vegan

Cooking, Filipino Food, Sweets

Coconut Pandan Steamed Rice Cake (Puto) {Filipino Food Month}

It’s Filipino Food Month over here, but in a few days it’s also St. Patrick’s Day. I decided to combine the two and make some Filipino food that’s green.

Puto is a Filipino steamed rice cake, although it can also be made with regular flour. (And before anyone gets all up in arms, I am aware that “puto” means something entirely different in Spanish. So if you and/or the people you’re serving are Spanish speakers, you might want to stick to “steamed rice cakes.”) I made these to be coconut pandan flavored, but they can also easily be made plain coconut, if you can’t get your hands on pandan extract. Bonus! These are gluten-free and vegan. I adapted the Puto Puti recipe found here.

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Cooking, Sweets

Cupcakes! and brownies tailored to your dietary needs

I’m going to give you a heads-up and let you know this post is going to be a bit long.

Also, you’re probably going to think that I’m totally crazy when I tell you what’s in these cupcakes. But, trust me, you’d never know these are healthy.

I know. Some of you are thinking of clicking away from this post right now. Healthy cupcakes? Who needs those? But I worked really hard to find & develop a recipe that doesn’t taste healthy. One of the things that makes these cupcakes better than most is that there are far less refined ingredients than you’d usually find. In fact, the bulk of these cupcakes are made with whole foods.

 

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Cooking, Side Dishes

Birdseed Bars

27616421086_854ef59e95_cSo Hubs’ birthday is coming up in a few days. I’m pretty sure that now his birthday will always be a little overshadowed by Little Man’s since they’re only just over a week apart. Luckily Hubs isn’t fussy about his birthday and is happy to have a simple night on the town with me. Yay. But I thought that before I got myself all dolled up, I should give you all an easy recipe that can carry you through the weekend.

For Little Man’s birthday, one of the things I made was birdseed bars. Besides being delicious and healthy, these bars are also gluten-free and dairy-free! And they’re sweetened only with honey. They are really easy and very versatile.

I got the idea from a birdseed bar I’d had from our local health food store. I looked at the ingredient list to have an idea what to put in it, and just made it up from there.

Let’s get started! (more…)

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Birthday Parties, Cooking, My Life

Little Man’s Angry Birds Birthday Party

Friends, we do not mess around over here when it comes to birthday parties.

Ever since my mom came to visit with her iPad, getting my son hooked on Angry Birds, I’ve been planning this Angry Bird-themed party. So, like 4-5 months of planning.

I don’t know what it is about kids’ parties that make me go a little nutty and start taking things beyond a normal level, but it’s just fun. Well, until it’s the week of the party and I’m swamped with things to make and get ready, and I can’t tone it down because I’m just too invested.

That being said, I did better than last year in that I wasn’t frantically frosting cupcakes as the guests arrived. I was plating the last of the appetizers as people got here, but other than that I was able to join the party from the get-go.

However, in similar fashion to last year, I was testing out recipes like a crazy person for months in advance. This year it was even more important because we had some food allergies to deal with. So I had to find and/or develop recipes that were gluten-free, refined sugar-free, dairy-free, and egg-free. Woah. So I tested out a lot of recipes, a few of which were so bad they went straight into the trash. Anyway. More on that later. (more…)

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