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Chia Raspberry Cacao Nib Peanut Butter Slice

Peanut Butter Slice

This peanut butter slice is adapted from the original Degustabox The Chia Co recipe. I had to make some changes to it as my kids wouldn’t eat cranberries if they were the last food on earth, and human survival depended on them. So I went for the freeze dried raspberries in the cupboard, and filled them out with some cacoa nibs for a raspberry and chocolate flavour to this ‘slice’ which could also quite easily be called a flapjack, except it has no sugar or butter and isn’t baked.Peanut Butter Slice

So, if you want a sugar free, butter free, no-bake flapjack, congratulations. You’ve found it in the form of a peanut butter slice.

I must then immediately caveat that by saying that in the 0 – 4C temperatures we’re having at the moment, these hold really well straight out the fridge. It’s likely that in hot temperatures, you could end up with a delicious peanut butter muesli. Try it and let me know?

Here’s the original recipe from Degustabox:

And here’s the adapted peanut butter slice version.

Chia Raspberry Cacao Nib Peanut Butter Slice
 
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Author:
Recipe type: Snack
Cuisine: Healthy, Free From
Serves: 20 bars
Ingredients
  • 70g whole almonds, roasted
  • 150g oats, toasted
  • 75g raisins
  • 50g desiccated coconut
  • 50g cacao nibs
  • 5g freeze dried raspberries
  • 2½ tbsp chia seeds (about 15g)
  • 105g honey
  • 100g smooth peanut butter
Instructions
  1. Pre heat the oven to 160C (320F)
  2. Place the oats on a baking tray and toast for 15 - 20 minutes. Keep an eye on it so that it doesn't burn. On a separate tray, toast almonds for 10 - 12 mins, allowing to cool slowly.
  3. Add the almonds to the Thermomix®, pulse quickly twice.
  4. Add oats, raisins, coconut, cacao nibs, raspberries, chia seeds, honey and peanut butter.
  5. Mix reverse/speed 4/ 2 minutes
  6. If you're not using a pan with a removable base, line a 20cmx20cm tray or pan with baking paper, tip the mixture in and press down into the corners, flattening the mixture to make it even.
  7. Cover with cling film or plastic wrap and place in the fridge for at least 3 hours.
  8. Once it's set, remove, slice and cut into bars or bites.
  9. Store in the fridge.

These are easily adaptable and are very tasty. They make fabulous breakfast bars on the go and can hold a plethora of hidden healthy foods that might not otherwise go down well. They are very filling and they freeze well too, so  you can make a huge batch, and keep some in the fridge and some in the freezer, so they’re ready when you need them.

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30+ Honey Based Sweet & Drinks Recipes

Over on my other blog, Diary of a First Child, we’re celebrating Winnie the Pooh at the moment, as it comes up for the 91st anniversary this year. We’ve made various honey-based recipes over the last few weeks, so I decided to do a round-up of honey, honey, honey for those who want to play along at home. Here are 30 food and drinks recipes based on or heavily featuring honey!

Sweets for a Bear Who Likes Honey

Sweets for a bear who likes honey

Healthier With Honey

Healthier with Honey

Cakes & Cookies

cakes and cookies

Ice Cream & Faux-Dairy

Drinks

 

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Honey Dough Balls Recipe

Honey Dough Balls

It’s a Winnie the Pooh time of year again, which means pretty much any time is the time for a little something, so long as that something includes some honey! Knowing this, I made sure to stock up on honey this week, because come Winnie the Pooh Day, we’ll be having honey everything. For human children though, jars of honey don’t seem to be sufficient picnic food, so I’m adding a few delicious honey-based recipes to our honey – repertoire.

These honey dough balls are traditionally an Italian recipe, but I’m sure they won’t mind sharing it with Winnie the Pooh, because really, dough balls smothered in honey? Pooh’d love it. I did consider drizzling condensed milk over – Pooh’s other favourite – but that’s just too much sweet for me.

“Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o’clock in the morning, and he was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and when Rabbit said, ‘Honey or condensed milk with your bread?’ he was so excited that he said, ‘Both,’ and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, ‘But don’t bother about the bread, please.”

Honey Dough Balls

These little blissful bites are sticky and crunchy and chewy at the same time.  As soon as the honey is poured they’ll still be warm but very sticky. If you leave them to cool the honey will harden a little, making them less messy to eat. Skewer the honey dough balls with fondue sticks, and tuck in. (I think these would be awesome with vanilla ice cream too, but it’s a bit cold to test that right now!) Honey Dough Balls

Isn’t it funny that the bear likes honey.
Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.
I wonder why he does.

~ Winnie the Pooh

Find more recipes for Winnie the Pooh here, and activities to do with the kids for Winnie the Pooh day here

Honey Dough Balls Recipe
 
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Author:
Recipe type: T5 recipe
Cuisine: Italian, Winnie the Pooh
Serves: 60
Ingredients
  • 200g water (50g more if you're using organic flour)
  • 70g vegetable oil
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • 340g all-purpose flour
  • 2 eggs
  • 170g honey
  • 85g sugar
  • ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
Instructions
  1. Heat the oven to 400F/200C
  2. In the Thermomix®, add the water, oil and salt.
  3. Bring to boil 4mins/Varoma/Speed 2/No MC
  4. Open the lid and add the flour to the side (so it doesn't get stuck on the blades)
  5. Mix for 1mins/Speed 1
  6. Add two eggs through the lid
  7. Mix for 2mins/speed 2
  8. Scoop out the dough about ½ a teaspoon at a time, making balls in the palm of your hands.
  9. Lay them out on a tray. They don't rise, so you don't have to worry too much about extra space.
  10. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes, depending on your oven. (My oven burns really hot at the top, and much cooler at the bottom, so after 10 minutes I turned it all out into a glass dish and baked the other side)
  11. Set aside to cool in a heat proof dish
  12. In a clean Thermomix® bowl, add the honey, sugar and cinnamon
  13. Boil 5 minutes/Varoma/Speed2
  14. Pour the hot sugar syrup over the dough balls, using a spoon to make sure it's all coated.
  15. They are very sticky, but if you leave them to cool the honey mixture will harden. It's still sticky, but easier to eat.
Nutrition Information
Serving size: 4 Calories: 2011cal Fat: 71 Saturated fat: 5g Trans fat: 0 Carbohydrates: 337 Sugar: 240g Sodium: 119mg Fiber: 4g Protein: 21g Cholesterol: 0

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Hard Boiled Honey Sweets, AKA Honey Balls – Outlander #BookFood

honey balls

There’s a passage in Dragonfly in Amber that always catches my attention when I read it:

“We stayed locked together, not speaking, until my eye suddenly fell on the other small, yellowish lumps that Jamie had removed from his sporran.

‘What on earth are those things, Jamie?’ I asked, letting go of him long enough to point. 
‘Och, those? They’re honey balls, Sassenach.’ He picked up one of the objects dusting at it with his fingers. ‘Mrs.Gibson in the village gave them to me. Verra good, though they got a bit dusty in my sporran, I’m afraid.’ He held out his open hand to me, smiling. ‘Want one?'”

honey balls

I love the sound of these ‘honey balls’, and remember making a hard boiled sweet using sugar, butter and syrup as a child. I wondered whether I would be able to do the same, but using honey, so gave it a shot and what came out were gorgeous sweet, hard, honey balls. They are so tasty and very sweet! honey balls

Once poured out you need to give these a few minutes to cool so that you don’t scald the flesh right off your bones, but not so long that they harden – you need to be able to quickly roll them into balls before they do.

I wait till the mixture stops bubbling on the stove, then pour it into a tray or dish. Leave it to cool enough to touch – use a melon baller or apple corer, or just a teaspoon and start on the sides as that’s where it will cool first. Gather from the outsides and work your way inwards, making balls as you go along.

Initially these will be soft, but they will harden. Either way, don’t chew! You’ll lose fillings or teeth if you do!

And while we’re talking about honey… I’m pretty sure Winnie the Pooh would quite like these too!

There’s another way to make these, which is a lot faster: rather than rolling the balls individually, you can wait for sugar mix to stop bubbling (about 20 seconds) and then pour the hot mixture into a silicone mould. If you use essential oils*, you can also add a few drops of Young Living Lemon oil to the mix.  I use this emoticon tray as the sweets are a good size for individual lozenges. Honey Lozenges

Honey Balls
 
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Author:
Recipe type: Stove Top
Cuisine: Outlander, BookFood, Historical Food
Serves: 50
Ingredients
  • ½ cup honey
  • ½ cup sugar
  • ¼ cup unsalted butter
Instructions
  1. Pour cold water into a glass. Set next to the oven.
  2. Prepare a dish for the sugar honey mixture
  3. Add all the ingredients to a saucepan and turn the heat up
  4. Bring to the boil and keep stirring. It will bubble and froth. Keep it doing so for about 2 - 3 minutes.
  5. KEEP STIRRING it will burn really easily. After 2 minutes dip a spoon in and drip a drop of the mixture into the glass. This is how you test for a soft ball or hard ball stage. If it dissolves, it is too soft. If it forms a soft ball that's easily squashed, it's called soft ball stage. If it forms a hard ball, it's called hard ball stage.
  6. For this particular recipe, you want to catch it between the hard and soft ball stages, turn the heat off, and pour into a prepared pan or dish. IT WILL BE HOT NOW
  7. As it begins to cool, use a teaspoon to scoop out the mixture and shape into balls in the palm of your hand.
  8. Put on a plate and repeat.

 

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Easter Egg Macaroons {DF, GF, EF, RSF}

Easter Egg Macaroons

This is not a new recipe for me – we make chocolate macaroons frequently – but I decided to make it into Easter Eggs for the children to decorate, so we’re sharing it again, all seasonal like.Easter Egg Macaroons

I used egg moulds to make these Easter egg halves, but you could make whole eggs by hand too.  Depending on where you are (temperature) and whether you use organic coconut or not, you may need a little extra coconut oil. If that’s the case, just add a tablespoon at a time at the end of the mixing process. The  mixture does need to be able to hold together.

Easter Egg Macaroons {DF, GF, RSF}
 
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Ingredients
  • 50g Coconut Oil (1/4 cup)
  • 70g honey or syrup (1/4 cup)
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 30 - 50g cocoa powder (1/3 cup)
  • pinch of fine sea salt or Himalayan pink salt
  • 150g shredded unsweetened coconut (1.5 cups)
Instructions
Regular Instructions
  1. Melt the coconut oil in a pot - this requires 37C, i.e. body heat, and is still considered raw, or uncooked.
  2. Add the honey or syrup and stir till it's all mixed and liquid and remove from heat
  3. Add the vanilla extract
  4. (If using banana, mash it and add to the mix)
  5. Add 30g cocoa first then add the coconut
  6. (Add chia seeds if using)
  7. Stir till it's all combined
  8. Taste the mix too see if it's the right amount of chocolatey. If you want it 'darker' add more cocoa powder till it's right for you. Mix again.
  9. Scoop out onto a tray, or into moulds and refrigerate until it hardens.
  10. Keep cool as it will fall apart if the coconut oil gets too warm.
Thermomix® Instructions
  1. Put the coconut oil in the bowl, and melt 37C/Speed 1/ 20 Seconds (you'll need a bit longer if the weather is cold) Make sure it's melted though, or it won't be liquid enough to hold everything together)
  2. Add the honey or syrup and mix 37C/Speed 1/ 30 Seconds.
  3. Add the vanilla extract
  4. Add 30g cocoa first then add the coconut
  5. Mix speed 2/ 15 seconds
  6. Taste the mix too see if it's the right amount of chocolatey. If you want it 'darker' add more cocoa powder till it's right for you. Mix again speed 2/15 seconds.
  7. Scoop out onto a tray, or into moulds and refrigerate until it hardens.
  8. Keep cool as it will fall apart if the coconut oil gets too warm.

 

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Honey Cookies

Honey Cookies

It’s national Winnie The Pooh day on Monday the 18th of January and we love Winnie the Pooh in this house. We’ve visited the real 100 Acre Woods and we’ve had a Winnie The Pooh birthday party and my kids have been playing Pooh Sticks since they could stand up straight, so really it’s only obvious that we’d have to do something to celebrate Winnie the Pooh’s special day!Honey Cookies

I’ve made this recipe a few times, because they’re honey cookies, and bears love honey! And so do my children. They are really tasty on their own, but my little ones love them with chocolate chips on top and my personal favourite is with glacé cherries on top. It’s just deliciousness all round.Honey Cookies

The original recipe from the 1979 The Pooh Cook Book You suggests you can top it with almond slivers. I’ve reduced the sugar too, with no ill effect, though that’s probably because we eat them before they can go stale, which is what the sugar helps slow down.

Honey Cookies
 
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Serves: 40 cookies
Ingredients
  • 230g self raising flour
  • pinch of salt
  • 115g salted butter
  • 80g brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 45g honey
  • 1 tsp vanilla essence
  • almonds (optional)
  • choc chips (optional)
  • glacé cherries (optional)
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F
  2. Add flour, salt, butter, sugar, egg, honey and vanilla essence to the food processor and mix till it's all well combined (Thermomix®: speed 5/30 seconds)
  3. On a well floured surface, and with well floured hands, shape balls the size of large marbles and space them out evenly on a tray. They will expand in the oven.
  4. With your finger make a dent in each ball and fill it with the optional extras or leave it as is
  5. Place in the oven and bake for 13 - 15 minutes depending on your oven
  6. They will still be really soft when they come out the oven, so leave them to cool entirely before transferring to a biscuit tin

Isn’t it funny

How a bear likes honey

Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!

I wonder why he does

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Honey Rosemary Twist Bread

Honey Rosemary Twist BreadI was watching a show on TV where the chef made a bread very similar to my usual bread recipe, but instead of olive oil, she added seed oil, and then added a lot of nuts. and seeds. I have a very good seedbread recipe, so I wasn’t overly desperate to try a new one, but when she added honey I remembered the honey and rosemary bread that a Thermomix® demonstrator in Australia had made for us, and I suddenly thought I had to try something similar combining the two ideas into one bread. Here is the very delicious result of that experiment.

Honey Rosemary Twist Bread
 
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Serves: 4
Ingredients
  • 650g strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 7g sachet or two teaspoons of fast action dried yeast
  • 4 teaspoons of honey
  • 1 tbsp sesame oil
  • 3 - 4 tbsp chopped rosemary
  • 350g (1.5 cups) warm water
Instructions
  1. Add everything to your bowl in the order mentioned.
  2. In the Thermomix®, mix for 20 seconds, then knead for 3 minutes.
  3. If you're using a different processor or kneading by hand, you need to knead it until it is firm and springy, about 10 minutes (i.e. if you dent it with your finger, it should spring back to cover the dent)
  4. Divide the dough into three, and roll out each ball into a long strip.
  5. Twist each strip into a twisty rope, then put all three together and twist again into one big twist.
  6. Place on your baking tray - I use a gorgeous Pampered Chef stone bake tray which is perfect for breads - in a circle.
  7. Cover for 30 minutes to let it rise.
  8. Switch on the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6 now and place the bread inside, letting it cook for 20 minutes as the oven heats up and reaches temperature.
  9. The loaf is cooked when it sounds hollow when tapped underneath. If not, then give it another five minutes or so in the oven.
  10. Once ready remove from the oven and serve with salad. It also goes really well with red meat or roasted butternut soup, or anything that goes well with rosemary.