Basic Vegan Waffles/Pancakes

Buckwheat flour used here. Served with chocolate maple sauce, sliced banana, peach and dried strawbies.

This vegan waffle recipe is the best I've tried for vegan pancakes or waffles ever. It uses flax as an egg substitute, which may be a little inconvenient for you guys, but really I don't know what else can replace it! 

Waffle and pancake recipes can be used pretty much interchangeably. After all, waffles are pancakes but with abs.

Raw Vegan Lime Bars w/ Pistachio Graham Crust

I took one bite, then the flavour sunk in and all I wanted to do was dance and proclaim to the entire universe how fantastic these babies turned out to be. Gluten free, dairy free, added sugar free, vegan, raw, tastes like ice cream what more can you ask for? 

(Hey that rhymes) 

They're simple to make and really are quite delicious if I do say so myself. Parents really like these and my critical brother said they were "not bad" aka "very good". He asked if there was sugar. Well, there isn't! Apart from non processed sugars like dates and maple syrup :-) Really glad these turned out well because this morning's breakfast got screwed up when everything got stuck to my not so non stick waffle maker. Need a new one now, care to sponsor me anyone?

I was scrolling through Pinterest (follow me @healthiepanda) the other day and I saw these divine looking lime squares with a pistachio graham crust, courtesy of Martha Stewart. So this Sunday afternoon I decided to healthify them. Oh by the way keep pinning my pictures! Really makes me so happy :-) 

I love that green from the avocado! (YES THATS THE SECRET INGREDIENT) The ones I used were perfectly ripe and not brown at all! Pity I didn't take a picture. Avocados make up a good portion of this recipe so please get good avocados. Brown avocados will not give you such a pretty green. 

Vegan Banana Berry Streusel Pizza

So I've been reducing my protein and increasing my carbs lately, because I want to eat less animal products. I was watching this YouTube video by freeleethebananagirl, and I saw how cruelly cows are treated. It was so horrible I literally cried. I'm eating more vegan meals now but I don't think I'll go completely vegan because that lifestyle isn't maintainable for me at the moment. 

Besides I'm actually eating more protein than necessary so it won't hurt to cut down. I want to watching "earthlings", a documentary about animal abuse stuff but I'm worried I'll be a huge sobbing puddle by the time the film is over.

Today's recipe is a wonderfully scrumptious vegan pizza. It has an oat flax base and is studded with banana coins and blueberries, sprinkled with walnut cinnamon streusel, drizzled with coconut cream and finished off with some freeze dried strawberry pieces. 

Food props: I am loving my cute little honey drizzling thing! I don't even really know what it's called haha. Found that little acorn by the pavement near my condo. 

For those who need photographic evidence that the pizza holds together when lifted up....

This was actually a really photogenic breakfast! :D I love it when the food makes my life easy by looking good. Sometimes I get so stressed taking food pictures.........

Strawberry Rice Puff (Krispie) Balls

Another Valentines Day treat for you guys!! Wish I could give each and everyone of you one but 1) they'll probably be sticky and melting by the time they reach you, 2) I probably don't have enough or 3) I might finish eating them before they reach you! They're so delicious :3 My dad who usually finds my foods bland LOVES these! You have to try this recipe out! Like any other Rice Krispie recipe, it's super simple. Basically mix everything together, roll into balls and freeze. 

You can use any kind of nut butter in replacement of cashew butter :) Preferably a light coloured nut? I used my own homemade cashew butter. All I did was blend 160g of cashews in my amazing food processor until it turned buttery. I blended for 1-2min, let the machine rest for a few minutes and then repeated (about 6 times) until the cashews released their oils and turned creamy. I made just enough for the recipe! :) 

Red Velvet Brookies!!!

Oh my goodness. These are good. And oh so healthy! The beautiful red comes from steamed beets not food colouring. Coincidentally, (or not) beets are also what keeps the brownie moist and dense! The the brownie part and the chocolate chip cookie layed over, are both made using oat flour, which means you can make this gluten free Ü 

Came across brookies (brownie cookies) on Pinterest and decided to healthify them ASAP because I wanted to get this post up before Valentines ❤ Day!! Hope you guys make this and try it out! Honestly it isn't too difficult and I think brookies, especially those that are red velvet AND healthy are pretty unique. 

Please use a measuring tbsp to measure cocoa powder so you don't add too much ^^ You want it to be RED. 

Healthy Nutter Butter Cookies

Happy belated CNY! Made some nutter butter inspired cookies this morning. I still have a few to let my relatives sample tomorrow yay! Peanut flavoured and shaped cookies filled with peanut butter cream! Mmmm. Have not made any successful CNY cookies yet so I guess these'll do :) Peanut is 花生 in Chinese and it represents health and long life! Make these for your friends and family, after all Chinese New Year isn't over just yet.

I'm so proud of these, they really are mega healthy. Dairy free, gluten free, egg free (for vegans), processed sugar free and so cute ~~~ 

I used buckwheat flour but you can also use a gluten free flour blend and leave out the tbsp of water! 

I was actually worried using chunky peanut butter would give me an ugly cookie but it turned out fine :) I still recommend creamy pb though. 

What you'll need 

Cookies:

2 tbsp creamy peanut butter 

2 tbsp honey (vegans: use any vegan liquid sweetener) 

1 tbsp water

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Juice from a small lemon wedge 

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup buckwheat flour 

Filling:

2 tbsp peanut flour

Water

How to 

1. Mix wet ingredients together. 

2. Mix buckwheat flour and baking soda together. Pour wet into dry mixture and combine well.

Preheat oven to 180C

3. Form the dough into 16 equal portions. Roll each portion into an oval and flatten. Make the middle part slightly thinner. Squeeze the centre to give it a peanut shape, use a toothpick to make the horizontal and vertical lines across the surface. 

4. Bake for about 13 min and cool. Mix 2 tbsp peanut flour with just enough water to get a creamy peanut butter consistency. 

Tip: Add water a little at a time! 

5. When cookies are cooled spread 1/2 tsp of peanut cream filling on the back of one cookie and top with another cookie :)

Enjoy!!

Ginger Longan Upside Down Cake

Delicious ginger longan upside down cake, topped with juicy mandarin orange slices. Perfect for the Chinese New Year season, and gluten free too! This cake wasn't made intentionally for Chinese New Year but my mum told me the flavours were rather suitable and suggested I topped it with mandarin oranges (:

I made this using buckwheat flour. The first time I baked it, it was very dense and heavy. I suspected it might have been the greek yogurt so I replaced a portion of the yogurt with coconut oil and voila — a perfect cake. I also took extra special care to beat the egg whites separately and sift the dry ingredients. 

Although the longans are only at the top of the cake (or rather the bottom) the juice kinds of diffuses through the cake and gives the entire cake a longan taste. 

What you'll need

3/4 cups buckwheat flour

1 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup plain greek yogurt

1/4 cup coconut oil

1/8 cup maple syrup

1 egg yolk

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

2 egg white

1/4 tsp apple cider vinegar/citrus fruit juice

1 tbsp maple syrup

1 cups longans 

How to 

1. Pit the longans. Grease and line a 5-6 inch round cake tin. 

2. Sift first 3 ingredients together into a bowl. 

3. Mix greek yogurt, coconut oil, maple syrup, egg yolk and vanilla extract together. Pour the wet mixture into the dry and combine well.

Preheat the oven to 180C

3. Beat egg whites and apple cider vinegar until frothy. Gradually pour in the maple syrup and continue beating until soft peaks, or mid way between soft and stiff. 

4. Fold half the egg whites into the first batter. Then gently fold in the other half until the mixture is one even colour.

5. Evenly distribute pitted longans across the bottom of the cake tin. Pour batter over. Tap in the counter top a few times to get the air bubbles out. 

6. Bake for about 50min. Cool slightly before turning out on to a plate. Cut off the rounded top (or rather bottom) of the cake and then flip it onto another plate so it is now upside down and the longans are on top of the cake. 

Remember to serve topped with some mandarin oranges :-))

Sweet and Sour Meatballs

After one bite of this, I flipped out and couldn't stop raving about it for the next few hours. These healthy sweet and sour meatballs are honestly THAT good. They taste and look like they were made in a Chinese restaurant! 

I'm going to teach my maid how to cook this for us, so we can have it for dinner some day! On weekdays my maid cooks dinner (-: 

Perfect blend of sweet and sour! Plus it's low fat unlike the usual sweet and sour pork. I messed these up last weekend and they were terrible!! But my mum motivated me to try again (-: I'm so glad I did!

What you'll need

140g minced chicken (or you can use half pork half chicken)

1 tbsp tomato paste

1 tbsp honey

1.5 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1/2 tsp light soya sauce

1/3 tsp Chinese rice wine

3 tbsp water

1/2 tsp olive oil

1 tsp minced garlic

1/4 cup chopped onion

1/2 cup chopped capsicum (3 colours)

How to 

1. Boil water in a saucepan. Form mince chicken into balls. Drop chicken into the boiling water and cook for about 15min or until they float to the top. 

2. Mix tomato paste, honey, vinegar, light soya sauce, Chinese rice wine and water together to form your sauce.

3. Heat olive oil in a pan. Over medium high heat sauté onion and garlic. Once fragrant add in vegetables and chicken meatballs. Briefly fry for a minute or so and then pour sauce over. Mix everything together well and cook until sauce thickens. The sauce should be thick enough to coat the meatballs.

Serve with brown rice and you can garnish with coriander if you wish :-)

Tahini Soba

School has started officially so my posts from now on may be even shorter than normal! Today I made this really easy soba. When I showed it to my brother he said, "that's not japanese" so I said "it's fusion.

In any case, it's delicious ^^ Tahini is sesame seed butter. I used organic hulled tahini I got from wholefoods in London. Tahini's rather bitter, so I sweetened it up with honey. Worked pretty well I must say! 

What you'll need

A piece of ginger

50g uncooked soba

1/2 cup chopped broccoli 

1/4 cup sliced carrots 

1 tbsp hulled tahini

1 tbsp honey

1/4 tsp mirin

1/4 tsp light soya sauce 

Grilled meat of choice

Seaweed for garnishing 

How to

1. Boil water with ginger. Add in broccoli and carrots. Blanch for a few minutes and remove broccoli and carrots. Then cook your soba in rapidly boiling water for 3 min or according to your packages instructions. 

2. Mix tahini, honey, mirin and soya sauce together. Toss soba in the sauce. Garnish with seaweed and serve with vegetables and grilled meat :)

Lemon Coconut Protein Crinkles

Made these cookies a grand total of 3 times. The first two times they looked more volcano like and were rather dry. Third times the charm I guess :) These make your kitchen and hands smell nice because of the lemon zest!

Crinkle cookies aren't very common in Singapore, where I live, so I made my own! They are sort of a cake-cookie, and have cracks across the top surface of the cookie! Instead of rolling mine in powdered sugar I used ground dried coconut! Definitely healthier :) This cookie is fairly low in fat but high in protein!

About 6 cookies:

What you'll need

1 scoop vanilla protein powder

1/2 cup oat flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 cup greek yogurt

1 tbsp honey or slightly more to taste

3 tbsp whisked egg/1 small egg

Lemon zest of 1 lemon

1/4 tsp vanilla extract 

3 tbsp dried coconut 

How to

1. Combine the first 3 ingredients. 

2. Whisk together remaining ingredients, except coconut. Next combine both mixtures. Freeze for 1h or longer.

Preheat oven to 180C.

3. Blend 3 tbsp dried coconut as fine as possible. Get a tbsp of cookie dough, form into a ball, roll in coconut, place on prepared baking sheet. Repeat until dough is used up. 

4. Bake for 10min.

Healthy Floating Island

Hi everyone! I do hope you enjoyed yourself last night. I had a barbecue ~ It's officially 2014 now! I'm so excited for the new year! I plan to achieve more and make this year even better than the last. Thank you all for supporting me throughout 2013, it really means the world to me when you guys like and comment on my pictures, and even try my recipes out! Tag #healthiepanda if you do :) 

For the first breakfast for the year, I decided to have dessert. What's new? Haha. It's a French dessert called île flottante, œufs à la neige aka Floating Island. It consists of a poached meringue floating on crème anglaise (vanilla custard). The texture of the meringue is like marshmallow!

However I gave my my own twist to the custard by adding in some orange! Simplified the recipe by microwaving the meringue, inspired by sorted food. They're awesome so go check them out :) 

Oh and I know it's strange that I only use 1/2 an egg yolk, but if you use more it'll be way too eggy. Blech.

What you'll need 

Custard:

1/2 egg yolk

1/2 tbsp maple syrup

1/3 cup plain non fat no sugar yogurt

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Juice from 1/4 orange

Meringue:

1 egg white

1/2 tbsp maple syrup 

Chopped walnuts (any nut is fine)

10g 85% dark chocolate 

How to

1. Put the egg white and a little squeeze of orange juice into a mixer.

2. Beat the custard ingredients together in a heat proof bowl. Boil some water in a sauce pan. Place the bowl over the mouth of the sauce pan. Cook for about 10min, stirring occasionally, until the mixture has thickened. 

3. Beat egg white until soft peaks. Add in maple syrup slowly while beating until you get stiff peaks. Pour 1/2 a cm of water into a dish/bowl. Scoop a mound of the meringue onto the water. Microwave on high for 30s. Now when you poke the meringue it should be firm.

4. Microwave chocolate for 30s or a little more until it melts. But make sure not to burn it. 

5. Pour custard on to a plate, top with meringue, chopped nuts, drizzle melted chocolate over and garnish with a sprig of some herb. 

Yum!

Sun Dried Tomato Cashew Pesto

Happy New Year's Eve!! So this is rather different from regular basil, pine nut pesto BUT it's just as delicious if not better! It's so easy to whip up and tastes great on toast and crackers with some lemon juice. You can water down the pesto a little, stir it through some pasta and serve with some protein for a satisfying main course!

There's only one step for this recipe!! Just blend up everything hehehe. I love thyme and sun dried tomatoes btw :-)) Also hope y'all are having a good New Year's Eve!

What you'll need

50g sun dried tomatoes

15g (2 tbsp) cashews 

1/2 tsp minced garlic

1 tsp fresh thyme leaves 

2-3 tbsp water (your preference)

How to

1. Blend everything together well!

Sweet Potato Gnocchi

Yum in my tum. Gluten and dairy free sweet potato gnocchi!

Just realised gnocchi is sorta like western dumplings? 

I've never made my own pasta before, which is why I was really excited to make these! I'm honestly so happy with the way they turned out. If you like sweet potato you'll absolutely love these. You can really use any herb in place of rosemary, but I think rosemary goes fantastic with sweet potato! 

The pasta can be a little sticky, so when you're forming the little gnocchi pieces use slightly damp hands and a slightly damp fork. Water repels the stickiness :D 

What you'll need 

160g sweet potato 

1/4 cup all purpose gluten free flour blend

1 egg white, beaten

1/4 tsp smoked paprika

Water and a fork/gnocchi board

2 tsp olive oil

1/4 tsp butter extract 

1 tbsp fresh rosemary leaves 

1/2 tsp minced garlic 

Black pepper 

Cherry tomatoes

How to 

1. Scrub sweet potato and poke holes in it with a knife. Bake the sweet potato in a preheated oven at 200C for 1h. Let the sweet potato cool, scrape out the insides and mash. 

2. Mix flour, egg white and smoked paprika into the sweet potato. Combine well into a slightly sticky dough. 

3. Take a teaspoon of dough and roll it into a oval shaped sphere aka an ovoid! Roll it on the fork to make the line indents you commonly see on gnocchi. Set aside and repeat until the dough is used up. 

4. Set gnocchi aside to air dry for an hour. Then cook gnocchi in boiling water for a few minutes until they float to the surface. Remove with a sieve or slotted spoon. 

5. Heat olive oil and butter extract in a pan over high heat. Fry garlic and rosemary. When fragrant immediately turn off heat and toss in gnocchi. Serve with black pepper and cherry tomatoes!

Quinoa Pizza Rounds

Another pizza post. Sorry I'm not sorry.

These are like pizza, minus the grease and carbs.

Gluten free too! Quinoa is also higher in protein than other carbs like rice :)

Going for a swim in pizza sauce. Actually I used pasta sauce but what's the difference haha.

I do realised I just spammed you guys with pictures but I can't short list them it's so difficult sigh. 

What you'll need

1/2 cup cooked quinoa 

1/3 cup shredded cheese 

1/4 cup chopped shallots

1 tsp minced garlic

Slightly under 1/4 cup parsley or basil 

1/2 tsp chili flakes

1/2 tsp dried mixed herbs (ensure there's oregano in there) 

1/2 tsp smoked paprika 

50g turkey breast, chopped up

1 egg

Serve with: pasta or pizza sauce

How to 

Preheat oven to 180C

1. Mix everything together except egg. Beat egg and combine with the other ingredients.

2. Divide into 5 greased muffin cups. Bake for about 18min. Cool slightly, remove from tray and serve with sauce!

Ps you can try less cheese and an extra egg white if you want.

Spiced Maple Chestnut Cake (Gluten Free) (Paleo)

Tis the season to be jolly! We are approaching the Christmas season friends! And this is the first in the collection of Christmasy recipes I'll be posting! 

This gluten free chestnut cake is so easy it literally took half an hour to get it in to the oven.

Want a piece?

Its gluten free and paleo (apart from the icing)! Totally healthy. I used half boiled chestnuts and half roasted chestnuts. You can easily get preroasted chestnuts from a supermarket. They sell them as snacks in little 100g bags ☺️ 

Do note though, if I were to bake this again for my family (they absolutely loved this) I would add something to hold the cake together better. Such as chia or xantham gum or starch. 

What you'll need

Cake:

300g cooked and peeled chestnuts

3/4 level teaspoon baking powder

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp allspice

1/4 cup maple syrup

2 eggs separated 

3 tbsp coconut oil

1/4 cup water

Frosting:

1 tub Greek yogurt (170 g)

1 tbsp Maple syrup

(Not paleo, but can sub with cashew cream or coconut cream!) 

How to

1. Process chesnuts until it's like a clumpy flour. 

2. Mix baking powder and spices into ground chestnut. Beat maple syrup, oil, 2 egg yolks and water together. Pour into ground chesnut and combine well. 

Preheat oven to 160C. 

3. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks and gently fold into chestnut mixture. 

4. Transfer batter to a prepared 6 inch round pan and bake for 40min. Lower temperature to 150C and bake for 10min. Then 140C for 10min. ((Honestly though I think you should just do 150C for 45min or so. I'm sorry I don't feel like rebaking the cake just to tweak the temperature))

5. When cake is cool, flip it out onto a plate. Mix greek yogurt and maple syrup together, spread over the cake. Top with walnuts or anything your heart desires. Orange zest would go nicely I think.