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Ingredients Archives: Coconut Butter

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Protein Bites

I have one child who will eat almost anything and another who eats… almost nothing. Not in the sense that he doesn’t want to eat, but in the sense that the number of foods he’ll eat is very small. He has five foods he’d eat all day long. I’m working on a post to talk about that but in the mean time, I’m posting about a great success I had!!

I try to cram as many nutrients in him as I can, which is very difficult. This week I decided to turn his favorite flavor (chocolate chip cookies) in to a low-sugar, high protein and healthy fats treat I feel good about sending to school with him. I almost cried when he took a bite and said, “Wow! These are so good!” And he was right! These are good! Plus they are easy to make and store. I keep them in the freezer and pull a few out in the morning for his school snacks. These would be AMAZING with walnuts but walnuts are not one of the foods he’s willing to eat. Let me know if you try adding them!

One key to making these as nutrient-dense as possible is to buy quality ingredients. This recipe calls for both protein powder and collagen peptides. I use this protein powder (click here for link) as a good compromise with me and my son. He’s willing to eat it and I mostly approve of the ingredients. I also like Great Lakes Collagen Peptides (click here for link).

The healthy fats (and awesome flavor) comes from coconut butter. If you haven’t tasted coconut butter, you’re missing out. I use it on pancakes bread or just on a spoon. It’s that good.

For the chocolate chips I use Enjoy Life Brand (click here for link). Yes they have sugar, but the ingredients are minimal and all pronounceable. Plus with one 1/4 cup in the entire recipe, each protein ball has very little added sugar.

Hopefully your family loves these as much as we do.


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Healthy Orange Cherry Breakfast Scones

Growing up, there was a Village Inn about two miles from our house. Sometimes on Saturday mornings, my BFF and I would walk there for breakfast, indulge in a sweet breakfast pastry (aka pie) and then walk back to my house. We felt like we were so healthy, walking the four miles it took to make the round trip. Little did we know, we were packing on enough sugar and bad carbs to require us to walk about 50 miles to break even.

Even with the knowledge I have now, I still have that taste for delicious pastries branded in my brain. Luckily, there’s a much healthier way to indulge.

These scones are sweetened only with dried fruit, cinnamon and orange zest; and made with a combination of almond flour and coconut flour. This keeps the protein high and the processed carbs low. These scones have less than 5 grams of sugar each.

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This easily comes together in a food processor. This is my ancient food processor my grandma found at a garage sale for $10. It’s one of my favorite tools and even though it’s death will mean I get to buy a newer model, I hope this one lasts forever.

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Combine everything but the cherries in a food processor. Let everything process until the dough forms a ball.

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Add the dried cherries and process again. These are the only dried cherries I’ve found without added sugar. This is one of my pet peeves. Fruit is so full of natural sugars, why do we feel the need to sweeten them. I found these at Walmart of all places.

I like to let the cherries process for a bit to break them into small pieces. This distributes the sweetness throughout the scone. If you like bigger chunks of cherry, mix these in with a spoon.

I bake these in my awesome scone pan, but you can pat this in a round disk and cut into eight triangles, cut them into squares, or roll this out and cut them with a circular biscuit cutter.

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These bake quickly so you don’t have to wait long. Rather than top these with frosting, we just drizzle melted coconut butter over the top. The kids think I’m the cool mom giving them frosting for breakfast. They’re such lucky kids.

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