
Our household tends to have a few extra brown bananas this time of year thanks to those warm summer afternoons. I used to keep those bananas in the freezer to make my mum's banana bread recipe but unfortunately my stomach can no longer tolerate her yum bread. Over the past few months I've been working with a great local nutritionist to get down to the root of my health issues. Turns out that my body just cannot process most gluten and dairy products.
Queue Slim Palates (found via Pinterest) amazing gluten and dairy free banana bread recipe. I've always been a bit skeptical of gluten and dairy free baking recipes as they can tend to be quite dense and flavourless - not this one!
This banana bread recipe tastes just like the real deal and best of all - doesn't cause me any discomfort - win win. Below is my version of Slim Palate's recipe but you can see his original version here.

Image from Ambitious Kitchen
I have a confession to make - I haven't baked in close to a year. With cutting most sugar out of our lives and being sensitive to dairy and gluten it just makes life way easier. But! We had some bananas that needed using and with the weather changing my heart couldn't help but want to turn them into delicious baked goodness vs frozen smoothie healthiness. Usually I would make my mom's banana bread but with no butter or milk in the house I decided on oatmeal breakfast cookies. These cookies are super easy to make and relatively healthy! Plus they only take around 15 minutes to make and are about 60 calories per cookie (depending add ons), win win!The recipe (if you want to even call it a recipe) is simple 2 mashed bananas plus 2 cups oats. Then for fun flavour you can add in basically anything you want!
I personally made 2 batches as we had 4 bananas.
Batch 1 had: banans, oats, peanut butter, pumpkin pie spice mix, cinnamon, salt.
Batch 2 had: bananas, oats, almond milk, sultanas, chocolate chips, nutmeg, spiced cake mix, salt.
INSTRUCTIONS
Have that sweet tooth craving at night but don't want to load up on sugar and carbs? Yup, same here!
My Mr. has come up with a super delicious, easy, and healthy alternative.
Ingredients: (yields 2 servings)
1 banana 2 cups of frozen berries 2 scoops of chocolate protein powder (can be substituted for Complan or alternatives) a dash of probiotic yogurt Simply combine all items in your hand mixer (I'm sure a blender will work just as well) until berries are blended and all ingredients have a smooth consistency. For presentation and a bit of texture, sprinkle frozen black currents (full of antioxidants, Vit C, and fiber!) Enjoy!
Happy Friday everyone! Hope you've had a great week, I personally have been struggling come back from holiday and getting into work mode. With the Gift Fair coming up in only six weeks, it's time to stop dilly dallying and really get cracking! There are a few new products and designs in the works and all will be revealed in the weeks to come! In the mean time, stay tuned here and our other social media outlets. This Sunday we'll be at the Matakana Market - a perfect school holidays activity! The market has amazing food, atmosphere, and vendors. If you come on by please do make sure to introduce yourself! Also incase you missed it, earlier in the week we shared a super delicious recipe for some Chocolate Chip Cookie bites! The recipe contains no flour, eggs, sugar, oil or butter - so really they're guilt free cookies! Have a great weekend everyone!
Tonight I tried a new cookie recipe - and let me tell you - yum! When I read this recipe and it said that it contains no flour, sugar, oil, butter, or eggs I had my suspicions but they just looked so good. So straight after work I made my way to the supermarket buying the missing ingredients. Prep-time took approximately 10 minutes and with bake time only being an additional 10-15 minutes, these cookies are perfect for midweek baking. Enjoy!
Ingredients: 1 1/4 cups canned* chickpeas, well-rinsed and patted dry with a paper towel 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons (165 grams) natural peanut butter (I used 100% pure nutz) 1/4 cup (80 grams) honey (I added a bit more due to peanut butter being quite dry) 1 teaspoon baking powder a pinch of salt (if your peanut butter doesn’t have salt in it) 1/2 cup (90 grams) chocolate chips * My can was a 390 gram can and used 2 full cans ** I added in a bit of cinnamon for extra flavour** Directions: Preheat your oven to 350°F / 175°C. Combine all the ingredients, except for the chocolate chips, in a food processor and process until very smooth. Make sure to scrape the sides and the top to get the little chunks of chickpeas and process again until they’re combined. Put in the chocolate chips and stir it if you can, or pulse it once or twice. The mixture will be very thick and sticky. With wet hands, form into 1 1/2? balls. Place onto a piece of parchment paper. If you want them to look more like normal cookies, press down slightly on the balls. They don’t do much rising. Bake for about 10-15 minutes. Yields about fourteen cookie dough balls.
Holy smokes I can't believe Friday is here yet at the same time I welcome it with big open arms! We've been burning the midnight oil around here the last few weeks gearing up for the big NZ Gift & Homeware Fair - our first big trade fair! We're also super excited to announce that we will be exhibiting two new products at the fair...but unfortunately we are keeping mute until then (I know, the suspense is killing us too!). We had the great honour this week to be featured on the Baby Life Online Magazine - Oodles of Delight at Toodles Noodles! Such a fantastic surprise! Lastly, if you're looking to purchase some items from us in person, we'll be at Ponsonby Central Markets again this Sunday from 10am - 3pm. Hope to see some of you there!