Yesterday, I posted a photo of my post-workout protein cookie dough in an Instagram story, and got several DM’s in response asking where the recipe was…sorry!
I’m going to pretend I meant to post it all along and go bury my head in a bowl of protein cookie dough. I actually made this cookie dough the night before and left it in the fridge so it would be ready when I got home from leg day (oof, leg day). The recipe is very similar to my Chocolate PB Cup Proats with just a few tweaks.
Protein Cookie Dough
- 2 scoops Orgain Plant Based Protein Powder - Peanut Butter Flavored (approx 21 grams of vegan protein)
- 2 tbs. smooth almond butter
- 1/2 cup gluten free rolled oats
- 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
- A dash of salt
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1 packet of organic stevia
- Unsweetened almond milk - the amount is going to depend on how thick you want the dough
- 1/3 cup Lily’s Stevia-Sweetened Dark Chocolate Chips
Mix together all ingredients EXCEPT for the almond milk and chocolate chips. This is the only tricky part of this recipe.
Slowly add almond milk until you reach the consistency you desire. Keep in mind that if you are going to leave the cookie dough overnight, the oats will soak up a lot of the almond milk, so you could even leave this step until the next day, and add your milk right before eating. Once you have your consistency, add your chocolate chips.
It’s really that simple!
Mangia <3
IF YOU SEARCH ONLINE FOR MOSTACCIOLI, YOU ARE GOING TO GET RECIPES FOR HOMEMADE PASTA.
But in Naples, we are also talking about molasses and black pepper biscotti. I promise, the black pepper just gives the biscotti a kick - it’s not overpowering, and the orange adds so much sweetness and brightness to balance out the spice.
This is my great-grandmother Lucia’s recipe, so you are getting a precious family secret here. Steward it well.
Mostaccioli
- 1 12oz. bottle molasses
- 1 grated orange rind
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup olive oil + a few tablespoons for the baking sheets
- 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 4 drops of Young Living Orange Vitality Essential Oil
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. ground black pepper
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 4 cups flour
- 1 cup chopped and roasted macadamia or hazelnuts.
Preheat the oven to 400F, and spread olive oil on two baking sheets.
In a stand mixer, combine molasses, orange rind, egg, olive oil, essential oil, and brown sugar. Set aside. In a bowl, sift together the flour, salt, black pepper, and baking powder. Now, here is where you get your arm workout - pour the wet ingredients onto the dry, and fold the two together until combined. This will take some muscles because the dough is sticky. Once the wet and dry are well incorporated, add the nuts and fold to combine.
Onto just one of the two pans, pour the batter, and shape into an oblong rectangle. It will take up most of the pan lengthwise, and will be about 5-6 inches in width. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from the heat, and let sit for 10 minutes. Then take a long knife (a butcher knife is perfect - something with a long and wide blade), and coat it with olive oil. Slice the loaf into slices that are about 1/2 inch wide. This is where you will need your second pan. Take each slice carefully, and lay it on its side so the cut side is up. The slices will take up two pans. Place the pans back into the oven and bake 10 minutes. Flip the slices to the other side, and bake another 10 minutes.
These biscotti do not need drizzle, because they hold a chewy consistency. They are best served with a hot chai latte or a cappuccino.
Mangia, mangia, mangia!
There has been a lot of Einkorn on this blog lately. I will totally own that.
Once you know how amazing this flour is, and how different it is from other flours, it is easy to get carried away. I’m substituting it into all of my favorite baked goods, and not tasting much of a difference, but it FEELS better internally.
Also - right now, we are in the middle of a global health crisis. The last thing I want to do is encourage you to eat junk food. Like…I should be telling you to steer dang clear of that stuff, and eating immune boosting foods.
On the other hand, I know most of you have been in your homes for almost 14 days or more. Sometimes, you just need something fun and pretty to eat, or something to give the kids that will take them a loonnnnnngggggg time to eat because it’s day 495 of the plague and you are ready to lock yourself outside.
So, I took my old biscotti recipe, gave it some Einkorn, took away anything refined and added oils. It won’t stop the Co-Fee-Fee (my physician brother’s new name for COVID 19), but it’s still a really, really good thing, and we all need that right now.
Einkorn Biscotti (Cranberry Orange Hazelnut variation)
Preheat oven to 350°F
Sift together
- 1 cup Einkorn flour
- 1 cup all purpose flour, non bleached
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp. baking powder
In a separate bowl, mix…
- 1 cup raw sugar or evaporated cane juice
- 3 large eggs
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- The zest of one orange, and the juice of one orange
- 4 drops of Orange Vitality Oil
Optional add ins (but I never leave them out)
- 3/4 cup chopped, toasted hazelnuts
- 3/4 cup unsweetened dried cranberries
Add dry ingredients to wet, and mix until firm dough forms. Stir the add ins into the dough. If dough feels too wet, that is ok.
On a greased cookie sheet, shape the dough into an oblong-shaped loaf. Bake for 10 minutes or until the bottom of loaf starts to turn golden. Remove from oven, and cut loaf into diagonal slices.
Turn slices onto their sides, and return to oven for 10 minutes. When the slices are golden, flip, and bake another 10 minutes. This seals in the moisture, and keeps the biscotti from being too dry.
Remove from the oven and cool. Glaze with frosting or dip in melted chocolate. For this particular recipe, I drizzled with confectioner’s sugar and almond milk mixed together, and topped with extra zest and chopped hazelnuts.
Pane di Pasqua is a colorful, braided, sweet bread that appears every Easter in Italian homes.
Pronounced ‘Pahn-eh dee paskwa’, the bread is flavored with citrus and anise, dusted with bright sprinkles or colored sugar, and topped with at least three hard boiled eggs to symbolize the Trinity. It is served after church on Easter Sunday as a way of breaking Lent (cause hellooooo sugar and butter).
This Easter, we are under quarantine, which still feels weird to say. Easter is my favorite holiday, and I usually spend it celebrating Jesus’ resurrection with my church family and my cousins. Instead, my parents and I are quarantining together and are aiming for a quiet dinner, and watching church services online. We’re grateful - it’s just different!
And now that my life is more health-focused, Pane di Pasqua is going to be a little different too.
I love sprinkles and the tradition of the colored eggs, but artificial food coloring is terrible for the body. We don’t even have it in the house, so I opted for fresh lemon zest and eliminated the colored eggs.
I love sprinkles and the tradition of the colored eggs, but artificial food coloring is terrible for the body. We don’t even have it in the house, so I opted for fresh lemon zest and eliminated the colored eggs.
Finally, I added a little Einkorn flour in with the all-purpose flour. Just a little. A sweet bread is not supposed to be healthy, but if I can cut down on the chemicals that are sprayed on most American wheat by using Young Living’s Einkorn Flour….I’mma do that.
Stay well, friends, and Buona Pasqua! He is Risen Indeed!
Ingredients
- 1 cup whole milk
- 2 ¼ tsp active dry yeast
- 1/3 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup Young Living Einkorn Flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
- 1/2 tsp anise flavoring
- 7 drops Young Living Orange Vitality Essential Oil
- The zest of one lemon
- 3 cups all purpose, high quality flour
- ½ cup unsalted butter
- 1 tbs. olive oil
- One egg lightly beaten for the egg wash
Icing
- 1 cup confectioner’s sugar
- 2-3 tbs. milk
- 5 drops of Young Living Orange Vitality Oil
- The zest of one lemon
Instructions
- Warm the milk in a saucepan to approximately 110ºF. If it’s too hot, it will kill the yeast. If it’s too cold, the yeast won’t respond. You are aiming for warmth. Take the warm milk and pour it into the bowl of your electric mixer. Sprinkle the yeast over it, and let sit for 5 minutes. Then slowly sprinkle the Einkorn flour, salt and sugar over the yeast mix and gently stir to combine. You can let this sit for a few minutes while you work on the other ingredients.
- In a separate bowl, combine your beaten eggs, anise flavoring, orange vitality oil, and lemon zest. While the mixer is running on low, pour the egg mixture into the Einkorn mix. Stir until combined. Slowly add one cup of the remaining flour at a time. Once the flour is incorporated, add the butter in squares, one at a time until they are thoroughly mixed in. The dough will be a little sticky, and that is fine. You want it to come away from the bowl a little. Form the dough into a ball, and rub the olive oil over the ball. This will keep the dough from getting that weird crust dough can get while it rises. Cover and let rise in a warm place for one hour.
- Once the dough has doubled in size, punch it down, and let it rest for 15-20 minutes. Flour a clean surface, and dump the dough out onto the surface. Slice the ball into 3 sections. Take one of those sections and roll out a rope until it is about 18-20 inches long. Bend the rope in half, and gently twist the dough until it forms one twisted rope. Form the rope into a circle, and pinch the two ends together. It will look like a wreath. Place the wreath on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, and repeat the process for the other two sections of dough. Cover the three breads with a clean kitchen table, and allow to rise in a warm place for another 45 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 375ºF. Brush the wreaths with the egg wash. Bake for 25 minutes or until they are golden. Allow to cool completely.
- To make the drizzle, combine the confectioner’s sugar, milk, and essential oils and stir until you get the desire consistency. Drizzle over the loaves, and sprinkle with fresh lemon zest.
These loaves are best served the day of, or the morning after. They are very, very rich so share one with a quarantine buddy and enjoy with a coffee.
Buona pasqua! Mangia!
And you thought tacos couldn’t get any better…
I recently saw a breakfast/dessert taco recipe on Pinterest and thought “I could totally do that with pizzelle, berries, ricotta and marscapone!” So, here we are.
Pizzelle are the Southern Italian version of a waffle and they date back to Ancient Rome when they were called crustulum. They are thin, crispy cookie flavored with lemon, vanilla, or anise, and are stamped with a rosetta pattern that looks similar to a stained glass window. They can serve as a crunchy addition to a bowl of gelato, as a vehicle for Nutella (what isn’t a vehicle for Nutella?), or they can be eaten plain with coffee.
Or you could make them into a breakfast taco.
I used my grandmother’s pizzelle press from the 70’s. It is electric and has one setting - hot. You can buy pizzelle presses from Amazon that are much more advanced now. If you don’t have a pizzelle press and aren’t planning on getting one, you can use a waffle press. The shells of your tacos will just not be as thin and may be harder to shape.
Finally, give yourself grazia (grace) when you first give this a try. It’s not easy. My first attempt resulted in the smoke detector going off four times, several burnt cookies, one cookie flying onto the floor, and a couple cuss words from me (in dialect, so hopefully no one noticed). Once you get it, you’ve got it. Until then, grazia.
Pizzelle Breakfast Tacos
For the pizzelle
- 1 stick butter at room temperature
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 3 eggs
- 3 tbs. milk
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 6 drops Young Living Orange Vitality Essential Oil
- 1 drop Young Living Cinnamon Bark Vitality Essential Oil
- 2 cups all purpose, unbleached flour
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. salt
For the filling
- 1 8oz package whole milk marscapone (cold)
- 1 16oz package whole milk ricotta (cold)
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 7 drops Young Living Lemon Vitality Essential Oil
- 1 tsp. vanilla
Optional toppings: fresh berries, grilled stone fruit, honey, and mint.
Start your pizzelle press up. You’ll want that sucker to be hot.
In a bowl, beat your butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, milk and essential oils until smooth and fluffy. In a separate bowl, sift your flour, baking powder and salt together. Add the dry ingredients into the wet and mix until incorporated.
Using either cooking spray or butter, grease the hot pizzelle press (watch your fingers). You are going to want to make one pizzella at a time. Trust me, trying to make and shape more than one results in burnt fingers and bad words. Pour about 1/4 cup of batter onto the hot press and close the lid. Wait about 30 seconds and check on it.
They will crisp up quickly. Once the cookie is crisp and golden, use a fork to gently lift it off the press.
Now we shape them! This is a good time to either use a glove, or you can just use your hand if you don’t mind the heat. It will be HOT when it comes off the press so please be careful and absolutely use a glove if you prefer. Gently bend the warm pizzella into a taco shape and hold it. It will immediately start to cool off and harden into the shape of a taco. Once it is cooled off a bit (after about a minute) prop it up against something to hold its shape as it cools. I used a plastic container with sides, and propped the pizzella against the side using a glass to hold it in place. As it cools, it will hold its shape without help and can be moved to a plate.
While these guys cool off, start the filling. Take your cold marscapone and ricotta (they must be cold) and beat with the sugar until fluffy. As the poet says “whip it….whip it good.”
Add in the vanilla, vitality oils, and whip until completely fluffy and combined.
Once the pizzelle are cool, you can fill them with the marscapone and top with fruit and honey.
Mangia <3
