Yummy Carob & Coconut Cookies

Makes around 6 large or 12 small biscuits/cookies.

1 cup raw almonds
¾ cup dates, pitted
pinch sea salt
½ cup raw carob powder*
⅓ cup shredded coconut
¼ cup buckwheat crispies (whole hulled groats soaked & dehydrated) (optional)

Put almonds (air-dried or towel-dried if pre-soaked) & salt into food processor. Process until chopped into tiny pieces. Add dates slowly, processing until well-combined. Add carob powder & process until combined. Add coconut, pulse until mixed through. Tip mixture into another bowl & stir through the buckwheat. Grabbing about a tablespoon of mixture at a time – roll into a ball & squash flat into a cookie/biscuit shape (if you don’t use soaked almonds, you might need to add a little water to get the mixture to stick together). Repeat until all mixture is used up. Refrigerate (or dehydrate until desired texture is reached).

Other options:
+ Press a piece of dried fruit, dried berry, a nut (eg. pistachio, macadamia, or chopped walnut pieces), or another “topping” into the centre of each biscuit for decoration & extra tastiness.
+ Roll the cookies in extra coconut to coat them – extra coconut yum!
+ Instead of buckwheat, you could also stir through chopped raw walnuts or another favourite nut or seed.
+ To make raw buckwheat crispies rather than buy/order them from a raw shop: To make raw buckwheat groats edible & crispy you have a couple of options: (1) Soak hulled buckwheat for 8 hours or overnight, rinse very well (get all that lovely “slime” off!), then dehydrate until dry; or (2) Soak hulled buckwheat for 15 minutes, sprout for 12-24 hours in a jar or sprout bag, then dehydrate until dry. The 1st option creates a crunchier, sweeter texture, & the 2nd option an earthier, less crunchy flavour that’s a bit healthier (& a bit easier to digest if you have digestive problems).
+ Add a teaspoon of cinnamon for a richer, earthier flavour.
+ You might want to reduce the amount of dates to about half a cup if you use a particularly sweet date like medjool.

*For a truly superb flavour, get a good quality untoasted carob powder – organic is usually a good bet. Carob oxidises rather quickly & loses its rich flavour, so the best place to get it is usually from a healthfood shop or organic supermarket with a high stock turnover. If you can’t get decent carob, try using a bit more &/or adding some spice like cinnamon. Additionally: these cookies harden up after being stored in the fridge for a while. I rarely bother dehydrating these sorts of foods – I prefer more water in my food for better hydration!

Raw Ginger Biscuits

As promised! Including a crap blurry photo taken with my daft mobile phone… They kinda look like tiny falafel patties. But they don’t taste like ‘em!

1 cup raw almonds
1 cup shredded coconut
¾ cup dates
1 tsp sea salt
roughly 1 inch chunk of fresh ginger root, grated

Process almonds and salt to a powder in a food processor. Slowly add dates, one at a time. Add coconut, and pulse processor until just combined. If you want “smoother” cookies, use desiccated coconut instead of shredded. Add ginger gradually. Taste test mix to check if desired gingery-ness has been reached. Empty contents of processor into bowl. Taking 1 tsp to 1 tbsp size chunks of dough, roll into balls then press flat into desired biscuit/cookie shape. Refrigerate to firm up. Optional: instead of refrigerating immediately, dehydrate on a low setting for several hours to achieve a drier, crispier biscuit/cookie.

Note: I wouldn’t recommend these ginger cookies for pregnancy nausea! The nut base was too rich for my sensitive tummy. Blander, flour-based ones are better until the nausea passes… and it seems to have passed for me, now. Yay!

Lots of Spelt Ginger Biscuits and Iced Green Tea with Lime & Ginger

Note these are low-gluten cookies made with spelt flour, not entirely gluten-free. If you want gluten-free, it’s probably good to use a soy-based gluten-free flour like F.G. Roberts, but it will make a softer/wetter mix. For soy-free & pre-mixed-flour-free, you can use a mix of equal parts potato starch, chickpea flour, brown rice flour, and tapioca starch, which tends to work well for a lot of pastry-style/biscuitish things. Also note that in the land of Australian English we use the terms cookies and biscuits interchangeably. I don’t know what’s up with those north American savoury “biscuit” things. Sorry, guys!

Ingredients

5 cups organic spelt flour (see above for alternatives)
2 tbsp ground flax (linseed meal)
1 tsp xantham gum (optional)
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt (add a little more if your baking powder is salt-free/gluten-free/aluminium-free fancy junk like mine)
1 cup sunflower oil (or other unscented vegetable oil)
1 cup golden syrup (aka: cane juice, cane syrup, light treacle)
½ cup molasses
1 bigass chunk of ginger root, grated (about ¼-½ cup, depending on how gingery you like it)

Heat oven to 180ºC (350ºF). Grease and/or line two baking trays. Sift together flour, flax, xantham, baking powder, salt, and baking soda. Combine well (aerating with a whisk is good, too). Dump in your oil, molasses, syrup, and grated ginger. Stir until just combined – this is a thick dough, so it’s fun to use your hands to finish the job after some stirring. (Add a little water if your flour is too dry.) Put tablespoon-sized blobs on to your two trays. Chuck the trays in your oven for about 15-20 minutes (remember the tray on the higher shelf will cook quicker). Cool for a while on the trays before putting the biscuits on cooling racks – they will probably be quite soft, and will harden a bit as they cool. Then eat the tasty little bastards. Give some to your friends and family if you’re feeling generous, otherwise hoard them for yourself. They freeze pretty well.

And there you have it. A cure for pregnancy nausea. Which is also one of the reasons I’ve been pretty slack with updating this blog recently. Another cure:

Iced Green Tea with Lime & Ginger

1 bigass pot of high-quality loose-leaf Japanese green tea*
1-2 cups of apple juice, to sweeten
juice of ½-1 lime
grated ginger to taste

Boil water, then let cool to 80ºC (176ºF), then pour onto your nice green tea in your nice teapot. Brew for 1 minute, then strain into a jug. Let cool. Add apple juice, lime, and grated ginger to suit your tastes (adding more or less also depending on how bigass your teapot is). Stick it in the fridge. Serve chilled.

*Please go to a decent Asian grocery shop and buy the most expensive stuff you can afford. Supermarket/generic/whitebread brands are complete shit. Seriously. Better yet, ask your lovely, kind Japanese sister-in-law to give you some for Xmas, or, if you fail at having extended family in Japan, find yourself a kind global nomad friend with a penchant for Asian travel and get them to post you some. Or get off your ass and see the world for yourself, and buy lots of tea while you’re out there. Get to it! And send me and my nauseous pregnant belly a postcard or two along the way. I promise to be insanely jealous. Go! Go now! Before it’s too late.

Stay tuned for a raw version of the above ginger biscuits as well.

Gluten-free vegan food pr0n

Fear not, I’m still alive. I’ve just been going through some wisdom teeth hell… but I’ve still been eating and photographing! Here’s a few of the latest pics:

My first ever gluten-free pizza: a success!

Getting our slice on.

Scrambled tofu with spinach and mushroom on toast. Tastiest breakfast in the universe.

Chocolate sugar cookies, made with rice and chickpea flour. An odd texture, but tasty!

A yeast-risen gluten-free loaf that sunk in the middle a bit, but tasted great.

A small yeast-free loaf in a big pan! It split a bit on top.

Mmm, tastyriffic.