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• Food, Sweet Treats

  Easy Seasonal Spiced Apple & Pear cake recipe

  • October 30, 2021
  • 0 comments
  • by Amy

  We live a very seasonal rhythm when it comes to our lives and everything within it; from our home education to the foods that nourish us, the literature we consume, and what we celebrate. After a wonderful spring and summer, one where we welcomed our baby boy into our family, autumn felt like the perfect moment to settle back into our normal rhythms.

  Autumn brings with it many wonderful adventures, including apple and pumpkin picking. My grandad always has a wonderful apple crop and this year was no different. H (our toddler), had so much fun with her great-grandad picking his apple crop, some of which we were able to bring home for ourselves. We decided to make something fun with our apples, and instead of cooked or stewed apple, we decided that a warm apple cake was perfect.

  

  

  

  

  From humble beginnings

  A friend had pointed us in the direction of a perfect, seasonal apple cake, the Vegan Apple cake from BBC Good Food. It was a wonderful way to use up the apples we had picked and started us on bit of a journey into creating the perfect cake for our little family.

  We aren’t a vegan family, so although a few times we made the vegan recipe, we were able to switch the ingredients around with ease, preferring organic grass-fed butter to highly processed spreads. We’re extremely conscious of the health benefits around food and keen proponents of nutrition and bioavalibility of our nutrients and the best places to get them from, including animal products which are, for all intents and purposes demonized with sensationalist headlines and a heavy agenda (but that’s a discussion for another day maybe…). What we’ve found is that actually, the ingredients in this recipe are very interchangeable, making this a really versatile base recipe. From there we’ve done so much with it:

  • Switched our processed spreads for organic grass fed butter.
  • Switch plant based milk for the dairy alternative.
  • Used vanilla flavouring instead of almond.
  • Used a mix of apples and pears.
  • Added additional flavourings of mixed spice and cinnamon.

  Apples & Pears into a cake

  The recipe itself is easy and very simple to make with ingredients most of us have in our cupboards. What I love too is that there is nothing in it like eggs (so great for allergy sufferers), so less worry about ending up with raw mixture after cooking. It is also great for little helping hands that like to lick the spoon. It’s so easy to make, regardless of your dietary choices.

  

  The recipe

  

  Apple & Pear Seasonal Cake

  Prep Time: 20 minutes

  Cook Time: 1 hour

  Total Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

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  Ingredients

  • 300 ml Whole milk, any suitable milk will work
  • 150 g Organic grass-fed butter, any suitable spread will work
  • 1 tbsp Freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • 350 g Self raising flour
  • 100 g Golden Caster Sugar
  • 100 g Golden soft sugar
  • 1 tsp Baking powder
  • 1 tbsp Vanilla Essence
  • 200 g Pink lady apples, Any sweet apple will work
  • 200 g Sweet Pears
  • 2 tbsp Mixed Spice
  • 2 tbsp Cinnamon

  Instructions

  1. Pour the 300ml into a jug and add 1 tbsp of lemon juice to thicken for 5 minutes at room temperature.
  2. Add self raising flour, both sugars and baking powder into a bowl and mix together.
  3. Pour over the thickened milk and hand whisk until smooth.
  4. Add 1 tbsp of vanilla essence and add to the mixture.
  5. Take the butter and melt in microwave (or on hob). Add to mixture and mix until smooth.
  6. Take the apples and pears, and cut into cubes. Place them in a separate bowl and cover in 1 tbsp of cinnamon and 1 tbsp of mixed spice. Mix together until all apples and pears are coated.
  7. Add the further 1 tbsp of cinnamon and 1 tbsp of mixed spice to the mixture and whisk together.
  8. Add the coated apples and pears and fold gently through the mixture.
  9. Grease a tin with the leftovers of the melted butter and pour mixture into the tin.
  10. Cook in centre of oven for 45 mins - 1 hour on 200 degrees celcius.

  Read below to find our amazing spiced apple and pear cake, with all the additions and changes that I think you will love as much as we do.

  This recipe is so simple, seasonal and tastes incredible. I hope you love it as much as we do. If you try it, please let me know in the comments or tag me on Instagram.

• Food

  Why you should add grass fed butter into your diet today!

  • August 29, 2018
  • 0 comments
  • by Amy

  Why grass fed butter is one of the healthiest fats on the planet you need to add it to your diet today

  For years the health industry has sold us the common misconception that fat is bad and low fat and low sugar items are the way to go. For our family we have not personally believed that this is the case, realising more often than not that low fat and low sugar (or sugar free or fat free) often means that the food has been heavily processed or contains a number of alarming chemicals. We have been sold the common misconception, as mentioned above, that low fat and low sugar is what a body needs to stay healthy and also to lose weight, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. There is now a number of high profile studies which are showing that there is no link between fat and heart disease (which we have previously been told was the case), so what does this mean for our diets? Today we’re taking it back to butter, delving into why grass fed butter is back on the menu and why you should consider adding it to your daily diet.

  

  The truth about low fat

  For many years we have been told that for optimum heart health you need to opt for the low fat options, but these foods are now not as good as we originally thought. However, that isn’t to say that now fat is back on the menu we can eat what we like, the real truth of the matter is being able to differentiate between good fats and bad fats and incorporating those good fats back into our diets. We know that we need some fat in our diet, in fact it is essential for our bodies. Fats found in foods such as nuts, seeds, oily fish and avocado, to name but a few, include essential fatty acids (including omega-3) which are essential for maintaining healthy blood vessels, heart health, hormone control, brain health the normal functioning of our nervous system. Fat can also help us absorb vitamins including A, D, E and K.

  So why grass fed butter?

  Butter is one of the healthiest fats there is and includes important nutrients that nourish our bodies. Until recently butter was being considered unhealthy due to accelerated fat content, however this myth has been thoroughly debunked in a number of high profile studies in recent years, suggesting that there is no link between saturated fat and heart disease. In fact, butter could even goes as far as to actually lower your risk of heart disease. When it comes to dairy there are two options grass fed and grain fed, which I think speak for themselves.

  So why would you pick grass fed over grain fed?

  Because it’s a completely different kind of butter. Feeding cattle grains is the equivalent of feeding them junk food and essentially pumps them full the wrong kind of fatty acids, including obesity causing hormones. If you feed junk food you will get junk byproducts. Grain fed animals also contain dangerous mycotoxins (which disgustingly are formed by mould in the cattle food and meat processing) which could be detrimental to our health. Butter from grass fed cows is much higher in the omega-3 fatty acids as well as vitamins, nutrients and other healthy fats. It is also natural for these animals to eat grass and not grains and therefore provides a number of health benefits. Grass fed butter is packed full of nutrition while grain fed butter also contains hormones, antibiotics and a number of other awful chemicals.

  There have been a number of studies to backup this theory and in countries where cows are largely grass fed the people who have been eating the butter have a reduced risk of heart disease. In fact in one study the more full fat dairy, such as butter, that people ate, lower the risk of heart attack. This proves author is not the antichrist. However there isn’t just one study there is a number of studies, several across Europe in fact, where cows have been grass fed and the results of the studies show that dairy fat is linked to a reduced amount of heart attacks and strokes.

  

  Where should I start?

  By all means use this blog post as a starting point. As always anything you have read on this blog is opinion only and should not be used instead of medical opinion. There are a huge number of articles, studies and information this subject, so use what you have read here as a leaping off point and do your own research on why grass fed butter, and grass fed dairy products in general, could be beneficial for your health.

  If you are looking for a grass fed butter – try Kerrygold!
• Food

  Keto & Low Carb Bread

  • April 4, 2018
  • 0 comments
  • by Amy

  But Bread is off limits, isn’t it?

  Yes, you would be right, standard bread is too high in carbohydrates if you are following a Ketogenic diet and it might be something you are choosing to avoid or having in moderation if you are following a low carb diet, but that doesn’t mean that you have to miss out on things like sandwiches, English Muffins or toast, because guess what? Help is here!

  

  Do I need many ingredients and is it hard?

  You do need a few specialised ingredients in and if you’re new to low carb or keto then they might not be something you have in your cupboards, but the good news is once you get them in stock it’s something you will always have, which makes this recipe super easy to whip up in just a few minutes. All you need is the ingredients and a microwave and it is that simple! Now, onto the ingredients and the recipe!

  

  Ingredients:

  • 3 tbsp of Almond Flour (but finely ground almonds works a treat, is are much cheaper too).
  • 1/2 tbsp of Coconut Flour.
  • 1 tbsp of Grass fed butter (We use Kerrygold unsalted).
  • 1 Egg (You can use the whole egg or just the egg white – with the yolk you’ll end up with bread more yellow in colour).
  • A pinch of pink Himalayan salt.
  •  1/2 tsp of gluten free baking powder (sometimes hard to find but this is always a good option).

   

  Method:

  1. Melt butter in microwaveable mug for 30 seconds.
  2. Add remaining ingredients and whisk until smooth.
  3. Let sit for a moment in the mug, to thicken.
  4. Microwave for 2 minutes.
  5. Turn out onto a plate.

  I then always like to slice my bread into small rounds and toast on a low heat setting or pop it under the grill.

   

  This has the taste and texture of normal bread and is very low carb too, so it works with both a ketogenic and low carb diet.