Mother's Day!

I realize this post is very late but HEY it's better now than never because... my friends I need to share with you the most wonderful,taste bud tantalizing, palate flirtation food I have  ever tasted.  Bacon dipped in dark chocolate!  (bottom left corner)

My mother's day brunch was a cornucopia of awesomeness.  Two types of pancakes (mine were gluten free oatmeal, extra protein powder added and the others were the buttermilk oatmeal pancakes), two types of turkey sausage, bacon, tons of fruit and the coup de resistance was the dark chocolate made "a-la-fondue" style.  We had visitors to share in our feast. Shout out to Christine, Shawn and their two lovies, Serenity and Gabriel! 

So to all my followers, yes I do realize this is not very clean! (well the bacon at least) but for one day of the year I allow my children to dip anything they want in dark chocolate!  Hopefully this tradition will stick for many many years to come. 

Each kid had a plate filled with food and their own individual chocolate to dip it in! Most popular was watermelon dipped in chocolate!

Live shot!  all dips and focus here!

smile!

Healthy Easter Baskets (filled with fruit snack and organic dark chocolate)

Ok well these don't look like much but alot of love went into them!  I looked up some healthy Easter treats and a recipe for these baskets came up but they used loads of brown sugar and butter (blah, hardly healthy) so I thought I would try to clean them up a bit and with some success I managed a basket that only uses dates to sweeten it and coconut oil to keep it together.  It's really cool actually, I was convinced when I started these I was wasting my time, how could they stick together without sugar... Ha ha, but the oven worked it's magic and voila they held! So there are quite a few steps to these so I'll walk you through them via pictures.

These are not GF so I couldn't taste them but I trusted the ingredients and had some faith.  I used 2 cups of shredded wheat (no sugar which I like).  I crushed these in the zip lock bag.

About 1/2 cup coconut oil.

Which needs to be melted, I did this on a small pot of boiling water.

Next I boiled some water, made tea and soaked 7 or 8 dates.

While the dates were soaking I added 1/4 cup of shredded coconut to my smashed shredded wheat.

I was also making chocolate at this time so these soaked about 20 minutes.

I added the dates and the melted coconut oil to my food processor.

Processed it until all visible chunks were mixed in.

Here I just mixed the dry with the wet ingredients.  (all 4 of them) and I knew it was ready to start to mold when I grabbed some and it stuck together enough to form a ball.

Formed in greased muffin tin. bake at 350 F for 11 minutes (or 10 - just until the edges are starting to turn light brown).  Let them cool in the muffin tin, then carefully remove!  These can be filled with anything.  But I wanted chocolate so here is the process I used to make chocolate shapes.

I used the same bowl that I melted the coconut butter in (why make more dishes)!

I could only find these silly molds, they worked well, I chilled them in the freezer and they popped right out!

I added some fruit snack also!

This is what I made my kids for Easter morning!  I

Healthy Easter Treats (crispy rice bunnies)

 Come on they are sooo cute! and they don't have stupid marshmallows! Have you seen the Lorax? The part where the kid is throwing marshmallows out to all the animals and it completely "tranquilizes them", it's like he's feeding them drugs.  Well that's how I saw it and that's what I personally think about sugar (the refined stuff mostly) some sugar is ok, in small quantities and in it's pure form. (like maple syrup, coconut sap or honey). Right"o" back to the Bunnies...

Ingredients;
1/4 c agave
1/4 c maple syrup
1 tbsp of coconut oil
1 tsp vanilla
3 c rice crisps
1 c of mixed seeds (I used sesame, pumpkin and sunflower)
dried currants/raisins and apricots (I like the organic ones because they don't contain sulphates)

Add agave, maple syrup, coconut oil and vanilla in pot and bring to a boil and let simmer for 5minutes.

Add dry ingredients (just not the dried fruit), mix well. (you will notice it takes a few minutes for the mixture to "get sticky" but it will as it cools.

I used some oil and rubbed it into the muffin tin and pressed the mixture into these. (I also made little balls, which I then cut in half to made the noses)

 Once the rice mixture starts to cool it becomes easier to press and mold.  I also used a sharp knife to cut the apricots in half then made the ears and the wickers.   Enjoy and have fun!