Carrot Crackers

Before I forget to post, I would leave a “memo” of the recipe,,, (Photo coming soon)

This is one of Yumi’s favorite recipe and I used to make it every day… I wonder why I never uploaded the recipe.
(Maybe I was too busy cooking, and so away from blogging)

Anyway, a wholesome crackers full of veggies: Carrots 🙂 

Ingredients (to make 1 baking tray size)

-100g Organic Wholemeal flour
-15g Organic coconut sugar
-30g Cold pressed Oil
-50g Carrot, grated (I do it in a food processor so it is fine) 
-1 pinch salt

Method
Step 1: Mix everything in a large bowl by hand; spread on baking tray. 
Step 2: Press down with hand until it is about 4mm thick, run lines with a knife to make 1cm by 4cm rectangles.
Step 3: Bake in 160C pre heated oven for 20-25 min. Open the oven door and let it cool in the oven. Once cool, break along the line.

Oh, yum yum yum, this is what I will be making this afternoon! 
ENJOY 🙂

Zucchini Carob Muffin

The original recipe was Banana Carob Muffin, but unfortunately bananas don’t last that long in our house until it is ripe enough to cook! So, what’s moist, bland and filling enough to substitute a banana?

Can you guess from the picture?

The answer is ZUCCHINI!
I love it when I can “hide” a veggie in my daughter’s snack 🙂
She loves her Carrot Crackers (a recipe that I must share soon), but that’s because she loves carrots.
She’s not a great fan of green vegetables at the moment, and I hope she can boost up her daily intake by eating these muffins.

Ingredients (to make 24 mini muffins or 12 regular size muffins)

-150g Organic Wholemeal Flour

-50g Organic carob

-1 Tablespoon Aluminum free Baking Powder

-150g zucchini

-200g Organic Soy milk

-80g Organic Agave Syrup

-50g Cold pressed oil (I use rice bran oil)

Method

Step 1: Mix zucchini in food processor for about 1 min, until it is grated into fine bits.
Step 2: Add soy milk, agave syrup and oil and mix for another 30sec.
Step 3: Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.
Step 4: Pour the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients, fold lightly and pour into muffin tins.
Step 5: Bake in 180C pre heated oven for about 15min (for mini muffins, regular muffins will take about 25  min)

Let it cool in the tin before  you pop the out. I use non-stick muffin tins, but prefer to grease them lightly before I pour the muffin mixture in. It will not rise as much as normal muffins, but this mixture is enough to  fill 24 mini muffin tin to the rim, and you will get fairly good shaped mini muffins as a result.

I think I can reduce the amount of Agave syrup to 50g, but that is up to you and how much you love sweets.
ENJOY 🙂

Vegan okara tart

Hi this is KK, Sushi artist, Healthy Muffin Maker, Mum 🙂
Thank you for visiting my blog.

I made this tart with my daughter Yumi, who’s 2 and in love with rolling play dough. She happily rolled this tart base and we made mini tarts using our muffin tin!

My husband liked it better than my okara cakes, so it must have been good. Would have added something like Countreau if it wasn’t for the kids!

Gluten free okara muffin

Gluten free rice flour cake, okara base

Hi this is KK, Sushi Artist/ Healthy Muffin Maker/ Mum 🙂

Thank you for visiting my blog.

 This cake is amazing.

It has

NO SUGAR

 NO MAPLE SYRUP

 NO HONEY

but it’s still sweet and yummy! The secret is

DATES!

I was reading some raw recipes, and they were using dates as sweeteners. Thought I would try some in my cooking too! I’ve made Dates and walnuts muffins before but in that recipe, I did add raw sugar.

This cake is completely sugarless, but sweet enough for Yumi and me, and you can eat it guilt free 🙂

 

The base is okara, a residue you get when making soy milk. (Read more about OKARA from Wikipedia)

Okara is low in fat, high in fiber, and also contains protein, calcium, iron, and riboflavin (from Wikipedia), and in Japan it is considered as a “Diet food”, because they are filling and can be used as an alternative for meat. It is not easy to find okara in Australia, but I was lucky because my friend gave me a bagful of frozen organic okara. This was a great opportunity for me to try lots of okara recipes, and this rice flour cake turned out to be a favorite for Yumi.

 

Ingredients (I used a 22cm round cake tin)

-260g Okara, fresh

-120g Rice flour

-10g Organic cocoa

-1 Tablespoon Aluminum free Baking Powder

-4g Agar powder

-160g water

-130g Chopped dates and walnuts (the ratio is up to you, the more the dates, the sweeter it becomes)

 

Method

Step 1: Mix everything in a large bowl, pour into a lined cake tin and bake in 180C oven for 20min.

 

It’s so simple, but  tasty! Yumi ate about a quarter of the cake already.

 

Agar powder must be something new to some people, so here is a description from Wikipedia. It is made from an algae, and although it saids “is a gelatinous substance”, don’t use gelatin as a substitute. It will not be vegan and it works differently. Agar works as a binder for this cake. I made it without it and unfortunately the cake did not keep its shape. If you don’t have to make it vegan, I would suggest to substitute 1 egg for agar, rather than gelatin for this recipe.

 

Please try it when you come across okara! I am sure you can make this using firm tofu as a substitute for okara. Will try it myself and let you know!

 

ENJOY 🙂

 

 

Gluten free banana cake, revised version

 

 

Hi this is KK, Sushi Artist/ Healthy Muffin Maker / Mum 🙂

Thank you for visiting my blog.

I tried making gluten free banana cake again, this time without corn flour. Better to keep recipes simple as possible.

Worked really well, Yumi is eating her second slice already:-)

(20 min after the cake is out of the oven)

 

It is bigger, because the total weight of the banana was 190g instead of 160g, and I had to moderate other ingredients to match it.

 

As a conclusion, corn flour can be omitted, didn’t realize much difference (although something could have happened 2-3 days after baking, we ate all ours before we could see the change in texture, taste etc)

 

The key would be the sweetness/ripeness of the banana. Make sure they are brown and soft when you are cooking this cake. I usually buy ripe bananas and stock them until they go spotty to brown. It is easier to mash and handle too!

 

Ingredients (for my 20 cm stick free tarte tin, non greased, non lined)

-190g banana, very ripe, mashed

-3 Tablespoon Organic raw sugar

-80g cold press oil (I used rice bran oil)

-90g water

-190g Rice flour

-2 Tablespoon Aluminum free baking powder

 

Method

Step 1: Mix all the wet ingredients (banana, oil, water and sugar) in a large bowl; mix all the dry ingredients (rice flour,  BP) in a large bowl.

Step 2: Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix well. The great thing about rice flour is you don’t have to worry about over beating. Mix well, pour into a tin and bake at 180C (pre-heated oven) for 20 min, or until a skewer comes out clean.

 

The cooking time will depend on what kind of cake tin you use. If you use a pound cake tin, it will take longer for the center part to cook. This is why I prefer to cook “flat”  or “mini” cakes, because the cooking time is much shorter. Same with my other recipe, if you don’t have allergies, I really recommend adding walnuts to this recipe. It adds flavor and texture!

 

ENJOY 🙂

 

 

Grilled Salmon

Hi this is KK, Sushi Artist / Healthy Muffin Maker / Mum 🙂

Thank you for visiting my blog.

 

I haven’t shared dinner photos for a while, not that I haven’t been cooking, it’s more that I’ve only been cooking everyday food, and felt that it wasn’t really worth sharing.

 For example, this is a very typical dinner at our place.

Rice +Miso Soup (Broccoli and Tomato)

Main dish:Grilled salmon and veggies

Side dish 1: Carrots with sesame

Side dish 2: Eggplant in sweet soy sauce with daikon radish

 

The 2 side dish can be prepared anytime of the day, can be made double batch so you can eat it the day after. This day, the only different thing I did was to grill the vegetables separately with the fish. I seasoned the grilled vegetable with olive oil+balsamic vineger+french mustard+honey dressing, but didn’t put the dressing on the salmon. It was sprinkled with salt and cooked on all sides.

 

My secret in cooking the salmon to the right texture is to heat the frying pan nice and hot, and cook the skin first until it is very crispy (but not burnt). Then, using a spatula, cook on all sides until it is cooked but not tough. By cutting some slits on the skin before cooking, you can peek “inside” to make sure that it’s not raw. I don’t use oil when cooking salmon because it is usually very rich and fatty.

 

This salmon was rather thick, so it took about 12 min all together to cook, but turned out very nice 🙂

Everyday cake:Tami-pan Cake

 

Hi this is KK, Sushi Artist / Healthy Muffin Maker / Mum 🙂

Thank you for visiting my blog.

 

When you are a mum, you have to cook for your family everyday, from breakfast to lunch to dinner, and even snacks. Although most things could be bought off the shelves, I still prefer to cook for my family, especially for Yumi because I want to know what goes into her body.

 

This round cake is called Tami-pan cake.

 Yumi calls it “HOT-CAKE” because she usually eats it while it’s hot, and we make it almost everyday for her to eat.

 

It is so simple to make this, 50g flour, 1 egg, 3-4 Tablespoon milk, 1 Tablespoon maple syrup. This is the basic ingredients. You mix, pour, put it over stove and cook for 8min. Done.

 

So simple, I let Yumi do most of the cooking (I only put it on the stove and take if off the stove). You can enjoy variations of this, adding cocoa, banana, apples, carrots, changing maple syrup to honey, taking out eggs and milk, putting in soy.

I am experimenting everyday to find the perfect combination  using flour from here.

It’s funny because simple things needs perfect combination to get it right. And the recipe included in the pan was for Japanese flours, and it’s a bit different here.

 

This Tami-pan cake is just the right size to make a simple decoration cake to bring over to a friend.

The cake takes 8min to cook, 5 min to cool, and 3 min to decorate with 100g whipped cream.

Can be made anytime to take it to a friends place.

 

The cake tin is made from cast iron cookware, a traditional cookware from Japan. It is heavy, but easy to handle and so easy to use 🙂 Should get my next batch ready for today’s snack!

Brown rice porridge

 

Hi this is KK, Sushi Artist / Healthy Muffin Maker / Mum 🙂

Thank you for visiting my blog.

 

 

I had a really bad cold last Friday, my temperature went as high as 39.5C, and would not come down.

Usually, when I catch a cold, I try to stay in bed and “sweat out” fevers, but this time, it wasn’t working. My temperature would rise but I wasn’t sweating at all. That meant that I had the heat inside me, and couldn’t get it out.

 

Instead of taking medicine, I used two techniques.

1: Daikon radish soup

and

2:Brown rice porridge

 

These are combinations of traditional Japanese home treatment. Daikon radish is used to detox things from my body, this time, I wanted to get rid of heat, and brown rice was supposed to give me positive energy. I don’t have the photo of the daikon radish soup, too sick to take pics, but here is what brown rice porridge looks like.

  To make this, I soaked 180g brown rice in water for overnight.

Then, using my pressure cooker, I cooked it with 1000cc water on high pressure for 20min. Using my Triblade, I blended till the mixture was smooth and creamy.

 

I ate this with microbiotic sea salt, and you will not the miracle it bring s you.

 

I felt so energized and fulfilled, I was out of bed in no time.

 

 

Sometimes, traditional treatment works just as well as modern medicine. Just be sure to use organic and traditional ingredients, because you want to put in the best into your body.

 

Enjoy 🙂

Gluten free, soy free cookie

Gluten free cookie.
Trying new recipes in the kitchen today. Hope to share the “no mistake” recipe soon!