Another (possibly even better) Paleo, gluten free, dairy free Easter Bun recipe!
So, I was running a bit low on ground almonds and had an idea – why not combine my pumpkin cashew bread recipe with the Xmas cake concept of simmering the fruit in orange juice! So that’s what I’ve done this morning and it worked great!
As always, the recipe is real foods and suitable for those on special diets – being gluten free, starch free, dairy free and Paleo. It’s a bit higher in carbs as the fruit is spread out over fewer buns, and there are extra carbs in the orange juice and cashews.
It’s suitable for vegetarians but not vegans, because of the eggs. Though it might work if you use something like a flaxseed “egg” instead.
Ingredients
• 250gm (2 cups) raw cashews
• 1 heaped teaspoon mixed spice
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon sea salt
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup cooked, mashed butternut squash or pumpkin
• 2 Tablespoons coconut nectar
• 2-3 teaspoon grated orange (and / or lemon) zest
• 4 Tablespoons juice from a fresh orange
• ½ cup sultanas, raisins or currants
Method
You’ll need to plan ahead and cook the butternut or pumpkin beforehand. You can peel it and boil it in chunks, if you’re in a hurry. But the flavour will be more intense and the texture drier if you bake it in the oven. I baked up some slices last night, when I was making butternut chips for dinner. But you could also bake whole pieces with the skin still on and scrape the skin off later.
Wash your orange, and zest or grate the skin. My orange didn’t give me quite enough zest (the pictured measuring spoon is a dessertspoon, or 2 teaspoons) so I also used a little lemon rind.
Juice the orange. It will probably give you more than 4 tablespoons, so just put the rest to one side.
Mix together dried fruit, orange juice & zest in a small pan. Set on a low heat to gently warm through.
When the juice is pretty much all soaked in, take off the heat.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 150ºC (300ºF).
Put the cashews, spice, baking soda and salt into food processor and process till fine. This is as fine as I can get it, but that’s fine enough.
Leave the processor running and add the eggs, one at a time, through the chute.
You can see that the slices of butternut had a bit of a harder edge, so I cut that off before roughly mashing it. It took about 8 half slices to make a cup.
Add the butternut or pumpkin and sweetener and process again.
Take out the blade and gently stir in the orange soaked fruit. It will be quite a loose mixture.
Spoon into 10 muffin cups.
Bake for about 30 minutes, till a skewer comes out clean.
We ate two each straight out of the oven, hot with melted ghee.
Then I had a go at doing crosses. I melted together a chunk of creamed coconut (or coconut butter) that was probably about 2 Tablespoons. I added the leftover orange juice (about 2.5 teaspoons). I melted them together in a small pan.
I didn’t have a suitable icing bag or implement, so just made some rather rough crosses using the handle of a teaspoon. It didn’t set though, so be careful when serving. If you keep some in the fridge for later, it does set then, and they are equally delicious cold.
My other idea was to just melt some carob or chocolate and spoon it on. Or possibly make into a glaze by adding butter or cream (before putting it over the heat!), which means the crosses would be a finer texture.
Thanks for reading and have a great Easter!
Photos by myself or @sift666.
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Some of my previous RECIPES AND KITCHEN TIPS:
• Choc Blackcurrant Smoothie
• Paleo Cottage Pie
• Feijoa Pear Smoothie
• Grain free, dairy free Pumpkin & Cashew Bread
• Tip for storing ginger & tumeric
• Grain Free Banana Cashew muffins
• Warming winter soup
• Breakfast ideas
• Healthy Chocolate & Fudge
• Jerky with vegetables
• Choco-mallow protein bars
• Equipment for the real food kitchen
• Carrot Almond bread
• Grain free Fruit & Nut bar
• Vegetable muffins
• Finger food for a gathering
• Real food ideas for snacks and road trips
• Grain free cheese muffins
• Best ever (and easiest) Christmas cake
• Orange Cranberry Xmas Breakfast Muffins
• Festive smoothies for Xmas morning
• Crisp & crunchy Xmas cheese stars
• Xmas menu ideas
• Planning your holiday eating to be a bit more balanced
• I judged the Steemit Culinary Challenge: Paleo
• Happy birthday to me! with birthday cake recipe…
• Paleo Easter Buns (coconut-almond flours, gluten and starch free, lowish carb)
• For MORE RECIPES and my 15 step Whole Food cooking course, see my recipe website.
Aha.. more of easter theme post coming out. Glad I had one sort of related too.
Yes, your Easter egg drawing competition should get some interesting results. I'm terrible at drawing, though, so might just sit back and look at others attempts!
I think it's supposed to help people like me who cannot draw too. Let's see.
Hi Deb! Happy Easter. I learned something new this week, @hilarski wrote a post about cashew nuts and it is quite amazing to see where these nuts come from. I never knew this. If you haven't seen his post, check under my blog. Fascinating! Hope you have a lovely weekend, and check out my post about friends. You are one of them!
I learnt some new things about cashews last year, when I checked them out to make sure they were Paleo
https://steemit.com/til/@kiwideb/til-something-new-about-cashews-and-paleo-diets)
But will go and see if there is even more for me to learn from @hilarski.
I'll go and check your post too.
You have a lovely weekend too xx
Oh my goodness Deb that recipe looks amazing! I absolutely love your way of simmering the dried fruit with orange juice & zest, and can imagine how scrumptious that makes the fruit. Totally going to steal this method... I bet it would be lovely for dates too! Am quite excited!!!
I really like the pumpkin, this looks very delicious lady @kiwideb thank you very much for the recipe and the step by step
You could use grated zucchini (courgette) instead of the pumpkin, too, as another variation!
Is true, that is another very good option, thank you very much lady @kiwideb
Looks yummy and healthy. Do you think hazelnuts might work?
They're not as soft a texture as cashews, so you might find you need to adjust the liquids a little. But I think any well ground nut could work.
Thank you. Come to think of it, cashews are also more oily, they tend to make better butter, so different texture for sure. Macadamias will probably work.
Ooh yes, those would be good!
Wow! These do look better. Nice level of detail with regard to the recipe, and great shots by you and @sift666! I'm a huge fan of Paleo, and while I'm trying to eat that way whenever I can, the cost and time to make them doesn't make it feasible for me at times. Since I don't have an oven, I'm not able to bake most of the things I want. This does look delicious though!
Thanks, Jed. Yes, not having an oven would make things a bit awkward. Luckily there are basic Paleo recipes that you can make without an oven, just meat & veg, nuts, smoothies, eggs. But it does cut your possibilities down quite a bit.
Yeah.. Those are what I'm currently consuming whenever I can. It does cut the variety, but for the sake of healthy living, I'm trying to stick with it as much as I can :D
Very clever! I might give this a bash, it's an intriguing mix!
Hopefully you find it as yummy as we did!
Those look really good! I just ventured into the world of paleo and gluten free cooking. My brother and mom are diabetic and I've been finding gluten free and paleo recipes to cook desserts and breads for them. I've been using coconut flour for my first experiments. I look forward to checking out more of your recipes.
Hi Marx the Rabbit! Welcome to Steemit. I've been looking at your blog, and will follow you. Hopefully you'll find lots to enjoy in my recipes and other posts.
Thank you for the follow. I've followed you as well. I love to cook so I'm sure I'll enjoy new recipes!