Christmas Butterbean Cookies

Tom again, feeling surprisingly prolific today,

...and CHRISTMASSY. Yes I know it's november. I don't know what is happening to me. I am normally a massive scrooge. Help?

Anyway, in the spirit of my want to bake and christmas spirit (and because I can use my parents' fancy food processor!), here is a recipe for christmas flavoured cookies (the smell when they bake is glorious, it's filling my kitchen as I write this). This is entirely stolen from Happy Herbivore (http://happyherbivore.com/recipe/butter-bean-cookies/), and I adapted it with christmas flavours to suit my mood.

But now, to address the elephant in the room, yes, I said butterbean. Before you run screaming and denounce me as a witch or burn me for worshiping the devil...62 calories per cookie. And 0.7g fat. That's all. Because you're using the protein from blended butterbeans (which lets face it, have no flavour) to bind these cookies together, you don't need to add any fat to it, animal or otherwise. To be fair, this recipe isn't exceptionally sweet, but that can be altered easily enough if you'd like too. Yes it sounds weird, yes it looks like babysick when blended, but hey, it's worth a try right?

Ingredients:

1 cup Rolled Oats
1 cup Plain Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
2 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Cloves
1 1/2 tsp Vanilla
3 tsp Ginger (or about an inch of grated fresh ginger)
1/2 tsp grated Nutmeg
1/2 can of Butterbeans
1/4 cup of Apple sauce (or stewed apples)
1/2 cup of Sugar
Pinch of salt
Handful of Almonds

These cookies are kind of like macaroons in texture. On a side note DO NOT COOK THESE ON BAKING PAPER. They stick. And do not peal. At all. However, despite the occasional piece of baking paper still stuck on they were still tasty (my mum would NOT leave them alone). Also this recipe needs a food processor, you can probably do it with a spoon and a hand blender but it will take a lot of elbow grease.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350F, 175C or Gas Mark 4.
Pour 3/4 cup of oats into the food processor and pulse until they are lightly ground but not a powder.
Add the oats and all of the rest of the dry ingredients to the mixing bowl.
Put the butterbeans, apple sauce, vanilla and sugar in the food processor with a tbsp of water and blend until smooth.
Add the oats and stir until mixed.
Toast the almods briefly and break them up in a pestle and mortar (or with a rolling pin).
Combine the wet and dry ingredients in the mixing bowl and 1/3 of a cup of water and mix roughly (it should still be pretty lumpy, it works better that way).
Put tablespoon blobs on a greased baking tray.
Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden around the edges and on the bottom and solid in the centre.
Enjoy with a coffee! (I just did)

Dry ingredients

First butterbeans...

Now babysick. Also known as the wet ingredients.

Combine the two.

Add a few almonds.

Before

And after baking. With a nice bit of icing sugar, everything looks christmassy with icing sugar.

As always, make any changes you come feel - I'm thinking walnuts and coffee? - and let us know what you come up with at twocooksoneblog@gmail.com

Vegan, Gluten Free Breakfast Muffins

It only seems right to start this blog with a healthy, low cal recipe suitable for vegans and coeliacs.

So, we've perfected the muffin that contains no flour, sugar, butter or eggs. We varied this a few times to make sure we got a good texture.

Jess: On telling friends, and my Mum, about the ingredients I was met with disbelief that it would actually taste like a muffin. But it does. It looks like one too. Despite being such a healthy recipe, it took me a while to get my head around not feeling guilty eating a muffin, because I've always associated them with being overly indulgent treats. But this recipe really is good for you, it keeps you full for hours and definitely stops the need for a snack to get you through the morning. This could also be great for diabetic people too, as oat bran, flaxseed and cinnamon all have links to stabilising blood sugar levels.

The basic recipe for this is one we found online, but it was a bit plain and (although still tasty) so we decided to experiment with this and make it generally much more appealing and wonderful. The basic recipe is as follows:

Basic Flaxseed Muffin:

1 egg
3 tbsp flaxseed
1 tsp of baking powder
1 tbsp oil

Mix in a mug and microwave for one minute.

The benefit of a recipe this simple (and microwaveable!) is that you can make as many as you want very quickly, so changing a little bit of the recipe at a time was not a problem. First things first, we veganised (yes, it's now a verb) the recipe by substituting half a banana for the egg (Tom: soon I hope to do a general post about vegan baking - watch this space!) We found that this didn't rise so well, so we added some milk (almond - but that's just personal preference) to make it a bit more of a batter, which solved that problem. Then we tried adding oat bran to the muffins to stop them from being quite so stodgy. Finally (the fun bit!) we added lots of combination of spices, vanilla, maple syrup, nut and blueberries till we found what we think is the best recipe!

However, probably while you're making this you'll think "hmmm, this would definitely benefit from just a pinch of.....", or you may even decide you hate cinnamon and blueberries (which would leave you with a very sad and empty life) and want to scrap our recipe and start again from the basic recipe in which case YOU CAN! You officially have our permission to make whatever muffin you think will be best. All we ask is you take a couple of photos and tell us your ideas at twocooksoneblog@gmail.com or post them in a comment below. We want to hear your improvements!

If you haven't cooked using flaxseed before, it's available in health food shops (Jess: I got mine from the Eighth Day Vegetarian shop in Manchester) but Sainsbury's do sometimes sell it too. It's high in fibre so introduce it into your diet slowly and maybe start with 2 tbsp oat bran to 1 tbsp flax if your gut is sensitive. It's a great ingredient to use though, lots of protein and omega-3 fatty acids and its low-carb so good for the dieters. Oat bran is also low carb and full of fibre, adding to the health benefits of these muffins.

This recipe is best made in a regular coffee mug. Any will do.

Ingredients
1/2 banana
1/2 tbsp oil (use whichever type you prefer, olive oil works fine in my experience)
1/2 tbsp milk (again, whichever type you want. Skimmed, full fat, almond, soy...whatever. Water would probably work here too)
2 tbsp milled flaxseed
1 tbsp oat bran (gluten free if needed)
1 tsp baking powder
1-2 tsp cinnamon

Firstly, mash the banana in the mug. Once mashed, it will have a similar consistency to beaten egg.

 Add the oil and milk to the banana and mix. Then add the rest of the ingredients and mix.

 We made this recipe with a few blueberries too, but anything would go in here (eg. other berries, dried fruits, chocolate chips...). Once all mixed together, put the mug in the microwave and cook on full power for 1-2 minutes. Jess: I have a 700W microwave so it took me about 2 mins 20 to be fully cooked, but check after a minute if you're lucky enough to not be living in student accommodation with a microwave from the 18th century.

Would you like some eyes with that muffin? Sorry, no can do.

And there you have it. A muffin with no flour, sugar, butter or eggs. If you prefer to use eggs, just substitute the banana for an egg. You don't have to use cinnamon, use anything you wish to flavour it. Vanilla essence also works nicely. We love cinnamon so as you will soon notice, we put bucket loads of it in absolutely everything, but you don't have to.

Using the above recipe (with regular skimmed milk, and a few blueberries), this muffin contains about 210kcal. Completely guilt free and a great filling start to the day.

Enjoy and let us know how it goes!