Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies

I decided to keep with my holiday treats theme and come up with a new chocolate chip cookie recipe. There are so many different variations of "paleo" chocolate chip cookies, so I decided to use what I had in my cabinets and come up with my own.  Since I love coconut, I tossed some of that good stuff in this recipe too. Only problem is these came out a little bit dry, but thats what happens when you use coconut flour.  Anyone else have a good cookie recipe?? I posted a recipe similar to this way back in march, that had mashed bananas and almonds in it.  Check it out if you like bananas,almonds, and coconut.

Have a good holiday friends!

You will need:
- 1/2 cup coconut flour
- 3/4 cup unsweetened coconut
- 1/2-3/4 cup dark chocolate chips  ( or chop up your favorite chocolate bar)
- 1/4 cup coconut oil ( is what I used, I would do 1/2 cup next time to make them more moist)
- 1/4 cup almond butter
-1/4 cup honey
- 3 eggs
- 1 tsp baking powder
- dash of cinnamon
-1/2 tsp sea salt

1. mix all dry ingredients ( except chocolate chips)
2. melt coconut oil, add almond butter and honey to melted coconut oil to get a smooth mixture.
3. add eggs to dry ingredients
4, add almondbutter/coconutoil/honey mixture
5. then add chocolate chips--mix together well
6. make small cookies with hands
7. place on greased cookie sheet

8. bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes.  In my oven 15 wasn't enough, so I left it in for 20 and they were over done.  I'd go for a good 18 minutes.

Enjoy!

"Clean" Brownie's

Tis the season for sweets & appetizers galoreeee.  I was making a very unpaleo appetizer for a christmas party I was going to, and asked on my facebook page if anyone had any holiday treats they would like a "clean" recipe for.  My friend April from nursing school, asked about Brownies.  I've made a few versions of paleo brownies before, and decided to come up with my own recipe with all the ingredients I wanted to incorporate.  April was a friend who probably had to listen to me complain too often about how sore I was after various crossfit workouts.  Now she has just joined a new crossfit in wallingford and can understand where I was coming from!  If anyone else has any recipes they would like to see for the holiday season let me know, i'll do my best to experiment!  It's so hard to stay on track during the holidays, I won't pretend my diet has been perfect because it hasn't! But hopefully with some options like "Clean" brownies, it might be a little easier for some of us :)

These brownies are not super sweet or chocolatey, but they still hit the sweet tooth spot.  If you want to make them a little more rich, add some dark chocolate chips. ( I'm going to try this in the next batch)

You will need:
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup almond butter
3 eggs
1/4 cup honey-- ( you can add more for a sweeter brownie)
1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk
**optional: dark chocolate chips (preferably 70-80%), walnuts

1.preheat oven to 350. mix all dry ingredients together

2. put almond butter, honey, and coconut oil in sauce pan--heat over medium heat until mixture is smooth.

3. add mixture to dry ingredients mix well.
4. then mix in eggs and almond milk.

5.  add to greased baking dish ( I use coconut oil spray)
6. bake in oven for 15-18 minutes or until baked all the way through.

Bring these to your next paleo holiday party!
Enjoy!

CleaneatsbyNickiSweet Potato Pancakes

You dig my blog title today?  I'm not really that sweet, but i'll just pretend I am for today. Anywho, clearly I have a slight obessesion with food in the form of pancakes.  I bought sweet potatoes with the idea of making some sort of casserole or to add into a main dish somehow. Life got in the way of my big hopes for an extravagant dish containing sweet potatoes, and they ended up sitting on my counter for a few days. I decided to use them up one morning instead of letting them go bad.  So naturally I made some pancakes! These yummy little guys only took about 15 minutes to make.

You will need:
-one large( or 2 small) sweet potato shredded ( this guy was huge--I put it in the microwave for about a minute and a half to soften it a bit before I shredded it on the cheese grater)
-1/4c onion-chopped
- 2 eggs
-dash garlic powder
-dash cinnamon
-sea salt & pepper
- coconut oil for frying

1. shred your sweet potato
2.  add onions
3. add eggs + spices
4. Form small pancakes with your hands
5. place in frying pan in preheated coconut oil
6. cook until brown on both sides. 
* this makes about 12 small pancakes
Thats it!

Enjoy your NickiSweet Potato Pancakes!

Pumpkin Spice Muffins

Tis the season for pumpkin flavored everything!  Pumpkin spice coffee from dunks? Yumm, but, loaded with sugar.  Pumpkin pie?? Delish, but all those carbs in the crust... Pumpkin Muffins sprinkled with brown sugar and topped with butter??  I just added 5 lbs to my muffin top just thinking about that... I found the recipe for these muffins here , and per usual, changed it up slightly.  This recipe called for maple syrup instead of honey. These paleo friendly mini muffins are the perfect treat to satisfy your sweet tooth, and you won't feel left out of all the fall festivities. You can have your muffins and eat them too. ( I don't know if that makes sense, but you know what I mean.) You can make normal size muffins, but I prefer mini.  Probably because in my mind 4 mini muffins is better than one big muffin.  Also, just because they are "paleo friendly" doesn't mean you can eat the whole batch, they do have honey in them.On that note,  here's the recipe..
You will need:

1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 cup pumpkin
6 eggs
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/4 cup honey
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
4 tbs coconut oil (melted)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup chopped walnuts



Pumpkin & pumpkin pie spice

 1. preheat oven to 350, mix all dry ingredients together in a bowl
2. mix wet ingredients together
3. then add wet ingredients to the dry and mix together well.

4. Grease your muffin tin with coconut oil.  I usually use coconut oil spray but I ran out, so I melted some coconut oil and used a paper towel to grease the muffin tin.
5. If making mini muffins- exactly one spoonful will fill each muffin, if using regular sized muffin tin fill about 3/4 of the way.
6. Put in the oven for about 18 mins.  I left mine in for about 20 and they were slightly over done. This made about 30 mini muffins. Note: you might want to keep these in the refrigerator if you have them more than a couple days because of the high egg content.



Leaning tower of muffins

Happy Fall, Enjoy!

Lasagna

Lasagna?! Thats totallly the least Clean ( I guess the dirtiest?) thing you could eat.  Layers of Pasta and various types of cheese. Yummy? Yes. Belly Ache? Yes. So I found this recipe for Paleo Primal Lasagna and changed it up slightly.  The noodles are made out of egg which is a really good idea, i've heard of other lasagna's using eggplant, zucchini, and other veggies as the noodles, but I like how the egg noodles really give it the lasagna-y feel.  In my lasagna I used egg "noodles", spinach, Rao's marinara sauce, mushrooms, ground turkey, and sausage.  This was a really yummy and filling meal that I will probably be eating for the next few days for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  It was a little time consuming to make the noodles, so this is probably a good sunday night recipe, then you have some meals prepped for the week. Also, I always like to mention, find your favorite pandora station before you start..My Lasagna Pandora station was James Morrison and then switched it up to Duffy ( who is new to me but I kinda dig her) Anywayyyyy that has nothing to do with lasagna, so here it is..

You will need:

- 1 lb ground turkey or ground beef-- if you don't want sausage in your lasagna use 1.5 lbs of ground meat.
- 1 package sweet italian sausage--casing removed.
- 1 package mushrooms
- 1 bag of spinach ( or more if you want more veggies-- even one bag reduced to less than a cup)
- 1 large jar of your favorite marinara ( I like Rao's, or you could make your own if you're feeling ambitious)
- 6 eggs
- 6 tbs water
- coconut oil for sauteeing veggies and frying egg.
- sea salt and pepper for taste

1. preheat oven to 350
2. first brown ground turkey and sausage in one pan.  Add mushrooms when meat is almost done. Set aside when all meat is browned.

3.  Sautee spinach in coconut oil and set aside
4. Here is the time consuming part: wisk eggs and water in a bowl, and heat coconut oil( only use enough to lightly grease the pan) over medium high heat in a small frying pan.
5. Use a measuring cup to slowly add egg to frying pan, only putting enough egg in to lightly cover the bottom of the pan.

6. Flip it and cut it into sections, these noodles do not have to be perfect, they will probably fall apart a bit, but its okay!

7. Do this with the remainder of the egg, setting the noodles on a plate to the side.

8. The fun part, start by putting a little bit of sauce into the bottom of a baking dish

9. layer the bottom of the dish with your noodles, remember doesn't have to be perfect just cover the bottom.

10. add some spinach

11. I dumped half the jar of sauce into the meat mixture, and then layered the meat on.

12. continue until you've used up all your ingredients.  I only got two layers of each, I think the recipe I followed must have used a smaller dish because the picture showed alot more lasagna layers.

13. Dump the rest of the sauce on ( if you like it saucccyyyy)
14. Bake at 350 for about 30-40 minutes.  I sprinkled a little parm cheese ontop just for looks.  The website I got this from actually used mozz.cheese in the layers of lasagna. Which would be delish, but i'm trying to be extra good this week after I may have had regular pizza this weekend. Ooops.

Enjoy your Clean Eats Lasagna !

Zucchini Pancakes

Here is the recipe I left you guys hanging for the other day ( i've got to keep the spice alive in our blog relationship somehow!). My friend from the gym came up to me yesterday wondering about the zucchini pancake recipe! She said it reminded her of when her mom used to make these for her growing up. I've come to realize that pancakes in any, shape, or form, are always a comfort food. Maybe it's the memories they bring up, saturday morning breakfast with the fam, or teaching little cousins how to make them, or  maybe it's just the sound of the word pancake ( or maybe just the word cake) that is an instant comfort no matter what word is in front of it.  I mean, even Poopy Pancake almost sounds good.  Poopy?? Yikes i've been spending too much time with people under the age of ten . 

Anyway now that i've ruined everyones appetite, I served these with my stuffed burgers, but then ate the left over for breakfast. They actually have more of a breakfast-y feel because they are very egg-y  ( does adding a  "y" onto any word make it a legit word?)  I was thinking these would be pretty awesome with some ham, bacon, or sausage on top and turn it into a B.E.Z (bacon, egg, zucchini.  I know, who cares what time of the day you prefer to eat Zucchini pancakes, Nicki.  Here are two more pancake recipe's you should try spaghetti squash pancakes and Protein Pancakes

 Here is the recipe:

You will need:
( this will make 8-10 medium sized pancakes)

- 2 large Zucchini
- 3 eggs
- 2 tbs coconut flour
-1/2 tsp garlic powder or clove fresh garlic
- sea salt & pepper for taste
- coconut oil for frying ( or olive oil if you prefer)
** onion would be good too, but I used all my onion in the burgers that night)


1. shred zucchini ( approx 2 cups shredded)  I went out and bought myself a fancy shredder a few months ago, honestly, I prefer the cheese grater!  Only took  about 5 minutes ( the time it takes me to figure out how to assemble the fancy shredder), Plus you get a nice little forearm/bicep workout in.
** important note if using cheese grater : If you have a lovely fresh manicure, stop grating a few inches away from the end of zucchini-- a few inches of zucchini isn't worth an annoying eye sore of a chipped fingernail. ok thats all for now**

2. Whisk eggs and sift in coconut flour, this flour gets pretty clumpy.
3. add eggs and coconut flour to zucchini, add salt, pepper, garlic. mix well.  The mixture will seem watery, not like real pancake batter, but this is how its supposed to be.

4. Heat a few tbs of coconut oil in frying pan
5. I used a 1/4 measuring cup so scoop the mixture into the frying pan.

6. cook until brown on both sides.

There you have it!
Enjoy your favorite kind of "clean eats" pancakes this weekend, even if it's a poopy pancake( i'll grow up one day)

Simply Stuffed Burgers

The only thing better than a bunch of awesome toppings on a burger, is a bunch of awesome toppings stuffed inside a burger!  I spent labor day with my brother, sister in law, and oh so cute niece, and we made some delish stuffed burgers.  The burgers we made weren't exactly paleo, so I re-made them for the blog in a more "clean" fashion.  I stuffed these burgers with bacon, onion, and mushroom.  These make some big ol' burgers, my brother said they looked like Ninja Turtle Shells.



Just showing you how cute Kayla is :)

You will need:

- ground beef -- I used 1 lb, it made three large burgers
- toppings of your choice: I used about 7 slices of bacon, but the more the merrier, one package of mushrooms, and one onion.
- couple tbs of olive oil to sautee veggies
- 1 clove garlic

1. prepare bacon-- the crispier the better ( to me anyway)
2. sautee onions, mushrooms, and garlic in olive oil  ( there was a ton left over, so I just served the burgers with more on top)

3. form ground beef into thin patties.  Make them as big as you want, but big enough to fit the goods in the middle.
4. spoon toppings ontop of the patties.

5. use the remaining ground beef to form thin patties to cover your burgers. Seal burgers around the edges using your fingers.

6.  Either grill them for about 6 minutes on either side, or bake them @375 for 12 minutes, flipping burgers at halfway point.

I served these with Zucchini pancakes ( stay tuned for this recipe).  But they would also be delish with another recipe I made last week but still haven't posted, Sweet Potato Fries (stay tuned for this also)

zucchini pancakes

sweet potato fries

Coconut Flour Flatbread Pizza

My family gets together for every single birthday on my mom's side of the family.  For every single birthday my grandmother makes homemade pizza, i'm talking the perfect thin crispy crust with just the right amount of  homemade sauce &cheese.  While this is a memorable family tradition, which will probably continue for years to come, for a carb/cheese lover trying to maintain a clean diet, this is absolute torture!!  Sometimes I sit at the table eating my salad while the rest of my family eats pizza with thoughts running through my head like " Why is this worth it??" " I'm eating f&$*ing veggies and everyone else gets pizza!" Sometimes the thoughts get to me and I will give in and have some.  When I do give in, within an hour I realize why eating a clean diet is allllll worth it.  When the bloating, stomach cramping, carb hang over,( not to mention guilt) kicks in, that's when I realize why I avoid the best food in the world, Pizza.  If foods like pizza, don't have a negative affect on your body like they do mine, then enjoy it once in a while.  For those like me, here is a better option, I'm not going to say its as good as pizza, because its not.  But it is still yummy and its also a fun to build your own pizza.

I used this recipe and split into two  pizzas.  I used two baking dishes because I don't have a pizza dish.  I made one with tomato paste, chicken sausage, and mushrooms.  The other with sundried tomatoes, spinach, and grilled chicken.  They were both delish!!

You will need:

- 3 eggs

- 1 cup coconut milk (whole fat) I've only been able to find this @ stop & shop in the baking section of the organic aisle. 

- 1/2 cup coconut flour

- 1/2 tsp baking powder

- 1/2 tsp salt

-1/2 tsp garlic powder

- 1/2 tsp oregano

- 2-3 tbs olive oil

-** parchment paper- this is necessary, the mixture is more of a batter than a dough so it gets pretty sticky.

-Any toppings of your choice

1. Preheat oven at 375

2. mix all dry ingredients together, coconut flour tends to clump together when you add wet ingredients to try and get it as smooth as possible.

3. mix wet ingredients-- sometimes coconut milk is a little chunky when you open the can, so make sure you stir until its smooth.

4. mix wet and dry ingredients together

5. line whatever dish you are using with parchment paper and then brush olive oil onto parchment paper.

6. evenly spread mixture into the bottom of pan, put as much as you want for your desired crust thickness, but this crust is more fragile so it might fall apart if its too thin.

7. bake crust for about 20 minutes

8. Take crust out and transfer to a cookie sheet, carefully peeling off the parchment paper

9.  Set your oven to Broil

10. add your sauce ( I used tomato paste because its lesss watery than sauce, this helped keep the crust more crunchy)

11. add your pre-cooked veggies/meats/other toppings

12. stick back in the oven on broil for about 2 minutes to crisp up the crust



lost the corner of one crust from pulling the parchment paper off too fast



Enjoy!

~Nicki PizzaLover Peet