually, there are many other things that are probably more appropriate like hot chocolate or soup or something, but I felt like scones!  So I tried out this recipe.  It was a complete "winging it" sort of moment, but they came out really good! I looked at recipe after recipe trying to find things that were more healthy, but ended up just experimenting as I went.  So here it goes!

Coconut Raspberry Scones

2 cups Oat Flour

1/2 cup coconut flour

heaping 1/4 cup coconut sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

6 tbsp chilled butter (coconut oil would work too)

1 large egg

1 tbsp vanilla

1 cup coconut milk

1/2 cup shredded coconut

small carton raspberries

For the glaze:

powdered sugar

coconut milk

To start, I blended up about 3 cups of whole oats in the blender.  That gave me the 2 cups I needed for the recipe plus extra for dusting the counter when I formed the dough.

Next step was to combine, 2 cups of the oat flour with the coconut flour, coconut sugar, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.  Just stir together with a fork.  

Once you have everything stirred together, cut up your cold butter into small chunks.  This will make it easier to cut into your flour mixture. I just used a fork.  Do this until you have small bits of butter evenly dispersed through your dry ingredients.

Next!  Add your wet ingredients and egg and stir with a spatula.  Once I got everything combined, I stuck the bowl in the fridge for a few minutes to make sure it was nice and cold before I started working it with my hands.  I wanted to keep the butter as cold as possible. After 5-10 minutes in the fridge, I took it out and dumped it onto the counter that I dusted with the left over oat flour.  Use your judgement and add as much oat flour as you need to keep it from sticking to your hands or the counter. 

Once you have the dough pretty flattened, dumb your raspberries into the middle and fold the dough over them :)  This way you will have large chunks of your raspberries still intact inside of your scones.

Once you have formed a circle with your dough about an inch or so thick, cut out triangular wedges.  I made 8 decent sized scones with my dough.  Place them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, and cook for 20 minutes in a preheated 400 degree oven!  Once they come out they should be crisp on the outside and moist on the inside.  Let them cool on the tray so they can continue to cook a bit, and enjoy as is, or make the glaze!  If you want a little extra sweetness, slowly add coconut milk to powdered sugar until you end up with a thick paste that will drizzle slowly.  If you make it too thin then it won't stick to the scone!

My boyfriend jokingly said they were " Snow Scones" for our snow day, which I am definitely going to rip off.  They were a great snack and I was pleasantly surprised with how they turned out!  I hope you enjoy them too :)  

Avocado Bean Dip

As the school year starts, I'm trying to eat healthy and yet still have snacks that hit the spot.  This dip fits that description to a T.  Throughout the entire summer, this was on the menu as an afternoon snack or during cocktail hour before dinner at the lake...so yummy.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! It's super easy, and delicious :)

Avocado Bean Dip

2-3 ripe avocados

1 can black beans

1 can of cooked corn

4 large cloves of garlic chopped

1/2 red onion chopped

olive oil or avocado oil

salt and pepper

Take all of the ingredients and mix it all up! you can of course change the amount of garlic to suit your tastebuds as with the salt and pepper.  drizzle the entire thing with a little bit of olive oil or avocado oil just so its moist, its not that great if its too dry, and it will absorb a bit of the moisture.  This also is better if you let it sit for a bit so the flavors can get all cozy with one another.  Don't forget to drain and rinse your canned beans and corn!!  This is so good that I have even eaten a batch of it for dinner with corn chip, or in place of salsa on top of tacos!  So good!!  

Also incredibly perfect to have before rehearsal or auditions because its filling and yet doesn't make you feel gross and sit too heavily in your stomach :)

Paleo Wraps

So I futzed around with a couple different recipes I found and I think I came up with the perfect combination.  These wraps are flexible and delicious, and are the perfect thing to have for breakfast or lunch when you're trying to eat light or just trying to be healthier.  With La Calisto going on, and the very revealing costumes we have to wear, a lot of us were trying to eat lighter, and these were my version of a light and healthy "sandwich".  

Paleo Wraps

2 eggs

2/3 cup plus 2 tbs of water

1 cup tapioca flour

1/4 cup coconut flour

1/4 tsp of salt

The batter for these wraps will look like very thin crepe batter.  Mix everything together and then cook like a crepe over medium heat in a non stick skillet until they are lightly browned on both sides.  I usually store them in the fridge in a zip lock bag for a couple of days.  Just so you know, if they seem a little bit brittle after being in the fridge for a couple days, just throw them back in a pan to heat them up a little and they'll become nice a flexible again!

Here is my breakfast wrap with ham, egg, and avocado to start the day off right before the first performance of La Calisto!!! So yummy.  I hope you enjoy them!

Holiday Honey

Alright I was not good about posting over the holiday break, but New Year, New Me as far as the blogging goes.  I have so much coming up this next semester with Operas, and trips, and classes, and study, and cooking, and quality time with my favorite people and much much more!  I just got back to school for my second semester and I'm already missing winter break.  I'm sure everyone is feeling the same way though, at least until we all get back into the swing of things. 

One of the best things about being home, along with all of the family time and relaxation, was that we harvested some more honey while I was there.  We have our own bee hives incase I didn't mention that already.  It's so interesting and fun to see those busy bees doing their thing, and I have to say that I look forward to stealing their honey every time we get to harvest! 

Here is one of the frames from our hives. Look at all of that wax and honey!!! It's the little things in life that make me happy, and a giant metal centrifuge full of honey is definitely one of them.

Beautiful golden raw honey :) Just straining the wax out of it before we strain it again into individual jars.

My boyfriend calls me Pooh Bear, and I can't say that's not accurate.  I could add honey to anything, and I really do.... I drink more herbal tea than anything and use a little spoonful of honey in every cup, I put it in coconut milk yogurt, on oatmeal, in baking and anything else I can think of. 

But, it's so good for you and it tastes amazing, so I'm fine with my honey obsession. Raw local honey can be so beneficial.  It can help with seasonal allergies because the bees pollinate the local plants, and it's a natural antibacterial. So go on out and buy some local honey and enjoy it with a nice cup of tea.  I'm so looking forward to spring and summer time when the bees start their busy work again and I can go in and steal some more of that yummy stuff!