food Archives - Meagan Made

Tag: food

16
Oct
2016

Blood Orange Chocolate Cupcakes

This week my lovely housemate took me to one of my local shops and I got to pick out some fresh produce for myself for the first time in a month! Once the excitement wore off, I stumbled across some blood oranges and couldn’t resist putting them in the trolley. Once I got home, I realised I’d have to find something special to make with them, and stumbled across this recipe for chocolate cupcakes with a blood orange icing.

With all of the extra time I’ve been spending at home with this ankle, I’ve been doing a lot of extra crochet – so much so that I’ve injured my thumb so have to give it a rest for a bit til it’s all better. In the meantime, I’m focusing on my cooking and finding delicious recipes!

I’d never actually had blood oranges fresh, always in drinks, but I knew how much I loved orange and chocolate flavours together and thought this would be a winner. Since I didn’t have enough fruit to use all of her recipe, I decided to focus on the blood orange flavour and the icing of Amanda’s recipe.

Blood oranges | MeaganMade.com

I mean, look at those colours, there is no way that I couldn’t make these the focus of my cooking this weekend. With my ankle still on the mend, reducing the juice into a syrup was a little taxing, but I managed to move a chair into the kitchen to give my ankle a break between stirs. I think I reduced the syrup a little too far in the end as once it cooled it became more like jam in texture. But never fool my work didn’t go to waste and it worked well once I mixed it into the icing. The citrus flavours cut through the sweetness just a little and this combined with the chocolate was perfection. I also brushed a little of the warm syrup onto the warm cupcakes as per Amanda’s suggestion in her recipe.

As for the cupcakes, I totally cheated and used an awesome box mix that I’ve discovered that is both lactose and gluten-free. It’s tried and tested for me, and I just separated it out into 12 cupcake liners.

Blood orange chocolate cupcakes | MeaganMade.com

I piped the icing on last night ready for photographs this morning. I noticed a few have gone missing overnight so I’m assuming this means they got the housemate’s seal of approval too! 🙂 These are so tasty, I’m trying to make them last – but you might notice there are not 12 in the photo above, whoops!

If blood oranges are in season in your area you have to give this a try! Let me know if you have any other recipes for me to try with blood oranges!

Happy cooking,
Meagan x

30
Jul
2016

Chocolate Banana Bread

categories: Cooking

I first made this recipe about 8 years ago, well before I became lactose intolerant, and it’s always been a hit. After I was diagnosed as lactose intolerant, I naturally just assumed that it was now off the menu and forgot all about it.

Lately I’ve been getting sick of paying nearly $4 per slice of banana bread at work, so I looked up this Australian Women’s Weekly recipe to see if I could make it dairy free! And the results…

Chocolate Banana Bread | MeaganMade.com

…Delicious! It was so much easier than I had thought, and just as good as I remembered! All I had to do was swap milk for almond milk and the normal chocolate for Sweet William’s dairy free chocolate. 🙂 I used my food processor to whiz up the macadamia nuts and chocolate to save time chopping, and the rest was easy to prepare.

Chocolate Banana Bread | MeaganMade.com

The crust is amazingly crunchy and the centre deliciously moist and tasty. The macadamia nuts give it the hint of a crunch, and the few slices I took travelling with me for work were very popular. Take a look at the texture once I cut this loaf open.

Chocolate Banana Bread | MeaganMade.com

Just writing about this is inspiring me to make another loaf this weekend, ready for the new week! Do you have a tried and tested loaf recipe? I’d love to find another recipe, maybe one for Pear and Rasberry Bread – Let me know what are your go-to recipes!

Happy cooking,

Meagan x

23
Jul
2016

Twix Bar Slice

categories: Cooking, Slices

When I stumbled on this pin in my Pinterest feed, I was thinking that a dairy free Twix bar slice was just too good to be true! I popped it on one of my boards thinking I’d give it a go at some point, and didn’t think too much more of it. Just 2 weeks later after a morning tea at work, I decided I needed to try this slice. If it worked out, I hoped it would convince some of my colleagues that it was possible to make delicious dairy free sweets that I could eat!

I’ve just gotta say, this recipe has changed my life! Well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but it is amazingly delicious and tasty! Not only is it dairy free (actually it’s vegan), it’s also gluten free so all of my friends will be able to enjoy this one!!

With only six ingredients (almond butter, maple syrup, cocoa powder, coconut flour, salt and vanilla extract) there isn’t too much to buy, and you re-use the ingredients throughout the layers. I did substitute cocoa for cacao since I couldn’t find any cocoa with no traces of dairy, but everything else I used by the book! Check out the recipe over at Bakerita’s blog.

Twix Bar Slice | MeaganMade.com

I ended up refrigerating the whole thing overnight before cutting the next morning. Pulling it out of the fridge I thought it was looking good (that’s sea salt flakes on the top) but I was a bit nervous as to what I’d find when I cut into it.

Twix Bar Slice | MeaganMade.com

I needn’t have worried. The three layers remained distinct, and when I snuck my first taste (I couldn’t wait until I took the photo) I was in heaven! The caramel was just gooey enough, and without knowing it was mostly almond butter, you would not have been able to tell! The balance of the salty and sweet was perfect to balance out the richness of the cacao. My only complaint, there wasn’t enough! I took it into work and it disappeared within about 5 minutes, and I’ve been told to make double the batch next time I bring it in. 🙂

I’m visiting another lactose intolerant friend for a craft day this weekend so I have another batch of cookie base in the oven as we speak. I can’t wait to eat it again, and this is firmly in my repertoire of sweet goodies now!

Happy baking,

Meagan x

11
Jun
2016

Creamy vegan pasta

categories: Cooking, Dinner

Creamy vegan pasta – you may be wondering how is this possible? Well I was thinking the same thing when I first saw this pin but I have been desperately craving creamy pasta since I became lactose intolerant.

While I’m not vegan, I do love trying new vegan recipes to change-up my recipe rotation, and I know that I’ll definitely be able to eat it because there is no dairy! I had to give this a try, even just to rule it out if it didn’t work, as it looked amazing in the photo!

The ingredients were simple: pasta, almond milk, sun-dried tomatoes (one of my favourite things), basil, onion, garlic and basil, and it also appeared to be quick to cook.

The end result was delicious, and so quick to make… In fact, I think boiling the water and cooking the pasta took the longest!

Creamy vegan pasta

Make sure you give this recipe a try, all I needed to do was add a little bit of salt when I served it up just to take some of the sweetness away, but it was awesome! The creaminess (is that a word?) was on par with what I remember my dairy-filled pasta meals to be like – which for me is high praise! 🙂

Please let me know how you go in the comments section if you give this recipe a try, and feel free to share my post with your friends!

Happy cooking,

Meagan x

04
Jun
2016

Happy Doughnut Day!

categories: Cakes, Cooking

I found this pin two weeks ago, and after my recent adventures in making doughnuts with red kidney beans, I was intrigued by these Chocolate Potato Doughnuts!

I know, I know, more vegetable doughnuts – I was going to leave this recipe for later in the year, but then I learnt that it was Doughnut Day on the 3rd of June and thought what better opportunity to give these a try.

It felt a little strange to be making mashed potatoes for doughnuts, and I did need to swap out the Gluten Free flour for normal plain flour since I didn’t have any in my pantry and cocoa for cacao, but they were amazingly delicious!! Given the success of the kidney bean doughnuts, I shouldn’t have been quite so surprised, but the texture was so close to “normal” doughnuts. I gave my housemate Lisa one to try and she had no idea they had potatoes in it, but gave it her tick of approval!

Chocolate potato doughnuts

Annemarie’s recipe that you can see on her site is both dairy and gluten-free, so I’m going to attempt another batch with Gluten Free flour and egg replacer next time I visit her! I can’t wait to see how it goes, I’ll post here in the comments to let you know, and I’d love you to let me know how you go if you try cooking it in the comments below! 🙂

Happy cooking,

Meagan x