Cashew Frosting, Dairy Free, Gluten Free, Grain Free, Sugar Free, Paleo

I think my favorite thing above all to make is cupcakes. Not because I have books and books on different kinds, and they are super simple. You could bring cupcakes to every event you go to for 10 years and never bring the same kind! 
I am going to a Birthday this weekend, and I of course am bringing the cake!!! Not just because I love cake, and it's fun to make, but because then I can eat it and so can everyone else without even knowing the difference. 
I get stupid disappointed when I go somewhere and the gorgeous chocolate cake is made from crappy GMO wheat flour.. bleh.. What the hell!? Didn't anyone know I would be there and expect that I could eat the cake? 
Since are lifestyle has changed I have been using such different ingredients all the time it has opened my eyes broadly towards alternative ingredients. 
Like who says butter cream has to be made from dairy butter? Or who says you need milk for the base? Why cornstarch? 
You know a lot of people still don't know that icing sugar is paired with cornstarch in the bag? I think one of the funniest moments in my life is when I found out that brown sugar is still WHITE cane sugar, it's just smothered in molasses. Molasses is just a sugary residue leftover from manufacturing sugar! Sugar on top of sugar, HA who would have thunk?
Not that I have anything against sugar, I just never knew. It's not like I went out of my way to discover it. I mean if you already have white sugar why make it brown? Why make cheese orange?!?!? Why does Coca-Cola need caramel color!?!? Oh so many questions...
SO, anyways, when I heard told that a chocolate cake with a vanilla topping was so called desired, I was so excited!!

Chocolate cake, easy peasy. Vanilla, bah so many options. THEN I got the "dairy free" notice. Okay, no biggie. I know how to do it, but I have never actually done it, probably because I have just not had the desire to all of a sudden make dairy free frosting. I decided to go with a vegan chocolate cake (just to help eliminate any allergens) and it turned out quite nice and fudgy. 
The only dairy free frosting I make often is coconut whip (which is delicious on waffles btw). Today I didn't want to make coconut whip, I wanted to go for it, and dive in to a dairy free frosting. 
You could call this primal, or paleo because there is no corn starch or sugar. If you don't like coconut milk, you can sub in almond, or cashew without a doubt. 
I don't mind coconut, and I must say I don't even notice the coconut in the frosting.
If you don't like cashews, you could use.. macadamia nuts, or walnuts, or pecans. Doesn't matter really, I LOVE cashews, as a nut, as a waffle, and as a piece of bread.
They are buttery and soft and have no distinct flavor. 

I think the best part of this frosting is it looks like regular frosting. Not chunky and nutty, it's not like you look at and just know there is something "different" then icing sugar and butter whipped together. You wouldn't know. In fact, there is one lonely cupcake sitting in my counter right now, just waiting for hubby. Do you think he knows? Not a chance. Will he hate it, nope. Do you know how I know? Because he loves me so much that even if it's awful he'll shovel it in. So if this frosting sucks, I wouldn't know. Besides the delicious two I ate, I will just have to wait until Saturday to find out how gross they are.
If you have a mediocre food processor, you may end up with a chunkier textured frosting. Don't fret, it will still taste the same, just not look as fantastic as mine. I had to run my fantastic Kitchen-aid for a couple minutes to get it the texture I wanted.

 Cashew Creme Frosting - Dairy free, Gluten Free, Grain Free, Sugar Free, Primal, Paleo

In a Food Processor:
1 C raw whole cashews 
       (sub macadamia, walnut, almonds, etc)
1/2 C raw chopped blanched almonds
1/4 C raw agave nectar, honey, maple syrup, coconut sap
1/4 C Full Fat Coconut Milk, Cashew milk, almond milk etc.
Puree. Scrape down sides.

Add to processor while spinning:
1/4 C plus 1 T Full fat Coconut Milk, cashew milk, almond milk etc.
1/4 C plus 2 T melted organic coconut oil or clarified butter
1 T real vanilla extract
pinch sea salt

Puree 1-3 minutes scraping down sides until smooth and creamy. 

For a "cream cheese" taste add 1-2 t lemon juice

Once you are happy with the texture, place covered in the refrigerator for 30min to 1 hour. Stir the frosting before use to check for the consistency. If the frosting is too stiff, let sit at room temperature until spreadable. 
 I took mind directly out of the fridge and placed it in my icing bag and frosted my cupcakes immediately. I then places the cupcakes back in the fridge for safe keeping. 

Because there is no starch used in this recipe if the frosting gets warmer then room temperature it will start to melt or run. So best to keep them chilled until eating. 

 I topped my cupcakes with "sprinkles". I don't actually buy sprinkles anymore, as they are corn syrup, high fructose and colors. I get my colored or flavored sugars from an organic spice dealer. 
(I have placed my favorite places to shop in my side bar). Organic sugar, is not processed or bleached and not nearly as bad for you. It is still very high in my Glycemic index which is why it should be eaten in moderation. I also really enjopy how their sugar is flavored with natural sources, cocoa powder, lemon, strawberry, vanilla etc. I have never received a headache from a pinch of flavored sugar on my cupcakes, so I go ahead and indulge.
I like pretending I can eat amazing sugar high cupcakes just like everyone else, except I don't :)

Banana "Cream" Pudding - Gluten Free, Grain Free, Sugar Free

Yes it's me! I did survive the Holidays!
I had originally planned to add some great holiday recipes to the list, but then I got distracted, got behind with orders, got behind in making gifts, got behind in making baking, and just really got behind.. sigh.
So I decided to save myself the stress and not worry about it. It also greatly helped me to chuck the delicious food in the freezer to save me from myself and indulging. 
SOOOO.. here I was today, wanting something new, fresh, chilled and easy. I ran through a bunch of my favorite books and got some ideas and then I landed upon a page dear to my heart. Banana Cream Pie, oh how I love thee:) 

Well, I didn't feel like making a crust, or going fancy with the gelatin and so I thought how delicious would it be to have the scrumptious banana cream all on it's own? 
I discovered that it's called Banana Pudding on Google lol. But I didn't want to use starch or flour.
The traditional Banana Cream Pie (before the days of processed Cool Whip and JELLO Instant Pudding Powder), Was a classic custard made with flour egg yolks and sugar. You of course can find a ton of Gluten Free Banana Cream filling recipes. You can also find Primal ones with almond butter that bake into a gooey center. 
I just picked a couple different recipes out of my books (as I usually do) and I figured that I would either end up with a pudding or a cold soup. Either way, I would eat it and learn. 

This delicious pudding is made from bananas with only a splash of agave to help thicken and Coconut Butter as the primary thickening agent. I did use egg yolks, but unless you use a lot more of them and stir in the classic half a cup of flour, it's hard to get a thick pudding.
I used three bananas for the filling that were prviously frozen, that I just thawed and mashed. You will get a great result using fresh bananas as long as they are black and ripe. If not I would suggest using a sweetener to taste. I loved the rustic texture of my hand stirred pudding, if you want it to be whipped and smooth, throw it in a food processor before refrigerating. You can use this pudding as a banana cream pie filling. Pre bake your crust or use a no bake (such as in my cheesecake recipe) and chill the pudding. Once chilled, place in the pie shell and freeze. Just top with Coconut Whip cream and slice.

I found this pudding to be stupid good, like soo good on my way down the stairs to go order more bananas I had to refill my bowl. It's like a banana cream pie without the pie or a banana bread without the bread, or a banana pancake without the pancake. Pile on those walnuts and chow down on this delicious chilly goodness. 
You could make it fancy and throw in some chocolate chips!
MMMMMmmmmmm.

Banana Cream Pudding - Gluten Free, Grain free, Sugar Free

This is for my mom who tried to make banana cream pie with an avocado :)

Topping:
Place in a small glass bowl:

1 sliced banana 
2 t lime juice

Place in refrigerator.

Pudding:
 In a saucepan over medium heat: 

1.5 C Organic milk, cashew milk or coconut milk
2 organic egg yolks
2 t real vanilla extract
pinch of sea salt

Stir constantly until bubbly and starting to thicken. 

Pour in 3 T warm and soft coconut butter**

Whisk continuously until pudding is thick and no coconut butter remains. Pour into a glass bowl on the side. 

In the same sauce pan over medium heat:

3 mashed bananas
3 dashes of cinnamon
2 T butter or coconut oil
splash of real vanilla extract

Stir and cook for 3-4 minutes until banana is browned and heated through. Add the bananas to the custard and mix well together. For a smooth texture puree in a processor. For a chunky texture mix by hand.
Cover with plastic wrap. Place the plastic wrap all the way down into the bowl so it covers and sits on top of the top of the pudding. This will prevent a skin from forming. 
Chill in  the refrigerator for an hour or more until gelatinous.

Scoop into a bowl and place three chilled sliced bananas with lime juice on top, and sprinkle with chopped raw walnuts. 
Though the coconut butter was used I didn't taste in in the recipe so don't be afraid.

Delicious!!!!

** The coconut butter is used to thicken the pudding. If you don't have coconut butter, you could use cashew or almond butter. Using a nut butter though may change the taste and make it nutty. Otherwise you can sub in coconut flour or corn starch by the teaspoon until it's thick to your satisfaction. **

Using coconut butter to thicken is a great way without using starch or flour. It can be deceiving though as it will not start to show exactly how thick it is until the pudding cools. You will see an immediate thicken but it will become a pudding texture until after chilling versus a soup texture while it's hot.
If you use too much coconut butter you may end up with an ice cream texture you could eat frozen. yum!

Chocolate Pudding - Grain free, Sugar Free, Gluten Free

Around Christmas time I was doing a lot of baking for the first time using alternative flours, sweeteners and using new methods foreign to me. 

One thing I came across was the benefit of cooking with gelatin instead of using starch. 

You can make the most delicious sugar free marshmallows (which i gave away) with gelatin instead of using eggs and  cornstarch. Of course you will get a more tender texture but so much better for you.

I also used it for the custard base in my Nanaimo bars which is usually made with custard powder (Corn starch and Maltodextrin). I also used it as a fabulous base for my Banana Cream Pie custard filling instead of the traditional lots of eggs, flour, butter and sugar.

It seems to be a very promising thickener without adding ANY Carbs at all to your dishes.

I also love how it doesn't clump together like corn starch or give you a chewy gelee texture like arrowroot. It hardly needs any cooking time or can be made strictly without cooking at all if using a pre-heated liquid.

So back to my story..... I am finding that eating some dark chocolate every day helps with cravings, keeping me on task and satisfies my desire for sweet most days without adding anything negative to my diet. We used to buy the dark 78% chocolate bars for our baking and eating. Then one day at my favorite bulk store I came across a bin that carried Dark, Unsweetened Bakers Chocolate. OHH MY GOD THERE IS A GOD, AND HE HAS SENT ME CHOCOLATE!

I didn't actually know you could buy completely sugar free chocolate. All though the dark is pretty close it definitely isn't sugar free. AND the only amount of sugar in it is the totally bad white, refined, processed, horrible, really bad for you sugar. So anyway to eat less of that crap in my opinion is a good idea.

I have now been using the bakers chocolate in every one of my recipes calling for chocolate. I haven't noticed too much of a difference in taste. A couple times I have just thrown in an extra tsp of agave or a pack of Stevia here and there to make up for the sweetness which is way better than eating the wrong sugar.

I noticed thought that my days of shoving my hand in the pantry to pull out a couple squares of chocolate are over as a square of unsweetened chocolate  is really not very good at all. Trust me you won't do that more than once! 

You can tell its chocolate, but, your brain is refusing to admit to you it's chocolate because the sugar spike it is used to receiving isn't there and it wants it lol.

Sooooooo I had to come up with a different way of getting my chocolate fix or I will just end up eating the cookie jar and that will not help anybody.

So here is an idea that popped into my head this morning as I walked into the pantry thinking about chocolate and a delicious way to eat it without adding carbs and junk.

Delicious Grain Free, Sugar Free Chocolate Pudding!!! MMMmmm totally beats those cups of chocolate pudding that you could leave in your pantry for months. Do I need to say more?? 

This is not a recipe for those of you who are fat phobics though. In our house we eat animal fat, non hydrogenated natural non-hydrogenated fat such as (dairy fat, fish oil, coconut oil, avocado oil and olive oil) and nothing that isn't found in nature. Of course you can always have too much fat, but the natural fats and animal fats are broken down completely differently in your body. 2% of every meal being a natural fat is what you should consume on a daily basis into your diet. 

Compared to toxic, man made fat such as vegetable oil, canola oil, margarine, cool whip etc... It's way worse to eat all of that junk (such as those flavored oil creamers in your coffee every morning or margarine on your toast).

For example if you put margarine on your toast every day or use fake coffee creamer or use skim milk BUT burn your bacon until it passes from a solid to a black dust bla... your really not helping yourself out in any way at all. 

Of course there is always the very first argument that comes out once I mention "only fats found in nature" .. "Canola oil is natural" true.. but there are chemicals added to the oil in order to keep it a liquid in hot weather, cold weather, 10 years from now etc! Those chemicals are just as bad for you as those bad BPA chemicals you get from reusing plastic bottles over and over.  If you wouldn't drink water that has sat in a plastic bottle on your window sill for a month.. why would you purposely ingest chemicals from hydrogenated oils??

Taking a lovely natural ingredient such as vegetables and make it into a oil (how the heck do you do that), add a bunch of chemicals to it and process the crap out of it, how is that good for you?

There is a huge amount of information out there for you but you have to go looking for it. If you don't you may end up with a sad bill of help way to early on in your life and then it may be too late.

So please don't shy away from the good fat that I recommend using in my recipes as it is very important and healthy!!

Only use full fat coconut milk  or 1-2% dairy milk for this recipe as you want it to thicken naturally. There is nothing natural about using skim milk and then adding starchy thickeners to it. Using a higher fat milk such as coconut milk has a great thickening characteristic without adding starch to it.
I did this recipe using 1 cup of 1% milk and 1 cup of coconut milk as I wanted it to thicken, add protein and fiber and I always add coconut milk to most of my cooking now. I find the chocolate over powers the coconut taste so if you don't like coconut you might benefit from this. If you do like it you could use solely coconut milk.

As I went through all of my ingredients in my pantry I came across one of those "JELL-O instant pudding" boxes that I forgot to throw away.

It was very ironic to stumble across that when I am planning out pudding in my head. So naturally I read the box. I was happy it was gluten free and sugar free (aspartame) but this itself is a chemical. At the bottom of the ingredient list was about 3 big long words that I couldn't even pronounce. So what is that? How is it going to help my pudding? Why is it there? 

If you can't speak it, don't know what it is and you wouldn't add it in yourself, don't eat it. Not to mention those weirdo ingredients probably did have gluten in them.

I threw it away and picked up my giant box of Knox Gelatin. 

What are the ingredients? 

Gelatin. 

What's in it?

Gelatin.

Woohoo finally. And then I created this:

Grain Free, Sugar Free, Chocolate Pudding

In a small glass bowl:

1/2 C 1% or 2% dairy milk

3 packages of unflavored Knox gelatin

let sit for 3 min

In a sauce pan over medium heat:

1 C of coconut milk/almond milk/cashew milk

1/2 C 1% or 2% dairy milk

3 squares unsweetened Baker's Dark Chocolate or 1/2 C dark cocoa powder
2 T Coconut oil/Butter

1/2 C agave nectar/palm syrup/date syrup**

1 T vanilla

Melt coconut oil and add chocolate squares. Stir slowly until completely melted. Whisk in agave, vanilla and coconut, dairy milk. Bring to a simmer, immediately stir in gelatin mixture and whisk constantly for 1 min.

Remove from heat and pour pudding into individual ramekins and place in the fridge for 1 hour until set.

I got 7 full to the top ramekins. You could do small mini ones by pouring pudding into small muffin tins or 1 large baking tray. I don't know how well it will set up if the pudding is just one big deep bowl. Try it and let me know.

Top pudding with a layer of whipped cream (without sugar) or just plain heavy cream, and shave some unsweetened chocolate on top. yum. This recipe beats the crap out of store bought pudding and I didn't even know what I was doing!

**Substituting granulated palm sugar or Splenda may cause the pudding to not be as thick as it is a binding agent and natural thickener. Always use a liquid thickener substitute for agave.**