Tag: healthy sweet treats

No-Bake Chocolate Coconut Flapjacks

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First I’d like to say thank you to my best bud Gemma at Gemma Bateman Photography for teaching me how to use my camera – how good does this pic look! She takes awesome baby photos so contact her if you need baby pics 🙂

These are so bloody yummy and decadent, and totally gluten, dairy, sugar and egg free. I love the combination of coconut and chocolate so for me these are just delish. Probably one of my nicest recipes yet.

Ingredients 

Base:
2.5 cups organic rolled oats
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup coconut oil
2 tbsp almond butter
1/2 tsp vanilla powder
2-4 heaped tbsp desiccated coconut, depending on preference

Chocolate fudge:
1/2 cup cacao powder
1/2 cup maple syrup
4 tbsp almond or cashew butter
1/2 cup coconut oil

Topping:
Handful coconut chips

Method

First make the base by melting the coconut oil in a saucepan on a low heat, then add to a blender with the rest of the ingredients except the coconut.

Once blended add to a bowl and mix in the coconut.

Spoon into a lined square silicone baking tray and smooth down with a spoon or your fingers and put in the fridge for 30 mins.

Now make the chocolate by melting all the ingredients together in a saucepan on a low heat.

Once the 30 minutes are up, pour the chocolate on top of the base layer and put in the fridge for a couple of hours, or until set.

Once set sprinkle the coconut chips on top then cut into squares and store in an airtight container in the fridge.

Love & health,
Lauren

5-Ingredient Salted Caramel Peanut Butter Cups

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peanut-butter-cups

I am a peanut butter fanatic and I make no apologies for that – just can’t get enough of the stuff! So growing up, Reeses Pieces would have been my ideal choice of sugary snack but just like with my mini Bounty bites, I wanted to come up with a healthy alternative and these are so unbelievably indulgent but refined sugar free, gluten free, wheat free, dairy free, egg free and vegan.

I actually  made these about 4 years ago for the first time but it was before I had the blog so I never posted a picture and obviously haven’t thought about making them again until now – heaven knows why. But a friend of mine, fashion blogger Sarah from We Are Twinset (check them out here), mentioned them so it gave me the inspiration to make them again.

They seem like they’d be really hard and time-consuming to make but I promise they are so easy! Give them a go, the kids will love them (that’s if you leave any left over for them!)

Ingredients

Chocolate layer:
4 tbsp coconut oil
3 tbsp cacao butter
3 heaped tbsp. cacao powder
2 tbsp pure maple syrup
Pinch Himalayan salt (optional)

Peanut butter filling:
3 tbsp organic, natural peanut butter
2 tbsp coconut oil, melted
1-2 tbsp maple syrup (depending on how sweet you like it)

Method

Start by making sure you have room in your freezer to place a baking tray flat.

Now line a cupcake baking tray with 12 muffin cases.

Prepare your chocolate layer by melting all the ingredients together in a saucepan over a low heat. The salt is optional so if you aren’t a fan of salted sweet snacks, leave this out.

Once ready, spoon into the muffin cases, reserving half of the mixture for the top layer. Put in the freezer for 20 mins.

At this point, make the peanut butter filling by melting the coconut oil then mixing it in with the peanut butter and maple in a bowl. Mix really well.

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Take the tray out the freezer and spoon a good dollop of this mixture onto the chocolate bottom layer and put back in the freezer for half a hour.

Once set, add the remainder of the chocolate layer to the top and put back in the freezer for 20 minutes.

Once ready, you can remove the muffin cases if you want to and store them in an airtight container in the fridge (easier to eat that way) or freezer if you want them to keep for longer, you may just have to wait 10 minutes when taking them out for them to soften a little bit.

Love & health,
Lauren

Cacao & Cashew Oaty Bites

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cashew-cacao-oaty-bites

I may even go as far as to say that these are the tastiest things I’ve ever made…

I have to be honest, I wasn’t sure if it would even work but oh dear lord they do! So simple; literally took 5 minutes, 1 spoon, 1 saucepan and a cup, and to make it even more exciting, there is no refined sugar, dairy or gluten and totally vegan. It makes giving sweet treats to kids easier. Braxton is 13 months and has never had refined sugar and I want to keep it like that. If he always has treats that taste this good, hopefully he’ll never feel the need to binge on the rubbish stuff 🙂

Cacao is also a great plant-based protein which is essential for babies, as well as the essential fatty acids in the coconut oil.

Basically, MAKE THESE!

I used Biona coconut oil, coconut palm sugar and cashew butter as I prefer their ingredients so use them wherever I can ❤

Ingredients

3 tbsp coconut oil
1 tbsp coconut palm sugar
3 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp almond milk
1.5 tbsp cacao powder
4 tbsp cashew butter
1 cup organic rolled oats

cashew-cacao-oaty-bites-2

Method

Heat all the ingredients except the cashew butter and oats in a pan, on a low heat, very gently until combined.

Once melted, turn off the heat and stir in the cashew butter and keep stirring until fully incorporated.

Now add the oats and stir until totally mixed into the mixture.

Wait until it’s cooler, then spoon a tbsp. full onto a plate that has baking paper on and press into cookie shapes.

Leave to cool then once cool put in the fridge for an hour until set.

Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a week.

Love and health,
Lauren

 

Golden Linseed Oat Cookies – Full of Omega-3 and Great for Baby Led Weaning

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As you all know by now, I usually make sure to make a batch of something sweet but healthy once a week (ish!) so that I don’t have to give Braxton anything processed or filled with sugar. I don’t give him sweet things every day (apart from fruit), but I do like to give him things like this every few days now he’s nearly 1. It keeps him quiet for 5 minutes, that’s for sure! 🙂 But the main point is that I like to make sure I fill any snacks I make with superfoods.

Making cookies like these is a great way to be able to add things like linseeds, which are a great vegetarian source of the Omega 3 essential fatty acid, Alpha-Linolenic Acid (ALA). Our bodies can’t make ALA, so it is ‘essential’ that we get them from our diet. These essential fatty acids also have anti-inflammatory properties, so aside from making sure he gets essential fatty acids in his diet, I’m also giving him anti-inflammatory properties which, in our situation, is imperative.

Suffice to say these were very well received! Soft on the inside, slightly crisp on the outside and easy for Brax to chew. Sweet but not too sweet and of course, free of gluten, wheat, dairy, refined sugar or eggs.

Ingredients (makes 12 cookies)

1 cup ground almonds
1 ½ cups organic rolled oats
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
Pinch Himalayan salt
5 tbsp coconut oil
1/3 cup maple syrup
4 tbsp almond butter
¼ cup almond milk
1 tbsp golden linseeds

Method

Preheat the oven to 180c and line 2 baking trays with baking paper and grease with coconut oil.

Mix all the dry ingredients, except for the linseeds, in a bowl.

Add all the wet ingredients to the blender and blend until combined.

Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well. Add the linseeds and mix.

Form into balls with your hands and press down on them on the prepared baking trays and bake for 10 minutes.

Put the baking sheets with the cookies on them on a wire rack or on top of some towels on the work surface (the surface they cool on shouldn’t be cold) to cool away from the heat of the baking trays so they don’t crisp up too much. Once cool put in an airtight container.

Love & health,
Lauren

White Chocolate and Flaxseed Blondies

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White chocolate flax blondies

I love an afternoon snack with a matcha latte, and especially as I’m breastfeeding, I need extra energy but I have to make the effort to eat healthy snacks with great nutrients in them so I added flaxseeds to this one for omega 3 essential fatty acids – essential when breastfeeding. These went down a treat in my house and unfortunately I wasn’t left with many for myself!

Ingredients

1 tbsp coconut oil
50g cacao butter
3 tbsp organic natural peanut butter
3 eggs
Pinch Himalayan salt
2 tbsp flaxseeds
70g coconut palm sugar
2 tbsp pure maple
1 tsp vanilla extract
200g ground almonds
Vegan white chocolate chips

Method

Preheat the oven to 160. Line a square silicone baking tin with baking paper and grease with coconut oil.

Melt the coconut oil and cacao butter in a heat-proof bowl over a saucepan with boiling water. Once it’s melted, add the peanut butter and stir until it all melts in together.

Remove from heat and set aside.

Beat the eggs in a large bowl and once beaten, add the coco palm sugar and whisk with a fork until totally combined. Then add the salt, vanilla and maple and mix.

Add the peanut butter mixture and mix well, then add the ground almonds and flax and mix until combined.

Flatten the mixture out into the prepared baking tin and put in the oven for 20-25 minutes. In my oven it only needed 20. You want it to be moist but cooked through but don’t overcook otherwise it will go dry.

Enjoy!

Love,
Lauren

Raw Chocolate Orange Brownies

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Raw Chocolate Orange Brownies

Being pregnant I am hungry quite a lot of the time but I try to nourish my body with as many pure ingredients as possible to give my baby the best start in life. If I’m hungry, I eat, and by making snacks like these and keeping a batch in the fridge, there is always something healthy to snack on when I fancy something sweet.

Everyone loves a chocolate brownie, but we all love it better when it’s guilt free. I had a load of Jaffa oranges left from my juicing so thought about doing a sweet variation on my usual raw brownies.

The raw cacao, as we know, is full of organic, pure nutrients and, like the almonds, is a great source of protein. Look no further for a snack for the kids that isn’t full of rubbish, is made with pure ingredients, and will take you no more than 15 minutes to make. This really is the easiest recipe with so few ingredients, anyone can make these!

Ingredients – (do double up if you want to make enough to last a while. This recipe makes about 8 small brownies)

1 heaped mug almonds (make sure to soak in purified water for at least 6 hours)
15 organic medjool dates
3 heaped tbsp raw cacao powder
1 tsp organic pure maple syrup
Juice of one orange
Zest of the orange

Method

Once the almonds have been soaked, rinse and pat dry with a paper towel, then put in the blender and blend until it almost turns into an almond butter.

Scrape away the sides then add the dates, cacao, maple, orange juice and a quarter of the orange zest. Blend until well incorporated.

Grease a silicone loaf tin or square tin with a little coconut oil, spoon the mixture in, smooth the top over with a spatula and put in the freezer for an hour and a half.

Remove from the freezer, sprinkle the remainder of the zest on top, cut into brownie slices and store in the fridge.

Enjoy!

Love,
Lauren

Raw Chocolate & Coconut Mousse

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Chocolate Coconut Mousse

Pregnancy has got me craving something sweet after a meal (or all the time?!) and although I am totally happy with my 80%/20% lifestyle in which, during the 20% I allow myself to eat out, have the odd pizza or have a processed chocolate bar, I have to remember that my continued remission is not something to take for granted; it is a product of continuous maintenance on my part and that maintenance comes in the form of diet and homeopathy. If I get slack on either one I could see the arthritis coming back at any point and now, more than ever, with a baby on the way, I need to make sure that I stay strong and healthy, especially because carrying extra weight could also impact my joints if they are not kept healthy and supple enough. It is constant work, this keeping healthy business, but I can’t think of anything more worth it.

Sometimes people say to me, ‘we can’t afford to eat organic’ or ‘I don’t have time to make those meals’. In some cases this is very true, but a lot of people who say these things to me would happily go out on a Saturday night and spend £150 on a meal, or buy a new pair of shoes, or spend the evening in front of the TV. There is nothing more precious than our health and prevention is better than cure so ditch the dinner out and save yourself some money and put it towards buying organic, and spend an extra hour in the kitchen once or twice a week preparing fresh lunches and snacks like this one here. I have to sacrifice many things to be able to afford organic food, superfoods and my supplements, and it shouldn’t just be a case of ‘well that’s ok because you had a disease but I don’t’. Because if you ever get diagnosed with something, from arthritis to cancer or the millions of others that people suffer from, you will wish you did all you could to prevent it, for you and your children. There are ways around EVERY SINGLE HEALTH ISSUE, you just need to be willing to work hard enough and remember that a lifetime consuming the chemicals that are found in every single thing you eat or drink that isn’t organic, WILL lead to disease. Don’t do it to your bodies, not in this day and age when there are so many options. Enjoy an organic, superfood lifestyle! And if you need any help getting started, feel free to drop us a line so we can help.

Ingredients

Chocolate mousse layer:
Half cup pecans
1 frozen banana
Half an avocado
Half a cup of almond milk
1 heaped tbsp raw cacao powder
1 tsp maple syrup
Half tsp vanilla extract

Coconut mousse layer:
2 frozen bananas
The cream from the top of a can of organic coconut milk (save the watery part for cooking)

Optional toppings:
Raw cacao covered goji berries
Desiccated coconut

Method

You will need a high speed blender to make the ‘ice cream’ from bananas. I use a Vitamix.

Put the pecans in the blender and blend well until they form a fine meal. Then add the banana and blend until smooth, followed by the rest of the ingredients and blend until smooth. Add this to fill just over half a small glass.

Wash the blender out then add the 2 bananas for the coconut layer until smooth but not melting, then add the coconut cream and blend quickly so combined but not melting.

Add this to the top of the chocolate layer then top with your choice of toppings. I used cacao covered goji berries and desiccated coconut.

I hope you all enjoy this as much as my husband and I will enjoy it after our dinner tonight!

Love,
Lauren

P.s. I had some leftover from the coconut layer so I used this as a milk / yoghurt replacement with my homemade granola this morning. Was lush!

Coconut mousse granola

Bite-Size Chocolate Caramel Maca Bars

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Bitesize Snickers

Please don’t get scared – these are way easier to make than they look! It kind of takes a while only because of waiting for each layer to freeze, but the making itself is easy. They are pretty similar to our Raw Snickers bars but I added maca powder for extra energy and vitality. I also wanted to cut them smaller as I am needing small snacks more often now my pregnancy is progressing.

These are amazing to have around to give the kids if they want a sweet treat, and you don’t even have to feel guilty about giving it to them – they are full of goodness!

Ingredients

1 and half cups medjool dates, pitted then soaked in water for a couple of hours)
2 heaped tbsp organic, natural peanut butter (I use Meridian)
1 tsp maca powder (I use Organic Burst)
1 tbsp coconut oil
Pinch salt (I use Oryx desert salt)
2 x amount of our chocolate sauce recipe or if you don’t have the time, you can melt bittersweet or vegan chocolate in a bowl over a pan of boiling water until melted. You need enough to fill about 1 mug.
Half cup almonds, soaked overnight

Method

Prepare a square baking tray with baking paper and spread some coconut oil over it to grease.

Pour half the chocolate mix at the bottom and put in the freezer for 20 minutes.

Drain the dates well, then put them in the food processor and blitz until a paste forms.

Once it is smooth, add the peanut butter, maca, coconut oil and salt and blend again.

Take the tray out the freezer and pour the date mix on top and spread evenly. Leave in freezer for 40 minutes.

Crush the almonds in a pestle and mortar, then sprinkle them on top of the ‘caramel’ date layer, then pour the rest of the chocolate on top and smooth to even it out.

Put back in freezer for a further 20 minutes. Remove, slice into bite-size chunks and enjoy!

If you can stop eating after just one, you deserve a medal!

Love,
Lauren

Fruit & Nut Loaf

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2

Once again my appetite has increased. Apparently this happens at the 23 week mark as the baby goes through a big growth spurt. I’m wanting to snack all the time so I’m needing to make healthy snacks that are filling and nutritious and this is honestly one of the best things I’ve made!

Ingredients

2 apples
1 tbsp coconut palm sugar
1/4 cup water
1 and 1/2 cups buckwheat flour
1/3 cup pecans
8 medjool dates
1/3 cup raisins
1/3 cup almond milk
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 tsp cinnamon

For the glaze:
2 tbsp almond butter
2 tbsp almond milk
Pinch Himalayan salt

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 / gas mark 6 and prepare a silicone loaf tin by cutting enough baking paper to cover just the bottom then grease the whole thing with vegan margarine.

Prepare homemade applesauce by putting the apples with the water and sugar in a saucepan and cook until soft. When soft, mash the apples into a puree and add to a large bowl. Leave to cool for 10 minutes.

Chop the dates into small pieces and add these to the bowl, then put the pecans into a pestle and mortar and bash until chopped but not crushed into a meal, add to the bowl.

Add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl and mix thoroughly.

Once mixed, pour into the loaf tin and bake for 20-30 minutes depending on your oven. It should come out the oven as soon as the fork comes out of the cake clean, you don’t want to over bake it.

Leave to cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes before turning out onto a plate.

Make the glaze by mixing all the ingredients then spreading it over the top, If there is any left you can use this to spread on each slice as a spread.

Serve hot out the oven or once cooled.

Enjoy!

Love,
Lauren

Chocolate & Coconut Puffed Rice Cakes

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Coconut Puffed Rice Cakes 2

I had some Kallo organic gluten free puffed rice from my breakfast cupboard, and some coconut cream left over from some previous baking so I thought I’d try a variation on my chocolate puffed quinoa cakes. I really love coconut – coconut cream, coconut milk, coconut water, coconut oil, desiccated coconut; anything coconut! – and these really turned out yummy. Sticky and moreish and delicious as they should be 🙂

Ingredients

2 cups organic puffed rice
3 tbsp coconut cream
3 tbsp coconut oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp organic maple syrup
4 tbsp desiccated coconut
1 x chocolate sauce recipe (optional)

Method

Put the coconut oil, coconut cream, vanilla and maple in a saucepan and heat gently.

At the same time, make your chocolate sauce in another saucepan and heat that gently too.

Once the coconut sauce is all melted, add in the puffed rice, enough so that it doesn’t look like there is excess sauce, then add in the desiccated coconut and mix well. Turn the heat off and scoop a generous amount into individual muffin cases within a cupcake baking tray.

Once they are all in and the chocolate is ready, take a teaspoon and literally drizzle the chocolate all over the cakes, as much or as little as you want. I had some extra chocolate sauce left so I mixed that in with some more puffed rice to make normal chocolate ones so that it didn’t go to waste.

Put in the freezer for an hour. You can eat them straight away but you can also store them in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a week.

Enjoy!

Love,
Lauren

Coconut Puffed Rice Cakes 1