Gluten Free Blueberry Muffin Tops

I know I have been horribly absent this month. I am currently in the middle of a very heavy course, and it includes lab days which I have been prepping for. Hopefully it will be over soon and I can get back to some fun things in life! Summer is passing me by while I have my nose shoved into a textbook!

I bought 20lbs of blueberries last week and froze most of them for smoothies and winter baking, but kept 5lbs out for immediate use. I decided some blueberry muffins would be wonderful and wanted to try out my new muffin top pans that arrived from (where else!) well.ca this week! What are muffin top pans? They are shallow wide muffin pans that allow you to get mostly just the muffin top (the best part in my opinion!) of the muffin!!

This recipe from Gluten Free Frugally was a first attempt for me and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but I would like to make some recipe changes since they are very sticky once cooked. It actually tastes quite 'normal' and is something I can actually make myself eat :)

INGREDIENTS
1/2 Cup Sugar
4 Tbsp. Butter/Margarine/Oil
4 Eggs
1 Cup Milk
1/2 Tsp. Vanilla
2 Cups GF All Purpose Flour Blend
1/2 Tsp. Salt
1/2 Tsp. Xanthan Gum
4 Tsp. Baking Powder
2-3 Cups Blueberries

Mix together sugar, butter and eggs. Once creamed, add milk and vanilla and mix well. Add dry ingredients (except blueberries) and mix on medium high for 4-5 minutes. Fold in blueberries. Scoop into pans and bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Note: The way this recipe is composed, I would think if you left out the Xanthan Gum and substituted regular all purpose flour it should turn out as a great non gluten free muffin!

Apple Crisp

I often try to come up with desserts that aren't really desserts, but are good enough to classify as such. Although my kids do get sugary desserts from time to time, I definitely try to limit them (even then, I do try to find the healthier route to it, such as the Puffed Quinoa Squares). I never thought I would be the type of mom that would serve fruit for dessert, or that I would have the type of kids who are excited by apples and peanut butter, but here we are :) I decided today to spruce things up a little bit and make it a little more dessert-y. We eat a LOT of fruit in our house. Being gluten free limits a lot of things we would normally have for snacks, so by default we go to fruit for snacks (and tomatoes, but that's another story). The amount of bananas I buy would make you laugh, and the amount of apples in our fruit bin could cause a small avalanche. 

Today's dessert is apples. Apple crisp to be exact. Just a unique, very easy version :)

Ingredients
Apples, halved and core cut out (see picture)
Cheese
1/2 Cup of Butter, or Oil works too. Coconut oil would be delicious I think!
1/2 Cup Oats (make sure they are GF oats if you are gluten free!)
1/2 Cup Quinoa Flour (If you are not GF, use regular AP flour here)
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
1 Tsp. Cinnamon
Pinch of salt.

Melt the butter (or if using oil just pour in!), and add oats, quinoa flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt. \Mix well until everything is moistened. 

Cut cheese into small pieces and place inside apple holes (see picture). 

Place the crumble mix on top of the cheese and apple. 

Place on a pan in the oven and bake at 350F for 20-30 minutes. 

Enjoy hot with ice cream or frozen yogurt, or just by itself. 

The measurements above made more then enough for 2 apples (4 halves), and I have enough left over for probably another 2-4 halves, depending on how thick you top the apples. 

The type and amount of apples and cheese is up to you. Cheddar does taste wonderful with apples though!

Slice apples in half and scoop out core.

Add cheese cubes to the holes.

Add crumble topping and bake @350F for 20-30 minutes.

Serve warm. With or without ice cream or frozen yogurt.

These have a really cute presentation and the cheese adds that extra little taste that makes them delicious!!

Bite Size Apple Pie

These are a delicious treat if you need something tasty in a hurry! From the Cookin Up North blog via Pinterest (of course!) The original recipe calls for using Pillsbury Premade Pie Dough. I just can't bring myself to eat that stuff, so I used the Lardless Pie Dough recipe (made with Almond Milk), and it was probably almost as easy! But way better tasting!

Ingredients
Pie Dough (1/2 the ingredients below if you only make 1 batch of Lardless Pie Dough)
1/2 c. sugar
2 tsp. cinnamon
3 tbsp. melted butter, divided (I used margarine so my son could eat them, it worked fine!)
2 medium apples, each cut into 8 wedges

In a small bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon, set aside 1 Tbsp. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the pastry. Brush with  2 Tbsp. melted butter, sprinkle with remaining sugar mixture.

Cut into one inch strips, about 8 in. long. Wrap one strip around each apple wedge, placing sugared side of pastry against apple.

Place on parchment paper lined baking sheet. Brush tops with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar mixture. bake at 425 for 13-15 minutes or until pastry is golden brown. Serve warm or cold was pretty good too!

So the next time you want some dessert but don't have much time, give these a try. I'm pretty sure you wont be disappointed!

I think next time I'm going to try with different fruits. I think peaches would be amazing, just a few different spices of course!

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Grapefruit

Of course everyone knows how to eat a grapefruit :) but did you know you can make it into a healthy 'dessert' easily? I know its tasty on its own but sometimes a craving for something dessert/snack-like comes along.

Peel the grapefruit and remove the chunks into a bowl. Sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg over top of the pieces. Add a small amount of sugar or a sugar substitute (I used xylitol). Its a tasty, healthy refreshing snack. One you dont need to feel guilty about having if you are trying to lose weight!
Its not really a pretty dish so I never thought to take a picture :)

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Hiding?

I love putting fruits and especially veggies into everything. If a snack, supper, lunch or even breakfast can be a little healthier why not? Some people get really upset and say you should NEVER hide healthy food or sneak it into things.

Does this mean they never make banana bread/muffins? If so, they are totally missing out! Does this mean they never make/use tomato sauce? I'd say it's pretty sneaky to puree up tomatoes and not tell your kid that you are pouring tomatoes all over their pasta! What about kids that don't like eggs? Do those parents always sit down and explain that there are eggs in the cookies or the bread? Or do they just feed them to them anyways? What about smoothies? Do they always detail every ingredient for their kids before serving it to them? What about kids that don't like milk? Do they never bake with milk? Never use it in sauces or soups? I'm being sarcastic of course, I'm sure the people objecting don't realize all the ways that actually 'sneak' fruits, veggies and other healthful items into things.

I DO NOT classify putting veggies into things as sneaky. Why? Because I always tell my toddler what he's eating and/or he helps me put it together. (I don't list off every ingredient of course, that would be time consuming and boring for him and I! I just tell him the extra stuff I'm putting in.) I still offer him fruits/vegetables that he doesn't really like in whole form just in case he changes his mind. I know he doesn't always understand what is in things (He's 2...there are a lot of things he doesn't understand yet!), but the more he helps me make things, and sees the ingredients, the more he will realize that vegetables have so many uses and can taste wonderful :) He didn't used to like eating carrots raw or cooked. I started making him carrot pancakes and putting pureed carrot into his mac 'n cheese and now he loves munching on a raw carrot! If I'm cutting up carrots for supper I'm lucky if there are any left by the time I'm done :)

I make things like Spinach Milkshakes, Pumpkin Milkshakes, Sweet Potato Biscuits/Muffins, Cottage Cheese Pancakes, Spinach/Blueberry Brownies and Red Velvet Beet Cookies and he not only loves them, but asks for them! I would never lie to my kids and say there wasn't any veggies/extra ingredients in them. My 2 year old has already figured out that just because something doesn't taste good one way it doesn't mean it wont taste good another way. Give your kids some credit. Don't lie to them, but give them a chance to realize that just because they don't like to eat beets plain doesn't mean they can't be good in things! It's a good way to get creative in the kitchen as well :)

I love recipes from the SneakyChef and Deceptively Delicious but I don't agree with pretending it's not there. Even the Weelicious site has recipes that incorporate vegetables into things, and yet she is one of the people that thinks sneaking veggies in is *gasp* awful! Go figure :)

If you can make a healthy muffin that your kid likes, then why not? If you can make their mac 'n cheese just a little better for them, then why not? If you can get them to drink their spinach, then why not? What's so wrong with creatively getting our kids to eat their vegetables?

Juicing

I am so excited! I just picked up a Breville Ikon Juice Fountain on a great deal off Kijiji! (For some reason pictures wont load right now, but I will try again later) This thing is amazing! The guy I bought it from said his fiance bought in on an impulse and they only used it 5 times. I went to the store right away and for the first time in my life only had veggies in my basket!
First we tried just an apple to see how it worked. 1 small apple actually gives quite a bit of juice, and tastes soooooo good! I don't normally like apple juice either. Then I did a carrot, celery combo and I loved it.
The way it works is that it actually separates the pulp into a different container then the juice, and it does a good job of it too! My juice was completely free of 'chewables'. You can use the pulp for things too but more on that later :)
My goal is to do a lot of juicing this summer and in the process hopefully lose some baby weight. Along with getting some exercise too of course :) I have a bike trailer for the kids and my daughter is finally old enough to go in it, so hopefully that will become my main form of exercise for the summer.

I will work my way slowly into more and more veggies, but from the reading I did they advise to start slowly so you don't send you body into overload.
I have also learned a lot about beets in my reading. There are warnings on all the juicing sites. Never drink beet juice plain, never add too many beets to your drinks and don't mix beet juice with anything (like broccoli) with calcium, or eat calcium directly after. Why? Beets have so many nutrients in it and when you juice them you are absorbing them all directly into your blood stream. Drinking beet juice straight can temporarily paralyze your vocal cords, make you break out in hives, increase your heart rate, cause chills or a fever. Crazy! Also the reason for avoiding calcium is that beets contain a large amount of oxalic acid and when combined with calcium create an indigestible compound.
Who knew veggies could be so dangerous!!
That's my excitement. Just had to share!

Fruit Snacks

 

It's hard to find snacks that don't contain a myriad of things we can't pronounce and have no idea what they are. I have been trying to find substitutes for anything that contains Corn Syrup or HFCS or other random ingredients. I always bought the big boxes of Welch's Fruit Snacks at Costco, until I read the label and realized they contain corn syrup and gelatin (their gelatin is pork based - nothing against pork but in my fruit snacks...really?) and they contain food dye. After a thorough hunt in the store, I came across these. They come in a couple of different flavours and are really yummy. I miss the large boxes of Welch's I was buying, and these don't really compare in cost, but they are handy to have in the diaper bag ready for an emergency snack! I don't use them on a regular basis, as I prefer snacks that don't come out of packages while we are at home, but at least when I need them I know what is in them, and I don't feel bad about letting my kids eat them :)

Welch's Fruit Snacks

Welch's Fruit Snacks - From the Welch's site


SunRype FunBites

The other flavours are the same ingredients, just different fruits/vegetables.

Sun Rype Fun Bites - From the Sun Rype site

Ingredients
Apple &/or pear & raspberry puree concentrates, apple &/or grape &/or pear juice concentrate, citrus pectin, elderberry juice concentrate, natural flavour, lemon juice concentrate, apple powder.