Charming Winter: Snow chocolate ice cream

#winterwonderland #icecream #easyfoodcreations

Over the last few days we received over 120cm of snow. Many people ask what to do with the snow... I'd say take advantage of it! Here is a super fast ice cream you can make using fresh snow. 

Ingredients:

2 tbsp of chocolate powder

1-2 tbsp of icing sugar or other sweetener

0.5 tsp vanilla powder

1 packet of vanilla sugar

0.75c whipping cream (you can use a mix of cream and milk)

3c fresh snow

1. Mix all ingredients other than ice with a whisk.

2. Pour mixture into a bowl with snow and mix with a spoon.

3. Serve right away as they melt really fast.

4. Enjoy!

Green smoothie: green and yellow

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating #greensmoothie #raw

I had been a crazy maniac of green smoothies when I first discovered them some 5 years ago. For about 2 years I had them for breakfast everyday, rotating my greens and all that. I drunk them though my pregnancy which probably helped as I did not feel noutious even once. 

Many people say that green smoothies do not taste good and they tried various mixes without success; hopefully some of my hints will be useful.

There are some key rules that will help you create better tasting smoothies:

- Bananas, prunes, dates, figs, raisins - add as sweeteners. Sometimes one extra date changes everything.

- If you need your smoothie to have less intensive taste add some lemon, cucumber, orange, or ginger

- Typically I don't use milk just water or coconut water but had used homemade nut/seed milk in the past. Various fruit and veggie juices could work very well too. Cows milk?... well it is up to you but I wouldn't.

- Creamy fruits such as avocados, bananas create great green puddings. If you want them in you smoothie use less or compensate with other more watery ingredients.

- You can add oats to your smoothies. Typically I like to soack them in water for at least few hours before adding them to smoothies to ease digestion.

- don't overdo it, the simpler the recipe the better. Keep it down to 3-6 ingredients.

Serves: 2 cups of smoothie

Ingredients:

3 large kale leaves, take stems out

1 whole celery stick

1 Granny Smith apple, take core out

1 banana

1/3 lemon, peel it

1.5 c water

Put all ingredients in the blender. The rule is to put ingredients that are toughest to blend at the bottom. In this case order is: greens, celery, apple, lemon, banana, water. Order is especially important if you do not have a very powerful blenders such as blentec or vitamix. 

Enjoy!

St. Patrick's cupcakes -Pistachio and Green tea Cupcakes with Avocado Icing

#easyfoodcreations #healthyeating #stpatricks #vegan

The upcoming St. Patrick's day got me thinking about "green" food and how I can create something new and delicious, and of course at least partially healthy.
I decided to try cupcakes this time, a small change to my usual muffins creations. This recipe will work equally well if you skip the icing so it is up to you.

Serves 7 muffins

Ingredients:
0.5 c all purpose flour
0.5 c oat flour (I grind oats rather than buying oat flour, it is cheaper and does not involve a lot of effort)
2 tbsp flax meal
6-8 tbsp green tea (liquid)
1 tsp green tea leaves, grounded (I used sencha but matcha would work too)
2 cardamon pods, keep seeds only
0.25 c brown sugar
1 packet of vanilla sugar
1 tsp baking powder
0.5 medium size zucchini
25 pistachios
0.25 c melted butter (you can use oil instead, typically I would use grapeseed as a replacement)
pinch of salt
Icing:
0.5 avocado
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp water
0.5 ripe banana
1 tbsp icing sugar
(If you want chocolate icing add 1 -2 tsp cocoa powder)

2-3 tsp psyllium husk

1. Grind 20 pistachios, set them aside. Reserve 5 pistachios for decoration.
2. Prepare flax meal - mix it with 5 tbsp of green tea and set aside.
3. Grind zucchini with remaining green tea to a smooth consistency. Set aside.
3. Mix all dry ingredients well. Then add wet ingredients to mix everything well.
4. Bake in a preheated oven at 177c for 20 minutes.
5. Let them cool before decorating with icing.
6. Prepare icing by blending avocado, sugar, lemon and banana. Once the mix is smooth add psyllium husk to thicken the mix.
7. Decorate cupcakes with icing, then sprinkle with crushed pistachios.
8. Enjoy!