Friday, July 31, 2015

Vanilla Coconut Butter Bites

This recipe is dangerous. It's so easy, and the melt in your mouth taste is delicious! I made a batch of these and they lasted two days, which was a miracle. We had to hold ourselves back.

If you'd like it sweeter, you can add more honey, but the 1/4 cup was perfect and this ended up making 12 bites -- 1 teaspoon of honey per bite!

Ingredients
1) 1 cup of coconut butter (aka coconut cream concentrate)
2) 1/4 cup honey
3) 2 teaspoons vanilla
4) 1/3 cup shredded coconut

Instructions
1) Prepare your coconut butter (you can grind your own by adding shredded coconut to a food processor and blending for about 20 minutes, until smooth like peanut butter or use Tropical Traditions Coconut Cream Concentrate like I did, and warm until it's the consistency of peanut butter).
2) Add 1 cup of your coconut butter to a bowl, along with 1/4 cup honey and 2 teaspoons of good quality vanilla. Mix until well blended. It will thicken more as you stir it more, so keep blending until it's thick like soft serve ice cream.
3) Spread your shredded coconut onto a plate.
4) Using a small cookie scoop or a tablespoon, scoop your coconut mixture into the shredded coconut, and roll until completely covered. Place on a separate plate.
5) Continue to scoop until you run out of mixture---mine made 12 using the smallest of my cookie scoopers.
6) Place in the fridge to harden, at least 20 minutes. Store in the fridge for best results. Enjoy!

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Plantain-Crust Taco Pizza

I just recently discovered that you could make an excellent crust out of plantains. I haven't really cooked with plantains often, but had bought some at the store the other day and wasn't sure what I would do with them. So I blended them up with some eggs and coconut, and baked it to see if it would solidify---and it did! This worked out great. Get creative and add whatever toppings you want!

Ingredients
1) 3 medium-ripe large plantains (about 1 pound)
2) 2 eggs
3) 1/2 cup shredded coconut
Your pizza toppings -- mine included guacamole, ground beef, salsa and tomatoes.

Instructions
1) Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
2) Peel and roughly chop your plantains. Add to a food processor or blender, plus your eggs and coconut.
3) Puree until smooth. It will take a few minutes.
4) Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper. Then pour your plantain mixture on and even spread it out, about 1/4-1/3 inch thick.
5) Bake for 14-16 minutes.
6) While your pizza crust is baking, we browned up ground beef in a large skillet. Once that was cooked, we drained most of the grease and added salsa until slightly moist.
7) Once your pizza crust is done, it will just be starting to brown on the very outside. Remove from the oven.
8) We topped ours with two packs of 100-calorie Wholly Guacamole, as the sauce for the pizza. Then we topped with our ground beef/salsa mixture, and added tomatoes on top. Lettuce would also have been great on top, or you can add cheese if you tolerate dairy.