Pumpkin Chocolate Almond Wholewheat Bread

Adapted from Sally's Baking Recipes:

https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/pumpkin-chocolate-chip-bread/#tasty-recipes-66409

 

Ingredients:

1. 55g Olands wholewheat flour (25% of total flour weight)

2. 165g wheat flour

3. 1 tsp baking soda

4. 2 tsp cinnamon powder

5. 1/2 tsp nutmeg powder

6. 1/2 tsp cardamon powder

7. A dash of salt

8. 2 eggs 

9. 30g sugar

10. 50g brown sugar (total 80g sugar 36% of total flour weight)

11. 340g pumpkin puree

12. 120g vegetable oil (I use sesame oil) (54% of total flour weight)

13. 30g orange juice

14. 50g chocolate chips

15. A handful of almonds unchopped 

Pumpkin Puree:

1. 1/2 Hokkaido or Crown Prince pumpkin seeds removed

2. 8 dried dates pitted

3. 30g skimmed fresh milk

Directions:

Pumpkin Puree:

1. Bake 1/2 pumpkin at 170 degree C for 30 minutes or until soft.

2. Add 30g fresh milk, 8 pitted date and blend in a food processor until creamy and set aside to cool down.

Pumpkin Bread:

1. In a mixing bowl, add 55g Olands wholewheat flour, 165g flour, 2 teaspoons cinnamon powder, 1/2 tsp nutmeg powder, 1/2 teaspoon cardamon powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, a dash of salt and mix well.

2. In another mixing bowl, add 2 eggs, 30g sugar and 50g brown sugar and mix well. Add 340g pumpkin puree, 120g vegetable oil and 30g orange juice and mix well.

3. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and gently mix well.

4. Gently fold in the chocolate chips and almonds.

5. Grease a bread pan with oil on all side and the bottom.

6. Pour the bread mixture into the bread pan.

7. Bake at 175 degree C for an hour, checking for doneness by inserting a tooth pick after it has been baking for 55 mins. If the tooth pick comes out clean, it means the bread is done. Take it out of the oven.

8. Let the bread cool down first before cutting and serving.

Additional Information:

I am trying to find out what can I make with my pumpkin puree and found this wonderful recipe!!!

I used Crown Prince pumpkin to make the pumpkin puree. I reduced the sugar from 250g to 80g (37% of total flour weight). I substituted the original recipe plain flour with 25% of Olands wholewheat flour. I reduce the chocolate chips from 120g to 50g and used dark chocolate chips. I added almonds. I use neutral sesame oil for this batch and it turned out great. I omitted ginger powder and clove powder as I didn't have them. Daddy FECS and C really liked it. We made this for Halloween tomorrow. We don't celebrate Halloween, but will be having family fun time instead.

References:

https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/pumpkin-chocolate-chip-bread/

Homemade Berry-Fruit Yogurt Bowl

Serves 1

Ingredients:
1. 1 banana
2. A handful of fresh or frozen raspberries or a mixture of different berries

3. 100 ml natural yogurt

4. 1 tsp nut butter (optional)

5. 1 dried date pitted (optional, if you want to make it super-duper sweet :-))

Toppings:

1. 1 chopped strawberry (optional)

2. 1 handful of nuts and/or seeds (I use sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds here)
3. A handful of chocolate chips (I use a mixture of milk chocolate, white chocolate and raspberries chocolate)4. A handful of muesli.

Directions
1. Add all ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth.
2. Sprinkle with mixed seeds and raisins and serve :-)

Additional Information:

This week the children are hooked on yogurt bowls - how our breakfast rotation goes!!!

This berry-fruit yogurt bowl takes less than 10 minutes to make 3 bowls (including chopping up 1-2 strawberries) or 5 minutes to make 1 bowl, and is a healthy, tasty and nutrients power-packed breakfast filled with antioxidants, protein, good fat and good bacteria from the natural yogurt acidophilus. This is also one of the cheapest natural yogurt from the Danish supermarket and it is organic. 

Adding banana as the natural sweetener and adding the berries, and viola, it turns to a yummy fruit yogurt, minus all the preservative from the store-bought ready made fruit yogurt. You can substitute the berries with any of your preferred fruit.

To make 3 servings, we use:

Ingredients:
1. 2 bananas
2. Handful of 100g raspberries or a mixture of different berries

3. 200 ml natural yogurt

4. 1 heap tsp nut butter (optional)

5. 3 dried dates pitted (optional, if you want to make it super sweet :-))

We try not to buy store-bought fruit yogurt as much as possible. They look very attractive to kids, but they are full of processed ingredients, chemicals and preservatives. 

Do not be fooled by the ingredient called "Naturlig aroma."

Naturlig aroma, for example, is a processed ingredient: A natural flavoring substance is a flavoring substance that has been produced by suitable physical, enzymatic or microbiological processes from vegetable, animal or microbiological material, either in its original form or processed. A much better flavoring is to add real fruits into the yogurt ourselves.

If we absolutely needs to buy store-bought fruit yogurt due to lack of time, then the product below is one of the best ones:

Here is how to make the homemade fruit yogurt:

Here are the ingredients.

This is the yogurt we use. It is organic, natural with only 0.4% fat, and one of the cheapest in the Danish supermarkets.

Blend everything together in a blender.

Add the desired toppings and ready to serve :-)

Rainbow Fruit Popsicle

Ingredients:

For each of the popsicle, add:

1. 2 TBS of blended strawberries sweetened with honey
2. 2 TBS of freshly pressed orange juice
3. 2 TBS of blended pineapple
4. 2 TBS of blended kiwi sweetened with honey
5. 2 TBS of blueberries sweetened with honey

Directions:

1. Freeze and serve :-)

Additional Information:

We got inspired to make this from the cartoon youtube video by Cocomelon, that Baby FECS love to watch, while we are busy working from home, during lockdown due to Coronavirus situation in Denmark:

20 April 2020 (3Y11M4D)

Homemade Orange Soda

Makes 2 small (Rosendahl) glasses or 1 large (Rosendahl) glass

Ingredients:
1. 1 orange juiced
2. 1 cup (250 ml) soda water
3. 4 TBS honey or 2 TBS sugar

Directions:
1. Squeeze one orange by hand and pour the juice into a glass.
2. Add soda water and honey or sugar, stir and mix well, and ready to serve :-)

Personal Journal:
I was upset with our Little FECS over some work that he didn't do consistently this morning, or for which I found to be sloppy, and that made him very sad and upset. We went into the crazy virtual cycle, and we ended up both very sad and upset.

When he came back from school, I apologized and asked him to forgive mommy, which he so graciously did. I made it up by doing a fun activity together. I know he is very interested in making soda recently (although he doesn't drink soda on a regular basis, and doesn't actually like the bubbles, until lately because all his classmates love soda). Thus, today we made an orange soda together.

He drank his soda, while doing his Chinese homework, and we are both happy again. Thank God.

We learned a lot along way about soda. We learned that it takes a lot of sugar to make it sweet. So even it is homemade and healthier, it is still not that healthy and should only be for an occasional treat. We can't imagine how much worse commercial soda will be. It is an eye-opener for our Little FECS and it helps him to understand in a concrete way, just how unhealthy soda is. He is convinced he would not be one to drink soda, after this activity, which made me very glad of course :-)

Strawberry Banana Mikshake Smoothie

Serves 2

Ingredients:
1. 3 large strawberries (This amount is perfect to give the strawberry flavor and also just 3 strawberries would cover all the daily vitamin C requirement. Do not add more strawberries, as it will dilute the taste and the richness of the smoothie)
2. 1 banana
3. 1 orange peeled and quartered
4. 1.5 cup (375 ml) fresh milk (For strawberry smoothie, I prefer the full fat version for the extra richness, but you can also use fresh skimmed milk)
5. 1 tsp hazelnut butter
6. 1 tsp flax seeds ground (optional)
7. 1/4 tsp vanilla powder (optional)

Directions:
Blend all ingredients in a blender until smooth.

Additional Information:
Daddy FECS knows that I love strawberries and he bought one case today. I love strawberry smoothie, and I decided to use them to make smoothie.

I use an orange and a banana as sweetening, and I like banana :-) If you don't like to include banana in a strawberry milkshake smoothie, you can use 1 teaspoon (tsp) of vanilla sugar in its place. Many recipes called for 1-2 TBS of nut butter. Nut butter is expensive and it is fattening, if consumed in excess. I find that adding 1 teaspoon of nut butter is perfect to give it a more rich milkshake taste, yet not too heavy. I find that adding 1-2 tablespoon of nut butter is too much. My preferred nut butter is hazelnut.

Strawberries freeze well. If I can't finish them, I will freeze up some of them in a portion size freezing bags for smoothies at a later time :-)

Little FECS and Baby FECS love this smoothie too. If I succeeded with Baby FECS, I know that I have truly succeeded, as she is so picky and has a sweet tooth :-)

Colors of the Rainbow Smoothies for the Week

I am thinking of making these smoothies according to the colors of rainbow (well, almost) for each day of the week:

Monday: Red smoothie
Tuesday: Orange smoothie
Wednesday: Yellow smoothie
Friday: Green smoothie
Thursday: Light green smoothie
Saturday: Purple smoothie

Sunday: We will take a break and enjoy a Chocolate smoothie instead.

The plan is that I will go for my groceries shopping once a week to cover all the ingredients for that week. I am not quite sure whether I will keep to this order, but I guess the aim is to cover the colors of the rainbow. The sequence is not so important.

To make it simple, I might also just use all the colors' ingredients mixed in a smoothie, but that will give a muddy color, which is not so attractive to the kids, and adults alike. Let's see how it works out :-)

Btw, it's actually possible to make blue smoothies (see links below), but I think it is too much work for now...

Useful Links:
http://www.nutritionaustralia.org/national/resource/eat-rainbow
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/blue-smoothie-bowl-recipe_n_57bc4f13e4b0b51733a5b417
https://thefirstyearblog.com/rainbow-smoothie/
https://www.finedininglovers.com/blog/food-drinks/purple-fruits-and-vegetables/

Easy & All Natural No-Cook Strawberry & Raspberry Jam with Chia Seeds

Recipe from Pick Up Limes

Preparation: 25 mins

Ingredients:
1. 1 cup frozen strawberries
2. 1 cup frozen raspberries
3. 2 TBS chia seeds
4. 1 TBS orange juice
5. 3 TBS honey (optional)

Directions:
1. Rinse and drain the berries.
2. Mash it with a fork, leaving some chunks behind.
3. Add chia seeds, juice and mix well.
4. Transfer into a jam jar and leave it in the fridge for 30 minutes until the chia seeds absorb the juice of the berries and become jelly-like, or overnight and ready for breakfast next morning :-)

Additional Information:
Chia seeds is used to thicken the jam. I rinsed the frozen berries with water, partly because Daddy FECS are paranoid about the cleanliness of frozen berries, and partly because it is a quick way to thaw the berries. Otherwise, you can thaw it in microwave oven or wait longer for it to thaw naturally. In this way, I can mash it a fork immediately. I added 1.5 chopped dried dates (since I had some left-over). I also compromised and added 1 TBS honey to serve the sweet tooth within us - Baby FECS*. While waiting for the berries juice to work on the chia seeds, I prepared the lunch boxes. Thereafter, I included a small portion of the jam in the lunch box.

It's amazing it tastes just like jam, especially if you sweeten it like store-bought jam (although we didn't do that, of course :-)), except that there is no cooking on stove involved.

It says it can store for 5 days in the fridge... I haven't tried that it, as it is normally eaten by then.

This recipe fills a full jam jar. But if you cannot finish within 5 days, make half a portion instead.

In this picture, I only made half a portion, as I didn't want to keep them for too long. Since it's so easy to make, I would rather make a fresh batch, when we need it.

* I intend to gradually reduce the amount of honey I am adding into this jam, but I thought I will ensure that Baby FECS develop a liking for my homemade jam first.

References:
https://www.pickuplimes.com/single-post/2017/04/06/Easy-Berry-Chia-Seed-Jam

 Frozen berries

Add 1 cup of frozen raspberries

Add 1 cup of frozen strawberries

Here are the frozen berries :-)

Rinse the berries under water to make sure that it is clean and it also helps to thaw it faster.

Add 2 TBS chia seeds

Mash it with a fork

I added some raspberries back for the chunks as I had forgotten and mashed up completely all the berries

Squeezing orange juice...

Add 1 TBS orange juice... and for the balance, Daddy FECS drank it :-)


I also added  dried date chopped for the crunch (optional)

Cover and leave it in the fridge for 30 mins until the chia seeds absorb the juice from the berries and become jelly-like or overnight.

Transfer to jam jar

Now it's done :-)

It can keep in the fridge for 5 days... according to Pick Up Limes

I saved a portion and placed it in the lunch box.

I spread it on rye bread.

Our Little FECS suggested to make a Danish flag out of it :-)

23 Jan 2019 (2Y8M7D): Our Baby FECS loves the rye-bread with homemade no-cook strawberry jam... she ate 4 pieces...

Updates 26 Jan 2019:

I made a full batch today: