Ginger curry

This has become one of my favourite recipes. The curry is a great recipe to eat in the winter. I used the usual winter veggies like winter carrots. This meal will give you good energy, the fresh ginger being warming and curcuma must be one of the healthiest spices, full of anti-oxidants! I love to eat the curry with quinoa. The quinoa is yellow as you can see in the picture. I cooked the quinoa with curcuma to give it a yellow colour. Steamed cabbage is eaten with this dish and I also like to add something sweet like cooked pears. I cook the pears water with a little sucanat and cinnamon. I also love cooked dried plums with this dish.

25 g fresh ginger root, peeled
2 big cloves of garlic
1 onion
2 or 3 winter carrots (about 300 g)
1 red ball pepper
1 can of tomato pieces
1/2 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp curcuma
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp salt
1 tbl sucanat
1/3 cup coconut milk

Make a paste with the ginger, garlic and onion. I use my food processor. Place the ginger and garlic in the food processor. Turn the machine on shortly. Add the onion and turn the machine on a second time. Stop when the onion is cut in small pieces:















Cut the carrots in thin slices. Cut the red ball pepper in pieces (not too small).

Heat coconut oil in a heavy pan and fry the paste on high heat. Add the red ball pepper, the carrots and mix all the ingredients together.

Pour 1 cup of water in the pan and let the vegetables cook in the water, placing a lid on the pan the first 5 minutes and removing the lid the next 5 minutes. The water should almost be evaporated by now.

Now add the canned tomatoes, coconut milk, spices, salt and sucanat. Mix together and leave to cook for a while on low heat.

Serve the curry sauce with cooked rice or quinoa.

Speculaas muffins

Baking for St. Nicolaas fills the house with an aroma of speculaas spices. These muffins are filled with figs and spices. They are rich in minerals since figs and molasses are a good source of calcium and iron.

1 1/3 cup white spelt flour
1/2 cup + 2 tbl whole spelt flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp speculaas spices
1 tsp grounded anise
1 tsp gingerbread spice
2 tbl currants
5 dryed figs (about 90 gram)
1 tbl molasses
1/4 cup organic canola oil
1 tsp applecider vinegar
1/2 cup soymilk, or other vegan milk
1/3 cup brown rice syrup

Preheat the oven to 180 C/ 356 F

Cut the dryed figs in small pieces. Place them together with the currants in a bowl. Pour the soymilk in the bowl and set aside so that the fruit softens.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Pour all the remaining wet ingredients in the bowl of softened fruit and mix together the ingredients. Incorporate the wet ingredients plus the fruit into the bowl of dry ingredients. Use a spatula to mix all the ingredients together.

Spoon the batter into a muffin form. The cups should be greased beforehand with canola oil.

Bake the muffins for 25 minutes.



Here in Holland we just celebrated St. Nicolaas. You can compare it to celebrating Christmas, so it's a big feast in Holland. We spend the day doing a lot of baking and playing with the children. I also like to spend the day doing handicraft with the children. This year I made these paper planes for Luka:



My daughter has her own project, she's making a curtain from crochet flowers:

Apple cake (sugar-free)

When making a new recipe I never focus my energy on what I cannot use and try to replace it. I focus on what I do have and in this case it's the wonderful taste of rice syrup. I don't look at a recipe which does use sugar and think it's enough to leave it out. You have to look at what you are using and try to find other ingredients which inhance the taste of the syrup. Here I did this by combining rice syrup with apples and december spices.

I'd love to share with you this simple apple cake which was inspired by a mail I got from someone who cannot eat any sugar products due to health reasons. For me, when I'm baking I usually grab for the sucanat jar. But now it was a challenge to bake without sugar and I decided to do this more often. I like to do something new and make a change now and again. So instead of grabbing the usual jar, now I have to think of making a new step. And isn't it wonderful to make some changes once in a while? I'm not planning to bake sugar-free all the time, but I will incorporate these recipes on my blog as well. Hope you enjoy the recipe!

1 cup whole spelt flour
1 cup white spelt flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp gingerbread spices
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ginger powder

1/4 cup organic canola oil
1/2 cup brown rice syrup
2 tsp applecider vinegar
1/4 cup soymilk or any other vegan milk

3 big apples
2 tbl brown rice syrup
1 tsp gingerbread spices
juice of 1/2 lemon

Preheat the oven to 180 C/356 F

Peel and slice the apples. You need enough apples to cover the top of the cake. Place the sliced apples in a bowl and mix together with 2 tbl rice syrup, 1 tsp gingerbread spices and juice of 1/2 a lemon. Set aside.

Place all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix.

Blend all the wet ingredients together in another bowl. Incorporate the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Mix well with a spatula. The batter should feel firm. If it's too difficult to mix the ingredients together then you can add a tablespoon of milk to the batter.

Pour the batter into a springform of 24 cm. The bottom of the springform should be covered with parchment paper and grease the sides with oil.

Now carefully place the apple pieces onto the cake batter. A small amount of fluid left in the bowl of apples can be sprinkled onto to the apples.

Place the springform into the oven and bake for about one hour until the cake is done. Check this by pricking a toothpick into the cake and if it comes out clean the cake is ready. Also check that the apples don't turn brown and cover the springform with foil during half the baking time.

When the cake is ready let it cool and using a small sieve, dust cinnamon on the cake.

Spelt cinnamon pancakes

I really love the old fashioned grain spelt and these pancakes are wonderful. Spelt gives the pancakes more flavour and has more nutrients than wheat. It's a recipe I created after my children were often asking for pancakes after school or on a Sunday morning. I wanted a recipe that was quick to whip up and no fuss. A pancake batter that always works. The result was perfect. The pancakes turned out small which is ideal. I have two 'Green Pan' pans and I can make three or four pancakes at a time. Then I layer the pancakes on top of each other, pour agave syrup over, and the children are satisfied. So here is the recipe. Make a first small pancake to test, and I usually do that without syrup to see if the pancake is any good. Maybe I add a little more salt or you might need to pour a little extra milk- not more then a spoonful at a time because these pancakes should be on the thick side. Too much milk can ruin them. Bake the pancakes in a neutral organic coconut oil.

1 cup spelt white flour
1/2 cup white rice flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbl organic canola oil
1 cup + 1/4 cup soy milk

Place the flours, salt, baking powder and cinnamon in a bowl.

Mix the oil into the flour mixture with a spoon.

Whisk the milk into the flour mixture with the spoon. You'll probably have to use the mixer now to get rid of the clumps and to end up with a really smooth batter. I use the hand mixer which is quick and easy.

Heat the oil in a pan. Pour the batter in the pan. I use a soup spoon to pour the batter into the pan. Make the pancakes small and start off with a really hot pan so that the pancakes rise. Then lower the heat and wait until they are golden brown on one side. Turn the pancakes carefully over.

Apple lemon cake with Provencal herbs

After harvesting the apples I made this cake. I never tried herbs in an apple cake and combined with olive oil and lemon the cake was superb! Not the usual apple cake but really worth trying this out!



1 1/2 cup spelt flour
1 cup almond flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup sucanat
1 1/2 tsp Provencal dry herb mix
3 tsp grated lemon
1/4 tsp salt

380 g apples (3 apples)
juice 1 lemon

2 tbl organic corn barley syrup
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tsp apple vinegar
1/2 cup vegan milk

Preheat the oven to 356 F/180 C

Cut the apples in pieces and sprinkle the pieces with the lemon juice.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Blend all the wet ingredients together in another bowl.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Mix together and fold in the apple pieces into the batter.

Pour the batter into a springform of 24 cm. The springform should be lined at the bottom with parchment paper and grease the sides with olive oil.

Bake the cake golden brown for about 1 hour. The apples should be soft when the cake is ready. You'll probably have to cover the cake during baking if it gets too dark.

School cookies

Just looking at the ingredients of this cookie makes me want to make another batch! You'll notice that these cookies are without flour, without oil and without a sweetener. I love these sort of cookies. Fruit is used to sweeten the cookies and spices make them wonderful for this time of year. These are the sort of cookies you like to give your kids to school.

1/2 cup grated coconut
1/3 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup dates
50 g rolled oats
1/4 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ginger powder
pinch of salt

1 apple, cooked in 4 tbl water
3 tbl mashed banana
1 tbl tahin

Preheat the oven to 356 F/180 C.

Cut the dates into small pieces. Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Peel and cut the apple in pieces. Cook the apple pieces in the water on low heat for 10 to 15 minutes until soft. Turn off the fire and with a fork, mash the apples.

Mix the apple, banana and tahin together in a bowl.

Pour this mixture into the bowl with dry ingredients and mix together.

Spoon the batter on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Press the cookies flat and round.

Bake the cookies for about 15 minutes until they are firm. Remove the baking sheet out of the oven and wait a few minutes before lifting the cookies onto a wire rack to furthur cool.

Cinnamon chocolate chip cookies

The weather is finally becoming what it should be here- fall! Today it rained, yay! The garden was drying out and I was starting to worry about the new strawberry plants we planted, but now they are getting enough rain for sure. In the meantime posts are developing for fall on my Dutch blog and now I have some time over to work here! Gees, is anybody still looking? I have been up to something in the kitchen- good vegan food that makes me so grateful for all the joy it brings! The smells of spices are now often hanging in the air in this house. I often use ginger and cinnamon in the fall, probably because it's warming and strengthens the immune system.

1 cup spelt flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup sucanat
70 g chocolate, cut in small pieces

3 tbl virgin coconut oil
1/4 cup soy milk

Preheat the oven to 356 F/ 180 C

Sieve the dry ingredients in a bowl.

Melt the coconut oil on low heat. Turn the heat off. Add the milk to the oil and stir.

Pour the oil and milk mixture to the dry ingredients and mix together. Then using your hands, knead and form a dough. Knead the chocolate pieces into the dough.

Roll small balls from the dough and place them on a baking sheet which is lined with baking paper. Flaten the balls into neat round cookies.

Place the baking sheet into the oven and bake the cookies for about 15 minutes until the cookies are golden brown underneath. Take them out of the oven and let them cool slightly on the baking sheet. Lift them off the baking sheet and leave to furthur cool on a wire rack.