Banana Oat Pancakes!

I was looking at recipes for banana muffins and I thought.. I'm going to challenge myself, I hould make fluffy-ish whole wheat pancakes with what I have on hand. I've also had a recent obsession with honey, YUM! So I've decided to have a decadent breakfast, without feeling too guilty. This variation on the classic pancake really is more dense (as are other whole wheat pancakes), to combat that, I made sure to add a little extra baking soda and powder. I think this recipe is full of flavor and really filling. :) Shall we begin??

Banana Oat Pancakes!

1 Cup of Whole Wheat Flour

1 tsp of Baking Powder

1/2 tsp of Baking Soda

1 tsp of Vanilla

1/4 cups of chopped Banans (about 1/3 of a large banana)

1 Egg (or vegan alternative, egg substitute)

1/4 cup of Unsweetened Almond Milk

2 tsp of Organic Blue Agave Nectar

2 tsp of Honey

1/4 cup of Toasted Rolled Oats (not instant!)

1. Toast your oats over medium heat for about 5-7 minutes, you'll be able to smell it!

2. Combine your dry ingredients (please try to do this, it'll end up lumpy and not really delicious!

3. Break out your food processor and coarsely blend up your oats. (you can use a blender if your kitchen is missing a food processor)

4. Make sure your oats are cooled, and mix them into your dry mix.

5. Add your eggs first, mix, then add your wet ingredients, including all you sweetners, make sure you don't over mix!

6. Add in your coarsely chopped bananas, mash some in and keep some pieces, it'll add some yummy texture! Your pancake batter might look like it has a LOAD go! of oats in there, but you won't be able to see it when you cook it up! Your pancakes will rise nicely :)

7. Preheat and grease up your pan with either pam, butter or whatever you choose :) Preheat your pan/skillet to medium heat.

There you go!

A tip to know when your pancakes will be ready: Your batter will begin to bubble on the edges and then you can flip! After probably 2 minutes, your pancakes will be ready.

Serve with you choice in topping, I chose the Canto way, peanut butter and a slight drizzle of condensed milk.

If you choose peanut butter, to keep the light healthyness going, I recommend "Better'n'Peanut butter" Spread, it's a lighter peanut butter alternative. It' really delicious and easy to spread. (refridgerate after use)
Finally, you can also use wholesome Agave Nectar to serve with and a pad of light margarine :)
Enjoy guys!

Proscuitto Wrapped Chicken Breast

Nomiliciously Italian and Healthy Proscuitto Wrapped Chicken Breast!

Try this healthy and meaty recipe, hardly greasy but super delicious! Pair this with some yummy peas and some garlic bread. This made for an excellent Date Night meal for my picky boyfriend hehe. Shall we begin?

btw: be careful, don't get salmonella and KEEP YOUR HANDS CLEAN or wear disposable gloves

You'll Need.....

4 Chicken Breasts

1 Package of Proscuitto

1 Package of Mozzarella Balls (you'll need 2-3 per Chicken Breast)

a Meat Bashing Tool (Mine looks like an evil hammer)

Olive Oil

Meat Thermometer

Salt
Pepper

BIG APPETITE

1. Preheat your oven to 350(f)

2. Prepare your baking pan, You can grease it with Olive Oil or place the silicon mat under it.

3. Prepare to bash your chicken! Place a little bit of plastic wrap over your chicken (that should be laying on your cutting board....make sure that it's there!!) now BEAT YOUR CHICKEN into .5 in. thick

4. cut a little slit into your chicken and place 2-3 mozzarella balls into your pieces of chicken

5. AFTER YOU WASH YOUR HANDS, Season up your chicken then wrap your chicken with your Proscuitto. (just one to two pieces per chicken)

-If your chicken doesn't wrap up cleanly, use butcher string to tie up your reluctant poultry

6. Bake your chicken for about 20minutes. My chicken was rather moist, just make sure the internal temperature comes out to be 180(f) MAKE SURE OF IT!

ENJOY!

Awesome Whole What Crepes

Usually when I make whole wheat recipes, they taste meatier than I'd like, so I expected a meaty and hearty crepe, which is totally opposite of what a crepe should be; HOWEVER, I really liked this crepe. It was light, not meaty, delicious and versatile. It's super simple, classy and healthy.

1/3 cup of whole wheat flour

2/3 cup of milk

3 eggs

a BIT of salt.

1. mix together dry ingredients.

2. create a mini well and add in the milk

3. mix in the eggs and whisk thoroughly

4. heat up a wide and large pan. Place a bit of olive oil at the bottom of the pan and let it heat up on high then when it's gotten nice and hot (BUT not hot enough so that the oil begins to steam up) then turn your heat onto medium and carefully ladle the batter into the pan. Use your ladle to maneuver the batter around in a circular motion so that you can spread out the batter. Careful not to rip the crepe, but it's easy to fix :) Make your crepe nice and thin and then you'll know it's ready to flip when you start seeing tiny little holes in your batter. Don't flip too early or else your crepe will rip! It'll have an almost tortilla appearance when you flip. It should flip perfectly. You shouldn't have to re-grease your pan after one crepe. Maybe after every 2 or 3 crepes :)

This recipe yields about 4-5 crepes, depending on the size of your crepes. These crepes are relatively small for crepes.

I like to serve this in several ways....

1. Cinammon, agave nectar (or honey) and cottage cheese recipe with strawberries topping.

2. Pesto, smoked salmon and french beans

3. Turkey breast, thousand island dressing and arugala

This is a no fail recipe! Good Luck :)

Chewy Granola Bars

Homemade Healthy Chewy Granola Bars

I guarantee that this recipe will be chewy and delicious. I initially didn't want to add peanut butter to this but I noticed it tasted much better with peanut butter and it was more gooey with peanut butter. It was really yummy. I decided to make this recipe because I didn't like how sweet the granola bars at the store was, so I made my own. Here we go!

You'll need...

2 cups of old fashioned oats (NOT INSTANT)

1/3 cup of honey

1/2 cup of whole wheat flour

1/4 cup of peanut butter

1 tablespoon of canola oil

1 cup of unsalted peanuts

1 cup of raisins

1/3 cup of cranberries

What Germ (to your liking)

1. I toasted my oats for about 10 minutes on a dry skillet on medium heat.

2. While the oats were toasting, I roughly chopped my peanuts to prepare for the epic mixing.

3. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees

4. I first mixed together the oats, flour, raisins, peanuts, and cranberries. (add your wheat germ now! I couldn't find it so I didn't get to put it in for extra nutrition.)

5. I then mixed together my peanut butter and honey in a separate bowl.

6. mix in your wet ingredients with your dry ingredients.

7. Your mixture shouldn't be too wet but it should be considerably wet... It should be pretty wet though.

8. Pour your yummy mixture into an 8x8 pan and bake for 30min.

9. You'll get super yummy and chewy, sticky half inch tall granola bars.

**add honey to your liking; I don't like mine terribly sweet but this bar was pretty sweet :)

Orange and Strawberry Smoothie

Orange and Strawberry Smoothie

I love smoothies at Juice it Up and Jamba Juice, but their drinks are always full a zillion calories and their prices are really jacked up. So I figured I can create a super simple smoothie recipe that won't burst my budget but quench my thirst. Shall we begin?

A handful of whole frozen strawberries (about 1 1/2 cup)

Fresh juice of 3 whole oranges (about 1 cup)

1 to 1/2 teaspoons of organic agave nectar

1. Take out your strawberries to let them soften for about 10-15 min while you juice your oranges.

2. I juiced some oranges that weren't really that sweet so I added agave nectar to sweeten things up. A little low glycemic agave nectar went a long way for me. I recommend that you don't add more than 1 to 1/2 teaspoons of agave nectar, it'll get too sweet.

3. Blend it all together for about 20-45 sec.

It's that quick! I like to switch it up by adding different frozen fruits. I like to add unsweetened raspberries, mangoes, pineapples. But the more frozen fruit you make, the longer it'll take to blend and the more frozen it'll get. So try to keep it to a 1 to 1.5 orange juice to frozen fruit ratio. The good thing abut this smoothie is that it doesn't melt that easily because it doesn't have any ice cream or yogurt, but it's really smooth!

So good. Try it! It's much healthier.

Double Chocolate Oreo Cupcakes

My little brother had a soccer game I planned on attending, but had to skip out of it last minute, so I decided to make up for it, by making him cupcakes! I knew he liked chocolate, A LOT of chocolate, so I made a double chocolate cupcake, with oreoes, his favourite. I wouldn't have thought of this if I had a choice, but whatever he likes!

CAUTION: this is a VERY sweet recipe, but I've gotten a good response to this :)

Double Chocolate Oreo Cupcakes

What You'll Need:
1. Duncan Hines Cake Mix (Chocolate)

2. Cupcake liners

3. Milk

4. Oreos

5. Butter

6. 12-tin cupcake pan

7. 1 pie pan (opt)

8. Chocolate Frosting

Let's Begin!

1. Line your pan and grease your pie pan, and then preheat your oven to 350!

2. Prepare your cake mix according to the directions, and substitute the water with milk. I substituted a little of the oil with butter. That's optional! :)

3. When you're done preparing your cake mix, quarter the oreos. :) I added too much into the batter, but the amount you want is entirely up to you!

4. I ended up quartering about a third of the oreos and mixing them into my batter.

5. Then spoon in the batter up to about a third of the way up the cupcake tins. (Ice cream scoop portions!)

6. Bake! for 350. Then remove from the oven and let it cool for 40-50min. The baking time should be shorter and rotate the pan for the last 5 minutes of baking. After 20 minutes in the oven pass, check every few minutes or so! :)

7. While they're cooling, mix the frosting with another third of the oreos. While you're at it, take the rest of the oreos and crumble them for a secret surprise in the cupcakes later.

8. Is it cool? Great! Shave off the tops of these suckers now! But keep the tops, :) They're still good to munch on!

9. Take a teaspoon and carefully spoon out a little bit of the cupcake to make room for MORE OREO!

10. Spoon in the crumbled oreos into the nice little space you just made and then seal it off with frosting!

11. Let the frosting set for about 15 minutes and enjoy!

-----EXCESS BATTER GOES INTO THE PIE PAN TO BAKE AND WHATEVER ELSE YOU DO IS UP TO YOU! I ended up making one big version of this preceding recipe. :)

Mother's Day Cake (PtI)

Mother's Day Cake!

I'm very close with my mother, so I knew she liked cake with fruit in it, or red velvet cake. I figured I'd challenge myself and make some yellow cake! This is my very first time making a legitimate cake so I figured I'd share this experience with you. :) (This isn't the cake I'm presenting her, however, this is just a test cake!)

What You'll Need..

1. 1 Cup of sliced fresh strawberries

2. 1 cup of sliced ripe bananas. (this will end up being around 2 large bananas)

3. Whipping Cream

4. about 2-3 Tbsp of powdered sugar (depending on how sweet you like your whipped cream)

5. 1 Package of Duncan Hines Yellow Cake Mix (or whatever brand you prefer)

6. 2-3 Kiwis (opt)

7. Frosting (opt)

Lets Begin!

1. First prepare the cake mix the way you'd like it. Some people like to add some butter, or substitute the water with milk. I find that substituting doesn't make a significant difference. and Bake! Don't forget to liberally grease your pan! I used a nonstick pan but still oiled it down with some extra virgin olive oil, as always :)

2. Begin slicing your strawberries, and bananas, and prepare your whipped cream!

3. I had a big Kitchen Aid mixer that I set on 2 then as it got thicker, I set it on 3 then eventually to 10 when I began mixing in my powdered sugar.

4. Sift the powdered sugar in when the whipped cream reaches the consistency that you desire. Carefully sift the powdered sugar in batches, so the whipped cream doesn't deflate.

5. Is the cake ready? Take it out!! It shouldn't take long. It baked in about 20-30 minutes for me. :) I did the dishes while waiting! So about half a load of hand-washed dishes should do it! I pulled it out right when it was lovely and moist! I managed to easily slip a knife in and out cleanly.

6. Let it cool, for at least 45 minutes. Make sure it's ENTIRELY cooled before you take it out of the pan. To prevent breaking :)

7. Carefully (make sure you DON'T scratch your pan!) cut the cake in half and then take one slice out :) I wasn't so careful with taking it out because the cake was so delicate, But I thought it was okay because I hid the faults with whipped cream! hehe.

8. Layer on a nice layer of whipped cream.

9. In whatever pattern you'd like, place the strawberries on. I made alternating rows of thinly sliced strawberries and bananas. They were pretty even :) Don't worry about appearance too much in this step, it'll just end up getting covered with another layer of cake :) Hehe, I accidently forgot to alternate rows, hense the messiness, I just covered the errors with some whipped cream, my mother's favourite!

10. Cover this layer with the cake and layer the cake with some whipped cream. Try to be a little neater this time, but the whipped cream is pretty good about being a great concealer to error! Now, pick a pattern, any pattern! If the cake is big enough, maybe you can make a fruit-border! That was my initial idea, but I was pretty spontaneous and went with whatever :)

11. Enjoy! or in my case, Refrigerate! I will enjoy this cake tomorrow! But, I couldn't help but take a little nibble, It was delicious :) The fragrant banana was delicious.