Reece's Cupcakes

Tom and Jess today!

Okay so for various reasons (not least because of our ongoing and undying love affair with peanut butter AND the recent discovery that Sainsbury's basics peanut butter is both amazing and cheap) we decided that a drizzly saturday REQUIRED cupcakes - and what better way to adapt our newly formed muffin recipe than into the greatest sweet on the planet - reece's pieces. The icing alone was good enough, but combined with chocolate cupcakes - unbeatable.

This recipe has quite a few specialist ingredients BUT it is vegan, gluten free, protein-filled and overall not incredibly unhealthy (except for the icing, but trust us, it's worth every calorie).

You're going to need the ingredients for the garbanzo muffins but with a few extra tweaks: makes around 10 (fairly large) cupcakes


1/2 cup Gram Flour (or chickpea or garbanzo beans - these things have too many names)
1/2 cup Gluten Free Self Raising Flour (I use Doves Farm)
1/2 cup Oats
1/2 cup of Soft Brown Sugar
3 tsp Soya Protein Powder (or substitute for 1 tbsp Cornflour)
3 tbsp Carob Powder (or you can use cocoa powder if you prefer)
3 tbsp Soya Butter
1 tbsp Vegetable Oil
2 ripe Bananas
1 tsp Baking Powder
2 tsp Distilled Vinegar
1/4 cup Peanuts
1/2 cup Almond Milk (or any other dairy free alternative)
10 1/2 tsp Black Cherry Jam
10 1/2 tsp Peanut butter

Make these in the same way as the garbanzo muffin recipe (http://twocooksoneblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/garbanzo-banana-muffins-with-cherry-jam.html), substituting the spices for the carob powder, the raisins for the peanuts and adding the peanut butter and jam to the centres.

Next you want to make up a batch of Jess' peanut butter frosting (the very definition of icing on the cake!) using:


1/3 cup Peanut Butter (use whatever type you prefer, other nut butters would work too if you wish!)
1/3 cup Dairy-free Butter
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
1 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste (this is an absolute necessity. And once again, worth every penny)
A few splashes of non-dairy milk (we used almond)
1 1/2 cups Icing Sugar
Optional - 2 tsp Maple Syrup (we used agave here)


For instructions see the second part of the recipe here (http://twocooksoneblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/vegan-gluten-free-chocolate-peanut.html).

Spread this on top in around a centimetre thick later, eat the rest of the bowl using you spoon/fingers/hands/face/tongue, and then enjoy!

Vegan Gluten Free Protein Granola Bars

Update 17/3  

Since I originally made these bars, I've done a little tweaking to reduce the sugar and calories whilst not losing the protein content, and they currently sit at 215 calories with 10g protein.

2 cups/160g oats
1/2 cup milled flaxseed
55g soy protein powder
1/2 cup agave nectar
1/2 cup cashew nuts
1/2 cup raisins
50g omega sprinkle (a seed mix from holland and barratt, but any seeds will do)
1 banana
1/2 cup almond butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
1-2 tbsp cinnamon
5 dates
Water

The only difference in method here is I quickly made up a little date syrup by mashing some pitted dates with some water for 5 minutes and drizzling this over the oaty mixture before toasting it. I would have properly made date syrup the night before if I had planned ahead, but I didn't. It seemed to work OK though, and I will get better at using dates. Also, I used 1/4 cup agave for the oat mixture, and 1/4cup in the banana-nut butter mixture. Unfortunately, as yummy as maple syrup and golden syrup and honey were in the old recipe, I needed to cut the sugar down. I also added some water to the whole mixture before putting in the dish and baking to try to keep the bars a little more moist as they dried out a bit last time. You could use milk (dairy or non) but I didn't have any to hand and water is calorie free I suppose. These bars maybe aren't quite as tasty as they were, but they're a lot healthier and will give you less of a sugar rush, so are probably better...

Jess and Tom today!

So, as we've both been working out pretty hard lately (Tom running millions of miles everyday, Jess complaining about her knee as she runs as far as she can and goes to a million Les Mills classes at the gym every week) and have been finding our diets fairly restrictive when it comes to sports nutrition, we decided to invent a vegan, gluten free, chocolate free protein bar. This is kind of 2 recipes in one, as we decided to play around with carob too. The protein bars are a take on our monkey bars which, if you've tried them, are just the best. I know a lot of protein bar recipes are raw but these baked ones are so good.

Carob

1 tablespoon vegan spread (we used sunflower, most recipes recommend coconut oil but we didn't have any to hand today)
1/2 cup carob powder
1tsp agave nectar
1tsp vanilla

Melt the fat (whichever you use), stir in carob powder over heat, add a little vanilla and agave to taste. Simple. Then, we poured this onto cling film on a plate, and wrapped it in another layer, and squashed it down nice and flat. Then we stuck it in the fridge/freezer to set.

Protein Bars

2 cups oats
1/2 cup flax seed (absolutely love the Linwoods one with sunflower seeds and goji berries in!)
1/4 cup oat bran
1/2 cup soya protein powder (50 grams)
1/2 cup cashew nuts
1/2 cup raisins
2 tablespoons cinnamon (or 3 or 4....)
2 tablespoons jam (optional but a nice sweet addition)
4 tablespoons maple/golden syrup (this time we used 3 maple to 1 golden but any combination works fine)
1 apple, grated

1/2 cup agave nectar
1 mashed banana
1/2 cup almond butter
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk (your choice, we used Alpro hazelnut milk)

So, as per the monkey bars, mix the oats, flax, bran, nuts, syrup and cinnamon in a baking dish and toast in the oven at 180C for 10 minutes, stirring halfway. Remove from oven and leave to cool.

Mash banana and add agave and almond butter, cook on the hob until the mixture is runny, remove from heat and add vanilla, salt and a drop of milk. You can also add more cinnamon here. We did.

When cooled, mix the oaty mixture, protein powder and banana-butter mixture. Add a grated apple and raisins (or whatever dried fruit you fancy) to this and add the milk. Mix thoroughly so that the ingredients are all coated and form a slightly doughy consistency. Spread half of this mixture in the bottom of the baking dish you are using, then spread jam on top of this if you are using it, and then we placed our carob flakes (yes, they came out as flakey bits but they taste nice anyway) on top of the jam. Then add the rest of the mixture and press down so that it is compact and neat. Then bake for 18-20 minutes.

And the result is high quality, high protein, vegan, gluten free granola bars. Using the above quantities, made into 14 servings these bars provide approximately 275 calories and 10g protein. So they're perfect to eat before or after a run or session in the gym. And they taste SO good. If you don't want to use soya protein powder, use whichever you prefer. We don't have much experience with protein additions yet so we'll add more recipes as we get more used to using it!

Gluten-Free (and vegan) Protein Pancakes

Tom here,

So in the spirit of me being gluten free for lent I've decided to try and actually cook something (rather than just staying away from all things that remind me of bread as I have done so far). Had an interesting experiment making rice flour chapattis a couple of nights ago, but these need a bit more tweaking so I will make those again before I blog them. This is just a very simple pancake recipe which worked well, based on the general banana pancakes recipe I've blogged before (http://twocooksoneblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/vegan-banana-and-peanut-butter-pancakes.html) but made with rice flour instead. This might seem like a speciality ingredient (and I guess it is, but hey, I'm trying to make this gluten free and vegan, give me SOME slack!) but I found a bag in the local greengrocers, and most asian food stores (like Worldwide on oxford road) will sell this, probably in economy sized bags. In our quest to make everything high protein and low carb I've added protein powder to these (mostly to see if it worked) and some flaxmeal, but these can be omitted as they are both expensive and not to everyone's taste - but I would reduce the milk slightly if you're cutting this out). All in all, they made pancakes, so I'm happy.

Ingredients (serves one):

1/3 Banana
2 tbsp Rice Flour (more heaped ones)
1 tbsp Cornflour (quite flat)
1 tsp Soya Protein (or whatever the recommended serving of your powder is)
1 tsp Flaxmeal (we've been using the Linwoods one with goji berries and pumpkin seeds and everything else wonderful in it)
2/3 cup Milk (I use unsweetened almond milk)

Method:

As before, I like to make this is just a mug, so really I add the ingredients and then fill it up to about 3/4 full with milk, but I think this is about the right amount
Blend with a hand blender until smooth (alternatively you can make it in a blender or smoothie maker, or simply mash the banana and whisk together, but all of these things seem like a lot of effort compared to my trusty hand blender!)
Heat up some oil in a non-stick pan (I used about a teaspoon of coconut - not least because anything fried in coconut oil smells amazing)
Place tablespoon sized(ish) dollops of mixture around the pan and brown on either side - don't try and flip them until you are absolutely positive they are about to burn, every time I tried before this they weren't cooked yet and they just flopped everywhere - the first time I made this recipe I ended up just squishing it all into one giant pancake - not so pretty but tasted good!
Plate up with a big portion of fruit and cover with cinnamon (yes, this is necessary)
Enjoy!

These might all seems like speciality ingredients, but once you've bought them and they're in your cupboard, (like me) you'll probably find yourself putting them into everything and experimenting so trust me they're all worth buying if you're trying to be gluten free or vegan. Let us know any flavour tweaks you come up with at twocooksoneblog@gmail.com