Read it! The Balanced Plate

This morning I perused my bookcase looking for a book to flip through while watching Sage play with his favorite toys and things he likes to think are toys. I landed on The Balanced Plate by The Balanced Plate by Renée Loux It's been a while sine I've picked it up, and I had forgot what a great book it is. Her book is filled not only with great recipes, but lots of good information on food in general.  She gets into the benefits of whole food and why eating organic is so important. One of my favorite parts of this book is the in depth look at the kitchen and everything in it, from spices to composting and even how to clean your kitchen naturally. Then after all that you get into all of her amazing recipes!

I don't think you could go wrong with this book, and I would recommend it to anyone looking to better their eating or even just their life. Which is why I am sharing it with you today, just because I think you should know about it! I linked it up to Amazon so you can order it now if you want, or go find it at your local bookstore, if you are lucky enough to have one near you still.

Let's make Scones!

Last week I came across a recipe for vegan scones and drooled about them all week long. I wasn't going to make them because we are trying to go pretty much gluten free. Then I thought 'duh! Just make them, but without the gluten!' So, I played around with the recipe and ended up with some delicious and not too bad for you scones! And now I get to share them with you! The recipe that is, you have to make them yourself. The good news is they were pretty quick, and easy too!

Gluten-Free Vegan Scones

Takes about 30 minutes start to finish. Makes 12 good sized scones.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 Cups All Purpose Gluten-Free flour

1/2 Cup Teft Flour

1/2 Cup Ground Almonds or Almond Flour

3/4 tsp. Xanthan Gum*

1/3 Cup Sugar + some for topping

1 Tbs. Baking Powder

1/2 tsp. Sea Salt

1 1/4 Cup Canned Coconut milk (cold) + some for topping

1 tsp. Vanilla Extract

3/4 Cup Chocolate Chips or Carob Chips (vegan) OR fruit

*the Xanthan Gum helps to bind the flours, which is nice, but if you don't have it, you could skip it.

Preheat oven to 425

Mix all your dry ingredients: flour, xanthan gum, baking powder and salt.

Add your wet ingredients: vanilla extract and coconut milk. Stir until combined.

Fold in your chocolate chips or fruit.

On a floured surface, form the dough into a 3/4 inch thick disc. Using a sharp knife cut the dough into wedges, like a pie. I cut mine into 12 pieces, and they were a great size.

Place the wedges on a parchment lined cookie sheet an inch or 2 apart. Brush on coconut milk over each scone and sprinkle a good amount of sugar over that.

Bake at 425 for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

Eat. Enjoy. Repeat.

I made a batch of these after dinner, and didn't think they would make it to the morning, they were that good! We did manage to save a few that night. I hope you get to enjoy these yourself this weekend. I am going to make more for sure, but this time maybe with blackberries!

Banana Blueberry Muffins from By the Porchlight

Today I have one of my lovely sponsors sharing a very delicious looking recipe with all of you! I won't keep you from it any longer, I'm sure you'll want to run to the kitchen after reading this!...


Hey there! I'm Lesley from By the Porchlight! I'm about to hit my 1-year blogging anniversary and have had a great year! I write about all things creative, good reads, good causes and all of life's adventures in between. Oh, and I can't forget good eats! I love cooking and baking so I thought I'd share a new recipe with you!

So, here we have it! Banana blueberry muffins! They were delicious and guess what?! Healthy, too! I was looking to try out my new coconut oil in and came across this recipe. I love banana bread and blueberry muffins so putting the two things together could not be wrong! I made a couple of alterations to the recipe above to suit my tastes & cupboard's stock a bit better.

What you'll need:

3 large bananas, or 4 smaller ones
1 cup sugar (you could use another sweetener, though)
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup white flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup frozen blueberries
4 tbsps margarine

In one bowl, mash the bananas with a fork. Then add the sugar and coconut oil. Mix well.

Next, in a second bowl, mix together 2 cups flour (1 cup each white and whole wheat), salt and baking soda.

Blend together the contents of both bowls. After the flour and banana mixtures are well mixed, fold in the blueberries.

Next, set aside the muffin batter. You'll need another bowl (yes, lots of bowls!) to make the crumbly topping.

Cream together the margarine and sugar and then add the flour. This should end up crumbly.

Pour the muffin batter into a greased tin. (I can't live without my Pampered Chef stoneware!) The batter should yield 12 large muffins. Top with the crumble.

As you can see, my topping wasn't so crumbly. I didn't really follow the directly for this, just threw some flour, sugar and margarine together haha. But it still tasted good!

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Check with a toothpick. If the toothpick comes out clean, the muffins are done! If it comes out batter-covered, bake the muffins another 3-5 minutes and check again.

And ta-da! Now you have delicious muffins!




I hope you'll come visit me at By the Porchlight and let me know how your muffins turned out! Thanks for letting me hang out today! Happy baking!