Feeling Fruity – Fancy a Refreshment? Smoothie Bowls For Early Dinner

Feeling Fruity – Fancy a Refreshment? Smoothie Bowls For Early Dinner

Smoothie Bowl Refreshment Vegan Dairy Free 4Smoothie Bowl Refreshment Vegan Dairy Free 1Smoothie Bowl Refreshment Vegan Dairy Free 2Smoothie Bowl Refreshment Vegan Dairy Free 3

In the spirit of keeping the smoothie bowls coming, I chopped up loads of bananas, mango, papaya and red dragonfruit (even though I prefer the white flesh ones, the red ones give you this amazing pink colour so eh fine! and it is important to eat the rainbow so…. make mine a pink orange and yellow rainbow). Everything is sitting in my freezer ready to go into the blender with water and any supplements I feel like adding for an extra zing in my step. The Child keeps diving into these bowls and making squishy motions. It gets so messy but it’s a delicious mess and afterwards we just head to the bathtub and hose ourselves off, lol.

Sooooo refreshing.

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✔️ The Great Vegan Waffle Experiment – Recipe

✔️ The Great Vegan Waffle Experiment – Recipe


So last night I was up late and HUNGRY and decided a good idea was to think about how to make vegan waffles. It made the hunger worse but that’s probably why I was up extra early and stuffing around with making different batches of waffle batter.

A few hurdles in the beginning:

  • Locating our waffle maker (haven’t used this thing in at least 5 years)
  • Blowing the dust off the darn thing and giving it a good scrub.
  • Plugging it in and having the entire circuit to kitchen blow out. WOOPSIES.

But we got our waffle maker working in the end! A lot of people in the house were highly motivated to make this experiment a success because that would translate to waffles for them. The carrot works better than a stick when it comes to adventures in waffle making.

Then came figuring out this batter situation. I came across a recipe that said any flour. Okkkkk…….. let me just tell you that COCONUT FLOUR WILL NOT WORK. Batch 1 was a total letdown. Coconut flour just sucks up any liquid and you just get this crumbly situation no matter how much liquid you add.

No good. Smelled great but hopeless.

So I decided to go with self-raising flour instead. I don’t go for gluten free flours because they sometimes contain random substitute flours that I’m not keen on. I’d rather just use regular flour but that’s ok for me because I can have moderate amounts of gluten without any issue. My main goal was to make waffles that didn’t contain eggs or dairy. I’ve had a few conversations with bakers of some prominent bakeries around Sydney who have said to just stick to the normal stuff rather than go gluten free unless I were a coeliac or otherwise gluten intolerant. One baker was saying he didn’t like the gluten free stuff but he had no choice but to bake it because that was what people were requesting.

Obviously if you need a gluten free waffle then PLEASE use your gluten free flour of choice. Just be warned about the coconut flour! Yeesh.

I make it sound like I went through multiple batches, don’t I?! Haha, I got lucky and batch 2 worked just fine. PHEW!

So heeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s the recipe:

The Great Vegan Waffle


Ingredients:

1 cup flour (NOT coconut flour) – I used self-raising flour, plain will be fine too since there is baking soda and salt in the batter but I just used what I had. You shouldn’t need to rush out to buy any ingredients. 

2 tsp sugar – I used 1 tsp of coconut sugar, use even less or none if you like! You can always add any sweetener of your choice after your waffles are cooked, you can’t remove sugar from a batter. Less is MORE when it comes to sugar.  

2 tsp baking soda – also called sodium bicarbonate

1 tsp sea salt – I use Himalayan pink sea salt

1 cup unsweetened non-dairy milk – I initially wanted to use almond milk but that got used up in batch 1 (looking at you, Coconut Flour) so I ended up using just under a cup of coconut milk

1 tsp apple cider vinegar

2 tbsp coconut oil

(Options: 1 tsp vanilla extract, sprinkle of ground nutmeg or ground cinnamon) – I used ground nutmeg

Method:

Mix the dry ingredients first – flour, sugar if using, baking soda, salt, nutmeg or cinnamon if using.

Add the wet ingredients – milk, apple cider vinegar, oil and the vanilla extract (if using).

The batter should look like a gloopy fluid. Don’t worry about lumps. It should NOT look crumbly and dry (glares at batch 1). 

Heat up your waffle iron. 

Spoon the batter onto your iron, say half a cup. 

Cook waffle blah blah. 

Alternatively you can make this as a pancake instead. Don’t go running out to buy yourself a waffle maker, unless that was something that you’ve been planning to do. Just work with what you’ve got going on at home, ok? 

To serve: 

I had mine with berries and maple syrup.


These waffles tasted amazing, however after I took photos, I cut into my waffles whilst I updated my VSCO app, figuring I’d do whatever cropping I needed whilst I munched. As soon as the app was updated, I launched in and found my photos got wiped.

By the time I realised this the maple syrup had already absorbed into my waffles Noooooooooooo, whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy is this happening……..insert much overreacting. I had to dash back to where the light was good and pour even more maple syrup over my waffles to get a few more pictures. I love maple syrup though so I wasn’t even really all that mad. But STILL. A little heads up would have been nice VSCO guy! Sheesh.

They are super filling so even though based on the size of my iron, I got just two waffles out of that batch, I found one waffle was plenty for me.

Overall a success in my household. If you tried it, I hope you enjoy! And if you use a different flour, PLEASE let me know what you used and how it went!

Chat soon xo

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Nog: Vegan Egg Nog in less time than it takes to say Bah Humbug – A Christmas Miracle Recipe

Nog: Vegan Egg Nog in less time than it takes to say Bah Humbug – A Christmas Miracle Recipe


A very cool comedian asked the audience for a show of hands, who was in their twenties. And then she said,”Yer all soft this generation. I could take an entire row of ya out just by feeding you eggs or sumthin’.”

I’ve got a few people in my household with allergies but 100% of us love egg nog at Christmas time. The math just won’t add up tho. 

Christmas Eve is our busiest day production wise. Amongst all the cooking and baking today I was getting through with my mum, I was handed a recipe for dairy free egg nog by my dad. But it contained egg yolks, a no go for another person in my family. And you needed to do this thing with a saucepan and heat things up and oh gosh, I just wanted to throw things in a bottle, shake it a little and shove it in the fridge. 

Which is kind of what I ended up doing and it was a success!!! You’ll want a blender but if you don’t have one just shake the mixture in a bottle to make it frothy. 

I shall name it NOG. 

Ready for it? 

Here we go, VEGAN EGG NOG or NOG

Makes 1 litre ish

Ingredients

1 litre of dairy free milk, I used half almond milk and half coconut milk. UNSWEETENED

Splash of maple syrup

Cinnamon, ground

Nutmeg, ground

1 tsp vanilla extract, or 2 tsp if you like vanilla, I used 2 hehe

Method

Put all the above in a blender (or the bottle) and blitz until frothy. With the cinnamon and nutmeg just shake in as much as you like, you might like it more nutmeggy than cinnamoney or vice versa. 

Pour into a container and store in fridge to chill. 

When you want to serve, give it a shake (the spices tend to settle at the base) and you can add a dash more nutmeg, cinnamon or both on top. 

TA-DAAAAAAAH! 

Of course you can make it alcoholic if you wish, I’d suggest something like Frangelico maybe? (But I don’t think you really need it.) 

Merry Christmas! x

Here’s me at four in the morning wielding saucepans with mascara under my eyes which is weird, I haven’t worn mascara for three days and I wash my face all the time. 

Video

What’s for dinner? – Easy recipe for when you need a weekend to recover from the weekend

How was your weekend? We took it really easy, it’s my first weekend back in town so naturally we had loads of laundry and chores to catch up on. The last thing I want is to then have to drag myself out for dinner but I also don’t want to expend my remaining energy on making dinner but I want home food.

It’s all too “I know what I don’t want but I don’t know what I want but I know I want it now.” I KNOW! TIRESOME!

What then?

This Spicy Vegetarian Cous Cous Goreng has been a breakthrough over here. I always have a few random odds and ends hanging out in the veggie drawer of the fridge. When I make cous cous I can never make just the right amount there’s always an extra container of it. I keep a few spare packets of spice paste so all I do is just grab everything and throw it together and dinner is done! It’s so satisfying and warming, best of all you can just make it in the one pot and that’s as good as it gets, washing up wise.

So so easy! It’s my new favourite way to have cous cous. And you can sneak in all those vegetables.

Ingredients: 

Your choice of cooked grains: rice, cous cous, quinoa, oats, barley etc

A packet of spice paste (don’t be afraid to try other flavours too! Great ones to use are green/red/yellow curry paste)

Chopped veg (the softer the vegetable, like leaves, the less time it needs to cook)

Bit of oil, I like coconut oil, but use whatever you like

Options: fried egg, shredded meat, or leave out to keep it vegetarian

And yes, I am using my rice cooker to cook dinner. There’s no gas for my stove but I will always find a way hahaha.

Enjoy your Monday! xx