Chocolate Coconut Flour Cookies

These delicious chocolate coconut flour cookies are naturally gluten free but they are also made with Swerve, making them diabetic friendly, low carb and relatively low calorie as well. You won't miss any of those things! 

One of my dearest and oldest friends is on weight loss journey for her health. She is doing amazingly well and we are all so proud of her for the lifestyle changes she’s made and her perseverance in pursuit of better health. A while back, she and her husband were going to be in town for doctors’ visits so I invited them to stop by after for tea before they had to drive the couple of hours back home. 

I made some savory snacks and baked these cookies as our sweet treat. She liked them so much that I happily wrapped up the leftovers for her to take home. I call that a win! 

Chocolate Coconut Flour Cookies

This recipe is adapted from one on today’s Sunday FunDay host’s blog, Cook with Renu. Her original recipe uses honey instead of my Swerve. If you are looking for lovely healthy recipes, many with alternative gluten free flours and little refined sugar, go have a browse! 

Ingredients for 12-15 cookies

⅓ cup or 28g coconut flour

¼ cup or 30g unsweetened cocoa powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

⅛ teaspoon or a generous pinch fine sea salt

2 eggs

¼ cup or 50g brown Swerve

1 tablespoon water

⅓ cup or 75g coconut oil - melted and at room temperature – or vegetable oil

½ cup or 90g 63% cacao extra dark chocolate chips

Method

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and line a baking pan with baking parchment or a silicone liner. I actually used two pans because all my cookies didn’t quite fit on mine, which only holds 12. That said, my cookie scoop was small. You could probably make 12!

In a large mixing bowl sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.

In another bowl whisk the eggs, along with the Swerve, water and melted oil.

Toss the chocolate chips into the dry ingredients and stir to coat. 

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and combine until well incorporated.

Leave the mixture to rest for five minutes so the coconut flour can absorb the liquid.

Use a cookie scoop or a spoon and put dollops of the dough on your prepared baking pan/s. 

Bake in your preheated oven for 12-15 minutes, until the cookies are firm on the top yet give a little if you poke them gently. They will firm up more as they cool. Like with all dark chocolate cookies, you can’t use color to see if they are cooked! 

Cool the cookies on a wire rack. Once cooled, store them in an airtight container, if they don’t get eaten right away! 

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are sharing recipes made with coconut flour. Many thanks to our host, Renu of Cooking with Renu. Check out the links below.

• Chocolate Coconut Flour Cookies - Diabetic Friendly from Food Lust People Love
• Coconut Crusted Chicken from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Coconut Shortbread Cookies from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Gluten Free Chocolate Banana Coconut Flour Cake  from Cook with Renu
• Gluten Free Coffee Cake from A Messy Kitchen
• Keto Flaxseed & Coconut Flour Flatbread Sneha's Recipe

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join. 

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Maritime Hodge Podge - Creamy Summer Vegetables

Maritime Hodge Podge is a wonderfully rich dish from Eastern Canada, made with a variety of fresh summer vegetables, butter, and, of course, cream. And every family seems to have their own combination!

It was fun to delve into recipes for a dish I had never heard of prior to starting my search for Canadian recipes for this week’s Sunday FunDay post celebrating Canada Day. Hodge Podge caught my eye because: Fun name. But it took me down a rabbit hole with many tunnels, right, left and deeper. 

Side dish or main course? Add bacon or should it be strictly vegetarian? Sweet peas or sugar snap peas? Green beans, wax beans, cauliflower??? Little liquid (some called theirs a stew!) or enough to make it actual soup? So many questions came up and I found just about as many answers while researching this lovely dish that originated in an area of Eastern Canada called the Maritime, which is a collective term for the three small, neighboring provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.

It's cooked in early summer when the vegetables are new and young with, apparently, whatever you have available to you locally. Lore says families don't actually follow specific recipes because the produce they might have varies. That said, I found a plethora of recipes shared online because Canadians are generous that way!

Sharp-eyed readers may notice that I wasn’t cooking this in my usual kitchen because we were on a week’s holiday on the west coast of Brittany at an Airbnb. The markets were fabulous and we were spoiled for choice in the fresh produce selection. I was delighted to find the yellow wax beans – haricots jaunes! They were in the ingredient list of quite a few of the recipes I found online for hodge podge and I hadn’t seen them at home. Score! I did bring the baby new potatoes with me so they are Jersey Royals. 

Maritime Hodge Podge – Creamy Summer Vegetables

As mentioned above, recipes had various combinations of vegetables so use what’s fresh, young and tender where you live. This is a dish where the vegetables should be the stars. Most recipes tended to have more potatoes and carrots than the other veg but I’m also leaving those amounts up to you. I’ll put my weights below, just as a guide. In the traditional spirit, I used what I had! 

Ingredients (Vegetable amounts are super flexible, see above!)

3 ½ oz or 100g smoked thick cut bacon, cut into pieces 

1 medium onion (6oz or 170g)

2 teaspoons fine sea salt

Baby new potatoes (6oz or 170g)

Cauliflower florets (4oz or 113g)

Young carrots (6oz or 170g)

Fresh wax beans (3oz or 100g)

Fresh peas or use either snow peas or young broad beans (6oz or 170g)

2 tablespoons butter, softened

2 tablespoons flour

½ cup or 120ml whipping or thick cream

Fine sea salt and fresh ground pepper – to taste

Method

Scrub your vegetables or peel as needed. Peel and chop the onion.

Cut the young carrots in halves or thirds. Trim the wax beans and, if using snow peas or broad beans, remove the string and cut into smaller pieces, diagonally. 

For the young broad beans, I use my sharp potato peeler to trim off the sides.

Cook the bacon in a skillet over medium-high heat until golden brown, about 10 minutes. 

Remove with a slotted spoon, leaving the bacon fat behind. If you end up with a lot of fat, you can take a tablespoon or so out and discard. Drain the bacon on a paper towel-lined plate. 

Reheat the skillet on medium heat and stir in the chopped onion. Cook until the onion has softened. Set aside.

In a large pot, bring 3 or 4 cups of water to a boil with the 2 teaspoons of salt.  Add in the potatoes and carrots. 

Boil for 3-4 minutes, then add in the cauliflower.

Boil for 3 minutes, then add in the peas, snow peas or broad beans. 

Continue boiling until the potatoes are cooked through. 

Meanwhile, mix the butter and flour together thoroughly to form a paste French chefs call beurre manié. I put the butter in the bowl first, then add the flour, using a spoon to press it into a paste. A beurre manié is ideal for thickening a sauce when you don’t want to risk lumps by adding in flour alone. 

Drain off all but 1 cup or 240ml of the water, leaving the vegetables behind in the pot. I find the easiest way to judge this is to drain all the water, catching the amount I need in a measuring cup. 

Add half of your water back into the pot in the middle of the vegetables. Add the beurre manié to the pot and stir gently to mix it with the water. 

Once the butter is melted, give the whole thing another gentle stir. 

Add in the cooked onions and pour in the cream and stir gently.

Simmer for 8 to 10 minutes. If it looks a little dry, add more of your reserved vegetable boiling water. That’s why we saved a whole cup!

Add in most of the bacon, setting a small handful aside for garnish. 

Add some salt, if you’d like, and a few generous grinds of black pepper. Stir gently.

I served this as a side dish so, as you can see, it came to the table in a serving bowl with the reserved bacon on top. 

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are sharing recipes ahead of Canada Day, which falls on July 1st, the anniversary of the Constitution Act of 1867, which created the self-governing nation originally called the Dominion of Canada. Kudos to our northern neighbors and I hope you enjoy some of their regional recipes! Many thanks to our co-hosts, Mayuri of Mayuri's Jikoni and Amy of Amy's Cooking Adventures. Check out the links below. 

• Canadian Butter Tarts by Karen’s Kitchen Stories
• Cherry Chip Cake by Amy's Cooking Adventures
• Maple Banana Muffins by Sid's Sea Palm Cooking
• Maritime Hodge Podge - Creamy Summer Vegetables by Food Lust People Love
• Nanaimo City's Namesake Bars by A Messy Kitchen
• Pouding Chômeur by Mayuri's Jikoni
• Pumpkin Pie with Homemade Pie Crust by Sneha's Recipe
• Quick and Easy Poutine by A Day in the Life on the Farm

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

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Fresh Scallop Ceviche

Made with Jersey hand-dived scallops, onion, cilantro and chili peppers, this spicy fresh scallop ceviche is a delicious start to any special meal. Or a light lunch!

Among the best benefits of living on an island is the gorgeous seafood that is available. It may cost more than buying from the freezer section of your supermarket but as a treat, it is so worth it!

As a bonus, hand-dived scallops are more sustainable and eco-friendly. Often supermarket scallops have been harvested by dredging which causes severe ecological harm by dragging heavy metal rakes across the seabed. This method damages fragile habitats (like coral reefs and biogenic reefs), scoops up large amounts of unwanted bycatch (non-target species like crabs and fish.) It also fatally chips or crushes a significant percentage of both harvested and discarded scallops. 

I learned about our scallop divers on a local Facebook group where a family member of the divers posts when she’ll have scallops available for pick up from her home. They are shucked and packed up in one-pound bags, £11 each. When I see her posts, I can’t resist asking her to put my name on at least one bag!

The scallops are so fresh that often I just clean them up and we eat them sliced as sashimi with soy sauce and wasabi paste. Divine! This is the first time I made ceviche with them but it won’t be the last. 

Fresh Scallop Ceviche

For the chili peppers, I used a mix of red and yellow – the ají amarillo is a traditional Peruvian pepper but hard to come by in the rest of the world. I was fortunate to have a friend who was growing them and shared a small plant with me! Use all red if that’s what you’ve got. 

Ingredients

12 fresh scallops (weight with roe 15 oz or 425g)

Juice 3 seedless limes

½ small purple onion (about 60g)

2-4 fresh chili peppers

1 bunch cilantro (about 25g)

½ teaspoon fine sea salt

Method

Finely slice the half onion and mince the chili peppers. 

Put them in a non-reactive bowl with the salt and then squeeze the lime juice over them. Leave to macerate while you clean the scallops.

Remove the roe and the tough “foot” from the scallops. I find the best way is just to use your clean fingers to gently separate them. Using a sharp knife, I end up inevitably cutting the scallop by accident.

Discard the “foot” but what you do with the roe is up to you. A lot of people like to pan-fry it with butter and garlic but personally, I’m not a fan of the texture. I have salted and dried it to make bottarga.

Slice the scallops into three circles each. 

Pull the leaves off of the cilantro stems and chop them finely.

Add the scallop rounds to the lime juice bowl and stir gently to combine. 

Try to tuck the scallops down into the juice and mostly under the onions and peppers. 

Cover the bowl with cling film and refrigerate. Set a timer for 30 minutes.

When the timer rings, gently stir the ceviche making sure that any scallops that were near the top, are now right under.

Add in the chopped cilantro but do not stir yet. 

Just use a spoon to press it down into the lime juice as best you can.

Set a timer for another 30 minutes.

When the time rings, gently stir the cilantro into the mixture. The scallop ceviche is ready to serve!

As you can see, I plated some of mine up in little lettuce leaves, three or four scallop rounds per leaf, making sure to add some of the lovely onions, cilantro and peppers. 

Enjoy!

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are sharing ceviche recipes ahead of National Ceviche Day on 28 June. Many thanks to our host, Camilla of Culinary Cam. Check out the links below.

• Ceviche de Camaron - Shrimp Ceviche from Sneha's Recipe
• Fresh Scallop Ceviche from Food Lust People Love

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

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Spicy Barbecue Sauce

A perfect blend of sweet and savory, this flavorful spicy barbecue sauce is great slathered on chicken and pork ribs or even grilled vegetables. Serve extra on the side for those of us (me!) who also like to dip. 

Living overseas in tiny oilfield towns early in my married life, I discovered that some items most Americans would consider normal essentials, like barbecue sauce and Jif peanut butter, simply were not available. I learned to adapt by either doing without, making my own or trying to bring some back in our suitcases after a trip stateside.

When we wanted barbecue sauce, this recipe is the one I made most often, sometimes adding some smoked bacon, which adds an additional smoky touch, for when I didn’t have liquid smoke, or sometimes even when I did! Because bacon makes everything better.

Brush this sauce on the meat or vegetables on the grill when they are just about cooked so that it doesn't scorch. If you brush it on too early, you risk it burning because of the sugar in the sauce both from the brown sugar and what is already in the prepared ketchup. 

Spicy Barbecue Sauce

If you need this spicy barbecue sauce to be vegetarian, do use the Henderson’s Relish instead of Worcestershire sauce, which has anchovies in it. Failing that, you can add soy sauce instead. For the ketchup, use your favorite brand or even a store brand. It won’t much matter once the other things are added. This recipe makes almost 2 ½ cups or 570ml.

Ingredients

1 medium onion

1 tablespoon olive oil

14 oz or 397ml ketchup 

3/4 cup or 180ml cider vinegar

1/4 cup aged balsamic vinegar

2/3 cup or 132g dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce or Henderson’s Relish

1 tablespoon smoked paprika

2 teaspoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons freshly cracked black pepper

1 teaspoon cayenne

1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt

1 teaspoon liquid smoke

Method

Mince the onion finely or use a small food processor to get little bits. You don't want it pureed, just not chunky. 

In a pot large enough to hold all of your ingredients, sauté the onion with the olive oil over a medium heat until it has softened completely and no longer smells strongly of onion. You are looking for a little color, some caramelization, all the better for creating flavor.

Add all the other ingredients to the onion pot.

Bring it to a simmer over medium heat and cook for about 10 minutes.

Cool and store in a sterilized jar in the refrigerator until ready to use. Because of the vinegar content, I find that this is good for quite a while once refrigerated. 

Enjoy!

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are sharing recipes for your cookout get-togethers! Snacks, side dishes, sauces, dressings, salads or desserts - all good. Many thanks to our host Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm. Check out the links below. 

• Caribbean Pineapple & Honey Mustard Pork Chops from Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice
• Eggless & Gluten Free Orange Pots from Sneha's Recipe
• Green Goddess Dressing from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Spicy Barbecue Sauce from Food Lust People Love
• Sweet and Savory Party Mix from A Messy Kitchen
• Viral Japanese Cheesecake from Mayuri's Jikoni
• Watermelon Radish and Cucumber Salad from Karen's Kitchen Stories

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

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