Today, I decided to relax and make something easy, after waiting in front of the oven anxiously for pate a choux to rise all day on Saturday. So, I made cinnamon roll pancakes that I saw on Pinterest, although I made up my own cinnamon filling recipe. Tomorrow, there will a more exciting post, I promise!

Cinnamon Roll Banana Pancakes

Banana Pancakes:

- Use this recipe, or any other pancake recipe you want

Cinnamon Filling:

- Use the technique in this recipe. You can use that filling too, or do what I did: mix 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 2 teaspoons honey and 1 teaspoon olive oil

I’ve been meaning to write  this post for a while, but as always, I was busy with other things going on in my life. I made this recipe back in summer for guests, and they were very pleased. Little they knew is that crumble is so easy to make, and also healthier than any other possible dessert choice (Remember, I live in Turkey, country of baklava, so we could have served them those too!). I took this recipe from one of my favorite books, Cooking Light Way to Cook. What I love about this book is that recipes are easy and quick to make. I love reading complicated recipes, but when it comes to cooking, I can sometimes become the world’s laziest person. So this book is great for me. I changed the recipe and replaced sugar with honey, as usual. Honey brings more flavor to this recipe, therefore it is really not necessary to use sugar, when there is a healthier alternative to it. So, go ahead and make crumble today! Possibilities are really endless with this recipe. For this season, apple & cinnamon, pumpkin & raisins, or quince & walnut can be just a few flavor combinations to use in your crumble! Enjoy!

Peach & Berry Crumble

adapted from Cooking Light Way to Cook

Ingredients:

For filling:

• 7 cups chopped fruit (I used half peach and half berries) (Remember that if you use berries, they will release some liquid)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 2-3 tablespoons honey (depending on the sweetness of your fruits)

For topping:

• 1/2 cup oats
• 3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1/4 cup nuts, chopped (I used almonds)
• 1/4 cup honey
• 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil or coconut oil
• 1 egg yolk

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C (375 degrees F).

Mix the filling ingredients in a bowl. Lay them into a shallow baking pan.

Pulse the oats in a food processor. Add the other topping ingredients and process them until everything is well blended. Squeeze the topping in your hands and spread this evenly over the fruit mix.

Bake for 30-40 minutes. Serve with vanilla icecream.

It’s been a long time.. Sometimes I really don’t feel like posting anything to the blog, although I have a ton of recipes and photos that I took. Actually, I have  never been a good writer, and that makes it sometimes hard to write. But I can proudly say I’m a total blabbermouth, and I always have something to say. In fact, that was one of the reasons I started blogging. I didn’t want to irritate people with my unnecessary talking, and I also wanted to improve my writing. But I have never blabbered in this blog (at least, not too much). I just couldn’t decide if it’s the right place to talk, talk, and talk (or in this case write, write and write). But, hey, blogs are meant to be the places you express yourself, so from now on, I’m going to write about anything that comes to my mind. The problem is, should I open a new blog for that, or should I pollute my food blog with unnecessary talking? I’ve been thinking about that for sometime.Another thing that confuses my mind is, a lot of my friends who read the blog (they are my only readers I guess) suggested me to open the blog in Turkish, and that’s another problem. Writing a post in two languages would take a lot of time, and I really don’t want to repeat everything once more in Turkish. My idea is that I can open a Turkish blog in a different concept. It can be more focused on healthy eating and “maintaining weight”, which may help other people.

Thinking while writing, I am now coming to a conclusion. I think I will extend this blog a bit, and write about food, and any other thing that comes to my mind. And I’ll be soon opening a turkish blog about healthy living. Next comes the name of the new blog, and new designs for my blogs. Any ideas for a Turkish name?

But, today my purpose was to post a quince dessert recipe that I adored! Quince dessert is a traditional Turkish dessert, and it’s very much like poached apples, and very simple to make. You poach (simmer in low heat) the quinces in water with sugar, some spice and the quince seeds. After a couple of hours (in my case, two hours), the quinces become viscous (is that the right word?), like they are dipped in honey. The gelling agent in quince seed makes the dessert sticky and it also gives the dessert a reddish color. Finally, you eat your dessert with a spoonful of clotted cream (widely used in Turkey). The tartness of quince goes away when cooked, and you get an amazing taste. Sounds good, right? When I came by some delicious photos of quince dessert while googleing, I was thinking the same. But there was a problem.

A few weeks ago, I bought some m&m’s and put in a jar to decorate my office, which I thought was a good idea. WHAT A HUGE MISTAKE! After unwillingly eating 200 grams of them in a day, I decided to stop eating processed sugar for one week, because I literally felt disgusted of sugar. So, I was in my “no processed sugar challenge” when I saw the quince dessert photos.

But you know, I had to do something, because I really wanted to eat and I couldn’t break my rules. I was thinking about making the dessert with honey instead of sugar, but I wasn’t sure if it would to be as sticky and syrupy like the original one. But I gave it a try.

I admit that I cheated a bit. I used honey and some organic palm sugar, because I think that palm sugar was only semi-processed. It wasn’t bleached, and it has its molasses inside. And I also love palm sugar. If it was something easy to be found in Turkey, I wouldn’t use anything else for sugar. It has the most amazing smell, it smells like caramel but better! I may try to make its homemade version someday, seriously!

So, here’s the recipe. If you want to use the original recipe, go ahead, I think it results in a more stickier dessert, but I really loved the honey version. I think

there’s an unnoticeable difference between them.

Quince Dessert

makes 12

Ingredients:

• 6 quinces, peeled, cut into half and seeded
• seeds of 6 quinces
• 18 tablespoons of honey (1 .5 tablespoons for each quince half)
• 6 tablespoons of palm sugar (or cane sugar, or honey)
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 6 cloves or 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• dash of salt
• water
• clotted cream (you can use whipped cream if you can’t find clotted cream, but I don’t recommend that)

Directions:

In a large pan, place the quinces and pour water just to cover the quinces.

Put the spices and the seeds to a strainer bag (I used a tea strainer, and I ran out of cinnamon sticks, so I used ground cinnamon instead).

In low heat, simmer the quinces for half an hour, or when they start to change the colors and soften a bit. Add honey and palm sugar, and simmer for one and a half hours more, or until the quinces become very soft and sticky.

Serve the quinces with clotted cream. If you like warm, eat immediately, or eat after storing them in the refrigerator.

If you follow this blog, then you probably know about my “famous” carrot cake, my all-time favorite cake! But, the fact is that this cake is not so healthy to eat every time. So, I tried to came up with a healthier one, using honey instead of processed sugar. But the result was not as I wanted to get. The unique taste of my “famous” carrot cake was gone.

So, for the last time, I gave it a one more try and I got really nice little carrot cakes. To make them interesting, I used both orange and purple carrots. This recipe uses milk and yogurt instead of olive oil to make the cake more protein-rich. And everybody seemed to like it. They didn’t understand it was  made with honey. But nevertheless, I still have to say that nothing can beat my original love. It still tastes so unique!

Carrot Cake: Third Version

yields 20 servings / 100 calories per serving

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1/2 cup dry oats
• 1/6 cup low-fat (high-protein) milk
• 1/6 cup yogurt
• 3 cups COARSELY grated carrots (I used 1 1/2 cups orange and 1 1/2 cups purple carrots)
• 3/4 cup honey
• 2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoon baking soda
• pinch of salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

In a bowl, beat together eggs, milk, yogurt and honey.

Stir in vanilla, flour, oats and spices, and mix well. Finally, add the baking soda into the mixture and stir.

Add the carrots and form an even mixture. Don’t worry that the carrots are too much. They will dissolve after cooked.

Pour the mixture into a greased pan (you can also pour the mixture into muffin cups) and bake for 30 minutes, or until cooked.

Well, the actual title of this post should be “Sour Cherry Chocolate Chip Honey Semolina Muffins”, which would tell more about the ingredients, but it was so long that I sticked with this one. Since the freezer is full of sour cherries and we can’t eat them raw with sick stomacks (we all have gastritis & reflux in family), it’s better to use them in desserts. This is yet another semolina muffin recipe, if you remember the one with apples. I really like to put semolina in muffins, because semolina gives a nice texture and I think it increases the nice smell I get from the muffins (and I don’t know why).

This recipe also uses honey; because I don’t want to use too much processed stuff in my recipes, and sugar can easily be replaced with honey in cakes, and it also makes them moist, which I do like. So, enjoy!

Sour Cherry Chocolate Chip Honey Semolina Muffins

makes 15 small muffins

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1 cup semolina
• ½ cup honey
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 2 cups sour cherries (or 1 ½ cup pureed sour cherries)
• 2 teaspoons baking soda + 2 teaspoons baking powder (or 4 teaspoons of either one*)

* Actually, it does matter which one you use. The difference is, baking soda needs some acidic compound to rise; while baking powder also has some acidic salts to do that. So we add 2 teaspoons baking soda, which will be activated by sour cherries, and 2 teaspoons baking powder for the rest. Why 2 teaspoons? I don’t know, I just made it up. Maybe the sour cherries are enough to activate 4 teaspoons of baking soda. I don’t care about these things for these messy kind of recipes, where the taste is more important than the looks. By the way, I learned these stuff from Robert Wolke’s “What Einstein Told His Cook“. GREAT book, it has lots of useful information about food and cooking.

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Beat the eggs with honey and olive oil and sour cherries. Add ther dry ingredients and pour the batter into muffin cups.

Bake for 20 minutes.

Woaaa! Long time, no see my dear blog. I don’t know what happened to me, I just want to sleep all the time. I actually made this recipe about a week ago, but I was so lazy to post it. But that’s enough. From now on, I’m focusing on my blog. So, I’ve promised to make some savory recipes, and this is one of them.

For the New Year, I bought myself a lot of cookbooks, and one of them is called “Cooking Light Way to Cook”, and it’s really an interesting one. It’s just the book I’ve ever wanted. All kinds of recipes (from salads to desserts) in a healthier way! And I found the pizza dough recipe from that book.

About the sauce, it is a recipe that I made up myself. It is actually another version of the sauce in my bruschetta pizza recipe. This time, I added some flaxseed in it (I always find something interesting in the kitchen and if appropriate, add use it in my recipes).

Thick Crust Whole-Wheat Pizza

adapted from Cooking Light Way to Cook

1 big or 2 small pizzas

Ingredients:

For the dough:

• 2 ¼ cups whole-wheat flour
• ¾ cup warm water
• 2 ¼ teaspoons active dry yeast
• 2 teaspoons honey
• salt
• any other herbs you want

For the sauce:

• 2 large tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 tablespoon pepper paste (optional)
• 2 tablespoon olive oil
• 1-2 tablespoon water, depending on the thickness
• 2 tablespoons flaxseed
• 1 clove of garlic
• pepper
• salt

For the topping:

• 150 gr. (5.3 oz.) mozzarella, or any kind of cheese that can melt

Directions:

Mix honey, water and yeast and let it sit for 5 minutes.

Knead 2 cups of flour with yeast mixture. Add the remaining flour after 3 minutes.

Coat the dough with some olive oil (not to make it dry) and rest it for about an hour in a warm place.

Using your hands (it doesn’t have to be in a perfect shape), make 2 mini pizzas (or 1 big pizza). The thickness depends on you, but mine was about 1 cm (½-inch) thick.

In a food processor, mix all the ingredients for the sauce and spread it over the top. Be sure to leave some empty space on the edges (I actually made the dough a bit thicker on the edges). Sprinkle the tops with grated cheese.

At this stage, you can wait for 30 minutes to make your pizzas more spongy (that’s what I did). Bake the guys for 10-15 minutes in a preheated oven (250 degrees C – 500 degrees F).

Well, I know the eclairs in the photo do not look nice and cool, but their taste is inversely proportional to how they look.. Really.. The reason for their bad appearance is due to a little accident. After I finished making my tiny eclairs, the plate they’re on fell off to the kitchen table and their chocolate glaze was all over the place.. I think I’m never going to make some good looking food..

In fact, nothing can make me sad about these eclairs, because it’s my third trial so far, and the first two were a complete disaster. I tried to play with the “choux” pastry recipe, put whole-wheat flour instead of all-purpose flour, tried to change the amount of butter, and the dough didn’t rise. So, this time I didn’t take any risk and made my “pâte à choux” directly from here. The directions there were also very useful.

Anyway, after making my little choux pastries, I filled them with pastry cream. Well, I cannot give you the recipe, because I took it from a pastry chef, but you can use this recipe, which I used before. The tricky part is, when I was making the cream, I added 2 tablespoons of honey by decreasing the amount of sugar, and after the cream is chilled, I added 2 mashed bananas into it.

Finally, I poured chocolate glaze on them. The glaze is very simple to make, melt the chocolate and add some melted butter (If you melt 2 units of chocolate, add 1 unit of melted butter).

These bars are like granola bars, but they’re also like fruit&nut bars. So I call them just “oatmeal bars”.

I don’t like those granola bars with a sharp honey taste and lots of oatmeal. And I wanted to make something for the late mornings, when I’m late for school and don’t have time for breakfast (Actually, I’m “always” late for school, but that’s another story). These bars are something that you can just take (and your tea mug) and leave home.

Nutty Oatmeal Energy Bars

makes 12 big, 20 small bars

Ingredients:

• 2 cups oatmeal
• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• ½ cup honey
• ¼ cup pistachios
• ¼ cup hazelnuts
• ¼ cup almonds
• ¼ cup raisins
• ¼ cup chocolate-chips (use ½ cup for sweeter bars)
• 1/3 cup flaxseed
• 5 tablespoons coconut flakes
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¼ teaspoon baking powder or baking soda
• ground nutmeg
• pinch of salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 155 degrees C (310 degrees F).

Chop the nuts coarsely.

In a bowl, mix all the dry ingredients.

In another bowl, whisk together the egg, oil and honey.

While stirring the dry ingredients, pour the egg mixture onto them.

Pour the mixture into a mid-sized pan and press the tops by using a spatula to make it firm.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until cooked.

Cut into squares (or bigger rectangles), and store in an airtight container.

OK, I know I’ve made a lot of muffins recently, but I love to make them. I am experiencing the results of adding honey to my muffins. Well, as far as I noticed, honey makes the muffins look smoother and the edges brown as if you brushed it with egg yolks. Even though my mom claims that the vitamins in honey are vanished when heated, I think it’s still better than processed sugar, which makes these muffins healthier than my carrot cakes. You obviously cannot get the same taste, but you save calories (6 tablespoons of sugar is about 400 calories, while 3/4 cup sugar required for the carrot cake recipe is 600 calories) And this lighter version tastes “acceptable”. In fact, my aunt thinks these taste better than my regular carrot cakes.

Carrot Muffins with Honey

makes 12 muffins

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 2 cups whole-wheat flour
• ¼ cup olive oil
• ¼ cup low-fat milk
• 2 cups carrots, grated
• 6 tablespoons honey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• ground nutmeg
• pinch of salt
• 4 teaspoons baking soda

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

In a bowl, beat together eggs, oil and honey.

Stir in vanilla, flour, and spices, and mix well. Finally, add the baking soda (powder) and stir. Add the carrots.

Pour the mixture into muffin cups, and bake for 25 minutes, or until cooked.

This is another impromptu cake I just made up and it didn’t disappoint me. I came by some ripe bananas in the kitchen the other day, and decided to use them in what I do best: muffins! I also added the chocolate chips I’ve recently bought from the coffee shop (I usually use chopped chocolate instead of chocolate-chips, but the girl in the coffee shop insisted me to buy them and I gave it a try). I didn’t want to add sugar to the cake, so I used honey. I don’t usually use honey in my cakes, but this time it really worked and the muffins were neither too sweet nor vapid. This has become one my favorite muffin recipes.

Chocolate-Chip Banana Muffins with Honey

makes 20-24 muffins

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 3-4 tablespoons honey
• 4 tablespoons yogurt
• 3 (200 gr. – 7 oz.) bananas, mashed
• 50 gr (1.7 oz.) bittersweet chocolate, chopped (or chocolate chips)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 4 teaspoons baking soda
• pinch of salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Mix together eggs, honey, olive oil, yogurt and vanilla in a bowl.

Add flour, cinnamon, salt and baking soda, and mix well.

Finally add the bananas and chocolate chips, and mix until you have an even mixture.

Pour the mixture into muffin cups, and bake for about 30 minutes, or until cooked.