Part 4 of my “What to do with crappy peaches” experiment. Boyfriend’s favorite, and a close runner-up to the cookies, IMHO. I used frozen raspberries for a little zing to complement the subtle peach flavor.
Peach Cupcakes Raspberry & Coconut Makes 10
Dry Ingredients:
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Wet Ingredients:
1 puree’d peach or 1/2 c. applesauce
3 eggs, gently beaten with a fork
1 T honey
3 T coconut oil or butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Mix-ins:
1 cup of fresh or frozen raspberries
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a medium size bowl, mix dry ingredients with a fork until all lumps are gone. In a separate bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients. Add wet to dry and mix well, then gently fold in the berries.
In papered or lightly greased muffin tins, put about 1/4 cup of batter in each muffin tin. Bake for 30-40 minutes, until the muffins are lightly browned on the top and a toothpick comes out clean when poked into the middle of the muffin.
Optional: frost with coconut butter, allowing the warm muffins to melt the “frosting” so it cools as a hard shell. These are best enjoyed at room temperature, and like most coconut flour baked goods, better the next day!
Pittsburgh is truly a foodie paradise- there’s a plethora of wholesale and ethnic foods in the Strip District, farmers’ markets in every neighborhood, community gardens, and at least one absolutely phenomenal restaurant for any genre of cuisine you can imagine. We’re surrounded by rich farmlands and woods filled with blackberry bushes and, if your timing’s right, fiddlehead ferns and wild morels. There’s a grass-fed cattle farm and a buffalo ranch out by my parents’ place (45 minutes away) and a farm where you can pick your own blueberries. I live in the sweet spot of the city- within walking distance I’ve got two Giant Eagles, a Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and an Asian grocer. Yesterday I walked to the Strip and back on my lunch hour, grabbed some raw oysters from a street vendor for a two-buck lunch and got all this loot from Stan’s market for $7:
This confession may strip me of foodie merit badge: I doubt I’ve tried even a dozen restaurants in the city. I eat out once, maybe twice, per week and there are only three or four joints in the date night rotation. What’s worse is that I’ve found my favorite dish at each and order it every time. Yes, I’m a senior citizen.
Spicy Eggplant is one of those dishes. Thai Cuisine gets it just right- the eggplant is crispy on the outside, caramelized and gooey on the inside and swimming in a sweet sesame oil sauce. A little experimenting in my kitchen, and while my recipe isn’t a replica of TC’s- it might just be better.
Stir-fries are great for weeknights because they cook quickly over high heat. This recipe can be easily adapted to serve your vegan friends- just add a package of frozen edamame near the end for some extra protein.
Thai Eggplant
Raspberry & Coconut, June 2011
Ingredients:
1-2 T. coconut oil
3 Chinese eggplants, sliced into half-moons
1 small onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
Hot peppers- I usually use 3 jalapenos, but you could use Thai chilies or just Sriracha if you don’t have any peppers on hand.
3 T. chopped garlic
1/2 c. chopped fresh basil
Chopped cashews and/or sesame seeds (optional)
Sauce:
2 T. fish sauce
1 T. soy sauce, tamari, or coconut aminos
1 t. honey
1 t. toasted sesame oil
Stir-frying veggies leaves them nice and crisp. In this recipe, it’s only important that the onions, eggplant, and garlic are cooked thoroughly. Chinese eggplant cooks much faster than “regular” eggplant.
Preheat a large skillet or wok over medium high. Add coconut oil, onions, red peppers, toss, then add green beans and eggplant. Cook for 3 minutes.
Whisk all the ingredients for the sauce while you’re waiting.
Toss the veggies and add garlic and peppers and cook a minute longer, stirring constantly. Add sauce and basil and cook until the sauce coats the veggies. Toss in cashews/sesame seeds before serving and top with Sriracha for extra heat!
Side note- the fish wasn’t great. It was cooked perfectly but I wouldn’t recommend the green curry rub- I usually do a dry rub with Penzey’s Cajun or chili powder.
Chocolate covered cherries make me think of Valentines’ Day! My mom rarely bought candy but somehow we always ended up with a box of those Queen Anne cherry cordials every February. I had one not too long ago, and good lord it was sweet- while my sweet tooth is definitely intact, it craves things like dark chocolate, peanut butter, fruit, and my grain free banana blondies 🙂 These cherry bombs don’t have the gooey, sugary syrup of regular cordials, they make their own as the cherries thaw. Mine didn’t make it to that point before me and my Valentine inhaled ’em.
Click here to read about the health benefits of coconut oil.
Chocolate Cherry Bombs
1/4 c. coconut oil
2 drops of Stevia or 1/4 t honey (both optional)
1/4 t. vanilla extract
One grind of sea salt
1 T. cocoa powder
1 c. frozen cherries (or frozen banana chunks, frozen mango… etc.)
Melt your coconut oil- it’s summer so if you don’t have a/c Mother Nature will have done this for you already- otherwise, fill up a large bowl with hot water and float your closed jar of coconut oil until it’s melted. (I should have explained this better in the video!)
Measure the oil into a small bowl and add your stevia, salt, and vanilla and whisk with a fork. Add cocoa and whisk until the mixture is blended. Toss in your fruit pieces one-by-one and roll each around until coated. Repeat until you’re out of fruit or chocolate!
I always use flexible plastic Ziploc containers when I’m making this recipe. The coldness of the fruit hardens up the remaining chocolate by the time I’m done with two thirds of the batch. Instead of wasting it, I just float the container in a larger bowl of hot water for a few minutes until it liquifies again. Also, if you put the cherry bombs on a surface before the shell has hardened, they’ll stick. A simple way to fix this is to place them in another flexible plastic container and pop them in the freezer for another minute or so. This makes the shell really hard and you can just “pop” the bottom of the container and they’ll let go.
Raspberry & Coconut 