Mixed berry pancakes

While it looks like plastic spew from a carnival show bag, it’s actually a sweet and delicious breakfast. Today I was craving something sweet and fun for breaky (to match the day – the sun is shining, it’s glorious summer-like weather and we are heading out for a day at Manly beach) but I wanted something reasonably healthy and wheat free. I couldn’t go for something like french toast or pancakes and icecream (which by the way would be so YUM, but would make me feel off for the rest of the day).

So I looked toward the banana & egg pancake recipe that features in one of my GF/DF cookbooks and which was also a big hit in the March Crossfit Lifestyle Challenge that many of my friends took part in. I didn’t have any bananas so I tried the same with berries. It hit the spot, and I imagine that a dollop of ricotta or greek yoghurt would go well on top if that suits you.

Ingredients
frozen berries
strawberries
2-3 eggs
1 tsp brown sugar

Method
Place ~10 blueberries and 3 strawberries in a bowl and coarsely crush it all up. Add eggs and blend the mixture well with a fork, a whisk or in a blender.

Pour mixture into a warm frying pan that has been lightly greased and cook well before flipping over and cooking the top side briefly.

Serve immediately with a sprinkle of sugar or your topping of choice.

These quantities serve 1.

 

A simple banana smoothie

I was really blessed to catch up with my Mum this weekend past. I was in Melbourne participating in a beach volleyball tournament and Mum caught a train up from Colac so we could hang out. We spent two fun days hanging out in St Kilda.

Mum was telling me that she has recently been inspired to do more walking, little exercises like air squats, eat well and do brain puzzles, all for longevity. She also told me about her rekindled love for smoothies. Berries, yoghurt, chia seeds… yum! So when I returned home to Sydney to find my fridge rather bare (as I had left it) I immediately thought “smoothie”. There was a well-ripened banana in the bowl, frozen berries in the freezer, and honey, soy milk and healthy seeds in the cupboard. With these stand-by ingredients I crafted a classic banana and berry smoothie for breakfast and it was delicious and perfectly filling. This reminded me that the simple banana smoothie can give you everything you need at that moment.

You can really play around with the flavours of this smoothie through your choices of banana and honey. A less ripe banana will make your smoothie nuttier, less sweet and more subtle in banana flavour. An overly-ripe banana will give a lot more sweetness and banana intensity. Similarly, yellowbox honey will make your smoothie sweeter with a classic honey flavor, while a darker honey sourced from hard wood trees like red gum or leatherwood will give your smoothie a rich tannin flavour. Or why not try Manuka honey for its medicinal properties… I’m a fan of honey, can you tell?! And just today Mark Sisson gave a great wrap of honey and man’s primal origins. You can read about it here.

I’m dedicating this smoothie to my Mum because she’s so sweet and she is very good for me, just like this smoothie 🙂

Ingredients

1 ripe banana
1 tsp honey
½ cup frozen blue berries
1 or 2 tbsp chia seeds
1 or 2 tbsp flax seeds
1 tbsp LSA
1 ½ cup soy milk (or this is a variation for my mum: use a mix of low fat milk and natural yoghurt to give it that hint of yoghurt)

Method

Throw the peeled and diced banana into a blender
Drizzle honey on top
Add soy milk
Add chia, flax seeds and LSA
Add frozen berries
Blend until fruit and milk are smoothly combined
Enjoy

 

Lemon Marscapone Tart with Blueberries

My friend Anthea reminded me of the value of marscapone for quick, easy and delicious desserts (see her comments in my Tiramisu post). And here is a great one from Donna Hay, for those welcome days when you are invited to a dinner with only a few hours notice. All you need is some marscapone cheese (it has a relatively long use-by date of a couple of months, so you can have some in your fridge on stand-by), a lemon, frozen berries, icing sugar and some shortcrust pastry. These ingredients can be on call in your fridge, freezer or pantry and bring calm when you get that last minute dinner invite. Now you can can quickly and confidently say: “Excellent! I will bring dessert.”

! Note – Donna Hay has a nice, evenly spaced crinkle along her pastry edge (très photogenic). I believe you can use a crinkle-edged rectangular pastry cutter to get this.

Ingredients

500g marscapone
2 tbsp grated lemon rind
1/4 cup (80g) icing sugar, sifted
375g blueberries*
1 1/2 sheets shortcrust pastry**

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

Lay pastry sheets out to thaw.

Lightly grease a rectangular loose-bottomed tart tin (33cm x 9cm).

Line the tart tin with thawed pasty and trim the edges. Prick the base with a fork. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Line the pastry case with non-stick baking paper and fill with baking weights or rice. Bake for 30 minutes.

Remove paper and weights and bake for further 10 minutes until golden. Set aside to cool.

While the pastry is baking, place marscapone, lemon rind and icing sugar in a bowl and mix until well combined.

Spread the marscapone mixture into the cooled base and top with blueberries*.

Serves 8-10.

Modifications

* I used a combo of frozen blueberries and frozen raspberries. Let the berries thaw while you are preparing the other steps, or of course you can use fresh berries if tis the season.

** you can make your own sweet shortcrust pastry. I haven’t had the time (and it takes the point out of a “quick dessert”) but please let me know if you have tried this, or other great desserts, with shortcrust pastry from scratch.

My FAVOURITE SUGGESTION is to use small pastry shells (such as Pampas dessert sweet tart pastry cases) for small bite-sized “cheese-cakes” for at parties or BBQs. YUM!