Choc-chip coconut cookies

These are pretty delicious and can be made as saintly as you like it! Raw, vegan, low carb, gluten free - anyway you choose.

4 Tablespoons Coconut Flour (A very low carb flour. Most of the carbs are in the form of dietary fibre and not digested, so those carbs are not counted. Yay!)

1/4 teaspoon gluten free baking powder (I use Ward's)

1/4 cup Natvia or equivalent sweetener (I tried powdered Stevia)

1 egg lightly beaten (vegan version - use one mashed small banana)

1 bar "Well Naturally" sugar free dark chocolate, roughly chopped, leaving some largish chunks).

8 Tablespoons Almond milk

Method:

Preheat oven to 180C

Roughly chop chocolate bar and set aside.

In a bowl add coconut flour, baking powder and sweetener - then whisk to combine.

Add the chopped chocolate (leaving some larger chunks aside to top the cookies) and stir through.

Add the egg (or mashed banana) and the almond milk to the flour mix and stir until combined. This recipe will thicken a lot (that's the magic of coconut flour!)

When the mix has thickened to a nice cookie dough consistency, break off bits and roll into balls. Place them, spaced apart,  on baking paper on a cookie tray.

Flatten each cookie and press a chunk of chocolate into the top.

Bake for 10 mins. Cool on a rack. These cookies will crisp up as they cool, but still be nice and soft inside. For raw cookies, ditch the egg and follow the vegan version and dehydrate until desired crispiness. (I'd say at least overnight)

This made 9 medium sized cookies.

Enjoy!

dehydrating berries

Have you ever tried to dehydrate berries? Ugh, talk about exercising great patience! Pricking the skins of each individual blueberry, four soggy days on the drying tray later and you've given up hope... 

Well I've discovered a neat little trick that means you don't need to prick skins or wait for days before the berries dry. Freezing the berries you want to dehydrate means you'll spend way less time and energy enjoying your nice, low GI snack. Freezing berries seems to burst the cell walls, allowing the drying process to speed up by a factor of three, without harming the nutrient content too much.

If you're lucky enough to grow your own strawberries, raspberries or blueberries, or have access to fresh organic berries, you can simply wash and dry them, then store them in zip lock bags and place them in the freezer, ready and waiting until you want to dehydrate a batch. Raspberries and and blueberries can be frozen whole. Strawberries are best sliced lengthways first, then frozen.

Lay the frozen berries on the mesh drying trays in your dehydrator, making sure they aren't too crowded together, and turn it on. 24 hours later, the berries will be nice and dry and ready to use. The Strawberries especially, tend to dehydrate into "fruit leather" type texture. After they've dried, I usually snip the strawberries into smaller pieces with kitchen scissors before I add them to my muesli (I will post the muesli/granola recipe soon)

So that's it. A neat little dehydrating cheat to save heaps of time.

Time for tartlets!

Today I dreamed about cooking something sweet. I was wondering if I could make a nice, sugar free dessert, that was zesty and a bit like a key lime pie - only low carb. 

I think I did it!  

I baked up some flax meal tartlets and filled them with a lemony, limey sweetly tart filling and topped them with some seriously lemony "icing". Served with a spoonful of heavy cream these babies were just right.

The recipe:

BASES

3/4 cup Golden flax meal

50g Organic butter (I used Harmonie brand)

1/4 cup Natvia (a Stevia Erythritol blend)

10 drops Vanilla Creme 'Sweet Leaf' Liquid Stevia

1/4 cup shredded coconut

1Tbs Unsweetened, unflavoured whey protein powder (I used Naked Whey brand)

1 Free range egg

FILLING

3/4 cup Cream cheese (softened)

2 sachets of True Lime 

1 Sachet of True Lemon (you could use the juice of one whole lime + one lemon wedge, but this might make the filling a bit softer)

1 Tbs of powdered Natvia (use a coffee grinder to grind up the granulated Natvia into a powder like icing sugar)

10 drops of Vanilla Creme 'Sweet Leaf' Liquid Stevia

ICING

Juice of 1 Lime

2 tsp Nativa

3 pinches (approx) of Xanthan gum

TO  MAKE THE TARTLET CASES

In a bowl measure out the golden flax meal. Add the softened butter and rub it through the flax meal until the mix looks like crumbs. Add Natvia and Stevia and stir through.  Add the egg and mix until the whole lot comes together in a stiff dough.

Take walnut sized pieces of dough and press into the bottom of 12 large silicone muffin cups, making sure to press the mix up the sides a little bit to form a hollow/indentation in the middle. (I don't own tartlet cases, if you do, go wild and use them)

Bake on an oven slide for about 12 mins at 180c. Watch them well. They'll be ready when the sides are slightly golden brown.

Take out of oven and let cool slightly. When ok to handle, carefully pop the tartlet cases out of silicone cups and allow to cool on a wire cooling rack.

TO MAKE THE FILLING

Mix the softened cream cheese with the sachets of True Lemon and Lime (or juices) Add the Stevia, then the powdered Natvia and stir until combined. Spoon filling into cold tartlet cases and smooth the tops.

ICING

In a small glass ramekin, add the Natvia to the lime juice and buzz in the microwave for 30 seconds. Sprinkle generous pinches of Xanthan gum over the warm juice mix, whisking well between adding each pinch. Allow time to thicken. 

Pipe in icing in thin stripes over the top of the tartlets.

Chill in the refrigerator and serve with heavy cream. Makes approx 12 tartlets.