Quite possible the easiest and healthiest chocolate muffins you will ever make!
Makes 12 mini muffins or 7 large muffins
Ingredients 1 cup all-purpose flour 1 cup unsweetened apple sauce 1/2 cup to 1 cup sugar or preferred sweetener equivalent, depending on taste 3/4 cup (plant) milk of choice 1/4 cup cacao or cocoa 2 tsp baking powder dash of vanilla pinch of salt
Note: You will need a silicon mould as they will stick to paper muffin cups due to their low fat content.
Preheat oven to 180 °C. Dump all ingredients (no particular order needed!) in a large mixing bowl and mix with a whisk or wooden spoon until you obtain a smooth and pourable batter. This should not take long at all. Evenly distribute into the muffin moulds. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Turn off the oven and let them rest in the hot oven for 5 minutes, then take them out and let them rest on the bench for 10 minutes. Only remove them from the mould once they have cooled as they will stick.
Ingredients 260g self-raising flour (gluten free if required) 40g plain flour (gf if required) 500g overripe bananas, well-smashed/pureed 2 eggs or egg replacer pinch of sea salt vanilla essence 100g sugar of choice 1tsp cinnamon half cup milk or dairy alternative of choice half a cup of apple sauce
Method Preheat oven to 180°C. Line a loaf pan with baking paper, allowing it to overhang. Sift the flours, salt and cinnamon into a large mixing bowl. Stir in the sugar and make a well in the centre. Add mashed bananas, apple sauce, egg replacer, vanilla and milk. Stir until well combined. Spoon batter into prepared pan Bake for 45 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack and cut into slices. Keeps well in the fridge for at least 5 days.
Waffles are the ultimate comfort food – unfortunately, they are usually also loaded with fat and other unhealthy ingredients. If you are looking for a healthy but no less yummy version of waffles to pop into your kids’ lunchboxes or have ready for a quick breakfast or afternoon snack, please give my waffles a try.
If you don’t have a waffle maker (I highly recommend this mini waffle maker from Kmart), the batter also works for mini pancakes!
For 12 mini waffles, you will need:
2 cups oats 1.5 cups plant milk or water 1 cup apple sauce 1 tbsp flaxseed (optional, but thickens the batter up nicely) 1 tbsp raw sugar or other sweetener 2 tsp of vanilla essence 1 tsp cinnamon (optional) 1 tsp baking powder pinch of salt
Blend all ingredients in a high-powered blender until smooth. Let sit for a few minutes for the batter to thicken. Heat up your waffle maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Make waffles according to the manufacturer’s instructions and enjoy!
This is probably the recipe I am making most often in my kitchen and still it has taken me so long to get around to posting it!
Everyone needs a recipe for a quick and easy lunchbox-friendly bar in their repertoire, so here comes my version of a low-fat, vegan, nut-free, gluten free (if you use gf oats) oatmeal bar that is a hit in lunchboxes, for picnics, afternoon tea, and at kids birthday parties alike! It is full of fibre to keep small (and big) tummies full and slow carbs to get those brains working. I also love it as a mess-free and satisfying breakfast on the go with its great balance of plant protein, complex carbohydrates, fibre, and a small amount of healthy fats (naturally occurring fats in oats and from any seeds you are adding if any).
Whip it up every Sunday afternoon for the week ahead and fill your house with the cozy aroma of this healthy and yummy oatmeal bar! This is an extremely customizable and forgiving recipe – use whatever milk or sweetener you like, add any combination of dried fruits, nuts and seeds (if nuts are allowed) or even chocolate chips. Add gingerbread spice or pumpkin pie spice for an autumnal twist, glaze it with chocolate – the options are seriously endless. You can adjust the sweetener to your liking and even leave it out altogether and your bars will still be tasty! It is also pretty fool proof – I don’t even really follow a recipe anymore and always manage to create something delicious based on this loose recipe matrix.
4 cups old-fashioned oats (you can use quick oats, but the result will be a bit more mushy and with less of a “bite” to it, still delish tho!) 4 flaxseed eggs or egg replacer eggs (or use “real” eggs if not vegan) 1/4-1/2 cup (more or less) honey, maple syrup or raw sugar or mix hereof (adjust to taste) 1 cup plant milk 3/4-1 cup apple sauce 1 tbsp baking powder 1 tbsp of vanilla essence pinch of sea salt 1 cup (adjust to taste) any mix of dried fruit (dates, sultanas, cranberries, candied peel etc.) and seeds/nuts (optional) 1 tbsp Cinnamon and/or other spice (gingerbread or pumpkin pie spice is lovely) optional: melted dark chocolate to drizzle over
Mix all ingredients and let stand for 20 minutes for the pats to soften and the flavours to develop. Preheat your oven to 180°C. Line a square 20cm baking pan with baking paper and pour the batter in, smoothing the top. Bake at 180°C for around 30 minutes. Let cool, then cut into 30 squares.
Gluten free, vegan and much lower in fat than traditional caramel slice – what’s not to love?
Making healthier, allergy-friendly versions of old favourites is definitely a hobby of mine. And caramel slice is no exception!
Just look at it – wouldn’t you think it’s the real deal?
Traditional caramel slice comes with a buttery shortbread, but you won’t find any butter or margarine in my version. For the caramel, I used a store-bought vegan condensed milk which is quite low in fat, but you can also make your own. I used dark chocolate for the topping so this is not a “fat-free” caramel slice, but it is much lighter and healthier than the original. And because there is a lot less sugar in it, it is also more satisfying!
My whole family approved of these (which is rare!) and they would be perfect for school’s cake stalls as they come without dairy, eggs or nuts!
Makes 24
One cup gluten free flour One cup apple sauce One cup desiccated coconut
Preheat oven to 180°C and line a slice tin (20x30cm) with baking paper. Combine flour, coconut and apple sauce in a large bowl until mixed well. Press into tin and bake for 15 minutes until golden brown. Pour condensed milk over base and bake for another 10 minutes. Allow to cool Melt the chocolate and pour over base. Let set in the fridge, then slice into squares.
These freeze very well – but I am sure they will be gone before you have a chance to freeze them!
Gluten free, vegan and fat free are usually not attributes that come to mind when hearing “Stollen” – I show you that the impossible is possible!
Tastes just like traditional Stollen – but without butter, egg, oil or wheat!
Today I got a real treat for you! Most of you would be familiar or would have at least heard of “Stollen”, a very dense traditional German spiced loaf typically eaten in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
Behold all this spicy, Christmas-y, fruity deliciousness!
It is basically our version of Christmas pudding and it is certainly never a light dish! Traditional Stollen is made with lots of butter (in the store-bought version often replaced with cheap margarine) as well as nuts and marzipan, none of them recommended if you are watching your waistline or are struggling with autoimmune issues (me).
Now, there is no shortage of recipes for gluten-free Stollen out there and there is even store-bought gluten free Stollen these days. Making it vegan is already a bit more of a challenge as Stollen relies heavily on milk, butter, and eggs. However, you do find recipes for vegan Stollen on the net. Problem is, even the vegan versions use lots of oil or margarine. I am presenting you here a completely fat-free version of this delicious treat that also happens to be vegan and gluten free!
It is so fluffy, juicy and delicious, you won’t miss a thing. It is comforting and perfect with a cup of hot latte or tea on a chilly afternoon. So now matter if you are vegan, want to lose weight or suffer from allergies, fear not – the perfect Stollen is awaiting you!
One loaf
454g gluten free flour (I use a self-made mix of buckwheat flour and a store-bought gf flour mix) 14g dried yeast 130ml almond milk, luke-warm 120g raw sugar 1 cup apple sauce 3tsp mixed spices (cinnamon is mandatory, everything else is up to you – I recommend ginger, cardamom, cloves, nutmeg) almond extract 250g mixed dried fruit (sultanas etc.) and orange peel
Soak dried fruit in some hot water (or orange/apple juice) to soften. Dissolve yeast in the milk, add a tsp of sugar and stir until completely dissolved. Add the flour, spices and remaining sugar to a large bowl, add the yeast-milk mixture and apple sauce, mix well, cover with a dishcloth and let the dough rise in a warm spot for 15 minutes. Add the almond extract and drained soaked fruit and knead well. Let rest for another 2-3 hours. Preheat oven to 180°C. Fill the dough in a loaf tin and bake for 45 minutes. For a more authentic Stollen, you can sprinkle with icing sugar after baking but it is not necessary.
Quick, easy, healthy and yummy pumpkin spice bars – a great breakfast or snack!
Looking for a quick easy and healthy recipe to have at hand when the 3pm slump strikes, the kids come home hungry from school or you need a quick breakfast on the run that doesn’t weigh you down? Then look no further than these pumpkin spice bars!
I have made and perfected this recipe countless times over the years and let me just reassure you that these pumpkin spice bars don’t need to be pumpkin spice bars at all. You can replace the pumpkin puree with apple puree and have apple bars (my favourite!) or replace it with banana and have banana bars etc. This recipe is veeery forgiving – you can play around with different grains, different sweeteners (or omit sweetener altogether) and it will always work!
Ingredients: 3 flax eggs (3 tbs ground flaxseed dissolved in 9 tbs water or plant milk and left to thicken) 3 cups rolled oats 3/4 tsp baking powder 1 cup pumpkin puree (or apple sauce or other fruit/veg puree) cinnamon and other spices to taste pinch of salt 1 cup soy milk or other plant milk 1/4 cup coconut sugar or other sweetener (may be omitted) sultanas or other dried fruit and seeds (half a cup)
Method: Preheat fan-forced oven to 180°C. Line or grease a 20×30 cm baking tin. Stir all ingredients together and let rest for 20 minutes – the longer the better! Pour into prepared tin and bake for 20 minutes or until golden on top. Let cool completely before you slice into squares.
Substitutions and adjustments:
As for oats, you can use quick or rolled oats, the rolled oats give a better texture though.
Sweetener: I have made these many times, including with raw sugar, coconut sugar, stevia, honey, and maple syrup and they all work well. As the oats, apple sauce and dried fruit are naturally sweet you can even omit sweetener altogether.
Milk: You can use any plant milk you like. I used soy milk to keep it nut free, but feel free to use nut milks if you don’t need the bars to be nut free.
Add-ins: These bars are very low in fat as they are free of oil, butter and eggs. The fat only derives from the natural fat in the oats and the seeds. If you follow a very low fat diet, omit the seeds and just add dried fruit.
Flax eggs: If you eat eggs, you can use 2 whole eggs instead of the aquafaba.
Pumpkin puree/apple sauce: mashed banana works well if you don’t have apple sauce, or any type of “baby food” purees. I’ve made these with pumpkin purée with great results.
It’s my birthday and I brought you muffins! Not any old muffins, but the most delicious, moist, fruity, fudgy, crowd-pleasing vegan glutenfree lowfat pear streusel muffins! Yes, that’s right. While anything involving the word “streusel” would usually conjure the idea of either vegan, gluten free or lowfat, these babies are exactly that. No white flour, butter or refined sugar involved, and with fat only coming from the fat naturally occurring in oats. Who is in?
Vegan Glutenfree Lowfat Pear Streusel Muffins
These little delights were born out of the necessity to do something with a huge bag full of pears that our supermarket gave away for next to nothing as they were approaching their use-by date. Ever since my teenage years, I have enjoyed making muffins. It is such an easy way to use up whatever fruit you have on hand, it is quick, virtually fool-proof and the results never disappoint. Using fruit in muffins is also a great way to lower their fat content as the fruit keeps the nice and luscious.
Back to my bag full of pears and my obsession with muffins. So vegan glutenfree lowfat pear streusel muffins it was. I had never attempted streusel before so I am quite pleased how these babes turned out after the first attempt. As I said, they are ready in a jiffy and not complicated at all. Perfect if you just want to whip up something quickly for surprise guests or the 3pm munchies.
As my daughter and hubby (who are not into health food at all) devoured them, I can’t really say how long these will keep…:-)
Vegan Glutenfree Lowfat Pear Streusel Muffins
Makes 12 muffins
For the streusel: 1/4 cup oat flour 1/3 cup coconut sugar 2/3 cup oats 1/2 cup applesauce cinnamon
For the muffins: one cup soy milk or other plant milk 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar 1 tbsp vanilla extract 1/2 cup applesauce 2 cups oat flour 1/2 cup coconut sugar 4 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt cinnamon 4 pears, diced
Preheat oven to 180 °C and grease a muffin tin or line it with liners. In a large mixing bowl, mix the milk with the vinegar, vanilla and applesauce and set aside for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, prepare the streusel by mixing all the streusel ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside.
After 15 minutes are up, add the oat flour, coconut sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon and gently stir with a wooden spoon until incorporated and you have a smooth batter. Fold in the diced pear. Scoop batter into prepared muffin tin, then divide the streusel on top of the muffins. Bake for 20-25 minutes and let cool in pan for another 10 minutes before taking them out. Best to store in the fridge in an airtight container.
Today is Anzac Day. And without going into all the historical intricacies, for the purposes of this blog, this means Anzac biscuits! Traditional Anzac biscuits, albeit tasty, are far from healthy as they contain butter (or far worse – margarine), refined sugar and white flour. Healthy Anzac biscuits? It seems like an impossible quest, but you can totally do this. Enter my healthy Anzac biscuits!
Healthy Anzac Biscuits
Healthy Anzac biscuits that are gluten free, vegan, refined sugar free and much lower in fat than standard Anzac biscuits. The best bit is that taste-wise, they are so close to the “original” that nobody will believe they are healthy! And as I can attest, they are husband and toddler approved too! I am not a biscuit person myself, but I can hardly stay away from them! With only a handful of standard pantry ingredients and very little prep time, there is no reason to enjoy a healthy Anzac biscuit – not only on Anzac day!
Consisting of oats, desiccated coconut, coconut oil and maple syrup, they are a guilt-free treat with benefits. Oats are one of the most nutritious foods on the planet, a great source of fiber, and have been shown to lower bad cholesterol. Coconut provides an array of essential nutrients, with manganese, copper and selenium only to mention a few. Coconut oil is a medium chain fatty acid, which is not readily stored as fat, but converted to energy and moreover has antifungal and antimicrobial properties. Maple syrup boasts calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc as well as vitamins such as thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, and B6. Now that’s what I call healthy Anzac biscuits!
2 cups rolled oats 1/4 cup desiccated coconut 2 tbsp organic maple syrup 4 tsp melted coconut oil 1 tsp vanilla extract 2 tbsp water
Preheat your oven to 160 °C and line a baking sheet with baking paper. Give all ingredients in that order into a high-powered blender and blitz for 20 to 30 seconds, scraping down the sides as necessary, until the dough is combined and comes together. Form into 16 rather flat cookies and arrange evenly on your lined baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes until lightly golden, let cool completely and store in an airtight container.
My toddler has a pronounced sweet tooth and it is almost impossible to walk her past the cookie and biscuit aisle unscathed. While Tim Tams, Anzacs and co. might be an effective temporary solution to placate a whingeing 2-year old and prevent a mortifying tantrum, they aren’t exactly what the doctor ordered. Needless to say, this doesn’t only apply to kids but to adults as well. Store-bought cookies and biscuits are loaded with processed ingredients, industrial oils and refined sugar. Moreover, white flour (and yes, this applies to “gluten free” items as well that are essentially all refined starch) is nutritionally deplete and its only benefit is the benefit for the manufacturer – by making you eat more than you want or need. Healthy cookies seem to be a contradiction in itself, but I am here to rescue you with my clean oatmeal & raisin cookies.
These babies have four ingredients and require five minutes prep time. Loaded with valuable plant-based protein, slow-burning natural sugars, fibre, minerals, and vitamins, they are incredibly tasty and just perfect for when you’re feeling sluggish (and even when you’re not!). They are completely vegan (hence dairy and egg free), gluten free, soy free and nut free and don’t contain any nasties whatsoever. So what’s their secret? Oats and bananas!
In fact, making healthy cookies out of rolled oats and ripe bananas is nothing new. Social media are literally swarming with this concept, so I didn’t exactly invent it myself. I just played around with the ratios and then added some raisins and cinnamon. I was absolutely blown away by the result so if you are interested in some truly clean oatmeal & raisin cookies, here’s my solution. And guess what – my kid loves them and I love them too! (They are husband approved, too.)
Clean Oatmeal & Raisin Cookies
Clean Oatmeal & Raisin Cookies
Makes 12
1 (rounded) cup rolled oats (certified gf if required) 2 ripe bananas a handfull of raisins or sultanas 1 tbsp cinnamon to taste
Preheat oven to 180 °C and line a cookie sheet with baking paper. Mix all ingredients until you reach a homogenic and malleable mass. You don’t need a blender for this, just your hands and some elbow grease. Shape 12 ping-pong ball sized balls and press them flat into a classic cookie shape. Place on the sheet and bake for roughly 15 minutes or until lightly golden on top. Let cool completely, store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to three days (if they last that long).
Nat's Ladle 