Mounds Candy Bars

We will be making these yummy gluten free candy bars for Purim which is coming up this week.  Of course, we also plan on making Hamantaschen as well, which is one of the boys' fave treats.

These mounds bars are easy to make and rich with dark chocolate and a coconut filling consisting of shredded coconut, coconut oil and agave.  My older son downed them and thought they were delicious.  My younger son is not a chocolate lover, so these did not strike his fancy.

Mounds Candy Barsprint friendly recipe
¾ cup dark chocolate 73%
½ cup shredded coconut
¼ cup coconut oil
1 tablespoon agave nectar (if you want a sweeter filling, try 2 tablespoons)

1. Melt chocolate in a small pan over very low heat; you can use a double boiler if you wish and temper the chocolate
2. Using a small paint brush, coat the bottom and sides of a mounds candy mold
3. Place mold in freezer for 10 minutes to allow chocolate to harden
4. In a small bowl, combine shredded coconut, coconut oil and agave
5. Remove mold from freezer
6. Fill chocolate lined molds with coconut mixture
7. Paint chocolate over coconut mixture to cover bars
8. Place in freezer for 10 minutes to harden
9. Remove from freezer, turn mold upside down and pop mounds out of mold
10. Serve

Makes 9 mounds bars (depending on your candy mold)

One of my favorite blogs, Pinch My Salt recently posted Ideas for a Homemade Valentine's Day and included a link back to my favorite Valentine's Day recipes over here at elanaspantry.com.  Thanks!

In book tour news, I will be appearing live on The Zoe Alexander Connection on Blog Talk Radio this Thursday at 11am (MST).  We will have a call in period during the show; if you want to say hello, the call in number is (347) 843-4537. I'll also be appearing on The Jeff Farias Show podcast later that day on March 2nd at 6:30pm (MST).

How-to Roast Almonds

Photo by familyfriendsandfood from Flickr.com

Roasted almonds?  Yes, one of my favorite foods and an important part of my eating plan.

What about my family's eating plan?  Well, my husband is one of the main reasons I cook and bake as religiously as I do; he comes from a family of excellent cooks who love to eat. However, recently, he went on a diet (I had no one to critique my desserts!).  Then he sent me this email:

"Was thinking you might want to do a post on how I have used the Abs Diet to get in shape and that you and I now eat the same; and then link to them and mention that almonds are their #1 food too."

So, there you have it.  Now we eat the same --tons of veggies, protein, some nuts, the occasional piece of fruit.  OK, so our diets are slightly different.  I'm on the Elana Diet and he's on the Abs Diet.  However, we both eat almonds and not a lot of dessert (not even my desserts).

We do enjoy eating fresh roasted almonds and here's how you can make your own to snack on at any time of the day.

Perfectly Roasted Almondsprint friendly recipe
1 pound whole raw almonds
1 teaspoon celtic sea salt

1. Spread the almonds out in two 9 x 13 inch baking dishes
2. Bake at 350° for 10-12 minutes, until a nutty aroma wafts out of the oven
3. Remove almond from oven and sprinkle with salt
4. Cool for 1 hour
5. Serve

I've been roasting a lot of almonds lately.  I explained to my husband that they taste much better purchased raw and roasted fresh at home (rather than purchasing them already roasted).  After one batch of my roasted almonds he was sold!

Almonds are a superfood.  This ultra nutritious nut is high in antioxidants and full of beneficial fats that raise good cholesterol and lower bad cholesterol.  Further, studies have shown that almonds curb hunger.  I think they taste delicious and keep a little jar of them in my car for when I get a snack attack on the road.  Just a few do the trick.

If you love whole almonds for snacking, you may also want to try blanched almond flour.  Honeyville (one of my favorite brands) is running a special right now until Tuesday, February 23 6pm (PST). Just enter coupon code PRESIDENT during checkout to receive 10% off your entire order. Their almond flour is of very high quality and I have had good experience with their customer service.

I'm really happy to introduce a super fun and captivating new site called Lilian's Test Kitchen.  Check out Lillian baking my gluten free coconut flour carrot muffins in this video.

The winner of last weeks Friday Freebie, a the half pound of Chardonnay Grapeseed Flour from AprèsVin, is @jenleitch!

Have a great weekend everyone.

Cabernet Cookies

I'm still on my grape seed flour kick and made these yummy Cabernet Cookies the other day which were "all gone" quite quickly.  If you like the combination of red wine and chocolate, be sure to give these treats a try.

Grape seed flour is full of antioxidants, fiber and protein and adds a nice flavor and texture to baked goods.  I'm loving experimenting with it these days.  One more super food to add to the repertoire.

Cabernet Cookiesprint friendly recipe
1 ¼ cups blanched almond flour
¼ teaspoon celtic sea salt
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ cup grapeseed oil
¼ cup agave nectar
¼ cup Cabernet Sauvignon Grape Seed Flour
¼ cup dark chocolate 73%

1. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl
2. Stir together wet ingredients in a smaller bowl
3. Mix wet ingredients into dry
4. Form ½ inch balls and press onto a parchment lined baking sheet
5. Bake at 350° for 7-10 minutes
6. Cool and serve

Makes about a dozen cookies

I was thrilled to find that Alltop, an RSS aggregator, recently added elanaspantry.com to both their food and recipe pages.  Head on over and take a look at Alltop for some other fun bloggers you can follow.  And I was super psyched to see that the author of one of my favorite sites, Small Notebook decided that The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook is her absolute favorite cookbook.  Way cool!

In other news, Tina Turbin from Glutenfreehelp.info will be interviewing the awesome Dr. Peter H. R. Green, MD on the Thrive In Balance Internet radio show on Friday, February 19th at 4 pm EST.

Don't forget about last weeks Friday Freebie Giveaway. All you need to do is RETWEET the Chardonnay Grapeseed Flour Chocolate Chip Cookies to be entered to win a half pound of Chardonnay Grapeseed Flour from AprèsVin. I will announce the winner this Friday.

Oh and if you're a regular Tweeter, don't forget to keep the grape seed flour momentum going by retweeting this recipe as well!

Grapeseed Flour?

These yummy little protein-a-licious cookies are the result of a complimentary sample of Chardonnay Grapeseed Flour that I received from Eric Leber of AprèsVin.  Grapeseed flour?  Yes, you heard it right, grapeseed flour.

While these treats look like they are double chocolate chip cookies, they actually are not.  It is high protein, antioxidant rich grapeseed flour that gives them their nice dark color.  And yes, grapeseed flour comes in different flavors.  This chardonnay grapeseed flour has a buttery taste and graham cracker type texture --I think it makes the cookies a little bit chewier and drier, though they're still very moist and I really like them.

For today's Friday Freebie I am giving away a half pound of Chardonnay Grapeseed Flour from AprèsVin so if you win, you can try your own little experiment.  Just retweet this post and you will automatically be entered to win this amazing flour.

The Boulder International Film Festival (BIFF) is happening this weekend and I am attempting to make it to a couple of the movies.  I'm particularly interested in a film called Under Rich Earth about farmers in the Intag valley of Ecuador taking on a powerful multi-national mining corperation called Copper Mesa. I'm also intrigued by another film about activism, dance and movement called Breath Made Visible.

I was hoping to take the boys to these movies however, however I think they're just a tad too sophisticated for my children.  We're still at the point where I pre-screen everything they watch and each of these films is showing only once this weekend, if I am correct about the BIFF schedule, so I'll be going sans the little ones unfortunately.

I hope everyone has a great weekend and Happy Valentine's Day!

Magically Moist Cherry Apricot Cake

My husband loves this simple, moist gluten free Cherry Apricot Cake. I make sure to use organic dried fruit in this dessert since pesticides levels tend to be high in conventional cherries and apricots and more concentrated in dried fruits. I often purchase my organic dried fruit at the local health food store, Vitamin Cottage; for more “hard to find” ingredients such as organic dried cherries (sans added sugar) one of my favorite sources is an online company called The Raw Choice.

Cherry Apricot Cakeprint friendly recipe
2 cups blanched almond flour
½ teaspoon celtic sea salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ cup agave nectar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
⅓ cup dried pitted cherries
⅓ cup dried apricots, sliced into quarters

1. In a large bowl, combine almond flour, salt and baking soda
2. In a smaller bowl, combine agave, eggs and vanilla
3. Stir wet ingredients into dry
4. Gently mix in cherries and apricots
5. Pour batter into an 8 by 8 baking dish
6. Bake at 325° for 30-40 minutes, until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean
7. Cool and serve

Serves 8

It's cold here and I've been getting a lot of exercise shoveling snow and chipping ice off the sidewalk in front of our house.  The boys and I had a great time yesterday walking around the neighborhood for an hour in the snow.  Today is bright and sunny --might be time to go out for a quick walk!