Date, Cherry, Almond and Chocolate Protein Bites

Have you been to a restaurant or cafe lately and noticed cute little protein bites for sale? They're all the rage these days and I know I am a bit behind the times in posting this recipe. What I have noticed in particular is that the price of these protein bites is ridiculous. I am not claiming to never have purchased said bites. But when I have purchased them I have been immediately embarrassed that I paid THAT much for a tiny bite of dried fruit and nuts, especially since I know full well how easy it is to make these things.

The combination I am sharing with you here is the perfect melange of chewy fruit and crunchy nuts, and of course, chocolate. I even threw in some protein powder to make them a perfect post-workout snack. The best part about this recipe is that you throw everything in the food processor and a few minutes later, they're ready.

At the end of this post, I will also give you some ideas for other combinations. It's really easy to fool around with this recipe and get the exact flavour you are craving. 

Here is the recipe. I made it up so I don't have to give anyone else any credit at all ;-)

Ingredients

1 cup roasted, unsalted almonds
3 large dates, pitted
1/2 cup dried cherries
1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
2 tsp chia seeds (you can leave these out if you don't like to pick them out of your teeth after eating)
1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
2 tbsp unflavoured protein powder (I use vegan protein powder)
1/4 tsp salt

Method

Place the almonds in the food processor and process until it looks almost like almond butter. This will give you a smoother ball.

Ensure there are no pits in the dates by slicing them open with a sharp knife. If you see a pit, remove it. Toss the dates and the rest of the ingredients into the food processor with the almost almond butter. Turn that sucker on and process for a couple of minutes.

Check the mixture. If you can pinch some together in your fingers and it sticks, it's ready.

I use a 1 tbsp measuring spoon to ensure my bites are all the same size.

Roll the measured mixture into a ball in the palm of your hands. 

Keep rolling - my yield is generally 18-20 balls. Today I got 19 (but you don't see the total in this photo because I ate some - quality control!). These are approximately 80 calories each.

Deeeee-licious.

My other fave combo is as follows:

3/4 cup roasted unsalted almonds
1/4 cup walnuts
1 cup pitted dates
1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tbsp chia seeds
2 tbsp shredded unsweetened coconut
1 1/2 tbsp protein powder (unflavoured)
1/4 tsp salt

Use the same method to mix it up. These are approximately 85 calories each.

Some other flavor combos you can try:

1. Dates, coconut, matcha, almond butter
2. Natural peanut butter, oats, coconut, ground flax seeds, dried cherries, raw sunflower seeds, honey, chia seeds, vanilla (tastes like pb&j)
3. Almond butter, hemp hearts, coconut, crispy brown rice, spiraling, mama, maple syrup, sea salt
4. Dates, dried apricots, chia seeds, ground flax, raw pumpkin seeds, cinnamon, white chocolate

Enjoy! And be sure to let me know about your favourite combination.

Snack Bars - Sugar Free!

Full disclosure - this recipe is from someone else's blog. Here is the original link: http://www.superhealthykids.com/blog-posts/healthy-no-bake-snack-bars.php

I am attempting to go sugar-free for a month. Today is Day 5. My friends have been kind enough to send me some recipes to help get me through the hard times and this is the first one I received. I made these last night and they are very yummy. I know those of you with kids are wondering if your kids will eat these - mine tried them. Sam said it wasn't terrible. Noah spit it out. There you go.

I don't have a big, long, rambling story to tell here, so I'm going to get right to the recipe!

Ingredients

2 cups pitted dates
3/4 cup raw cashews
1/4 cup nut butter (You have to use homemade or natural nut butter to ensure there is no sugar in there. Here is the link to my homemade peanut butter: http://richlerrecipes.blogspot.com/2014/05/homemade-peanut-butter.html)
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 pinch of salt

Method

Put everything in a food processor and mix it up until the mixture forms a ball. I put everything in except the nuts for the first few spins because I wanted the nut pieces to be a bit bigger. So after three or four pulses of the processor I removed the lid and added the cashews into the mix. This is what the mix looks like when it starts to form a ball in the processor.

Pour the mix into an 8 inch by 8 inch square pan

Press down firmly. Cover the pan and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes. 

Cut into bars or squares and serve! Make sure to store your squares in the fridge in an air tight container. They won't last long!

P.S. the original blog suggests using parchment paper in the pan, but I didn't have any and they turned out just fine.

David's Robert's Absolute Best Brownies EVER

Brownies. The bane of my existence. I never met a brownie I didn’t like – well, that’s not really true as there are some pretty crappy brownies out there. And since I like to try most of the brownies I meet, I have tasted some duds in my day.

I’ve made:

Joy of Cooking brownies (cakey and classic), 

Jenifer Soper’s (my Uncle’s girlfriend) brownies (best icing ever on a good cakey brownie),

Better Homes and Gardens brownies (not bad),

Alice Medrich’s brownies (awesome, with a beautiful cracked top),

brownies with applesauce instead of butter (don’t bother), 

brownies with cream cheese (a mistake and confounding), 

Nigella Lawson brownies (of course they’re good because they have a pound of butter in them), 

Martha Stewart brownie cookies (pretty good)

and many, many more.

I’ve also tried many brownies made by other people. 

Starbucks’ brownies, 

crappy cafeteria brownies at work, 

Tim Horton’s brownies, 

fancy brownies from quaint little bakeries in small Ontario towns near the cottages we rent,

brownies from Rocket Bakery in St. John’s, 

brownies from Auntie Crae’s bakery in St John’s (back in the day), 

two-bite brownies from the supermarket (gross), 

Weight Watchers brownies (why not?), 

and Sara Lee brownies.

I remember a special time with one of my best friends, I think it was grade 7 or 8. We told my Dad we were going to the store. We headed to some nearby shop and bought a foil pan of Sara Lee brownies. We walked home and talked about the brownies pretty much the whole way. Once we arrived, we went into the family room (why were we eating in the family room?), lifted the cardboard top off the tin, then the wax paper. Then we did the only sensible thing to do in a situation like this – broke the entire slab of brownie in half and shared it. I don’t think we managed to eat the whole thing in that one sitting, but maybe we did. Susan? You’ll have to remind me.

Based on all of this information, I am sure you can tell that I am always interested in finding the ‘perfect’ brownie. Two years ago I put out the call on Facebook for my friends to send me their perfect brownie recipe. Several people responded – Marni’s brownies were indeed pretty unbelievable (I may blog those someday soon). One friend (Karen) wrote back to me and reminded me that my own recipe that I had recently shared with her was amazing (in this particular recipe, I used Lindt chocolate balls as a portion of the chocolate in the brownie). But my quest continued.

Until I found these. This is it. The ultimate brownie. You may never need to consult another recipe again once you have tried these. Off. The. Hook. For realz.

As you know if you read my blog, I am a huge fan of blogger David Lebovitz. David posted a recipe for the ultimate brownie and he gave credit to Robert Steinberg (co-founder of Scharffen Berger chocolate) who had adapted his recipe from cookbook author Maida Heatter. David referred to them as “Absolute Best Brownies”, and I have to agree.

There is a key step in this brownie process that you cannot skip, you cannot shorten, you cannot change. This step is what makes these brownies the “absolute best” brownies you will ever eat. The step is simple – beat the ingredients for one full minute. You won’t regret it. These brownies are sort of cakey on the outside, and if you follow these instructions, fudgey on the inside. There’s something for everyone here.

Here is the recipe (with my edits/notes in brackets).

6 tbsp butter, unsalted or salted, cut into pieces, plus more for the pan (I use salted)

8 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped (I have used chocolate chips when in a pinch, but for this recipe I used a combination of Ghirardhelli Intense Dark Twilight Delight 72% cacao (an entire bar of 100g), Lindt 70% chocolate (3/4 of a 100g bar), Lindt Fleur de Sel dark chocolate (1/4 of a 100g bar), and Schmerling’s of Switzerland Rosemarie bittersweet praline filled chocolate (4 squares).

¾ cup sugar (I use ½ cup)

1 tsp vanilla (always use real vanilla)

2 large eggs, at room temperature

¼ cup all purpose flour

1 cup walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts or pecans, toasted and coarsely chopped (this time I didn’t use nuts, but my preference is pecans)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and line an 8 inch square baking pan with parchment. To do this, don’t try to jam one piece of parchment into the brownie pan because the corners of the paper will be crumpled and messy. Cut two strips of paper the width of the pan but longer. Place them perpendicular to each other then lightly butter the parchment. The original recipe calls for a 9 inch pan, but 8 inches is better. Yes, size does matter.

Melt the butter and chocolate together in a pan on low heat. Start with the butter 

... and then add the chocolate once it starts to melt. 

Stir by hand until the chocolate has melted completely and the mixture is smooth and glossy.

Remove from the heat and stir in the sugar and the vanilla until combined. 

Pour the mixture into an electric mixer. You can do the rest by hand but I have had better success with the one minute of mixing if it’s in my Kitchen Aid!

Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Then add the flour and beat for 1 full minute. If you are beating by hand, this one minute of beating must be “energetic”!

You will know it’s right when the mix is glossy and smooth, with no more graininess, and pulls away slightly from the sides of the bowl you are using. If you don’t follow the directions for the one minute of energetic beating, your brownies will not be the absolute best and will be dry and crumbly. It has happened to me and I am telling the truth.

Pour into the pan 

... and bake until the centre feels almost set. The instructions say 30 minutes but I only bake for 25. Do not overbake.

Let the brownies cool in the pan completely, then use the parchment to lift the block of brownie out of the pan. Cut into squares (I do 4 x 4). 

The brownies will keep well for up to 4 days (haha! They won’t make it past 2!). You can also freeze them – it says for up to one month but I don’t know why you could not freeze them for longer.

They taste spectacular with vanilla ice cream. Below you see our poodle, Kugel, wishing I would share with her. Not a chance.

Chanukah Gelt

Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, is observed for eight days, and commemorates the victory of a small band of Maccabees (Jews) over the pagan Syrian-Greeks who ruled over Israel at that time.  It starts on the 25^th day of the month of Kislev, in the Hebrew lunar calendar. Because it is associated with a lunar calendar date, the date in the ‘regular’ 12 month calendar varies each year (as with all other Jewish holidays). Generally it takes place in the month of December though, so it fits in nicely with other holidays happening at the same time. 

The word Chanukah has two meanings – the first means ‘dedication’ since this festival marks the rededication of the previously defiled Temple in 165 BCE (BCE means Before the Common Era; the Common Era refers to the time after Jesus Christ was born. Jews use the terminology Before the Common Era (BCE) and After the Common Era (ACE) instead of BC and AD.)

The second meaning of Chanukah helps people remember what day (the Hebrew date) the festival begins! “Chanu” translated to “they rested”, and “Kah” (composed of the Hebrew letters for 25 - “Chof and Hay”) means “on the twenty fifth” (referring to the 25^th day of the month Kislev). 

Please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah, or other sites on the internet, for more information and details about Chanukah (also spelled Hanukkah).

People generally refer to Chanukah as the Festival of Lights, in reference to the candles that Jews light for each of the 8 nights of Chanukah. The story goes that when the Maccabees, led by Judah, defeated the Syrian-Greeks and reclaimed the Temple, they discovered only enough fuel (oil) to last one day. It would take them 8 days to manufacture new oil. By some great miracle, the oil lasted for 8 days.

 

The candles are lit on a special candelabra called a Menorah or Chanukiat. Once the candles are lit, small gifts are often given to the children (Chanukah Gelt is customary here), and of course, traditional foods are eaten. As is the case with many Jewish holidays, Chanukah can be summed up as follows: the Jews battled their foes, we won, let’s eat! Most traditional Chanukah foods are fried in oil, to commemorate the miracle of the oil (for example, latkes (fried potato pancakes), and sufganyiot (fried jelly-filled doughnuts).

Chanukah Gelt (gelt is Yiddish for money) is essentially chocolate-covered coins. Traditionally, Jewish Rabbinical students would receive small sums of money as gifts from their benefactors at this time of the year. In the 1920s, the coins became chocolate once American chocolate makers came up with this amazing idea. Children are encouraged to give some of their gelt to charity, as charity is also a traditional Chanukah concept.

This year, I was doing some reading on gelt, charity, etcetera and came across a post on a blog discussing the concept of charity being a focus of Chanukah. Because of this charitable element, it behoves Jews to ensure that the chocolate gelt that they give is Fair Trade (and not made in some factory somewhere in the world that underpays their employees, or other uncharitable practices). I couldn’t agree more so I started to look online for Fair Trade gelt. I found some sites in the US but nothing in Canada – so I decided to make my own!

I started by purchasing some lovely Fair Trade dark chocolate with sea salt in it. Then I melted over a double boiler and poured it into a piping bag. I piped coin-shaped rounds onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet and waited for the chocolate to harden a little.

Then my son and I experimented with various methods of imprinting the chocolate coins with images related to Israel and Chanukah. Here is what we tried:

1)      We took actual Israeli shekels (coins) and boiled them to sterilize them. Then we tried to stamp each coin with the shekel. This didn’t work at all. It was difficult to hold the coin without completely losing it in the chocolate blob, and it got messy.

2)      So then we tried wrapping the coin in Saran Wrap and twisting the Saran Wrap into a handle, thinking we could stamp the coins as though we were stamping into a wax seal on a letter. That didn’t work either.

3)      Third time lucky! We took skewers and drew little pictures on each coin ourselves, freehand. It was so much fun! My son loved coming up with designs (we did menorahs and the Hebrew letters that are on the dreidels (spinning tops) we play with at Chanukah).

Once your coins are decorated, put the tray in the fridge for them to harden. Then you can present them on a platter for your event, and keep the leftovers in the fridge - make sure you eat a couple of coins on each day of the holiday!

 

I didn’t take any photos of the process, but have posted a few of the end result – the best gelt we have ever had! I will definitely do this again next year, and might even up the ante by brushing each coin with some gold leaf once the chocolate has set.

Eyeball Cake

Every year about a week before the birthday of each of my kids I ask them a very important question: what kind of cake would you like this year? My youngest son turned 7 last week and when I posed this question I got an unexpected reply. “I want an eyeball.” When I tell you that his birthday is the day after Halloween, this seemingly strange request might make more sense.

So what’s a Mom to do? Well, make an eyeball of course! First I consulted with my own Mom, and we discussed the vehicle in which to bake the cake. She asked me how I was planning to do it and I said I’d use regular round cake pans and then sculpt the cake into a dome shape. She suggested trying to bake the cake in a stainless steel bowl, so on to the internet we went to do some research.

According to what we found, you could indeed bake things in a bowl. Several sites recommended using something called a flower nail to assist in evenly distributing the heat as the cake bakes. I went off to the local Bulk Barn to see if they had such a thing. I found one in the cake decorating area – it’s basically a flat metal disc, with a nail sticking out from one side. It is used to assist in the production of those rose-shaped flowers that you often see on wedding cakes (the kind my brother and I used to stare at in the front window of Woolco on Water Street in St. John’s). Bulk Barn only had a small one but I decided to give it a whirl anyway (it was only $2.99).

When I returned home later that day, my Mom had some bread baking in the oven – in a stainless steel bowl! She had decided to test it out. When the bread was ready, we turned it out of the bowl – first lesson learned – ensure you grease the bowl. The bread was stuck. With a little prodding it came out, but we noticed it didn’t sound hollow as it should when it is baked properly. So I threw it back in, with the oven turned off, for about 15 minutes. All was well. Note to self: bake cake for longer than recipe calls for, and use flower nail.

I made the kids’ favourite chocolate cake, from the new Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. Here we go:

Ingredients (cake):

3/4 cup butter, softened

3 eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 3/4 cups sugar

2 tsps vanilla

1 1/2 cups milk

Method (cake):

Allow butter and eggs to stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. I used to think this wasn't an important step, but it makes for a fluffier cake so I recommend it. Lightly grease the bottoms and sides of a stainless steel bowl. Mine was approximately 9 inches wide. Flour the pan once you have buttered it and stick the flower nail in the bowl (disc side down, nail side up, obviously). I greased the nail and disc as well.

In a medium bowl stir together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside. Of course the BHG recipe tells you to sift the ingredients. What can I say, I am a lazy baker and I never, ever, sift. Mostly because I hate cleaning the sifter afterwards.

In a large mixing bowl, beat butter on medium to high speed for about 30 seconds. Gradually add the sugar and beat on medium speed for 3 - 4 minutes. Scrape the sides of the bowl, then continue beating for another 2 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Beat in vanilla.

Alternately add flour mixture and milk, beating on low speed after each addition, until just combined. Beat on medium - high speed for about 30 seconds more after you've added all the stuff. I scraped the sides in between. Pour batter into the prepared stainless steel bowl. Make sure you've placed the flower nail into the bottom of the bowl first!

Bake at 350 degrees F for an hour, then test the cake. Mine was done at 70 minutes, but it was a bit dry so I suggest checking in two minute increments after one hour. You want it to be a little sticky on the toothpick, but not too much. 

While the cake is baking, make the icing(s).

Ingredients (icings):

8 ounces cream cheese (I use light cream cheese)

10 - 12 tbsp butter, softened

3 tsp vanilla

7 to 7 1/2 cups icing sugar

1/2 tsp salt

Method (icings):

Beat the cream cheese for about a minute on medium speed, then add the butter and vanilla. Once that is nice and creamy, start adding the sugar in 1/2 cup increments, mixing on low speed. Add the salt and mix on medium until your desired consistency is reached.

Reserve a small amount of icing (about 1/2 cup, maybe 3/4 cup) for the different colours required for the eyeball. Instructions follow later.

Your cake might be ready now. So head on over to the oven and check it out. If it's ready, take it out and place the bowl on a wire rack.

Once the cake has cooled for about 3 minutes in the bowl, you're going to want to turn it out onto a rack so it doesn't get soggy in the bowl. what you may have realized by this point is that the part of the cake that was the top in the oven (which will become the bottom on the rack) is round. And yes, you have to fix that before you turn it out onto the rack. 

Simply take a knife and slice off the top portion, dig out some of the cake and then replace the top. Or, just be really careful when you slice the top off so that you don't have to replace anything afterwards. I wasn't so careful and so had to patch it up before I did the flip-over.

Once you have made it flat, flip it onto a rack. Feel free to snack on the parts you cut off. It's tasty!

Then remove the flower nail, using a knife. Now, here's how to decorate this cake!

Place the cake on your platter and get ready to ice. Start by placing a small blob of icing underneath the cake to help prevent it from sliding all over the place - think of it as icing glue. I learned this trick from my old friend Brian Mendoza.

I asked the Birthday Boy to help me ice the cake. Make sure you save at least 1/2 - 3/4 cup of the icing to use for the pupil and the bloodshot lines later on.

Once the cake was iced, I decided to use the flower nail as a template for the pupil of the eyeball. So I cleaned it first, and then placed it at the very top of the cake, on the icing (to be removed later).

I needed another template for the iris, so I put my thinking cap on and came up with the idea of using a paper plate. I used a yogurt container to trace the space for the iris, then I cut it out of the plate.

I placed the template on the top of the cake and let Sam sprinkle the blue sugar on top.

Once the pupil was sprinkled on, we pressed the sugar into the icing with our fingertips to make sure we wouldn't lose too much of it when lifting off the template. The Sam lifted it off.

Success! Now let's do the pupil. Take some of the reserved icing and add some unsweetened cocoa powder to it. Mix well until smooth and blended. Put into a Ziploc bag (or piping bag) and push the icing all the way into one of the corners. Carefully cut the end off of the corner, you need to cut it about 1/2 inch wide for the pupil. In the photo below I haven't made the cut yet.

Carefully squeeze the bag of icing until it starts to come out of the hole that you snipped. Move the icing bag in a circular motion as you squeeze to make the icing pupil.

Voila!

Next step - make the eye bloodshot.

Take the rest of the cream cheese icing that you reserved, and add some red food colouring to it. Mix it up and keep adding until you have the shade you like. 

Put this red icing into another Ziploc or piping bag and snip a very tiny bit off the tip - you need the hole to be very small to make thin lines. Now you can start making your eyeball bloodshot!

Sam loved this part. 

So below you will see the final, finished product, and as well to the left here you will see our inspiration for the whole cake - a wind-up hopping eyeball toy that Sam got in a loot bag last year.

I hope you have as much fun as we did making this cake!!