So this is such an interesting one to me, as you know I have reached the point in my Reprogram when I am very much interested in balancing my macronutrients, but also making sure that I get enough kilojoules every day just to maintain my current weight and physicality. To get this in three meals with no snacking in between, especially with the food intolerances I have, especially when I am trying to float within the Australian Government Guidelines - developed by people with FAR more dietary knowledge than I have, can be very hard, so I decided to build a few little additional things that I can use to bulk out my daily intake, the brief is that they must not cause me PAIN or ASTHMA, so that rules out anything with anyone from the grass family, wheat, rice, teff, sorghum, oats, barley, etc - sigh, anything with soy, which actually I am not keen on anyway so the fact that it twists me into a french braid is a lucky excuse, nothing with refined vegetable oils or additives, nothing with casein, so no dairy. No, no, don't fret, it can be done, this blog itself is proof that life with food intolerances can be a culinary delight, whatever ones you have, we can work around, we should all be able to eat gorgeous, delicious food that doesn't make us sick, I don't care what you have to exclude.
For me, these have been a delight, I was unsurprised to put them through foodworks and find their fat ratios high, well, of course, they are all nuts and eggs really, but they also have some really nice nutritious compounds and as a part of a balanced diet they are a much better addition than a lot of the commercially made so called 'healthy' snacks out there.
OO! They look delicious don't they? And they are! Best of all they freeze really well so once they are cool you cut them up, wrap them, pop them in the freezer and you are good to go.
Ingredients - Makes 20
Preheat oven to 160 degrees C fan forced, 170 if not fan forced
200g almond meal
120g quinoa flour
50g coconut flour
300g sugar
I teaspoon ground wattle seed (optional, you can use instant coffee if you prefer or just leave it out)
8 eggs
250ml olive oil
120g dried cherries, chopped - you can use whatever dried fruit you like, chopped prunes would be very good in this, or dried blueberries or cranberries
100g 85% cocoa dark chocolate, chopped - I used a Lindt block, not the cooking kind, the eating kind
10g flaked almonds
Tip all the dry ingredients (apart from the flaked almonds) into a large bowl and give them a good stir to combine, make a well in the centre, add the eggs and olive oil and then give it all a good beat to combine.
No need to be dainty here, just make sure it is all combined. Scrape it into a lined baking tray, I used a 23x32cm brownie tin, smooth it out, sprinkle the top with the reserved flaked almonds.
Right, into the oven for about 40 minutes or until golden and cooked through.
MMM. Looks good. So now let it sit until it is quite cold and then you can cut it up, bag it up and freeze it, or just scoff the lot at once if you are very, very hungry or have fifteen other people visiting your house. A little tip, if you partly freeze it before cutting you will get a very nice clean cut.
Beautiful. I love blondies.
Right, so now let's have a look at the nutritional profile of this one. Let's look at a single serve. I wanted mine to be big enough that I could add it to the end of the meal and it would not only top up my kilojoule intake, but also keep me satisfied until the next meal rolls around, so I portioned this into 20 pieces, which is quite a big bit, but good for what I wanted it for, so we will look at a single piece of this size.
Kjs - 1360, right, so that is giving me a good boost to my kilojoules
Protein - 6.7g
Fat - 60% (saturated plus trans - 11%), yes, that is to be expected, as I said, it is all nuts and egg
Carbohydrate - 30%
Fibre - 3g
So this is an interesting one isn't it? You remember how we spoke about the pendulum effect, how when one macronutrient goes up, another will come down? Here we have a really good example of this, it is high in fats, low in carbohydrate. To me this is no surprise, the only surprising one for me is the fibre, because I would have thought it would be a little higher.
So what do we take from this? Well, if you were eating only this all day, every day, you would be having a diet very high in fat, but as a discretionary food choice, to my mind, this is a good one, a nice top up for those days you need a little something extra.