Healthy Oat Carrot Bars

Wishing all of you a Happy New 2014!

Have you made those lists yet? You know the ones, called resolutions. Yeah. I've been there a few times too. And sometimes I've been successful to cross January with it. But of late. I've come to realize until I make something a habit, they don't last. Fitness, healthy eating, good rest, etc are all best done if they are converted from resolutions to long lasting habits. Good luck to you with your plans for the new year. Make them habits and then it won't be too difficult to maintain them.

Starting off this year with a healthy breakfast bar recipe. Even though I call this a breakfast bar, this can really be had at any time of the day when you need a good boost of energy. With all healthy ingredients and no unnecessary fat or fillers, this is just what our bodies need for a good pick me up.

I tweaked the recipe a little bit from this Whole Foods recipe mainly because of the ingredients I had on hand. The end product is delicious. Each bite feels whole and hearty. The sweetness is just right. Not dessert sweet, but just sweet enough. A lot of sweetness comes from the carrots and raisins themselves. Not to mention this is an eggless recipe. So rejoice, all you eggless loving people.

Start off with pulsing some oats and nuts in a food processor. I used 1 cup of cook quicking oats and 1 cup of almonds and walnuts mixed. Don't fine grind it as little bites of almonds only increase the deliciousness of the bars.

Move the dry oat and nut mix to a bowl. Add 1 cup of whole wheat pastry flour. Then add 2 tsps of baking powder and 1 tsp of baking soda. Add 1/2 tsp of salt.

Also add about 1 tsp each of ground cinnamon and ground ginger. You can also add fresh grated ginger for better taste. Mix everything together and set aside.

In another small bowl, add 2 cups of grated carrot. You can make this 1 cup of carrot and 1 cup of grated apples too. Add 1/2 cup of raisins or dried currants to this. Cranberries would also be a good substitute here.

Add 1 cup of maple syrup to the carrots. I reduced the maple a little bit and added agave nectar along it, both together equaling 1 cup. Add about 1/2 cup fresh grated or frozen coconut. (not the dried sweetened coconut). Finally add 1 tsp of vanilla essence. Mix everything well.

Add this moist carrot mixture to the oat and flour mix. Mix everything well until well incorporated.

Move to a greased pan and spread it flat. I topped off with some pecans before sending it off to the oven.

Bake at 350F for about 45 mins or so. If you do a toothpick test at about 25 or 30 mins, it will still come out clean but the batter would still be light. Let it go on for about 45 mins until you see the bars turn golden brown. That would be a good time to take them out.

Let them cool down a bit. Cut into squares and then, all you have left to do is eat.

Or you can just stare at your creation like I'm doing right now.

Who says healthy is boring. Live it up, you health nuts!

Ingredient List:

Dry Ingredients:
1 cup Quick cooking or Steel Cut Oats
1 cup whole nuts- almonds, walnuts, or any other nuts. Total quantity of nuts is 1 cup.
1 cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ginger powder

Moist Ingredients:
2 cups grated carrots (or a mix of carrots or apples)
1/2 cup of raisins, or dried cranberries or currants.
1/4 cup fresh grated coconut
1 cup maple syrup (you can even do 1/2 maple +1/2 agave nectar)
1 tsp vanilla essence

Prepare as explained above.



Enjoy. Peace Out.

Mocha Chocolate Shortbread

When there's happiness to be shared, it should always be accompanied by chocolate. Is that not true?

So, here I'am sharing happiness with all of you again. And that does come with chocolate too. There are many reasons to be thankful and happy - and my biggest reason now is that my little girl is here - she was born the first week in November. And yes, when the say a baby changes life, its all true. Now I have two little girls to spoil - and oh yes a lot more girly shopping that I can indulge in!

Another big reason to be thankful and happy is that my blog turns 3 today! My heartfelt thanks to all of you for being a part of the blog. Thanks for all your wonderful and supportive feedback even though I've not been very active the last couple of months.

Here's a super easy shortbread recipe - a favorite of mine from the Southern Living magazine archives. If you have an IPad - download the Southern Living My Recipes app - it provides a beautiful dessert recipe for every day of the year and some more. The app costs about 4 bucks but its all worth it if you enjoy baking or just looking at pretty pictures.

Here the link to the original recipe - Mocha Chocolate Shortbread from Southern Living 

Get all your ingredients in place.

1 1/4 cup of All purpose flour
1/2 cup of powdered sugar
2 tsps of Instant coffee granules ( I used taster's choice)
2/3 cup of softened butter
2 cups of semi - sweet chocolate chip morsels
2 tsps vanilla extract - the recipe calls for it - but I was all out and just skipped using it. Trust me, I did not miss it

The great thing about this recipe is that it is an eggless recipe as well and takes about 5 mins to prepare. You can make this as a quick dessert when you have friends over for an impromptu dinner.

To a mixing bowl, add the flour, sugar and instant coffee crystals.

Add the butter and vanilla extract and mix well in slow speed. It is very important that the butter is softened and not completely melted in order to get the crisp texture of the shortbread.

And this is how the dough looks once mixed well.

Now add 1 cup of the semi sweet chocolate chips to the dough and mix well using a spatula.

Spread out the dough in an ungreased 9 inch square pan.

Using a fork, poke in a few times to aerate the surface.

Bake in a pre heated oven at 325F for about 20 mins until the top gets a little brown.

Switch off the oven and immediately add the remaining 1 cup of semi sweet morsels. I added a few more of milk chocolate morsels ( because two little hands and a mouth ate some of my semi sweet chips in the pretext of helping me in the kitchen!)

In a couple of mins, the chocolate chips would be melted. Spread it around with a spatula and make an even coating of chocolate on top of the shortbread.

Can I just dive in here and swim??

Cut the shortbread into little pieces while its still warm. Then let it cool for about 30 mins to an hr. That's the hardest part of the whole process.

Obviously I could wait - who has 30 mins, right?? These were just oh so melt in your mouth good. Glad I did not wait...all the wet chocolate is worth the warm shortbread..if you know what I mean..just go ahead and indulge. 

Since the theme for A Sweet Punch Series this month was anything that we'd like to bake, I'm sending this across there as well. 

Enjoy. Peace Out!

And Thank You for making 3 years of blogging so much fun!

Strawberry Banana Muffins - Eggless

I wonder - why did not Little Miss Muffet sit on a tuffet and eat Muffins? Why did she have to eat her curds and whey? 

Just the smell of a warm muffin out of the oven is so comforting. Its like cupcakes for the grown ups. Just a wholesome warm little cup muffin. And if it has ingredients like strawberry and bananas in it, that's just added appeal. 

Baking again this time for A Sweet Punch series, here's us presenting a Strawberry Banana Muffin with a recipe from the Joy of Baking site. I changed the recipe a little bit to make an egg less version to satisfy the entire family. But the timing was perfect - we had a impromptu planned picnic potluck at the park this evening and these muffins found a few friends to please.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a 12 cup muffin pan with liners or use a no stick spray on the pan. This actually yielded about 18 muffins for me - since they were a smaller size muffin. So, keep a few extra liners ready.

Take about 21/4 cups of All purpose flour. For a healthier and grainier texture, you can add 2 cups of flour and 1/4 cups of rolled oats if you'd like.
Add 3/4 cups of brown sugar. I accidentally added 1/2 cup of white sugar first and then remembered the recipe called for brown sugar - so I added another 1/2 cup of brown sugar - and so I had a total of about 1 cup sugar.
Add the 1/4 tsp of salt and instead of the cinnamon, I added a pinch of cardamom powder on to the dry mix.
Finally add 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp baking soda.
Mix everything well together and set aside.

Now, to make the wet mix, mash up a couple of ripe bananas and add to a mixing bowl.
Melt 1 stick of butter and when the butter is in room temperature, add it to the bananas

Add a few drops of Pure Vanilla extract.

Now instead of the eggs, here's where we'll add a good substitute to provide the moistness required - Applesauce.

Add the one cup of applesauce and mix well with the other wet ingredients.

Chop up a few strawberries into small pieces - about 1 cup of chopped strawberries. Thankfully, we might still get fresh strawberries for a few more weeks.

Mix the chopped strawberries with a spoon of flour and set aside. This flour helps the strawberries from sinking to the bottom of the muffins.

 Next comes getting the batter ready. Mix the wet ingredients with the dry flour mix.

Add the strawberries on top.

Gently using a spatula, fold in the wet mix and dry mix. Don't beat too hard - just mix until well combined.

I felt the batter was too thick and did not want dry muffins, and hence added about 1/4 cup of warm milk to the batter and gently mixed that in. And I was thankful I did this - the muffins were perfectly moist and you could not tell that they were egg less.

Scoop up the batter into the lined muffin pan. Give it a tap or two on the counter to release a few big air bubbles. And send it on its way to its sauna bath in the oven.

My muffins on the top are done - and I still had batter for more muffins - so sent another batch in for its hot bath.

And just how happy one is when their muffins come out so perfect from the oven!! I wish you can see what a huge smile I have on my face.

What are you waiting for - bake up some eggless muffins - I won't say its easy as pie - it actually is easier than pie.

You can pick this one if you want.

Or this one.

I want them all.

Enjoy. Peace out!