Valentine's Crepes

I love Valentine's day.  I can't help but have some fun with at least one of the meals we make.  Last year I made pink beet pancakes, and they were a hit.  Breakfast isn't so easy to make into something fun now with our oldest in school, so I decided to do crepes for lunch.  I figured since the beets worked so well last year, I'd do them again this year.  They turned out great!

 

Isn't that a beautiful pink color?  And for fun, I sliced the strawberries into hearts to go with and made whipped cream.

Just lots of yum! 

Don't they just look delish?  Oh, and did you know that February 2 was crepe day?  Made crepes then as well... did about 1 and 1/2 recipe and it ended up not being quite enough. 

 

Valentine's Crepes

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking powder
1 Tablespoon sugar (I omitted this)
2 cups milk
2 Tablespoon melted butter
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix the dry ingredients together.  Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until smooth.  Add 2 or 3 Tablespoons beet puree* to the mix to make it pink. 

Heat a pan on medium low heat with butter to grease it.  Then put 1/4 cup batter and swirl it to a thin circle.  When cooked enough to lift it (doesn't take long, maybe a minute or so) loosen the edges with a spatula and flip.  Cook a minute more.  Then remove, recoat the pan with a little butter, and do it again.  It will probably take almost an hour, but it is worth it.

Serve with whipped cream and fruit!  So tasty.

Whipped Cream
Whip one cup of whipping cream with 1/4 cup date paste** until peaks form.

*Beet Puree - Wrap beets in tin foil, and roast in the oven at 350F for 45-60minutes.  Remove, and wait until cool to the touch.  Then, using plastic gloves (or plastic bags), remove the skin (it's slippery and actually comes off pretty easily).  Puree the beets in a food processor, and store in the fridge for a week or freeze for up to three months.

**Date paste - Soak dates overnight in a bit of water.  Place in a food processor and process until smooth.  Store in the fridge for 3 months.

Bright Beet Pancakes

Since Thursday was Valentine's day, and we can't all have breakfast together on Thursdays due to preschool, I decided that we'd have our 'Valentine's Breakfast' on Friday instead... and we made these bright pancakes together.  They turned out rather well, and although more work than my usual pancake recipe, the kids loved them and I would probably make them again... as long as I already had beet puree prepared before hand.  This recipe was once again adapted from Parenting magazine... see page 54 on the Feb 2013 issue for more fun things to do with beets.

 

Bright Beet Pancakes

Ingredients
1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3 Tbsp brown sugar (I omitted this and used a bit less than 1/4 cup date paste*)
1 Tbsp baking powder
dash salt
3/4 cup beet puree** (enough from one beet)
1 1/4 cup milk
1/3 cup plain Greek Yogurt
1 large egg
3 Tbsp melted butter (if salted, omit the salt from the recipe)
1 tsp vanilla.

Sift together flours, sugar (if using this.  If using date paste, put that in with the wet ingredients), baking powder and salt into a medium bowl
Whisk together the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl.  Once blended, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  Drop about 2 Tbsp of batter onto a greased pan (or pancake griddle) over medium heat.  Cook 3 minutes per side.  Serve with raspberry sauce, honey, or syrup.

We just buttered ours and added fruit to the top.  We also added thawed strawberries and raspberries to the batter to stretch it a bit, and that fruit tasted great in there!

* To make date paste, take as many dates as you can manage and pack them tightly into a large measuring cup. Add water just to fill in the spaces to let them soak and soften (if they are soft enough already, I believe you can skip this step). Soak for 1-4 hours, depending (some say 1hr, some say overnight... I just do whatever until they feel soft enough to process alright). Drain and reserve liquid, and put the dates into the food processor. Process until smooth. If very thick, add some of the reserved liquid. Put in the fridge for up to 3 months. It probably won't last that long though, if you are like me. :) Use as a substitute for sugar in recipes!

**Basic roasted beets: Preheat oven to 375F. Wrap the beets in tinfoil and bake 45-60 minutes, until fork tender. Remove from the foil and set aside until cool to touch. Wear disposable plastic food gloves (or use Ziploc baggies over your hands) to avoid staining your skin, and rub the skins off the beets. Puree in food processor until smooth.

Chocolate Velvet Beet Cupcakes

Adapted this recipe from Parenting Magazine.  Made it a sugar free recipe!

 

This is a nice alternative to red velvet chocolate cupcakes.  The flavor is chocolaty, the color is a deep red/brown, and the frosting a lovely deep pink color.  My kids loved these, and while I wasn't sure how well these would turn out, they were surprisingly good!  I am not a fan of beets, and while you can taste them in this recipe slightly, the cream cheese and the cocoa balance things out nicely so that the beets do not take center stage.  At all.  In fact, if I didn't still smell them in the air from baking them, I don't think I would have noticed them at all!

 

Chocolate Velvet Beet Cupcakes

Ingredients
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups flour (I used half whole wheat, half unbleached white)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup sugar (I omitted this and added 3/4 cup date paste* to the wet ingredients)
1/2 tsp salt (I omitted this completely)
2 large eggs
1 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil (I melted coconut oil in its place)
1 large beet, roasted and pureed** (about 3/4 cup puree)
2 tsp vanilla
NOTE:  I found this very thick as there was no milk listed originally, so I added about 1/2 cup milk to the batter.  I found out on the website that apparently they forgot to add the 1 cup milk to the recipe in the magazine.  They turned out OK though, either way.


Preheat oven to 350F.
Sift together the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. 
In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, then add the rest of the ingredients.  Slowly stir in the flour mixture into the wet ingredients mixture.  Pour into 12 paper-lined muffin cups.  Bake 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Frosting:
Place into a mixer and beat on medium high until blended:
1 8oz package cream cheese
1/2 cup unsalted butter (I used coconut oil)
1/4 cup powdered sugar (I used honey instead)
1/2 cup beat puree
1 tsp vanilla

* To make date paste, take as many dates as you can manage and pack them tightly into a large measuring cup.  Add water just to fill in the spaces to let them soak and soften (if they are soft enough already, I believe you can skip this step).  Soak for 1-4 hours, depending (some say 1hr, some say overnight... I just do whatever until they feel soft enough to process alright).  Drain and reserve liquid, and put the dates into the food processor.  Process until smooth.  If very thick, add some of the reserved liquid.  Put in the fridge for up to 3 months.  It probably won't last that long though, if you are like me.  :)  Use as a substitute for sugar in recipes!

**Basic roasted beets:  Preheat oven to 375F.  Wrap the beets in tinfoil and bake 45-60 minutes, until fork tender.  Remove from the foil and set aside until cool to touch.  Wear disposable plastic food gloves (or use Ziploc baggies over your hands) to avoid staining your skin, and rub the skins off the beets.  Puree in food processor until smooth.

No Sugar Cardamum-Pear Muffins

So, I've started on 'no sugar' since the beginning of the year (got on board a little late and so the 3rd was my first official day), and I found this recipe today in a magazine for muffins.  I love muffins.  I usually like to grab a bran muffin when we go out vs a doughnut because, to me, they taste better and give me more energy.  Well, muffins have sugar.  The ones from bakeries have lots of sugar.  So... no muffins for 90 days?  Really?

As I was reading the recipe (in my 'Fresh Juice' magazine), I noticed that it did have sugar, but I've modified a few of my tried tested and true recipes to remove sugar completely, and figured I wanted to give this one a shot as well.

So, I did!

I actually changed the recipe quite a bit... and I doubled it so I could use up ingredients that I had that were needing to be used up NOW.  I don't want to trash good Greek yogurt, after all!  Oh the horror!  So, this is the recipe, and the changes I made to it.

Cardamom-Pear Muffins

Ingredients
1 398mL can pear halves in juice from concentrate, drained
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
3 Tbsp oil
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup brown sugar (I used about 1 Tbsp honey instead... yes, it is sweet enough)
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup natural bran
1 cup each whole wheat flour and all purpose flour
1/3 cup ground flax seed (I don't have this, so I used some hemp seed hearts for salads)
1tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cardamom or cinnamon (mm... cinnamon)
dash salt
1/3 cup chopped pecans (optional... I actually used almonds instead)

Preheat oven to 375F.  Line 12 cup muffin tin with paper liners, grease, set aside.

In a large bowl, mash the pears, add milk, yogurt, oil, egg, molasses, sugar/honey, and vanilla.  Beat until blended.  Stir in bran and let sit 5 minutes.

In a separate large bowl, mix flours, flax seed, baking soda, cardamom/cinnamon, and salt.  Mix the wet and dry ingredients until the flours are incorporated (mixture is actually really thick!).

Spoon into prepared muffin cups, filling to top.  Sprinkle with nuts.  Bake in center of 375F oven for 25-30 minutes, until golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Let cool in pan on rack for 5 minutes before transferring to a rack.  Let cool.