Blondie's Recipes | Finding Feasts

Healthy Coco Pops

Healthy Coco Pops, Yes, believe it! A healthy version of your favourite sneaky snack. It’s crunchy and chocolatey and oh so good.

I came across this recipe yesterday from Whole foods Simply (so many wonderful recipes) and was intrigued by the simplicity of it.

The thought of making Coco Pops had never entered my mind so I was really excited by it. This recipe opens up a pandoras box of ideas to use this with; mix with crushed nuts and flattened rice for a light snack, use it as a crunchy topping for cakes and ice creams, add some coconut and dried fruit for a tropical hit or just straight up in a bowl with cold milk … so many delicious ideas.

Snap, crackle and pop to your hearts content – Blondie 🙂

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Nut Free Chia & Sunflower Seed Bliss Balls

Finding Feasts - Nut Free Chia and Sunflower Seed Bliss Balls — Click image for recipe

Nut Free Chia & Sunflower Seed Bliss Balls … Naturally sweet with a gorgeous ‘pop’ from the chia seeds, these are a great snack to have on hand for a quick boost of energy or naughty indulgence without too much of the guilt.

Diary of today… so far: Get out of bed, with my cold, lovingly given to me by my darling husband. Make lunches. Throw on jeans (leave pyjama top on as will hide under a jacket). Drop Master S off at school. Come back home to get cleaned up as just been reminded by Master S that I need to actually GO INTO the school for some event. Go to event. Come home and wait for hard drive delivery (long story). Receive delivery and take to data recovery place. Get nails done … 11:00am Coffee time!

… and here we are, it’s always amazing how time flies by, and it’s exactly this type of day where extra energy is desperately needed. These are super fast to make as it’s just a matter of throwing everything into the food processor then rolling into balls.

This volume makes about 16 20g Bliss Balls and can easily be doubled or tripled as they freeze really well. To freeze them, place them on a baking sheet lined with baking paper and leave overnight. Once completely frozen you can place them in a ziplock bag. This technique works well for school or office lunches as they will remain firm without the need of a ice-pac in the lunch bag … they will naturally defrost by lunchtime.

Power up!… Blondie 🙂

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Bread & Butter Pudding w/ Banana Bread

Bread & Butter Pudding w/ Banana Bread is a delicious way to use up leftover, stale banana bread… Upcycling food in a sense. This is the recipe that my son told me last night that I should use as my entry recipe to get onto Masterchef, so it must be good.

We all get to the point were we’ve had the bread out for days and it’s getting stale, it’s now too late to freeze as it will forever be stale banana bread that will need to be toasted (although that’s not too bad if you have the freezer space). So making it into a pudding will extend the life of the bread for a few more days – if it lasts that long.

There are no hard and fast rules to this fabulous recipe other than the egg and milk ratio for the custard, but even then you can add a bit more cream or add and egg yolk for extra richness. I prefer a firm custard to a wet one for these puddings.

The size of your pudding will be determined by the amount of banana bread you use. I had just under half a loaf left and it was perfect for a 22x15x6cm baking dish.

It’s delicious served warm with ice cream or a dollop of cream and if you were feeling so inclined to be decadent, a light drizzle of Salted Caramel Sauce will top it off nicely.

Enjoy with family… Blondie 🙂

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Chicken & Mushroom Wonton Soup

Chicken & Mushroom Wonton Soup can be either a deliciously light starter to a meal or a hearty meal itself, it will come down to the size of your bowl and the amount of wontons you eat.

Wonton soup meals are deliciously luxurious with their silky sheets of egg wontons swimming in a hot bath of tasty, soothing broth. Throw in any vegetables and greens you like as once the stock is at simmer you can cook anything in it.

Happy slurping! Blondie 🙂

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Lemon & Garlic Chicken w/ Chat Potatoes

Lemon & Garlic Chicken w/ Chat Potatoes is a zesty full flavoured casserole that is super quick to whip up.

It is Bastille Day today, and even though I have no known French ancestry, well not in my immediate family tree, it’s always fun to work with a theme. This isn’t a traditional french dish but with it’s simplicity and flavours of lemon, garlic and thyme it certainly could be.

When most people think of french food they think it would entail the use of lots of ingredients, be loaded with cream or butter or be very labour intensive when it actually can be quite the opposite… fresh quality meats and seasonal vegetables with accents of herbs and other flavourings are what make the ease of french cooking into some of the most memorable meals you could make.

This one is no exception. Start with fresh, ‘happy’ chicken; keep the skin on and the bone in if you can as it adds a lot to the flavour. Don’t fuss around with too much prepping as the time it spends in the oven does all the work for you.

Jouir! Blondie 🙂

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Tofu San Choi Bao w/ Dipping Sauce

Can you believe that there are 18 top ranking ways to spell San Choi Bao so I have decided to use the very top one. This is Tofu San Choi Bao w/ Dipping Sauce.

This is a much loved dish for many people as it’s very mild in flavour so appeals to those who don’t go out of their way for asian food. It’s also a hit with kids as they get to play with their food… and who doesn’t love doing that?

For a strong flavour punch then make a dipping sauce, or three. One can be a blow-your-head-off chilli one, another can be a sweet chilli and other can be this soy, lime and ginger one.

If you have never had tofu this way then you are going to be in for such a surprise. It’s a game changer, really. If you are looking for tasty, meat-free alternatives then this is your saving grace as the tofu ‘mince’ can be used in replacement of meat mince in recipes that use it in loose form such as spaghetti bolognese or chilli con carne to name a couple. It’s has the same texture and soaks up all the flavours making tofu mince extraordinarily versatile.

The surprising trick to getting the texture right is freezing it. This process alters firm tofu slightly giving it a bounce or slight chewiness that so closely resembles meat mince. So do as I do now and always keep a slab of firm tofu in the freezer.

Happy eating! Blondie 🙂

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Zucchini, Spinach & Dill Fritters

Zucchini, Spinach & Dill Fritters are a delicious pancake style dish that perfectly compliments a light salad or as a side dish to a curry buffet.

My family is still on our alternative day meat free lifestyle, which is going really well. Maybe more so for me as it now gives me a guideline to work with. There really is something to be said about having restrictions to help motivate and encourage new ideas and strategies; whether it be needing to include an ingredient for your diet or remove an ingredient due to allergies, or perhaps it’s even a budget necessity but each one means putting more thought into what you actually eat and stock your fridge and cupboards with.

I was thinking about this recently, as I was going through my ever growing cookbook library, about how, in our mother’s time they would have had two maybe three cookbooks. Cookbooks that would have been worked through thoroughly, family discussions about what was liked and what didn’t really work. Favourite family meals would have be discovered and made often – Sausage Casserole Tuesdays for instance. If you wanted to change it up you would open one of your favourite cookbooks (out of the three) and pick a recipe to make, it was certainly an easier time.

Now, everyone has so many books, so many recipes in printed form, most books of which would be lucky to get one recipe made from it … Perhaps I’m feeling the loss of the simplicity and romance of times gone by… perhaps I need to do a cookbook cull?

This recipe has probably been around in some form or another for many decades. It is full of flavour, especially with one of my most favourite herbs, dill, and can easily accommodate more herbs and spices depending on the style of meal you are serving.

Enjoy, Blondie 🙂

PS: I would never/ could never get rid of my cookbook babies… I think I just need a coffee!

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