HEALTHY COOKIES

The words cookie and healthy are not usually synonymous with each other but this little number is about to change all that. These cookies taste so sweet and full of flavour you'll never guess they're flour free, oil free, dairy free, gluten free aand refined sugar free! 

They're the easiest, quickest things to bake and can be made with ingredients your bound to have in stock, they don't even require any baking powder. So what's in these magic cookies I hear you ask?

Ingredients (Makes 12):

- 2 cups gluten free oats

- 2 ripe bananas 

- 2 tbsp almond butter

- 2 tbsp shredded coconut 

- 1/2 cup of cacao nibs 

- 1 tbsp agave syrup

Instructions:

1.) Preheat the oven to 170c. 

2.) Mash the bananas then mix in the other ingredients. 

3.) Line a baking tray with parchment, scoop out the mixture a bit at a time and round off into cookie shapes with your hands, spread the mixture evenly between 12 cookies. 

4.) Bake for 15-20mins or until golden brown.

Here I've served mine with some homemade almond milk, made using my Omega juicer. They also make a delicious dessert served with banana nice cream. 

COOKIE CAKES

I'm calling these cookie cakes as they're a bit of a spongey/crispy hybrid, perfect for when you can't decide whether you fancy a cookie or a cake, well now you can have both!

The recipe for these can be found here, I used a muffin tin to bake them so it would give me a deep cakey cookie but you can just use a flat baking tray if you'd prefer. Otherwise I kept the recipe pretty much the same, the only addition I made was a 1/2 cup of walnuts (having found these are rich in Omega-3 I'm trying to amp up my intake!) I also opted for soya margarine rather than oil and added an extra 3/4 cup of almond milk to give them a spongey cake texture rather than a crisp cookie one. 

I love that the recipe is measured in cups, it's so simple to follow and means you can't really get it wrong, which means the quicker it's ready and in my belly!

Using a spatula for this part really helps get it all in as the mixture is quite sticky!

They will never come out brown so take them out when they are lightly golden, you don't want to burn them! I cooked my cookies in a preheated oven for 14mins at 180C.

I couldn't wait to tuck in, the perfect partner in crime for a cuppa tea! 

CAT & THE CREAM

On this dreary drizzly day, when all you want to do is tuck up at home with a cuppa tea, a good book and something naughty to nibble at I thought I'd share with you my favourite Vegan cake by a company called Cat & The Cream. My life became complete when a Wholefoods recently opened up nearby me, being a vegan it just makes food shopping a whole lot easier (and pricier!) but I've always thought it's important to spend your money where it matters i.e nutrition, health, wellbeing etc.

Ok so the cake isn't nutritious or healthy but it definitely makes me happy so that counts as wellbeing right?! So far I've tried the Banana, Cashew and Peanut Butter which was pretty amazing but my fav flavour has to be the Banana, Walnut & Choc Chip with Butterscotch Icing (drool). They are very rich and highly calorific at a whopping 509(!) cals per cake, so I often share one of these with my other half or save the rest for another time (literally having your cake and eating it too!), so while they retail at around £2.69 - which is quite pricey for a cupcake, you do get a big portion for your pennies. You can tell a lot of thought has gone into this product as they're so perfectly packaged, at halloween my cupcake even had a cute little dark chocolate ghost on top of it!

These cupcakes are: Vegan, Dairy Free, Wheat Free AND Soya Free, which must be quite a task to achieve. I really appreciate when food companies don't automatically use soya, as vegan products are often full of it!

Another great vegan cake company based at the Greenwich Market in London is Ruby Tuesdays, I bought my boyfriend a birthday cake from her stall this year and it tasted just like a real chocolate cake, my non-vegan/vegetarian relatives couldn't even taste the difference! They also offer a variety of completely vegan baked goods such as: banana bread, biscuits, brownies and even donuts(!). Their pretty little stall is worthy of a post in itself, which reminds me I must pay them a visit again soon...

NUTS FOR BROWNIES

I found this recipe for vegan brownies on the internet a while back and have been wanting to make them ever since but somehow never got round to it. Last night I finally pulled all of the ingredients together and gave it a whirl while the boyfriend was out, as me + baking = lot's of mess in our open plan kitchen.

The photographs really don't do these brownies justice (I'm working on upgrading my camera soon) as these were scrum-diddly-umptious if I do say so myself! The consistency was just right, a key component to making the perfect brownies. For me they've got to be gooey in the middle and slightly harder on the outside with plenty of chocolate so they're nice and moist. I even added my own dairy-free chocolate chips (80g), from Wholefoods and 3 big spoonfuls (or 100g) of organic Whole Earth peanut butter to give it some oomph. 

I was shocked by the measurements as it seemed like a lot and it turned out it was! It gave me so many brownies I don't know what I'm going to do with them all. Safe to say I'll be palming them off on to friends and family all week long. The pics show the big ole slabs I first cut them into but I will be cutting them down to halves or even bitesize chunks, after finding out how gooily rich they are!

Although not the healthiest of recipes we all need a sugar fix now and again and these brownies will certainly do the trick! (to be enjoyed in moderation of course...).