Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy, and plant-based
Nutritional value hinges on preparation
Edamame are green soybeans. Young green soybeans are also called mukimame.
Edamame beans are not readily available everywhere, but you can find them more and more. In organic shops and Oriental supermarkets most easily. Usually deep frozen, and stripped of their pods. And if you have a choice between with or without pods, do without. Because the fibrous, rough pods are not so tasty.
Edamame beans are not only very healthy, but also super tasty. Of all the beans, they are also the quickest to prepare.
Below are two ideas for an edamame bean-based snack. These immediately give food for thought. About how best to handle preparing legumes and food in general.
Recipe 1: Edamame with cheese and onion flavour
This 100% plant-based recipe uses no cheese at all, of course. However, by cleverly combining some purely plant-based ingredients, you do get something reminiscent of the taste of cheese and onions.
What ingredients do you need?
- 250g frozen edamame beans, shelled
- one tablespoon of nutritional yeast flakes
- half a teaspoon of onion powder or onion grits
- some black pepper
- a quarter teaspoon of sea salt
- half a teaspoon of (apple cider) vinegar
- and finally half a teaspoon of olive oil
This is how to prepare them
- Cook the edamame beans in lightly salted water for 5-6 minutes
- Drain them and rinse briefly
- Combine all the other ingredients for the marinade
- Mix the beans into the marinade
Done!
Recipe 2: Grilled spicy Edamame beans
The big difference here is that the marinated beans are grilled in the oven or in an airfryer at 180 to 190 °C.
What ingredients do you need?
- 250g frozen edamame beans, shelled
- a teaspoon of red paprika
- a pinch of cayenne pepper
- one teaspoon of onion powder or onion grits
- another teaspoon of garlic powder
- a tablespoon of melted coconut oil
- and finally a teaspoon of sea salt
This is how to prepare these appetisers with edamame
- Heat the oven to 190 °C
- Mix the edamame beans and all the ingredients well
- Spread them out on a baking tray lined with baking paper for the oven or on the grid of an airfryer
- Bake for about 30 minutes until brown and crispy
The grilled beans are ready.
The taste test
I personally fall like a log for the edamame beans in the first recipe. A heavenly flavour with notes of salt, acid and umami with the creaminess of the olive oil. The beans have a firm bite and are juicy. They also look like fresh, firm beans.
Recipe number two sums up very well what flavour and bite is popular in our Western snacking and fast-food culture. It is the sought-after combination of salty, spicy, dry and crunchy. The beans crack just like classic brittle roasted peanuts. Many people will love this and won’t be able to stay away from it. Easily available fast-food peanut snacks are often fried in a crust of oil, salt, sugar and flour. In contrast, these roasted edamame snacks have the advantage of being exempt of sugar, flavour enhancers or food preservatives.
But they look nothing like the fresh, moist beans they were at the beginning of the run. They are now dried out and brown …
The health verdict
Put yourself in the place of your stomach and digestive system for a moment. Which is easiest to digest: the short-cooked beans that have retained their natural moisture content? Or the hard, dry and now browned beans? After all, for these latter, our intestines need extra moisture to digest them.
And which is healthiest: the unheated olive oil or the coconut oil heated to 190 °C?
Recipe number one wins with flying colours!
Eat your food as little processed as possible
Many cookbooks are full of recipes that seem to only give importance to taste, feel and appearance of our food. Rarely is there any mention of health, digestibility or the ease with which the dish can be absorbed by our metabolism.
The same goes for most products displayed in our food shops and supermarkets.
Not infrequently, good ingredients lose much, if not all, of their nutritional value and energetic potential just by the method of preparation chosen. Either by the way they are processed or altered.
What are the healthiest cooking techniques?
In the world of health philosophies, people pretty much agree on one thing. Namely that processed, especially extremely processed foods can be downright harmful in the long run.
Not all foods can be eaten raw. Legumes or certain starchy root vegetables, for example, have to be cooked. On the other hand, some foods are sometimes even nutritionally enhanced after heating. This is the case for steamed or boiled carrots compared to raw carrots, for instance. Fermentation techniques can also change the taste and nutritional value of vegetables for the better.
And in our own kitchen, too, we can very consciously choose those recipes that use short, gentle cooking techniques. Because these involve the fewest losses.
Below are some cooking techniques classified from softer to harder:
- steaming (over boiling water)
- blanching
- boiling
- steaming (in a small amount of water and fat)
- baking
- braising
- broiling
- stir frying (wok)
- grilling
- deep frying
- popping
- blackening
The shorter the food item is heated and the softer the cooking technique, the greater the remaining nutritional value.
Edamame beans, frozen, unprepared, per 100 g product
| Energy | Carboh. | Sugars | Fat | Sat. Fat | Protein | Fibre | Salt |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 507 kJ/121 kcal | 8,9 g | 2,2 g | 5,2 g | 0,6 g | 11,9 g | 5,2 g | 0,03 g |
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Every mistake is a gift
Failure does not exist
We were made to fear mistakes and imperfections in our childhood.
I still vividly remember how, at school in the first year of primary school, I suddenly saw a thick, dark blue ink stain fall from the old-fashioned hand pen onto the page … I let the thing dry, albeit too briefly, and then diligently started rubbing and sanding with the rough, blue side of an eraser, hoping the stain would go away. So that no one would see them, least of all the teacher. The result was even more blurry blue smudges AND a gaping hole in the sheet of paper. The teacher then used laundry pins to hang all the students’ calligraphy notebooks on a line for parent contact night. And mine hung open exactly on the page where the hole yawned …
Artists never fail
Artists know that mistakes don’t exist. That they are all necessary steps in the development of their work. Some artists work in the shadows for 20 years, searching and trying, while not being seen and not selling a single work. And then suddenly they change tack. New ideas and insights emerge and they sometimes radically change their style. And suddenly they are doing well artistically and commercially. So were all those earlier works and attempts failures? No, they were necessary to make the next step possible.
The potential of the stain
So in the sixth workshop “Yoga and the Art of Drawing”, we deliberately used the potential of the stain. Each participant was given a sheet of splattered paper, and asked to take the very spots on the blank paper as the starting point for their drawing, in complete freedom. Thus, the blemish on the paper became a component and even an inspiration for the creation. It once again gave rise to the most diverse drawings and collages.
The universe works in utmost perfection
Failures and mistakes are a life lesson. You can work around them or use them as strengths for the next phase. Perhaps I learned as a child in first grade, that the more you try to hide or erase something, the more visible it becomes. In our lives, there are also no mistakes, nor failures. Every event is perfection itself, at the right time and place. Provided you dare to look at them in a different way. Through your own eyes, and not through other people’s judgmental eyes. And then using them to your advantage, as a springboard to the next step.
In yoga philosophy, this corresponds to what is called yama and niyama in the eightfold path to enlightenment: the ability to free yourself from the yoke of:
- The (judgmental) gaze of others on yourself
- The (judgmental) view of yourself on yourself
Because only then do you create the conditions for true freedom to live your life according to your own unique plan.
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Intention is more important than result
Discover the why behind your drawing activity
Intention and yoga
When we practice yoga, the concept of intention is fundamental to our practice. First of all, we need to ask ourselves why we want to practice regularly. Is it initially out of curiosity? Is it because it is trendy? Or is it because deep inside us there is an almost naive and little-recognised belief that yoga is a magic pill or a simple box of magical tools that will – we hope very soon – solve a whole range of discomforts related to our existence?
If we practice yoga regularly, it is true that we concentrate and set in motion a lot of energy. It is a creative act. This energy can be consciously directed towards a more or less precise goal. Here are some examples:
- Maintaining, restoring or strengthening our physical body.
- To learn to calm our excessive mental activity or soothe our nervous system.
- In order to create an expansion of our consciousness.
- To adopt a more compassionate and benevolent attitude towards our lives, the other beings with whom we share existence on this planet and the world around us.
- Or to grow and develop and allow unsuspected aspects of our potential to blossom.
- To support our own healing or someone else’s.
- To live a life more grounded in our physical bodies.
Of course, this list is by no means exhaustive.
Just like asking yourself this question at the level of a regular practice, it is a good idea to choose a conscious intention at the beginning of each individual yoga session. To really get a grip on the reason behind your choice to sit on your mat for an hour, or even longer, instead of spending your time on another activity.
Intention and drawing
If you want to start drawing more regularly and consistently, it is also a good idea to ask yourself what you really want to do with this activity. Why am I drawing or creating? And what is my purpose?<:strong>
Is it to fill a void or dispel recurring boredom? Or to find more peace and relaxation in this creative flow of full presence that makes us forget any sense of the passage of time? Do we want to create images to brighten other people’s daily lives. Or do we have an activist goal to awaken people’s minds in the face of injustice, for instance? Is it to create objects of rare beauty? Or to touch deep emotional strings in our fellow humans? To come to terms with our own deeper emotions and feelings? Or to rediscover the joy and innocence of our childhood?
Whatever your reason and motivation, it is your intention – which you should examine carefully and remind yourself of regularly – that will help you sustain your creative activity through drawing in the long run.
Red envelope
As American designer Cat Bennett suggests in her book “Making Art a Practice – 30 Ways to Paint a Pipe”, you can write your intention on a sheet of paper, put it in a red envelope and tuck it under your bed’s mattress. In this way, we symbolically reinforce this written-down intention by keeping it in our body’s energy field during the night.
And it is a good idea to re-evaluate this original intention from time to time, because there may well be an evolution taking place that requires you to rephrase or clarify it. Nothing in this world is permanent except change.
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Awaken the observer in yourself
Neutral observation of reality
Both yoga and drawing push us towards better observation of reality. There are wonderful parallels between both these activities.
Yoga and objectivity
Yoga practice trains us to more easily assume the position of the observer in the world and in our daily lives.
And thus:
- We are less easily misled by our own thoughts, emotions, beliefs and judgements about the things around us.
- Moreover, we are able to perceive situations more neutrally. We recognise that different viewpoints and perspectives on the same phenomenon are possible.
- We soon understand that ours are almost always coloured. As if we are looking through tinted or smudged glasses.
This is often a big challenge.
Objectivity in artistic creation
Very often a drawing course starts with observational drawing.
In observational drawing, we also look for the most neutral representation of the subject of our drawing. The aim is to learn to see and reproduce it in an accurate and objective way. And this has several fascinating implications:
- it is amazing to see how different and distorted our representation of the model is compared to reality!
- We learn to adjust our gaze and make it more objective.
- We train the coordination of our vision and the motor skills of our hands.
- Soon, we discover our desire, often impatient, to proceed directly to a personal interpretation of the subject. And that is very different from a simple objective reproduction.
In any case, the drawing phase of observation is a useful phase that serves us well. Because it can improve the quality, intensity, thoroughness and depth of our gaze and our vision of things.
Much more than the ability to produce truly flawless classical drawings, it is these discoveries, about the relativity of our vision, that constitute the true, rich harvest of this kind of drawing activity.
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Simple vegan chocolate cake
Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy, and plant-based
Undoubtedly the easiest vegan cake ever
To make the dark chocolate cake below, you use a dead simple recipe that you can literally get done in an hour. Truly a cake for beginners with no baking experience.
The result is a deeply dark, juicy cake with the bitter flavour of dark chocolate. However, we do not use chocolate for it, but rather raw cocoa.
What ingredients do you need?
It is unimaginably simple. Just 5 ingredients, at least, if you leave out the water.
- 200 g sieved flour
- 130 g (or ml) of neutral-tasting oil you can fry with (e.g.: sunflower oil)
- 70 g sieved (raw) unsweetened cocoa
- 100 to 180 g whole, unrefined sugar
- 1 teaspoon of baking powder
- 500 ml boiling water
About the sugar: The original recipe specified 180 g of whole cane sugar. I reduced that, as I often do, to almost half (100 g), and used coconut blossom sugar. So adjust that according to your preferences.
As for the flour: I used a mixture of semi-whole and white wheat flour. That way, you get still some extra minerals and fibre in the cake.
This is how to prepare it:
It couldn’t be simpler:
- Preheat your oven to 180°C (or 170°C for an oven with hot air circulation).
- Grease a round baking tin of about 20 to 24 cm with some oil or line the bottom and edges with baking paper.
- Mix the 4 dry ingredients flour, cocoa, baking powder and sugar in a bowl.
- Then pour in the oil, stirring a little.
- Finally, pour in the hot water and mix to a homogeneous, fairly liquid batter.
- Pour the batter into the lined tin.
- Bake for about 30 minutes at the bottom of your oven.
- Let cool and remove from the springform pan.
- Garnish with a topping of your choice
An example for a vegan topping:
For a luscious vegan top layer with chocolate and coconut flavouring:
- Mix about 100 ml of canned coconut milk (17-23% fat content) with two tablespoons of cocoa and two tablespoons of agave syrup or whole (cane or coconut) sugar.
- Spread this chocolate coconut cream on top of the cake.
- Garnish with fruit such as berries or banana slices if desired.
- Finally, put the cake in the fridge for one and a half to two hours.
- Take it out of the fridge 30 minutes before serving.
Simple as that. This vegan cake certainly rivals its traditional counterpart in flavour and is remarkably moist thanks to the water. The texture is somewhat reminiscent of a flan, another archaeological find from my Flemish childhood.
Enjoy!
I found inspiration for this recipe at “The Happy Pear” from Ireland. Their website is full of delicious and healthy vegan recipes.
Do I need butter and eggs to bake cake?
The answer is no, of course.
Traditional cake such as the famous “quatre quarts” from French cuisine, always uses the following ingredients:
- White flour
- Butter
- Eggs
- Refined sugar
Okay, cake is not something you eat every day. It’s fun food. But the above list shows that the resulting classic cake is quite a chore for the body to digest as well as metabolise. The white flour, refined sugar and butter are high in calories but very, not to say totally “empty” of nutrients. The eggs provide a lot of cholesterol. We are so conditioned by the traditional pastries of our childhood. The above vegan recipe is very basic and consists of just 5 ingredients.
Opting for vegan pastries is good for your health, the environment and animals. It just takes the courage and initiative to step outside the known paths.
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Fruity cinnamon rolls
Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy, and plant-based
Sophisticated natural sweet
Cinnamon rolls are almost a cliché in the food world. Every fresh bakery or croissant stall has them. They are very easy to prepare purely plant-based. You can find the plant-based versions virtually nowhere on sale. Only at bakeries that already have a pure vegan offering, and there are very few of them. That’s how unwieldy, slow and conservative the food industry is, with its close ties to livestock farming.
We are happy to go ahead and make our own then!
The version below is very basic, gluten-free and consists of just 4 ingredients.
You can also prepare them in a raw version if you have a dehydrator.
What ingredients do you need?
For eight rolls:
- Four bananas, ripe but not overripe
- 40 grams of raisins
- 150 grams of pitted soft dates such as mazafati or medjoul dates
- 3 teaspoons of cinnamon
- 6 tablespoons of water
150 grams of pitted dates, roughly equivalent to 13 to 14 pieces
This is how to prepare them
- Mix the dates with the water and cinnamon and grind in food processor or blender to a spreadable date paste
- Preheat your oven to 130 to 140°C
- Cut the bananas lengthwise into 4 slices
- Place them on a sheet of baking paper on a baking tray
- Bake them for about 15 to 20 min at 130 to 140°C until they have dried out a little
- Spread the date paste on all the banana slices
- Distribute the sultanas evenly, one at a time, over the banana slices
- Roll one banana slice into a cylinder
- Place that roll on a second banana slice and roll into a wider cylinder
- Place that thicker roll flat on the baking tray
- Repeat for the remaining slices
- Bake the rolled bananas for another 15-20 minutes at the same temperature
Important tips for slicing the bananas:
The first time when I tried this recipe, I struggled not to break the bananas into pieces. Hence:
- Use a very sharp knife
- Lay the bananas flat, i.e. on their sides and cut along in the direction of their natural curve
Tip for making the date paste
In the original recipe, the author indicated to grind the date mixture with a blender. But unless you want to make double the number of cinnamon rolls, I recommend using a food processor with an S-shaped blade. It is very common in recipes to be asked to use a blender, when the amount of ingredients is just way too small not to make a mess, with everything splashing around and you having to scrape the sides of the blender every so often.
Serve the banana rolls the same day, as they don’t keep so well in the fridge.
The result is a beautiful symphony of different tones of sweet with the aroma of cinnamon woven through it.
Enjoy!
Healthy sweet
Be moderate with sweet. In our Western food culture, all attention goes to just two of the five tastes: salty and especially sweet.
Preferably use wholesome sweeteners such as fruit, dried fruit, and only then cereal syrups and sweeteners such as agave or maple syrup and concentrated fruit juices such as apple juice. Coconut blossom sugar is also fine.
If you do opt for cane sugar, take the unrefined version. White, refined sugars like granulated sugar (from beetroot) or white icing sugar are really not done for your health.
In most recipes found in cookbooks, the amount of sugar is usually excessive. From my own experience, you can easily reduce the amount of sweet by half for the same eating pleasure.
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Surprising Carrot balls
Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy, and plant-based
Light and healthy
These carrot balls have a very surprising composition. Usually, these kinds of sweet snacks make use of nuts. But here, no nuts at all! That makes these balls very light.
Moreover, they are completely raw and you are able to prepare them very quickly.
What ingredients do you need?
This will be it for about twenty to twenty-four pieces. All depends on how big you make them.
- ca 80 grams of pitted fleshy, soft dates (Medjoul or Mazafati)
- 120 grams grated carrot
- 75 grams of sultanas, which you can pre-soak in warm water if necessary
- A little sea salt
- 75 grams of oatmeal
- two teaspoons of an allspice mixture
- about 20 grams of grated coconut for the finishing touch
This is how to prepare them
- First cut the dates into small pieces
- Mix all the ingredients excepot for the grated coconut in a bowl and knead intensely until everything sticks together well
- Roll balls of the mixture
- Pour the grated coconut into a plate and roll each ball in it to coat the outside
And there you are. When I weighed out the 20 grams of coconut according to the original recipe, at first I didn’t believe that amount would be sufficient. But it was right as pie!
These balls store well in the fridge.
Is it preferable to eat raw or cooked food?
There are views on food that assume it is best to eat everything raw, and as little cooked as possible. And there are views to the contrary: that it is best to eat cooked food as much as possible, and avoid raw.
There is no doubt that cooked food is easier to digest than raw food. Raw food costs our intestinal system more energy to digest, leaving relatively less energy available to meet our energy needs. On the other hand, some nutritional value is lost in the cooking process. After all, many essential vitamins and interesting enzymes break down during cooking. In any case, all the more reason to prefer gentle, short cooking processes for vegetables that retain as much nutritional value as possible. Grains and legumes, on the other hand, should be cooked long enough. After all, you don’t eat them primarily for the vitamins, but for the energy, the proteins and minerals.
Personally, I believe the middle ground is golden. Healthy plant-based food can consist of both cooked and raw dishes. And depending on the seasons and your personal energy needs, you can vary the ratio between the two. In the colder winter months, it is best to eat a bit more cooked, and in the warmer period of the year, a bit more raw.
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Vegan Coconut Rocks
Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy, and plant-based
Tropical sweet
Even without added sugar, you can hit high peaks in terms of sweetness. These super simple soft biscuits, reminiscent of the archetypal coconut rocks, consist of just two to three ingredients.
Banana takes over the role of egg whites as a texturiser. (Whew!)
You have them prepared in no time.
What ingredients do you need?
For twelve pieces:
- about 340 g peeled bananas
- 75 g grated coconut
- a pinch of salt
- optional: 3 tablespoons of dark chocolate drops
This is how to prepare them:
- Preheat the oven to 165 °C.
- Mash the bananas finely, with a fork or in a food processor.
- Add the coconut and the pinch of salt and mix until homogeneous.
- Add the chocolate drops if wanted and mix well.
- Place a sheet of baking paper on a baking tray and spoon 12 mounds of the batter onto the paper.
- Let bake for 25 to 30 minutes until golden brown.
- Let cool for at least an hour before munching them.
Is all sweet equal before the law?
The human species has a distinct preference for sweet taste. Perhaps because our distant ancestors evolutionarily associated sweet taste with energy density.
In the last 50 years, consumption of sweet and sugary foods has increased dramatically. Many people struggle with obesity, and the incidence of diabetes resulting from unbalanced eating habits has never been higher than today.
Should you therefore ban sweet? No. But moderation is the message. And preferably choose wholefood sweet. Fresh dates, bananas or other fresh and dried fruits not only give us their heavenly flavour, but also bring vitamins and minerals. This, unlike crystallised or powdered refined sugar.
A tip: gradually reduce the sweet level of your dishes, until you learn to enjoy the subtle sweetness of sweet vegetables and cooked grains again. Be moderate with fruit, and prefer the whole fruit rather than just the juice.
What is the true cost of imported tropical fruit?
Imported tropical fresh fruits such as bananas, mangoes and coconut products, for example, have a huge carbon footprint due to long-distance transportation. They are also available all year round, whatever the season. Transport by plane – madness for agricultural products – scores the worst, but transport by ship and truck is also wasteful. Rail transport seems to be the most favourable ecologically for food products.
The origin of food products can give an indication of the means of transport used, although as a consumer you can never be sure.
That is why it is better to consume regional or local seasonal fruit, and to keep a limit on tropical fruit coming from very far away.
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Three tofu marinades
Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy, and plant-based
It’s the marinades that make the tofu
Plain, white tofu has virtually no flavour. You can see that as a drawback, or as a positive. Because it allows you to add any flavour to this healthy supplier of plant protein. Moreover, it allows you to add structure to your cooking habits.
If you set aside half an hour at the weekend to dice a large block of white, firm tofu and make a few different marinades, you’ll immediately be set for the week.
Here are three examples of marinades. Besides, there is no brake on your creativity and you can replace these marinades with your own favourite combinations.
Oriental style marinade with peanut butter and sesame oil
This sweet and spicy marinade is excellent with rice or noodle dishes, accompanied by grilled and steamed vegetables.
Ingredients:
- 200 g firm white tofu
- 2 tablespoons of peanut butter
- one tablespoon of soy sauce (tamari or shoyu)
- 1 tablespoon of vinegar (e.g. apple cider vinegar)
- 2 tablespoons maple, rice or agave syrup
- Two tablespoons of sesame oil
- 2 finely chopped garlic cloves
- A good chunk of ginger, grated or very finely chopped
Greek style marinade with olive oil and lemon
This fresh and sour marinade is ideally suited as a substitute for feta cheese in salads, but is also very tasty slightly warmed up.
Ingredients:
- 200 g firm white tofu
- 2 tablespoons of nutritional or noble yeast flakes
- Two tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon of dried oregano
- 3 tablespoons of olive oil
- salt and pepper to taste
Spicy Mexican style marinade with chilli and paprika
A pungent, spicy marinade for lovers of spicy Mexican flavours. Ideally to use in wraps, with beans, vegetables and, for example, slices of fresh avocado. These are best eaten hot, by briefly frying the tofu with the marinade in a pan.
Ingredients:
- 200 g firm white tofu
- 3 tablespoons of olive oil
- 1 tablespoon plain white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar
- 1 teaspoon of ground cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder or two finely chopped or pressed cloves of garlic
- sea salt to taste
- 1 teaspoon paprika powder
- 1 teaspoon of oregano
This is how to proceed:
Mix all the marinade ingredients in a bowl and stir in the cubed white tofu. Transfer the marinated tofu into glass jars, for instance with a span seal. This marinated tofu will keep for 1 week in the fridge.
Nutritional info: white firm tofu from the brand The Hobbit, per 100g product.
This gives a good indication of the nutritional values for firm tofu. Tofu from other manufacturers may of course differ from these exact values.
| Energy | Carbohydrates | Sugars | Fat | Sat. Fat | Protein | Fibre | Salt |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 503 kJ/120 kcal | 2,1 g | 0,5 g | 6,1 g | 1,0 g | 13,5 g | 1,4 g | 0 g |
Is fermented tofu better than regular tofu?
Fermented tofu looks like ordinary tofu but has undergone a fermentation process. As a result, the flavour is slightly acid. Two advantages:
- the tofu is slightly more digestible
- this tofu has a more distinct flavour
In fermentation processes, bacteria grow and produce acids and enzymes. The enzymes trigger the digestion process, the acids provide stability and favourable acidity for the digestion process.
Fermented tofu is ideally suited for cold preparations with tofu, for example as an alternative to animal feta cheese. Great solution if you are vegan yourself or are visiting a friend or relative who does not eat dairy products.
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Cocoa peanut butter cookies
Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy, and plant-based
A quick and easy cocoa treat
Biscuits with peanut butter as an ingredient can be found here and there on the internet. I chose this recipe because, except for the sugar present in the (optional) dark chocolate granules, no other sugar is added. It is the banana that provides natural and mineral-rich sweetness. At the same time, the bananas give the soft, cohesive and springy texture to these soft biscuits. This is an example of how bananas can be the perfect egg replacements in sweet recipes.
The ingredients for approx 10 pieces:
- 220 g peanut butter
- 280 g ripe, mashed bananas
- about two and a half tablespoons of oat flakes
- about 35 g unsweetened cocoa powder
- a pinch of salt
- optional: two tablespoons of dark chocolate granules or drops
This is how to prepare them:
- Grind the oat flakes into flour in your blender or food processor.
- Mix the oat flakes and cocoa powder well.
- Mix the mashed banana and peanut butter in a food processor until they form a homogeneous mixture.
- Add the dry mixture to the liquid mixture and mix well.
- Finally, spoon the chocolate drops through the mixture.
- Set the mixture in the fridge for an hour and a half to stiffen.
- Spoon out the batter one spoon at a time and finally roll 10 balls of the biscuit dough between your fingers.
- Place the balls on a sheet of baking paper with enough space in between.
- You may want to flatten the balls a bit with the back of a spoon.
- Bake for a maximum of 10 to 15 minutes (depending on your oven) in a preheated oven of 165°C.
- Let the biscuits cool on a wire rack before eating them.
When I first tried this recipe, I was very sceptical when I saw the sticky batter.
Dirty fingers guaranteed! But the result paid off. Soft, springy biscuits with a deep, dark chocolate flavour.
Yet another vegan treat that doesn’t take much time. One hundred per cent vegan baking fun with respect for all creatures of life.
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