Paleo Cupcakes AND Frosting

It's next to impossible to find good recipes for both cupcakes and frosting on the same blog page. Either the cupcake sucks, or the frosting sucks. I'm here to give you pretty darn good recipes for both.

Coconut Vanilla Cupcakes
(I add the coconut in the title because you really can taste it in there. It's a really smooth and delicious combination!)

Cupcake Ingredients:
1/2 Cup plus 2 Tablespoons Coconut Flour
 4 eggs
2 egg whites
1/2 Cup Cane Sugar
1 Cup Coconut Milk (I used canned)
2 tsp Vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking soda

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 and line cupcake pan with liners. (This recipe makes a dozen short cupcakes, or about 9 that are raised like normal cupcakes.) Combine all ingredients in a bowl and whisk until you get a nice even batter. Scoop batter into each cupcake well. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until tops are firm to the touch. Remove from oven and let cool completely before frosting.

 Frosting Ingredients:

1 Cup dark chocolate
1/2 grapeseed oil
2 Tablespoons agave nectar or raw organic honey
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract (or almond, or whatever you like)
Pinch sea salt

Frosting Directions:
In small saucepan, melt and combine chocolate and oil. Add agave, vanilla and pinch of salt. Stir until combined. Remove from heat and put into freezer for 10 minutes to force cool. After 10 minutes, remove frosting and whip with a hand mixer on low speed. Let stand on counter for 10 minutes before frosting.

Frost cupcakes and devour.

Chocolate Covered Bacon. Yes. It's on the diet.

O.M.G. I found a Paleo friendly snack my daughter will eat. Not that she should be snacking on these regularly, but hey, I'm counting it as a success.

Ingredients:
1 Tbsp coconut oil
2 lbs lean bacon-Sliced however you like
1 lb good quality organic chocolate. I don't love the 100% cacao, but the bars that are 70%+ are good.
4 Tbsp Irish Butter

Directions:
Drop coconut oil in frying pan. Just enough to keep the bacon from sticking before it starts leaking juices. Fry up bacon in batches-don't clear out the juices in between. Just let it spatter baby.

 Pat bacon between paper towels to get the grease off. Let the bacon cool to room temp. While you're letting it cool, put butter and chocolate in a small saucepan and melt on low, stirring constantly to keep it from burning.

Once chocolate is melted and smooth, remove from heat. Proceed with dipping bacon halfway into the melted chocolate and put on a rack to cool. I put mine in the fridge to speed up the process.

Eat up!! This is seriously awesome.

Stuff the Pork with Pork Crock Pot Pork Tenderloin (Get it? it's Pork).

I've owned a crock pot for 10 years and used it maybe 5 times. But I've been looking up crockpot recipes lately in anticipation of some spring time snow days. Since we're getting buried up to our eyelids today, I thought today would be a good day to start. I didn't find anything I loved, so I'm tweaking one for pork chops. This recipe starts with about 20 minutes of prep, but it's totally worth it. My house has smelled BEYOND delicious all day. For some reason I didn't think to take photos until just now, so I'll be as descriptive as possible to make this extra easy.  This was also a total win on the kids friendly paleo menu. Both kids LOVED this and even asked for seconds. (I may or may not have told them it was chicken....)

Ingredients:

1 trimmed pork tenderloin: 2-3 lbs
1 tablespoon of your favorite cooking oil
6 large strips of bacon cut into bite sized chunks
3 granny smith apples, peeled and cut into bite sized chunks
1 medium whole head of garlic (It's annoying but again, so worth it) peeled, crushed and cut into large bits)
1 cup of raw, unsalted pecans
10 green onions, chopped
1 lemon (for zesting at the end)

cooking string or twine cut into 5-6 15 inch pieces for binding loin (that sounds dirty).

Directions:

Pre-prep: toss a tablespoon of your favorite cooking oil (I used coconut) into a skillet. Put bacon in and cook until it's about 80% cooked and browning. Toss in the apples and garlic. Cook until bacon is about 90% cooked. Use a slotted spoon and stuffing mix from pan and let cool. Keep the bacon grease in the pan and turn off the heat. Throw the onions into the pan but don't cook them. Just toss them and coat them in the bacony fatty goodness.

On a cutting board, lay out your cut pieces of twine about 2 inches apart from each other. Most tenderloins are already cut down the center and fall into two pieces. Hold them together and center tenderloin on twine pieces. Stuff the center of the tenderloin with the half of bacon-apple-pecan stuffing, and then tie the pieces of twine individually around the tenderloin so it's completely bound with stuffing cascading out the top.

Line the bottom of your crock pot with half of the onion/bacon grease goodness. Place bound tenderloin on top. Dump the rest of the stuffing on top of the tenderloin and let it fall and fill the bottom portion of the pot. Cover and cook. All. Day.

You can cook this either on Low for 8 hours, or for the first two hours on high, and then 3-4 hours on low. Pork's internal temp needs to be 145 degrees to be servable. There is no broth or anything in this recipe, but the pork will ooze juices all day. For the last hour, I scooped the juices and poured them back over the pork just to let it marinate even more. Remove tenderloin and let it stand 10 minutes before serving (it will continue to cook while you do this). You can serve it with some of the filling from the bottom of the pan the way it is, or smash it up in a bowl to make it more like applesauce and line the tenderloin with it when you serve it.  Be sure to cut off twine before serving.

I'm planning on serving this on a bed of spinach, so that I have a spinach-bacon-apple salad along with my tenderloin. Plus it's pretty.

Makes 5-6 servings.

Revamping my favorite recipes...

I'm a high school art teacher. Everyone wants to cut our jobs, so I have to prove myself somehow, aside from the normal gold key art shows and full ride scholarship offers. No. I have to really prove my worth. So tomorrow, I'm entering a chili cookoff at my school to help feed a staff of 120 for parent/teacher conferences. I have an all time favorite chili recipe, but alas, it's not Paleo. So I'm revamping the original recipe to meet my health goals. Here is my Paleo Autumn Harvest Chili. Enjoy.

Pre cooking disclaimer: This is NOT a weeknight chili. While the cooking time is minimal, the chopping time is 30-40 minutes alone. I also doubled my recipe to feed more poor starving educators, so my photos may look more bountiful than your actual creation. It does impress though and you have my permission to bring it to ANY chili cookoff and take full credit. Unless you win money. Then I take a 20% cut.

Paleo Autumn Harvest Chili:

Ingredients:
3 tablespoons Coconut Oil
1 1/2 lbs Apple Chicken Sausage
6 green onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 large butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into bite sized chunks (about 6 cups)
2 teaspoons chili powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
6 cups reduced sodium chicken broth
3 Granny Smith Apples, peeled, cored and chopped into bite sized bits (save a handfull for garnish)
1 tablespoon fresh snipped sage

Directions:

1. Melt 2 tablespoons of coconut oil in large dutch oven over medium high heat. Add sausage and cook until medium brown (about 3-4 minutes if pre-cooked). Remove from pot with a slotted spoon and set aside.

2. Add onions and garlic to oil in pot and cook until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add butternut squash, stir to coat in oil and oniony garlic goodness. Cook about 6 minutes. Stir in chili powder, salt and cayenne pepper; cook for 1 minute. Return sausage to pan and add broth; bring to boiling; then reduce heat.  Simmer, covered for 8 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, in medium sized skillet, heat remaining oil over medium high heat. Cook apple slices in hot oil for 4-5 minutes, stirring occasionally until light brown. Transfer apples to chili. Simmer for about 8 minutes, until apples are tender. Top with fresh snipped sage and extra apple slices. Serve and devour.

4. Serve at chili cook off. Kick ass. Take names. 

Cooking tip: Keep your handy dandy Newfoundland around to clean up any delicious morsels that may have accidentally hit the ground while cooking.

Yum yum give me some chicken stir fry...

Made a great, easy, yummy meal last night. I bought the "Everyday Paleo" cookbook by Sarah Fragoso and like it a lot. I think it will be a great tool to get started cooking paleo. I will warn you the photos don't do the meals justice. She should probably hire a new photographer for her next cookbook (and I hope there will be one). I adapted her recipe for Skillet Chicken a bit and here's what we came up with:

Chicken Stir Fry

Ingredients:
3 Tbsp coconut oil (really awesome for sauteing. It has no flavor and no smell and best of all, doesn't splatter like other oils! I found it on the very bottom shelf at Whole Foods. I use the refined.
1 orange bell pepper, cut into spears
4 green onions
1 cup chopped cremini mushrooms
1 Tbsp chopped garlic
1 Tbsp dried Thyme
1/2 cup low sodium free range chicken broth
1 1/2 lbs free range boneless chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces
4 cups Kale
handful of thinly sliced almonds
fresh ground black pepper to taste

 Directions: heat 1.5 Tbsp of coconut oil in pan on med heat. Toss in chicken and garlic and cook until it starts to brown (6-7 minutes for me). Toss in bell peppers, onions and mushrooms and saute until tender (3-4 minutes). Add chicken broth and thyme and bring to a simmer. Continue to cook until most of the liquid has evaporated (3-4 minutes). Pour everything from pan into a bowl and set aside. Heat the other 1.5 Tbsp of coconut oil in pan on medium-low heat. Add Kale and cook down until tender (will be bitter if you undercook) about 3-4 minutes. Put Kale on plates and add your portion of chicken stir fry on top. Top with black pepper and a sprinkling of almonds. 

Super yum! Next time I think I'll throw in some broccoli too. Now did the kids eat this? No. They had mac n cheese. Actually they probably would've eaten the chicken solo, but not all the yumminess surrounding it. But I have a plan damnit! I'm inventing some paleo chicken nuggets this weekend and will keep you posted.