My Smoothie World!

Smoothies are ALL the range now and people in the know have been yapping on about how good these things are for you! And having now been substituting my breakfast for a few pieces of fruit and a green smoothie, I am a complete convert on how this glass of deliciousness impacts on your feelings and energy for the entire day! And the fact that N now asks for these each morning is a sure sign that a non green eating man can get on this healthy kick too!

I few people asked me how to introduce healthy living into their diet and my first thing to suggest was a green smoothie, the easiest way to add goodness to your diet with no fear or worries. 

There are just a few things that are key to getting a great smoothie:

1. RIPE bananas, have no fear in buying bananas with spots on them. This is when they are reaching their highest content of sugar and when blended this gives a creamy (non foamy) smoothie and adds natural sweetness so you don't need to add in anything else if you're worried about having a 'green' taste.

2. Add in Spirulina, it is a complete wonder food, and is nature's richest source of protein (very good for vegetarians and vegans to take). It contains 4 times more protein than meat, and as it is an algae, it is plant based and it's form is more readily absorbed than the protein we get from meat. It helps to stimulate the immune system, making us stronger against infections and helps red blood cell production, increasing our general health also. It has been shown to help cholesterol and blood pressure levels, increase memory.

I for one have found I am more alert, more engaged in my every day activities and have tremendous energy from this little addition. All in all there are only positive gains for adding this into your everyday smoothie to increase your health!

If you buy it in the powder form, 1/2 teaspoon is sufficient per person.

3. There are no rules to making a smoothie... you can decide if you want a super thick, lushious, spoon out of the mug type or a thinner, juicer type, and making them fresh every morning means you can add in anything you are fancying that day, chocolate, cinnamon, nuts.. the list is endless!

My Smoothie:

Spinach
I added this to begin with as I wanted to increase my iron intake and to help build up my hair (haha). But it is also a wonderfully rich vegetable, adding iron and water to your smoothie. It has actually been linked to help regulate and control appetite also.

Any greens can be added though, they are all great!

Cinnamon
People are often conscious of eating too much fruit for fear of the sugar content. Adding spinach helps balance out this natural sugar high, but the addition of cinnamon has been shown to also help regulate our blood sugar levels too, so adding a sprinkle over fruit is a great and delicious thing to do too.



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Green Smoothie Goodness

Serves 1 person

2 medium ripe bananas
Good handful of raw spinach (stalks removed if using large leaves)
1/2 cup of water or milk for a creamy consistency
1/2 teaspoon spirulina powder
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Add ins:

2 teaspoons of raw cacoa powder
1 teaspoon Maca powder
Squeeze of honey
1 teaspoon carob powder

Peel and chop the banana into chunks and add along with all the other ingredients to a blender. 
Blend on medium speed until smooth, and you see no flecks of spinach left.

Serve over ice in the summer and enjoy!

Homemade Nut Milk

I think I am obsessed.

With a blog called My New Roots. Her amazing recipes and advice on food is so good, I find myself spending hours here reading and at the same time learning how to cook to feed and nourish my body.

These past few days I have been trying her recipe for homemade nut milk, and seriously this is SO easy. I'm not sure about the UK, but I know for definite that any type of nut/soya/rice milk here is ridiculously expensive. This way, homemade means you can make any type you wish, in any mix also and add in anything else you like too...

So far I've made Almond, and drank it alone with a little agave added for sweetness. This morning I tried Hazelnut - and this time added it to bananas for a Banana and Hazelnut smoothie, yum. And I'm thinking also adding in a spoon of raw cacao powder for a Banana, hazelnut and chocolate smoothie - too good!

Once you pass the nuts through a sieve, you are actually left with the nut 'body' as such after, the first time I put this in the bin but after some thinking, why waste? - I've kept the left over hazelnuts and am planning on adding them to the topping for a plum cobbler later today, I think this would be a great addition to crumble topping too?

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Watch Sarah's video below!

And please leave me a comment on any variations you try also!

My New Roots - How to Make Nut Milk from My New Roots on Vimeo.

Winning Hearts

A beautiful spring photo from Cannelle Vanille
(All copyrights to Cannelle Vanille blog)

It's Easter.

It's an excuse to eat chocolate, well more chocolate than usual.

It's spring, and here we have cherry Blossoms and their cotton slowly drifting in the spring air around our work place.

It's the holiday, like Christmas where it's completely excepted and alittle strange if you don't, to eat chocolate as your breakfast or alongside it with a good cup of tea.

And of course its the time of year for mini eggs. Huh?? Mini eggs are delicious, moreish, chocolate shaped little eggs in a crispy sugary coating. They are everywhere in England now.

My favourite word I heard the other day describes them perfectly... nom.
As in nom, nom, nom.. oh no I've just finished another bag!

***
Easter and chocolate, led me to bake the perfect chocolate treat last weekend. It is the perfect chocolate cake if your looking for deep, sillky smooth, truffely softness of chocolate melting slowly in your mouth with each spoonful.

This cake is amazing.
And of course it is by Molly, everyones much loved friend from Orangette.

Tiramisu, oh how I love you

Tiramisu is my favourite dessert.
Of all time.

Ever.

It is also one of N's, however... we used to work together in a French restaurant, waiting tables. At the end of an evening service the staff were allowed to put to one side some of the food left over from that night (shared amoungst us all).
On the odd night there were desserts... or burnt or spoiled Creme brulee.

On one particular night there were alot of slightly spoiled creme brulee.
What a pity.

Well so they didn't go to waste, and it (was) one of my favourites... alot of them ended up being eaten by myself and N.

Now creme brulee is no longer a favourite... But rather an 'oh my god, they have creme brulee on the menu', kind of thing - in a bad way.

Lesson be learned.
Now I just stick to Tiramisu.

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Like many people I am often disappointed with restaurant Tiramisu. The only one I love is Pizza Express (I know its probably made in the masses but is lovelllly) and this other one my sister and I discovered on the buffet selection at our holiday hotel, but that was in Ibiza so can't really go back for that!

Having read this recipe some months back at Sparkling Ink I knew that all I needed was a true Italian to tell me the answer to all my Tiramisu dreams.
That true Italian is Giulia, a friend of Tiina's from Juls Kitchen, (a wonderful and sweet blog, that I am so pleased I found through Tiina), who showed her the recipe.

I would like to call Giulia my 'tiramisu friend', surely we all need one of these??

Working days and homemade gnocchi

The last few days I was working from home.
Working from home has that sneaky, slightly naughty feeling.

When I was younger, one of things I thought I'd be when I grew up was a writer. Getting to spend my days in the comfort of my own home, pottering around between the hours spent writing, stopping to make pots of tea and cakes.

These days my idea of working from home, is peace and quiet and piles of papers to read and pages of notes. The only thing that has changed from this time back in university, is now the textbooks are replaced with research papers.

To get through days like these, I plan my breaks around food. Day dreaming about dinner plans and treats in between...

I spotted this gnocchi recipe on Delicious Days a few weeks ago, and was waiting for a night to relax and have a go at making them.

I remembered a moment last year, eating ravioli as a starter during our stay in Lake Como, I loved the simplicity of perfectly cooked pasta and simple sauce, complementing each other.

When I read that the base of this recipe consisted of ricotta rather than potatoes, I knew they could be perfectly light pillows of creamy, sweet cheese and began dreaming up ideas of what to serve with them.

Saving my night to try them out, I thought also why not make my own ricotta too?

Ricotta is not used very much in Portuguese food.. actually not at all I don't think.. But you can find it in most supermarkets that stock a good variety of cheeses.
I think I would try these next time with requeijo, a Portuguese cheese almost a cross between cottage cheese and ricotta.
I think the slightly sour flavour of requeijo would go well with a good strong pesto and toasted pine nuts on top.. yum.

I chose to follow the ricotta recipe I found from Baking Obsession and one from David Lebovitz to make my cheese. I used the lemon juice suggested in Baking Obsession and the whole yogurt from David L. and followed alittle of both methods.
It's as simple as warming whole milk, a touch of salt, and whole yogurt in a pan. Then adding lemon juice and letting it curdle and separate for a few minutes, then straining the whey away... (whay) and saving the cheese on top.
I let mine strain for longer in my tea-towel as suggested if I was intending to use it for pasta fillings, rather than serving it warm as suggested by David Lebovitz.
(Sorry no picture... next time!)

The cheese came out lovely, I was so pleased at how easy it was to make.

And the gnocchi recipe itself is seriously easy to make. Add this, mix that, roll out of the dough and done.

I chose to serve mine with some v.good extra virgin olive oil and crisped sage (I was reminiscing of Italy...). Instead of the olive oil, you could use butter instead and let it brown, bringing a wonderful nutty, warm flavour to the dish.

The perfect treat after a days work.

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Ricotta gnocchi 
(15 minutes to fame, gnocchi for beginners (Delicious Days))


15 minutes prep time
Serves 2 (easily scaled up)


250g Ricotta
1 egg yolk (M-L egg)
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
30g freshly grated parmesan
50g all purpose flour


Perfect served with a pesto, or sage butter.


1. Discard any excess liquid that the Ricotta packaging may contain (or use homemade).
Add cheese, egg yolk, salt and parmesan to a large bowl and mix well with a wooden spoon. 
Add the flour and stir briefly, just until combined - the dough will still be quite sticky.
(Of course you can add more flour at this point, but keep in mind that the more flour you add, the more dense the gnocchi will be - and you want them as light and fluffy as possible).


2. Forming the gnocchi is the only slightly harder bit.
Generously flour a board and a separate work surface.
Take a large spoonful of the dough and put on the work surface, dust with alittle flour and dust your hands too, roll with the hands the dough together and into a long finger-thick roll.
Cut into little pillows and place on your floured board. (Dip the blade of the knife in flour before to prevent sticking to the dough).
Work quickly with the remaining dough, otherwise they can become soggy and stick to the board.

3. Meanwhile bring a large pan of water to the boil, add a generous pinch of salt and turn down to a rolling boil.
Add the gnocchi and stir once to prevent sticking to the bottom.
Cook until they start floating on the top, around 2-4 minutes depending on their size.
Lift them out with a skimmer and serve immediately.


* For the sage olive oil: Thinly slice a small stack of freshly washed and patted dry sage leaves. Bring 3-4 tbsp of olive oil (or butter) to a high heat in a pan. Add the sage leaves and let them crisp for a few seconds, serve over the gnocchi.
To brown the butter, let it heat through, froth and cook further until browned and delicious smelling, then add the sage leaves. Be careful to not let it burn.

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Christmas Cookies and Chocolate

I think most people are out there now, baking cookies.

And I am about the join the list, in a few days that is. Sorry for the suspension.

I am still researching which to make, but I think I've found the ones that promise to be THE best, the most amazing and seriously worthy of World domination...

The World Peace Cookie.

As previously written about here (great blog I recently discovered, love that!) and here (one of my favourite go to recipe people).

I am just dying to make them.

Sneak preview...

All copyright to CafeFernando

I am also waiting for those days when all you want is chocolate.
To eat it, devour it, bathe in it...

You know those days.

Because until I feel like that, I think baking these cookies and not thoroughly wanting to wolf down the whole rack is abit of a waste.

You see, I'm not an 'eat chocolate everyday' sort of girl. I prefer to wait till that feeling 'must eat chocolate now' comes on and when it's all I want. And eat ridiculously large amounts of it.

Have I just admitted I am one of the worst kind... A binger?

Which I did with these. The first time I baked them, I resisted eating any as I was making them to take to a friends get together. Silly me... I should of tried their gorgeousness there and then, and saved a good lot to keep at home. Bad me.

And since then, I get requests to make these and get pleads for the recipe by anyone who tries them.

So these World Peace things have got ALOT to live up to.

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I'll be back in a few days with the report. And in the mean time, if there are any other cookie recipes you think are worth giving a try this time of year, please let me know.

I am still drooling over a recipe for Stollen that I just read here...

All in the name of research and Christmas, hard life!

5 minutes to Chocolate

Yum.

Chocolate cake, made and baked in 10 minutes.

No joke!

And gooooood.

Not the most exciting picture to make you drop everything and go bake it! But, seriously THE easiest chocolate cake in the world to make.

My boyfriend's work colleague gave him the recipe to give me. I've had it on the shelf for a few weeks,  and on sunday when deciding what birthday to cake to make for his mum, he remembered this and said how amazing this cake is, and how easy it was to make - having tasted it again at work on friday. This cake had been made by his colleague, twice in 2 weeks, I think at their request. And seeing as they're only 4 of them in their work... that's alot of cake for each of them!