English Muffin

Quick and healthy oat English muffin, homemade one. I promise this recipe will surprise you a big time!

- This is a brilliant in its simplicity recipe. English muffin, made exclusively of oats, yet stunningly resembling your usual store bought English muffins. Oh yeah, just without all those funny additional ingredients. 

- The only minor downside to this recipe is you can do just one muffin at a time. 

- It's a gluten-free (if you care), healthy recipe you will love. It's also handy when you suddenly are out of bread. 

Oat English Muffin

For 1 English muffin :

• 1/3 cup rolled oats (any kind)
• 1 tbsp chia seeds
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 2 tbsp unsweetened apple sauce
• 1 tbsp plant milk

- Blend first 4 ingredients in a high-speed blender like Ninja until it resembles course flour. Transfer to a bowl, add remaining ingredients. Mix just until combined.

- Transfer dough into un-greased ceramic ramekin, smooth out with a spoon and cook in a microwave, on a high, for 2 minutes.

- Let it cool until able to handle. Transfer on a cutting board and slice with knife into two halves.

- Carefully place in your usual toaster (vertical one) and toast to your liking. 

- Ta-da!  Isn't it tastier that your regular one? Enjoy!

Notes

- You can play with this recipe using oat flour or whole chia seeds, or adding 1 tsp of ground flax seeds for additional nutritional value, or, perhaps some black cumin (nigella seeds) for surprising bursts of flavor.

- No worry, the dough is not going to stick to ramekin :)

- I bet you will be very surprised when you slice into the cooked muffin - it so close to original English muffins. Only tastier.

- For suggested usage for these English muffins see my pictures below.

- If you don't have apple sauce, finely grate 1/2 of apple instead, or perhaps you have canned peaches or pears, use them! In fact, I'm not even trying to keep apple sauce in a house, I just use fresh apples as they are always on a hands.



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IN PICTURES

I use fork to get it out carefully.

Bottom is a bit soggy which kept it from sticking to the bottom of ramekin.

Soo much like real bread..

Flip side, just like English muffin is.

I love it with homemade hummus and fresh salsa

Sweet version with almond butter, banana and chia seeds.

These are made using fresh grated apples instead of apple sauce. You might even notice one small apple chunk on a picture :) Below you see my breakfast with these muffin halves smudged with homemade pesto and curry leaves spread, topped with fresh Ox Heart tomato. It was such a yummy meal. I will be posting the recipes for those spreads later.

Healthy Banana Bread

The healthiest Banana bread ever! And perhaps the tastiest :) 

It's vegan, whole food, plant based, no oil, vegan version of banana bread. Not a vegan? Is it enough not to try this guilt-free recipe? I don't think so. Easy to make (one-bowl recipe!), delicious, this banana bread is a great snack, breakfast or dessert option for anybody. 

Notes

- I've chosen to mega-flavor my banana bread with lemon zest, cinnamon and vanilla. You can choose any combination of those or maybe something completely other flavor such as almond essence (one of my favorite flavorings), or something exotic such as pandan drops (oriental version of flavor).

- I like to use my mini-loaf silicon baking pans for this. Try not to use large pans as it should be baked through well to balance out oat moisture- keeping qualities. Silicon baking muffin cups are perfect as well as mini-loaf pans.

- I use store bought oat flour for this recipe, but, if you don't have it, make your own by blending regular oats in a food processor.

- If using other than medjool dates, just make sure you are taking enough quantity - we like our bread somewhat sweet, right ;) Also make sure you remove woody cap on a top of date, sometimes dates are sold with those.

- Ground flax seeds are required for this recipe. Soaked in a little water, they usually play role of eggs as a binder. It's besides all health-beneficial qualities of flax seeds. Sure you can use, two eggs instead, but flax seeds are so much healthier IMHO.

Healthy Banana Bread

For about 3 mini-loaf pans:

• 2 very ripe bananas
• 8 large medjool dates, pitted, tiny seed cap removed, roughly chopped
• 2 tbsp of ground flax seeds + 6 tbsp water (let it stand for about 10 minutes)
• zest of one lemon
• 1-2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 cups oat flour
• 1/3 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1.5 cups roughly chopped walnuts (it's a lot but I like it)

- Preheat an oven to 350F.

- In a large bowl, with a fork, mash bananas, add soaked ground flax seeds, lemon zest, chopped dates, cinnamon and vanilla. Mix well.

- Add remaining ingredients, mix. You'll get very thing batter. Distribute it evenly between three mini-loaf pans.

- Bake in a preheated to 350F oven for 40 minutes until golden-brown and baked through completely.

- Remove from an oven, let it cool down for about 30 minutes, then remove from forms.

- Enjoy!



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IN PICTURES

 All action going in one big bowl on a left. You will need just two supplemental bowls, one for flour,  one for flax seeds. Ground flax seeds, soaked in water are great binding ingredient (at bottom right)

 When baking I always pre-mix soda or baking powder into flour.

Mixing my wet ingredients.

Adding dry ingredients.

 Batter/dough is ready, it's very thick.

 Ready to go into an oven.

 Done!

 Pieces of walnuts, chunks of dates, lemon zest - awesome texture, delicious and flavorful!

 Yeah.. gluten-free if you care :)

Healthy Banana Bread

Almond spread

While this almond spread can easily replace cream cheese for vegans, it deserves universal recognition as really healthy and delicious spread for bagels, bread, tortilla chips or crackers.

Blog's Category: Vegan, Appetizer, Finger Food, Healthy, Holidays, Hors D'oeuvre, Snacks

Despite the fact that I don't crave cheeses at all after switching to Whole Food Plan Based way of eating, it's nice to have convenience and versatility of "cheesy" spread. This recipe is simple and easy way to mimic cream cheese made of almond. Even seemingly tedious process of taking off skins from almond nuts is actually pretty fast and even fun!

For about 1 cup of spread:

• 1 cup raw almonds
• 1 tbsp lime juice from fresh limes (or fresh lemon juice)
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast (see my notes in a pictures section below about nutrition yeast)
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp salt 
• 1/2 cup drinkable water
• 1 tbsp olive oil of your choice (optional)
• 1/2 tsp dry basil
• 1/2 tsp dry thyme

- Place almonds in a pot, cover with plenty of water, bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Let it cool down until you can handle it and remove skins by squeezing kernels out of their skins using your fingers.

- In a high-speed blender cup place all of the ingredients, except herbs - almonds, lime juice, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, salt and water. Process until desirable smoothness.

- Add dry herbs, mix it in and enjoy!

Notes:

- It's pretty garnished with almond flakes. They also add some texture.

- It is probably going to be delicious with some fresh herbs, such as dill, parsley, cilantro or even sage or rosemary. Just remember that sage or rosemary has to be added sparingly as those are very strong flavored herbs.

- Try it in a vegan sandwich generously smothering toasted multigrain bread with almond spread and layering some arugula and fresh bell pepper. 

- It will keep in a fridge about 3-4 days. 

- This recipe is a great recipe to make ahead as it gets even more delicious the next day.



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IN PICTURES

 Almonds are cooked and cooling down now. Not very pretty, hah? Don't worry it's going to be delish.

 Let fun begin :)

 I was making double batch, so about 2 cups of almonds.  Had job done in about 7 minutes.

Don't forget about adding water or your blender will choke.

Vegans are pretty familiar with nutritional yeast. For those scared by this weird ingredient I want to say: don't be. When I first tried the stuff I was pleasantly surprised with yummy cheese aroma and subtle umami taste. This product is nutritionally dense and delicious. If you don't like word yeast it is nice to know that yeasts are dis-activated in there. You can, of course, to omit nutritional yeast in this recipe but to be honest I don't know why I would. 

 I used Himalayan salt in this recipe, but any salt can be used.

 Garlic powder does in..

 Lime juice. Please, no bottled lime or lemon juice. Only real stuff :)

Ready to blend

 Done

 I forgot to add olive oil. No biggie. It can be blended in now.

With 3-Seed Beet crackers from Trader Joe's, this almond spread is scrumptious. It was my lunch today at work, along with pea soup :)