Mistake Cake (or Everything-But-the-Kitchen-Sink Breakfast Cake)

This morning my girls (very adorably) demanded pancakes for breakfast. So I took out my trusty pancake recipe and started mixing.

Problem. I used baking SODA instead of baking POWDER. But then, I added the baking powder, and, oh my goodness… I tried one pancake and it didn’t work. It just fell apart all over the place. It also tasted like baking soda. Blech!

Here’s something you probably already know about me by reading my posts; I can’t waste anything – especially food. So I tried to salvage it. I thought it probably wouldn’t work, but I had already messed it up, so what the heck, right? To my left was a baggie of ready-made oatmeal – my version of the instant packages. It had oats and raisins, some sea salt, and cinnamon/nutmeg. I keep these made up and ready for my husband to grab in the mornings. All he has to do is add a cup of water to quickly make a healthy breakfast for the girls. I poured that in the mix. Then I wanted something else. I couldn’t put my finger on it! Looking in the fridge I saw some apple butter looking kinda lonely. I chucked it in, stirred it up, and hoped for the best.

40 Minutes later…

Well, hey, it worked! I made a beautiful little breakfast cake! It’s also pretty healthy. Yay!

Without further adieu…

Mistake Cake (or Everything-But-the-Kitchen-Sink Breakfast Cake)

Ingredients:

2 Cup spelt flour

1 Cup rolled oats

2-4 Tblsp coconut sugar (depending on your sweetness preference)

1 tsp nutmeg and/or cinnamon

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp sea salt

2 Cup whole milk

1 Cup applesauce (I used apple butter!)

4 Tblsp melted butter

2 Tblsp melted coconut oil

2 large eggs

1 Cup raisins or other favorite dried fruit (optional)

Directions:

Mix everything together however you want with a mixer. It doesn’t really matter what order because I totally “invented” this by messing it up. Pour into a well-greased pan.* Bake at 350 degrees F for 30-40 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

Mine was an oval pan. You can use this handy conversion chart to check the time for your pan. The chart works well for this cake. Want to make a heart-shaped Mistake Cake? Go for it! 

Have fun!

Love, Veronica

Clean Eating Breakfast Cake – “Healthified”

I gave away my white sugar.

I did. It was hard. A good pound or more of it just walked out my door one day. I told my friend, “I just can’t justify feeding it to my family anymore.” She could, which was fine for me because I didn’t have to waste it.

Lately, I have been on this amazing food journey. Every step I take I discover something new about what I can do to really FEED my family. Food is more than just food. There are nutrients and anti-nutrients, probiotics, good sugars and bad sugars, good fats and bad fats. We’re not being told the real story. The good fats are actually those we have been told to avoid! Saturated fats are good! Mind. Blown.

Cue whole milk (pastured and raw if you can get it!), butter, ghee, lard, coconut oil, FAT. It’s not all bad. Of course, everything in moderation, but I want you to know, it’s ok to put butter on your veggies. In fact, it’s encouraged. Because that little bit of fat helps your body utilize many of those vitamins you’re eating.

This whole journey started with the purchase of one book. Nourishing Traditions. I recommend it to anyone who wants to be healthier, happier, and really eat well. Then I started fermenting. First sauerkraut, then pomegranate “soda”, then dilly pickled carrots… All these have helpful, tummy healing, brain boosting probiotics.

Then the sugar. So, goodbye refined, white, bleached sugar. Hello sucanat, honey, maple syrup, coconut (palm) sugar.

And this is where we get to cake. Breakfast cake.

I found a recipe that called for 2 cups! of sugar… for a breakfast or coffee cake! (Aside: You’ll have to excuse me. As a Mormon, I don’t drink coffee, so calling this a coffee cake seems odd to me. We call it breakfast cake around here.)

It called for brown sugar; but brown sugar is really white (refined) sugar with molasses added to it. You can bet that molasses probably isn’t organic either. But, here’s a cool fact about coconut sugar: It tastes like brown sugar! Score!

The recipe I read originally called for refined (not clean) brown sugar, oleo (yuck!), refined flour, and some other ingredients that weren’t so bad. But I knew I could replace those bad ones. So, without further adieu… the recipe.

Clean Eating Breakfast Cake

Ingredients:

2 cups coconut palm sugar or sucanat

1 cup coconut oil (or butter, or a mixture of the two)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3 cups unbleached flour (I prefer spelt flour and grind my own. But einkorn or emmer are also good. Read why here and here.)

1 cup of sour milk or buttermilk (Good way to use up your milk if it sours! Keep in mind, raw milk sours beautifully over time. Pasteurized milk rots. Don’t make the mistake of using rotten pasteurized milk!)

1 teaspoon baking soda

Method: Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Mix sugar, flour and cinnamon together. Then mix coconut oil/butter in with your hands until mixture resembles crumbly sand. Reserve one cup for topping. Stir baking soda into sour milk/buttermilk. Add to flour/sugar/oil mixture. Stir to combine. Pour into greased 13×9  pan, and sprinkle with topping. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Serve warm (or that evening with ice cream!).

The changes I made were 1:1. Everything came out perfectly. My family devoured this recipe. And I know that it was much healthier than it was in 1962 when sweet “Mrs. McCarter” wrote it in a small-town cookbook. I hope you enjoy it. Please comment and let me know what your favorite recipe was that you “healthified” or cleaned up.

Happy (clean) eating!

~Veronica

Curried Butternut Squash Soup with Coconut Creme

Soup warms the soul. It’s just what I need when the weather starts to change, as fall starts to creep back. It’s crunching leaves, crisp breezes, and harvest.

I needed a recipe for the tons of butternut squash I just processed. Soup called to me, and this was the one! I just sort of threw things together, tasting as I went. This is the recipe I ended up with, loosely based on a recipe I once made long ago (but I can’t remember who to give credit to). It’s sweet and savory, smooth and satisfying. Enjoy!

Curried Butternut Squash Soup with Coconut Creme

Soup Ingredients:

1 butternut squash, seeded, cooked, and mashed – without skins

1 onion, chopped

1 – 2 apples, peeled, cored and chopped

1 tablespoon coconut/olive oil

2-4 cups chicken broth (preferably homemade)

up to 1 teaspoon curry powder

sea salt and pepper to taste

Coconut Creme Ingredients:

1/2 can of organic coconut milk (I use this one*)

1/2 cup vanilla or plain yogurt

Method:

Soup: Cook butternut squash by preferred method. Scoop squash meat out of skins, mash and set aside. In a large pot, heat oil on medium heat. Add onions and apples and cook for 1 minute. Add chicken broth. Cook, stirring occasionally, until apples and onions are soft. Add curry powder and butternut squash puree. Cook for another 5 minutes to blend flavors. Blend the soup with an immersion hand blender or in batches in a conventional blender. add sea salt and pepper to taste. Serve warm with toppings.

Coconut Creme: Hand mix or blend coconut milk and yogurt together. Drizzle over warm soup to bring this delicious dish to the next level!

Optional additional toppings: Roasted nuts (walnuts pictured), toasted coconut flakes, chives (pictured), seasoned croutons or chunks of hearty (slightly) stale bread, fried shallots or leeks, pumpkin seeds or pine nuts, shredded apple… anything that offers this smooth soup a bit of a crunch will help with the texture.

*I receive no compensation for sharing links to products or pages. I just want to help you know what to look for when you’re out shopping, especially in this instance. Coconut milk also comes in a carton. What I used here is a canned coconut milk. It’s thicker and tastes a bit less sweet.

I hope you enjoy this delicious soup. Let us know what you topped yours with!

~Veronica

Kid-Pleasin’ Zucchini Apple Muffins

It’s that year again! Tis’ the harvest season. And, though I’m sure this happens everywhere, there is a joke in the Mormon community, “You might be a Mormon if you have to lock your car in the church parking lot to keep it from being filled with zucchini, tomatoes, and eggplants.” It’s a total knee-slapper, right? Yuk yuk.

Well, the point is, whether you are overrun with zucchini or are looking at the one on your counter wondering if you can choke down any more zucchini bread, having another recipe up your sleeve can come in handy! This recipe also makes a delicious addition to your toddler food repertoire.

Here’s why, two reasons:

• Fiber – Keep the skin on (only if you know your zucchini are organic!) and you’ve got lots of hidden fiber.
• Vitamin A – Zucchinis are high in this vitamin that is important for eye health and immune function.

I was happy to see my kids (4-years old and 20-months old) chowing down on these healthy snacks. We even had some for breakfast one day.

And when I shredded the zucchini for this recipe, I just shredded all the zucchini I had on hand in my food processor, used what I needed, then froze the rest in 2 cup allotments for next time. I tracked down the original recipe here.

And now, without further adieu. The recipe for these delicious muffins.

Zucchini Apple Muffins

Makes 18 large muffins

• 2 cups flour or flour substitute (for gluten-free)
• 1 cup brown sugar (Try sucanat as a cleaner substitute. it has a mild brown sugar flavor.)
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp. ginger
• 1/8 tsp. allspice
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 1 medium apple, skinned, cored, and grated
• 3 eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce
• 1/2 cup oil (y’all know I use coconut)

Method:

Mix the flour, sugar, spices, and salt in a large bowl. Add the shredded zucchini and apple In a separate bowl, mix the wet ingredients. Add this mixture to the rest and stir until just combined. Spoon the batter into lightly greased or paper-lined muffin tins. Fill them almost to the top. Bake on 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Pull them out when a toothpick comes out clean. (Tip: No toothpicks? Use a piece of dry pasta!)

These freeze amazingly!

You won’t be disappointed in these moist, flavorful, healthy muffins. Thanks to Try It You Might Like It for the recipe I ended up seeing in Parenting.com!

~Veronica

Clean Your Oven Naturally and Cheaply

Author: Veronica Hilliard

“I have sporadic OCD cleaning moments around the house. But then I get lazy and I’m cured. It’s a very inconsistent personality trait.” —Chris Hemsworth

Yep. That’s me. Sporadic OCD. I have one day or one week where I get a wild hair (well, in my case it’s always wild!) and I feel the need to CLEAN ALL THE THINGS!

That happened today. I had a good friend and her boys over for pizza dinner tonight. She doesn’t care that I’m not the best housekeeper (love her for it!) but it was good reason to do a deeper clean than I normally do. I managed to focus my lasers on the oven that I mentioned in this post. It’s been smoking me out for long enough. Want to know how I cleaned it?

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My secret cleaning weapon for almost every situation is baking soda and vinegar. Together or apart they are just about all you need. I mix half vinegar and half water and 5-10 drops of my favorite essential oil in a spray bottle for sanitizing and cutting through grease.

I keep a little jar of baking soda in just about every room and I buy it in bulk at Sams.

A quick sprinkle of baking soda.

Spray vinegar and it’ll start to bubble. Yep, just like the crazy science class volcano.

You’ll still have to apply a little strategic elbow grease. Can’t get out of it that easily.

And Tadaa!! You have a (mostly) clean oven and no harmful chemicals. Come on… that’s where you put your FOOD! Don’t you want to clean it with something you could technically eat? Yeah, me too.

I was really glad to have a clean oven to cook my pizza in. Want a super duper and easy pizza recipe? Here’s mine. I let my bread machine do all the work. Easy!