This is going to be a food post as I've not had the forethought to take my camera with me when I go down to do the chickens in my brand new awesome eggmobile, look for that post coming soon :)
So this morning I was low on energy and not feeling like doing much, I worked out yesterday, and spent half the day in town, which always wipes me out. So I decided some yummy food might perk me up, I made a carrot cake out of my favorite recipe. It's not so smart to make cake this early in the day, there might not be any left by the time my husband gets home... Oh well, I'll make sure not to pig out too much. To help prevent too much overeating of cake, I'm making Sweet Potato Fries, one of my favorite foods ever. I've never liked sweet potatoes, until about 6 months ago, I had some that needed to be eaten, and I tried a fry recipe. Now I eat them like candy, they are so super good.
Slice up your sweet potatoes, I prefer to peel them just because most pesticides and chemicals are in the outer layer, and these are not organic unfortunately. Then throw them in a bowl, splash olive oil generously over them, then sprinkle (douse) them with paprika, chili powder, and salt.
Stir them up and spread on a heavily greased baking sheet, if you don't grease it you'll have stuck fries. Bake on 400 or so until they are done, usually I take them out when the little ones are nice and crispy, and I try to stir them once or twice. Right now mine are baking at 350 because they are in with the cake, which means it's going to take longer and I'm starving...
Meanwhile, my older two are swimming in the pool, they wish... They've been begging me for a pool but I'm too cheap, um, thrifty, to buy them one. So they make do with what they've got. And then the baby, who loves anything with an edge, or anything that can cause blunt trauma, or anything with a motor, is "helping" chop sweet potatoes. For a while every time I turned my back he would remove all the knives from the silverware drawer and play with them. I had to put them all up in a high cabinet to keep them away from him. He's pretty careful with them, well, at least he never stabbed himself and he still has all his fingers.
And then, finally, time to eat! Of course I was too busy stuffing my face to take a picture, only when my stomach started urgently signalling me to stop eating did I think of the camera. Here's the leftovers, not very much left out of a three pound bag of sweet potatoes. We did also finish off the Venison Stew, we didn't just eat sweet potatoes, that wouldn't have been a very balanced meal. Though actually the cake has a dozen eggs in it so really I guess the meal would have been decently balanced just with the fries and the cake. And the cake was oh so terribly good, thankfully I was pretty full already, else I would have probably eaten myself sick
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Sweet Potato Fries (probably would serve 6 normal people)
3# bag of Sweet Potatoes
1/4 cup EV Olive Oil
2 tsp Chili Powder
1 1/2 tsp Paprika
1 tsp salt or to taste
Peel potatoes if they are not organic and slice into fries. Mix the olive oil and spices in a bowl then drizzle on top of the potatoes, stir til coated then spread out on a greased baking sheet. Bake at 400 for 30 minutes or until done, stir and flip them over about halfway thru.
Coconut Flour Carrot Cake
1 cup sifted coconut flour
½ cup butter, melted
½ cup milk, coconut or whole
12 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ cup honey
¼ tsp stevia or to taste
¾ teaspoon salt
1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 ½ cups finely grated carrot
½ cup nuts, chopped
1/2 cup raisins (opt)
Combine butter, milk, eggs and vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix together sugar, salt and spices. Stir into wet mixture. Combine coconut flour with baking powder and whisk into batter until there are no lumps. Fold in carrots and nuts. Pour batter equally into 2 greased 8 or 9x1½ inch layer cake pans or one 9x9x2 inch pan. Bake at 350 degree’s for 35-40 minutes or until knife inserted into center comes out clean. Cool.
Cream Cheese Frosting
8 oz cold cream cheese
5 tbs unsalted butter
2 tsp vanilla
¼ cup honey
Stevia to taste
Beat and add additional sweetener until it reaches the taste and consistency you want.
Why do you bother with Stevia and honey? It looks like there might be enough honey in the recipe not to bother with the stevia? Or is there?
ReplyDeleteRachel
I don't know, try it and let me know :) I usually use stevia and not as much honey, just because honey is expensive. I usually just taste the batter and add until I think it tastes good.
DeleteMy mom used to cook with honey a lot so I have a little experience with it but none with stevia yet. I keep thinking about trying it but I am always very suspicious of alternative sweeteners that haven't been in use long enough that we can find out what is bad about them yet. I know it is from a plant and all but that doesn't make things inherently healthy, so is sugar and lot of other poisonous things. I am going to have to start messing with some kind of low calories sweetening options soon though because Josh has lost tons of weight recently doing low carb dieting and has pretty much sworn off real sugar for the foreseeable future.
ReplyDeleteI tried one of my granny's stevia packets in some ricotta with some almond extract the other day because someone said it made a good dessert but it was so nasty tasting. I guess people get used to the flavor after a while?
I also keep thinking about trying agave nectar but it isn't really low carb. . .
Rachel
Don't use agave, it's just as processed and has more fructose in in than corn syrup. I like stevia because my mom has used it for 20+ years without issue, I only use NuNatural's brand, because it doesn't have any aftertaste, I use the pure kind, it's ridiculously sweet so you only use a pinch. It is a processed food, but I figure, using it in minute quantities is ok, and certainly better than sugar. I also use raw sugar sometimes, when I want to make cookies or something that just needs a bit of sugar. I imagine the reason your ricotta was nasty was the almond extract, that stuff is weird... I've used it in a coffeecake before and it was ok, but it's still weird. But some stevia is nasty too, it's got a bitter aftertaste, that's why I use NuNaturals. Honey is ok, but again, it's still a form of sugar, so I like to use it sparingly. That's awesome that Josh has done well on low carb, it's definitely the best way to diet in my opinion. As long as you go unprocessed low carb, which I imagine is how ya'll are doing it :)
ReplyDelete20 years? Wow! I had no idea it had been around that long. I was reading someone else's recipe that called for NuNatural's baking blend I guess I will have to give it a try. I have been trying to make some desserts for Josh and so far I have sweetened the 2 I have made with his sugar free pancake syrup. LOL! I need to find something else that tastes decent.
ReplyDeleteRACHEL