Chocolate Chai Banana Bread

If I could choose how to spend my perfect Sundays, I would be in great company, exploring picturesque neighbourhoods and sampling plenty of overindulgent foods. Of course the majority of my Sundays are spent rising at 6 to cram in a 10 mile run, catching up with work from the previous week ready for the next, and just trying to find a few spare minutes to shave my legs and collapse on a heap on the sofa. What remains in both my expectations and realities of a Sunday however, is plenty of tea and sweet treats to see me through.

This a perfect bake to use up all those sad, bruised looking bananas long forgotten in the dark corners of your kitchen. And as well as being gluten and dairy-free, this subtly sweet Chocolate Chai Banana Bread is refined sugar-free, and when kept in an airtight container will see you through the week as a delicious, healthy snack.

Ingredients

Dry

1/2 Cup Buckwheat Flour

1/2 Cup Ground Almonds

1 1/2 TSP Baking Powder

1/2 TSP Baking Soda

2 TSP Cinnamon

1 TSP Ginger

1/2 TSP Allspice

1/2 TSP Nutmeg

1 TSP Vanilla Extract

1/2 TSP Salt

Dark Chocolate Chopped

Wet

2 Large Eggs

1/4 Cup Melted Coconut Oil

1/4 Cup Milk or Milk Alternative

1 TSP Apple Cider Vinegar

3 Medium Ripe Bananas Mashed

Topping

1 Cup Pecans

1 TBSP Coconut Oil

1/4 TSP Cinnamon

Method

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celcius or gas mark 6 and line a loaf tin.

In a large bowl, mix together all your dry ingredients and set to one side. 

On a chopping board, roughly mash your bananas with a fork leaving some larger chunks of banana. In another bowl, whisk together your eggs, coconut oil, milk and apple cider vinegar. Add in your mashed banana and mix together.

Begin to fold in the wet mixture to the dry ingredients until only just combined.

Transfer the bread mixture to your loaf tin. Sprinkle on your pecans and drizzle with the remaining coconut oil and put in the oven to bake for 45 minutes, or until a skewer comes out of the bread clean. If you find your pecans are beginning to burn on top, cover with foil and resume baking. 

So slather up a slice with jam and peanut butter and thank me later.

K

Benefits Of Dairy-Free For Your Skin & Body

Whats with all the big milk moo-ha?

Now I forgo the cheese and cracker platter out of my own ethical reasons, and I respect everyone’s personal choices when it comes to their diets. It’s simply none of my business. However, there are many great benefits for your skin and body when you ditch the dairy. So lets have a little talk about the white stuff.

1. Clearer Skin

Unfortunately for many people, dairy may be the trigger of your problematic skin conditions and inflammation, including eczema, acne and rosacea. In fact, many dermatologists recommend ditching the dairy as a first course of action in treating such skin conditions. So if you’ve tried every remedy and tablet under the sun, perhaps try eliminating dairy from your diet for a couple weeks and see if your skin improves. 

2. Healthier Digestion

It is estimated that around 70% of the world’s population has a certain degree of lactose intolerance. This intolerance means that the body is unable to easily digest lactose (the natural occurring sugar within dairy), leading to swelling and discomfort, as well as constipation and diarrhoea. So if you suffer from IBS, bloating and other digestive issues, milk may be the culprit. 

3. Weight Loss

Removing dairy from your diet cuts out a lot of excess saturated fats, sugars and salts from your diet which could help you lessen your calorie intake. And in fact, in a study of more than 12,000 children, they found that the more milk they consumed, the more weight they gained. So it's a simple switch that could help you shift a few pounds.  

Dairy-free Alternatives:

Ditching the dairy doesn’t mean you have to miss out on milk, butter and cheese. There is a large market for dairy-free alternatives which taste fantastic. We’ve been known to replace butter in cakes with a dairy-free butter and no one has been any the wiser (but lets keep that between us!).

Oatly Organic Oat Milk 

I’ve found this milk to be the best to froth up and top a cappuccino and doesn’t contain any nasty or unnecessary ingredients.

Rude Health 

Pictured is their Coconut Drink, but all their products taste delicious and are full of natural ingredients, unlike many products on the market that contain lots of stabilisers and sugars.

Flora Freedom

I’ve recently started using this new Flora Free dairy-free butter, especially in baked goods, and am pleased to learn it is made from 100% plant oils and is free from artificial preservatives, colours and flavours. 

Where do you stand on ditching the dairy?

K

Almond Butter Blueberry Cookies

Now I wanted to start this post tastefully. I'm currently "surfing the crimson wave". Some might say, "birthing a blood diamond". Or I'm attending "arts and craft week at Pantry Camp", if you get what I mean.

Yes, I totally googled: polite things to call your period. 

Too much information, I know. But the point was that this week I’ve been craving sweets, cakes and biscuits like crazy, and this is where these Almond Butter Blueberry Cookies come in.

Not only are they free-from dairy, eggs and gluten, but they are also free from refined sugars. I try and avoid processed sugars around this time of the month because my skin is usually already suffering with the unbalanced hormones and I don’t want to make it any worse. These cookies are sweetened naturally with maple syrup and vanilla extract, but still smell and taste delicious warm out of the oven to keep my cravings at bay.

 

Makes 20 Cookies

Ingredients

150g Oats

100g Buckwheat Flour

1 TSP Bicarbonate Of Soda

90ml Olive Oil

90g Tahini

250g Almond Butter

120ml Maple Syrup

75g Blueberries

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius/Gas Mark 4 and line and grease a large baking tray.

In a blender or food processor, blend the oats down into a fine powder and then stir together with the buckwheat flour and bicarbonate of soda in a large bowl.

Over a low heat, melt the olive oil, tahini, almond butter and maple syrup and stir until  smooth and combined.

Pour the warm liquid mixture over the dry ingredients, along with the blueberries, and fold until all the ingredients are combined.

Roll the cookie dough into 20 golf-sized balls and flatten down with the palm of your hand on the baking tray.

Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes (don’t overcook them or they will become dry). The cookies will still be a little soft, but they will start to firm up as they cool down. After a couple minutes transfer to a wire rack to cool completely - or just eat the whole batch before then!

If you too are “riding the cotton pony” so to speak, make a big batch of these and put your feet up with a cup of tea. 

K

The Almighty Moringa Miracle Chocolate Shake

Now if we were to play a game of Superfoods Top Trumps, Moringa Powder is the card we’re all going to want, and here’s why…

This world of superfoods in which we live can seem like a baffling, all very extravagant marketing ploy to make money out of an increasingly health-concerned (and apparently cynical) population. We have mulberries, goji berries and whats that? You’ve never tried any enchantedmagentaunicornforest-berries? You haven’t lived. And apparently, the less you're able to pronounce the word, the better it is for you, so don’t worry because no one pronounced quinoa right the first time. But, there is a reason why these mysterious people - who actually have the time to make fancy schmancy, instagram worthy breakfasts every morning - swear by them, and it’s probably why they have such fantastic skin…

For the past few months, and now for the foreseeable future, I've been supplementing for an iron deficiency anaemia and a B12 deficiency, which is a pretty common and very treatable problem. Coming off the tablets would inevitably cause my levels to drop but I totally feel like that prescription money could be better spent on a new pair of shoes (am I right?) The only further advice offered to me was to 'make sure you eat plenty of dark leafy greens' - really? If I possibly ate anymore broccoli than I already do, I'm gonna' turn into one myself. So I took research into my hands, and discovered that the tub of green powder gathering dust in my pantry (along with the other products I had picked up on a trolley dash through Holland & Barrett), was actually used to prevent and treat 300 illness worldwide, including anaemia. 

Having previously doubted Moringa, questioning "what could this superfood promise me that others couldn't?", I would like to retract that statement and admit that I could not have been more wrong.

So meet the heavyweight and powerhouse of nutrition, 

Moringa: Native to India, used to treat and prevent 300 illnesses worldwide. 25 times more iron than spinach, 17 times more calcium than milk and 15 times more potassium than bananas. Neutralises and reduces the damage of free radicals (the nasty molecules that speed up ageing and can cause heart diseases and cancers).

Nutrients: 92

Antioxidants: 46

Amino Acids: 18, with the 9 essential ones our bodies cannot produce.

Vitamins: A - Z

Omegas: 3, 6 and 9.

And whats even better, Moringa Powder is so easy to add into any meal. I made this Almighty Moringa Mircale Chocolate Shake as my post-run protein shake. Even with the slight green tint, the taste was undetectable. Naturally high in iron, protein and all those over heavyweight stats, it's great for your skin and your whole well-being. Super creamy, all naturally sweetened and great for muscle repair, it makes for a fab, guilt-free treat. And if it's going to help up my iron levels, I'd consider in a daily necessity, at least for the foreseeable future...

Ingredients

Serves 1 

1 Frozen Banana

1 Medjool Date (pitted)

1 1/2 tbsp Raw Cacao Powder

1/2 cup Water/Ice

1/2 cup dairy-free milk alternative, I use Almond Breeze Unsweetened Almond Milk

1 tbsp Moringa Powder.

Optional:

1 tbsp Nut Butter.

1/4 tsp Ground Cinnamon

Method

Simply blend all ingredients together in a blender and serve pinterest-style in Kilner jars with paper straws*. Enjoy…

*Instagramming the hell of out this is not required, but highly recommended.

Kay's Kitchen Playlist:

Catfish and the Bottlemen - Kathleen, Cocoon and Pacifier