Eggless Wholewheat Pancakes

Happy weekend, everyone!
So for today's breakfast, I decided to try taking eggs out of my pancakes, just for the sake of cutting down the cholestrol and calorie intake a little, (and maybe eat that egg seperately, just saying). The result was better than I imagined.
This is a very easy recipe, simple enough to follow without looking back at your phone/ipad/tablet to double-check its ingredients/procedures every 2 minutes. They're super fluffy and just sweet enough for them not to be too sweet nor too non-sweet, if you know what I mean.

Here it goes.

Ingredients:

1. 1 cup wholewheat flour
2. 1 Tbs sugar substitute
3. 1 Tbs baking powder
4. 1 cup skimmed milk
5. 1 Tbs oil
6. 3 Tbs water
7. 1 tsp cinnamon (optional)

Procedures:

● Mix all the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon) in a small bowl.
● Whisk wet ingredients together, then add them to the dry ones and use a spatula to mix everything well.
● Scarcely oil (or use cooking spray on) a non-stick pan, and use a 1/4 measuring cup to unify the size of your pancakies.
● Flip your pancake when bubbles start forming on the surface.
● Yields about 5-6 small pancakes.
● Serve with fruit, yogurt, applesauce, or melted dark chocolate for a healthy breakfast, snack or dessert.

Please leave me a note if you try it.

xoxoxo

Healthy Red Velvet Wholewheat Pancakes

The weekend is the perfect excuse to have pancakes for breakfast. They are a little celebratory and essy to make, so what's not to like? 
I wanted to add a little twist to this weekend's pancakes, so I thought of adding some red food colouring for a sexy effect. Heck, it did work!
This recipe is a staple in my house, and I like to play around with it every now and then. You can get really creative with its add-ons and decorations.

As usual, excuse the crappy photo.
I sprinkled some strawberry chocolate chips on top, just for the sake of the pic, and Lily ate them as soon as the flash went off!


This recipe yields 4 - 5 small pancakes. You can, of course, double the ingredients to get double the number of pancakes.

Here's what you'll need:

- 1 cup wholewheat flour

- 2 tsp sweetener/honey

- 1/2 tsp baking powder

- 1/4 tsp baking soda

- 1/2 tsp vanilla

- 1/2 tsp cinnamon  (or more)

- 1 egg

- 1 cup milk

- 1 tbs apple cider vinegar

- 2 tbs oil (coconut is lovely here)

- 1/4 red food colouring (or until you get a vibrant red-coloured batter)

- Optional: Raisins/fruit pieces/nuts

Procedures:

1-In a small bowl, combine milk and vinegar, set aside until milk curdles.

2- In another bowl, combine flour, sweetener, baking powder and soda and cinnamon.

3- In a small bowl, whisk the egg, vanilla, oil and curdled milk until well-incorporated.

4- Gradually pour the liquid mix onto the dry mix while whisking slowly.

5- Add your food colouring in small amounts and whisk after every addition until you reach that red velvet colour. Don't over-mix or the pancakes would be tough. The batter should be a little lumpy and bubbly.

6- You can now add whatever you'd like, i.e. raisins/fruit/nuts/dark chocolate chips

7- Lightly brush a nonstick pan/griddle with coconut oil. Heat it over medium heat.

8- Ladle the batter and pour into the pan. I like to keep my pancakes small and even by using a 1/3 measuring cup as a ladle. 

9- They are ready to be flipped oncy tiny bubbles form on the surface.

10- Makes about 4-5 pancakes.

Cheat Dessert: Zebra Cake

Hello lovelies,

Well, it's been a while since I last posted something on the blog. I've been bad! Work and housework combined are not really my cuppa tea. Anyway, I chose something fun, though not very "fit", as a comeback; Zebra Cake. There's nothing special about it except that it has a zebra pattern all through, which makes it pretty self-decorated. It's very impressive and looks like a ton of work. It is kind of a hassle, but very basic and needs absolutely zero skills. I assure you it would be a lovely crowd-pleaser and you'll be asked to do it on birthdays.
I first saw Lorraine Pascale do it, and was blown away. It took me a long time to pluck up the courage and do it, but it was definitely worth it. If you're on a healthy lifestyle like me, it would be a nice monthly or fortnightly treat , if you've got a lot of people around to finish it for you. I repeat, do NOT have your cake and eat it too, by yourself!


I used sugar substitute instead of sugar, but you can definitely use regular sugar. I use IsoSweet, which is an Egyptian fructose aspartame-free sugar substitute. It has two kinds; one for drinks and cold desserts, and another for baking. I used the baking kind here. You can definitely use any equivalent of choice, just make sure it's aspartame-free.
I also used unsweetened cocoa in the recipe, but you're free to use the sweetened kind if you wish, or just increase some sugar.

You'll need:

-2 cups sifted flour
-3 heaping tbs cocoa powder (I used raw unsweetened cocoa)
-1 cup sugar substitute/sugar
-4 eggs
-1/2 cup oil (I used heated coconut oil)
-1/2 cup milk (skimmed)
-1 vanilla sachet (1 tsp vanilla extract)
-1 baking powder sachet (15-16 g)
-1/4 tsp salt

Directions:
- Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
- Using an electric mixer or food processor, beat the eggs with the sugar until sugar is almost dissolved completely.
-Add oil, and continue beating.
- Add milk and salt and continue beating until frothy and pale yellow.
- Take 3 tbs off the four and set aside. Now your 2 cups flour are minus 3 tablespoons.
- Start adding the flour gradually and mixing till all is incorporated in the batter with no visible white streaks.
- Add the baking powder last and mix in using a wooden spoon or a spatula, not the mixer/food processor.
- Now divide the batter into 2 equal parts in two separate bowls. On one half, add the 3 tablespoons of cocoa and mix in with a spatula till well-incorporated in batter.
- On the "white" half, add in the 3 tbs of flour that you set aside. Mix in with a spatula.
- Your cake batters are ready.
- Prepare a 20-cm baking pan by lightly brushing with coconut oil/cooking spray/margarine then lightly sprinkling flour to coat it all, and finally getting rid of excess flour.
- In the center of the pan, carefully add 2 spoonfuls of white batter, then in the center of the white spoonfuls, add 2 spoonfuls of brown batter.
- Keep alternating between the white and the brown batters, 2 spoonfuls of each a time in the center of its previous "blob" till the batter is all done.
- Bake for 20 - 30 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Leave to cool completely before cutting.

My camera was dead, so I only took this terrible pic with my phone. Sorry! I promise it looked much better than this.

Valentine's Day Breakfast

Hi again everyone,

I hope you had the most romantic Valentine's Day ever, even if it was just a nice moment with a loved one, family, or friends.

If you haven't seen my last post, I put up this menu that I so bravely said I'd do on Val's, but I ended up skipping a couple of items due to running out of time.

Here's what I actually did:

Breakfast:

- Eggs in heart baskets

A cliche, but such a cute one! Super easy and looks like you've  done a little magic to put it together.

First of all, you'll need to separate the egg yolks and whites. I did two at a time, so I used 4 bowls to separate 2 eggs to make sure no accidents happen.

I used whole-grain toast for this one, but you're free to use whichever bread you fancy.
(Very) lightly butter 2 slices, and put over medium heat in a non-stick skillet. Once golden brown, take both slices off the skillet, butter the uncooked side of each, then use a heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut a heart out of each. Put both back in skillet with the cut-out hearts, cooked side up. You're now ready to add the eggs.

The key to getting picture-perfect results is to add a little bit of whites first, wait for a few second for it to harden, then add the egg yolk. You can add your seasoning at this point. I used salt, pepper and oregano.
Cover the skillet to help eggs set faster.  Serve immediately.

- Mini heart-shaped sandwiches with pink cheese frosting.

I basically used a heart-shaped cookie cutter, one size smaller than the one used above, to cut hearts out of whole-grain toast, and made light cheddar and salami sandwiches.

To decorate them,I used a plastic icing pipe/syringe (more fool-proof than piping bags) to draw a heart on each sandwich using my pink cheese frosting (light feta cheese mixed with beetroot powder) and a star tip for the icing pipe.


- I-Love-you Breakfast Parfait

 This was the easiest and most beautiful little breakfast dessert.

All you need is:
- 6 strawberries
- 2 low-fat vanilla (or regular yogurt)
- 2 low-fat strawberry yogurt
- 4 light digestive biscuits

1. Chop 5 strawberries, and slice the 6th for garnish.
2. Crumble the biscuits into larger crumbs. Set 2 dashes aside for garnish.
3. Your'e now ready to assemble your parfaits. Start by adding a layer of chopped strawberries, followed by vanilla yogurt, then more strawberries, followed by biscuits, and the last layer would be the strawberry yogurt.
4. Garnish with strawberry slices and biscuit crumbs. Cinnamon would be a nice addition too.
5. To make heart-shaped strawberry slices, cut a tiny triangle off the top of the strawberry, then slice it as you would normally slice a strawberry. Voila!

You'll need To finish it off, I wrote "I Love You xoxoxo" using a permanent marker on the glass for a personalized touch.

Valentine's Day Special

It's been almost a month since I last posted, and it makes me feel horrible. So much has happened since then; my sister's birthday, getting a job as a 5th grade teacher at a reputable school and finally, Lily catching the Rubella virus (German Measles). Talk about busy!

So anyway, I decided to take a break from all the tension (and my terrible flu) and blog about my culinary plans for Valentine's.
As always, I raided Pinterest, Facebook and the whole wide web for ideas and recipes, healthy ones.
I reached the conclusion that, you know what, I don't have to be super healthy on that day. I mean, if I won't splurge on Val's, when would I? (except for my birthday, and any other family birthday, of course!)

Here are my preliminary plans that can change by tomorrow:

Breakfast:

- Eggs in heart baskets
- Mini heart-shaped sandwiches with pink cheese frosting.
- I Love You Breakfast Parfaits

Lunch (This is our main meal of the day, similar to dinner in the US) :

- Tomato Soup
- Lettuce and croutons salad
- Chicken Cordon Bleu
- Penne Green Patitsio

Dessert:

- Pink Velvet Cinnamon Rolls

Dinner: (That's our evening/night meal, similar to supper in the US)

- Mini Pizza Hearts

Recipes to follow. :)

Sugar-free Strawberry Jam

Let me tell you something about me; I adore strawberries. And ever since I've started my lifestyle change, I've been using it as an excuse to eat even more of those sexy hot-red beauties.
I recently came across a jam recipe on Instagram which uses no added sugar and chia seeds. I wasn't lucky enough in my pursuit of chia here in Alexandria, so a good friend of mine suggested flax seeds instead. Bottom line, this is NOT my own recipe, but one I had to try. So here's the simple recipe to a healthy strawberry jam. You can use any kind of berries too, and ,of course, you can replace flax with chia seeds.
Jam away!

Recipe yields about 1/2 cup of jam, so feel free to double ingredients for more quantity. I used 1 tsp of honey because I like my jam tangy, but you can add 1 more if you prefer it sweeter.

Ingredients:
• 1 cup strawberries
• 1 tsp honey/agave/natural maple syrup
• 1 1/2 tsp flax seeds

Directions:
1. Using a food processor, break down the strawberries for 5 seconds on medium speed, just to help them cook faster, but not so mych to reach purée consistency.
2. Into a skillet over medium heat, transfer strawberries and bring to a simmer.
3. Add honey and stir, and bring the
heat down to low.
4. Add flax seeds, stir and leave ro cook for 5 minutes. It should reach the jam consistency with the help of the seeds.
5. Remove it off the heat, leave to cool, and store in a clean air-tight jar for as long as a week in the fridge.
6. Enjoy! :)

Healthy Cookie-dough Lemon Bars

Have you tried lemon desserts yet? If not, start with this healthy lemon bars recipe. It's light, tangy, non-sickeningly sweet like most lemon desserts and is such a guiltless pleasure. I know chocolate is the main go-to dessert for everyone, but it sometimes calls for non-chocolate ones. As I'm not really a cream-dessert kinda gal, I'm more inclined to fruity treats. They are generally a bit lighter than normal desserts, taking most of their sweetness and flavor from all-natural fruits. I've made a Weight Watchers lemon bars recipe before,which I didn't really like, so I decided to pursue my own.
Here is my humble attempt at healthy lemon bars, with a fiber-full crust and a rich lemony topping.
Note: I didn't sprinkle my lemon cubes in the below picture with sugar/coconut. The white surface is just the light froth from beating the lemon.

Ingredients:

Crust:

1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup bran
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup sugar


Lemon Topping:

4 eggs
4 tbsp. honey
2 tbsp. sugar substitute (I use Z Sweet)1/3 cup fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons)
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon lemon zest, grated

Powdered sugar for topping, or shredded coconut (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degree Celsius.
2. Prepare a small baking dish with cooking spray, or 2 overlapping parchment papers for easy removal from the dish.
3. Mix dry ingredients of the crust together. 
4. In a separate bowl, whisk sugar, egg and oil until well combined. 
5. Add dry mix to wet mix and mix until everything is incorporated in the dough.
6. Press the dough into baking dish and bake until golden brown, about 15 minutes.
7. While crust is baking, prepare lemon topping. Beat eggs in a medium bowl. Add sugar, honey, lemon juice, cornstarch, baking powder and lemon zest and stir until well mixed. 
8. Pour egg mixture over baked crust. Return pan to oven and bake for 15 to 20 minutes (do not overbake)
9. Cut into cubes while still warm. Sprinkle powdered sugar/ shredded coconut when cooled. Yields 24 cubes.
10. Serve in room temperature or cold.