Tag Archives: seeds

A very good, healthy, carrot cake

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I’ve adapted this recipe from Tim Spector’s The Food for Life Cookbook and make it at least once a month. Everyone in the family eats it and it’s amazing how little sugar you can use and something still tastes great. If you’re used to high sugar this may not hit the spot for you but if you’re like me and eat very little sugar but like a bit of cake then you may love this. This is gluten free and dairy free but not suitable for vegans with the eggs (you can probably sub by using flax seed ‘eggs’ but I never do this). I usually make this as one big cake but I don’t have a picture of it so here is one of the cupcake-size ones I made this week.

You can use honey if you prefer, instead of maple syrup.

Ingredients

For the cake

85ml of extra virgin olive oil
100ml of kefir or plant-based yoghurt. I use coconut yoghurt as I rarely have kefir in.
3 eggs
Two tablespoons of maple syrup (you can probably cut this down further, I will experiment but I’ve already cut it down from the four tablespoons Tim has in his original recipe)
50g brown sugar – I use dark, you can use light
285g ground almonds
Two tablespoons of cinnamon (yes tablespoons)
Four tablespoons of pumpkin seeds or other seeds of choice
50g of walnuts – I toast them first
Two teaspoons of baking powder
One teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
A pinch of salt
200g of carrots, grated (I do this in the Magimix because my goodness I hate grating things).

For the topping

185g plant based yoghurt – I use coconut
Two tablespoons of tahini
One teaspoon of vanilla extract
One teaspoon of maple syrup
Zest of half an orange (this makes it look pretty but don’t sweat it if you don’t have it, I often don’t)
Two tablespoons of pumpkin seeds
Berries if you like – makes it look super pretty.
I also use toasted flaked almonds sometimes.

What you do

Oven to 180C. Use a 20cm lined spring form cake tin or this makes 12-14 cupcakes sizes (use muffin cases).

Mix together the olive oil, yoghurt or kefir, maple syrup and sugar. Then add the ground almonds, cinnamon, pumpkin seeds (or other seeds), walnuts, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt.

Mix together. Now fold in the carrots and put in the tin and bake for about 45 minutes. If making as muffins/cupcakes they take about 20mins.

When done remove and let cool. To make the topping mix the yoghurt, vanilla, maple syrup together then plop on the cake/cupcakes and sprinkle on the seeds/orange rind/berries.

Keep in the fridge. These are also great on their own with no icing and as such can travel in lunch boxes.

Bagels 2.0

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I first started making bagels over 13 years ago. I still make them very regularly. Home made bagels are not difficult, completely different to shop bought versions and whilst I won’t say they are ‘healthy’ they are very much better if you make them yourself.

The original recipe still stands but I’ve tweaked it ever so slightly and this is what I do now, making it in a stand mixer.

Ingredients:

450g strong white bread flour

1.5 tablespoons of caster sugar

1.5 teaspoons of salt

230-240 ml of water, at body temperature preferably (but just not ice cold).

1.5 teaspoons of dried yeast

egg wash for later and seeds if you want them.

Method


If you want to eat these the next day, start making them about 5pm. They overprove easily, even at 4C in the fridge, so you don’t want them hanging round too long. If you want to eat them that day, start making these about 3 hours before you want to eat them.

Put everything in a stand mixer with a dough hook. Mix steadily for ten minutes. Take out the dough hook (on very lazy days I don’t even do that, I drape a tea towel over the mixer) and cover.

Leave for one hour at a room temperature. After an hour the mixture should have risen. Obviously if you live somewhere very hot or very cold adjust accordingly. The dough should be puffed up and a bit yielding to the touch.

Now cut the dough up, using a bread knife, into eight pieces (more if you want to make smaller bagels). You can now either roll each piece into a long sausage and then join the ends (overlap slightly, as per pic below, although in that they are already baked) or gently knead into a ball (put dough in palm of your hand, cup your other hand over and gently make circles, it’ll ball-up), then make a hole with your finger, or a wooden spoon and make the hole a bit bigger. Place on a baking parchment lined tray. Cover with a clean tea towel.

You can also roll them into a sausage shape and overlap the edges if you prefer.



Now either put in the fridge at 4C if you want to bake these the next day – in which case you can go straight to the boiling of them once you’ve taken them out of the fridge. Or rest for about an hour til they’ve puffed up.

Whenever you are ready to cook:

Preheat oven to 220C.


Bring a wide-mouthed pan of water to the boil. I boil two at a time. Slide in two bagels, upside down to begin with (it doesn’t really matter but this is the way I do them), boil for 45s, tip over with a slotted spoon, boil for another 45s. Take out with the slotted spoon and place them to drain for a few minutes on the tea towel, whilst you do the others.

Once ready to bake put them back on the parchment lined tray you had them on, brush with beaten egg (can be a whole egg or just a yolk if that’s what you have), sprinkle with seeds if you want.


Bake for about 12 minutes (depending on your oven of course).



Voila. They also freeze (once baked) beautifully – better than letting them go stale and then toasted them – and you can defrost them gently in a microwave and they seem like freshly baked.

Lovely, nutty tasting (but with no nuts) poppy seed oatcakes

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These are wonderfully nutty tasting, and you’ll be convinced there are nuts therein. But there are no nuts. They are very frangible, so don’t roll them too thin, and when cooked don’t be too rough with them. Lovely with some cheese, of course, but I also sometimes have them for breakfast with some almond butter and a smidge of apricot jam on top.

Being full of oats ‘n’ seeds, they are particularly good for you, too.

(Note: I’ve put these under gluten free, oats are naturally gluten free but some have gluten in due to the manufacturing process so look at the packet your oats come in.)

These are from Hugh F-W’s Light and Easy book.

150g medium oatmeal

150g porridge oats (not the jumbo variety, if you have those, give them a quick spin in a food processor)

One tablespoon of ground linseeds

One tablespoon of poppy seeds

One tablespoon of sunflower or pumpkin seeds, or half of each

half a teaspoon of salt

75ml of sunflower or other tasteless oil

You will also need 100-150ml of boiled water

Baking parchment

 

Oven to 180C.

Put all the ingredients, save for the oil and water, into a bowl. Make a well in the middle and now add the oil and mix the ingredients around. Add 100ml of just boiled water and mix to a sticky wet dough, if you need to, add up to 50ml more but try not to if possible. This will seem like an unpromising dough and won’t be like a smooth dough, such as you may be used to.

Now you need two sheets of baking parchment to roll the dough out. Not too thin. Cut into squares – just free form with a knife, you don’t need to be madly exact. Hugh recommends cutting the square in two so you get triangles and I like this shape, too.

Don’t be tempted to use a cookie cutter. But do ball up and re-roll any off cuts. I shaped the last one by hand, in a butter-patting style.

Put on baking parchment lined baking tray and cook for 20-25 mins until just coloured. These give out a lot of steam (cos of the water) so be careful when you open the oven. You don’t want them too cook too much and be too dark, but equally they do need to be cooked so if your oven is temperamental, check after 15 minutes. The surface should be dry – no bubbling bits of steam – but not too coloured. Mine took about 22 minutes in a quite fierce oven. You may need to cook in two batches, I did.

This makes about 20-24, depending, on course, on the size.