Cake Pops

After enjoying some, I set aside the rest to indulge on my birthday the next day. My 8 1/2-year-old PoPPed them all into his mouth, and I was barely able to rescue one for myself. Laughing and crying. Here’s the simplest sugar-free version I came up with.

6 oz. coconut flour
6 oz. gluten-free oat flour
touch of sea salt
1/2 t stevia powder

2 large mashed organic bananas
3/4 t rice bran oil or oil of choice (ghee works well if you do dairy)

chocolate almond butter
lollipop sticks

50 minutes
245 degrees

I ground the oats in the blender. Mix the dry and wet ingredients separately (holding off on the almond butter) before combining to get the dough texture of soft ice cream. Shape into 1-inch balls about the width of a U.S. quarter and place them on parchment paper. I baked on low to preserve nutrients. They were nice and sweet. When they’re five, ten minutes out of the oven and moist, you can insert the sticks and gently frost them with the almond butter using a spoon. This is the butter I used. Using a little more oats than coconut flour will help glue the sticks into the cake, though the 1:1 ratio is fine. Yields 20 pops.

Asian Kale Chips

DEHYDRATOR VERSION

Kale and I first met through Francesca.  My dear old friend introduced me to this superveggie on one of her visits out to California.  Fast-forward about seven years and my new friend Tonya shares a generous amount of her kale chips with my family.  Crisped kale?  Tennyson, then two, devoured them.  A new world of drying foods opened to me.  I went on to play with recipes, and Tonya and her family loved my simplified Asian version of her chips.  If I were allowed to dry only one vegetable before exile to an island, it would be the king of greens, my kale.  The red, also called purple, is less stiff than the green and smells like roses.  You can dehydrate all kale, including the green lacinato.

These guys taste way better than they look.  Dittoes Jon.  The variations are endless.  Even the basic with just olive oil and sea salt are happily addictive.  The chips stand alone as a snack or can complement a meal.  Those who don’t dehydrate bake them too high.  Despite the license given by The Food Network and almost every cookbook out there, I try to heat oils at or under 250 degrees – which means longer oven time – because they go rancid when too hot.  Sometimes I take more liberty with rice bran oil that has a smoke point of 450.  Oils that are heated lend themselves readily to cholesterol production so I reserve them until the end just before serving, when possible.  Those who do dehydrate the chips, many raw foodists, usually don’t bake them at all and end up not killing unwanted invisible critters like parasites.

I clean the kale well in a vinegar soak at least 30 minutes.  Soaking is my secret to thorough vegetable cleaning, as opposed to just running them under water.  The bath dislodges sediments well.  This batch of scrubbed, rinsed kale was jam-packed into two large bowls 7.5″ wide, 3.5″ deep. If you don’t have a ruler on hand — each was wide enough to fit my face.

Sesame oil (optional)
Vinegar 1 T (be careful w/ any liquid seasoning.  You don’t want the kale too wet because your aim is to dry it up, and soggy leaves will be hard to crisp).
Sorghum (or maple) syrup, 1 heaping T
Miso, 1/2 T
1 head of kale

I don’t strip all the stems out, just break off the end part that runs past the leaves.  Eating the stalk with the leaves makes for better balance in the body. A macrobiotic practice, and one espoused by Paul Pitchford of Healing With Whole Foods.

Sometimes I replace the oil with 1 T almond butter.  In its thickness, it gels and coats the marinade so nicely over the kale. Adjust sweetener and salt to taste, but because syrup and miso are so concentrated you want to watch intake.  I use just enough for a little zip to the palate.  Miso should be organic.  Soybeans are among the most genetically modified crop in the U.S.

Mix the sauce up, and divide and pour into the bowls.  Divvy up the leaves with the help of another bowl if they fall out in the coating.  Transfer kale onto oven trays or first onto parchment paper.

230 degrees in oven, 45 minutes
Flip w/ tongs halfway
115 degrees in dehydrator, 3 hours or until the wilt is crisped away, depending on size of leaves and how wet they were.

When the leaves starts browning in the oven, they’re cooking.  Flip them, being careful not to let them burn.  You want to cook them just enough to kill microbes and seep in the flavor.  It is the dehydrator that will drain, even crystallize the sauce.

====================
OVEN-ONLY VERSION

You must put the leaves in the oven as dry as possible, avoiding flavorings like watery vinegar because it’ll sop up the leaves too much for the oven to dry them fully before scorching.  Pat and squeeze kale firmly with a clean towel.  Coat lightly with oil to help stave off premature browning and burning.  Can mix the oil first with some syrup or just a spritz of lemon.

Mediterranean
Coriander powder, 1/3 teaspoon or to taste
Oregano, 1/3 teaspoon or to taste
Fine sea salt, 1/3 teaspoon
Extra virgin olive oil, 1 teaspoon

Coriander, my favorite spice, improves and fills out the flavor of just about anything.  It minimizes the need for salt.

Asian

Sesame oil instead of olive, and skip the oregano.

Flip every 30 minutes and rotate trays because the back of the oven is hotter than the front. Bake about one hour and 15 minutes, depending on your oven, and watch for the browning.

Enjoy!

Prologue

HOLISTICPEDIA  FOOD: Nourishment. Sustenance. Power. Medicine. Pleasure.
 
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1.9

I almost feel shy.  How long has food been around?  The dozen years I’ve been studying holistic nutrition are swallowed up by timeworn wisdom.  Of grandmothers who labored in love in the garden and kitchen before we let machines mass-assemble our meals, of indigenous cultures that have known what foods serve their makeup, of the friends and teachers in the vanguard of my journey who have taught me so much.  Meaning, nothing I say is new and neither is any recipe out there.  But I’ve learned much since my nutritionally unconscious days; there must be a place for what my kitchen offers…[continued]