Holiday Archives - Strength and Sunshine

New Orleans Gluten-Free King Cake (Vegan, Allergy-Free)

February 18, 2019 by Rebecca @ Strength and Sunshine 34 Comments

Carnival season in New Orleans means it’s time to bake up a King Cake for Mardi Gras! This Gluten-Free King Cake recipe is vegan, allergy-free, lightened-up, and low in sugar! A rich brioche-style cake ring with a sweet, buttery filling, decorated with icing and bold colored sugar crystals! A classic Fat Tuesday dessert everyone will love!

Mardi Gras always sneaks up on me every year and I never end up getting around to creating a gluten-free king cake recipe! Not this year! I’ve had this recipe planned to test out since I dropped the ball last year. King cake is full of rich culture and contrary to what you may think, not an exclusive treat to just New Orleans. King cake is a broad term that many cultures use for the cake that celebrates the end of the Christmas season and/or pre-Lenten festivities. However, if you’re from the United States, that iconic purple, green, and gold sugary sparkle automatically bring to mind Fat Tuesday and Mardi Gras!Read More

Wild Strawberry Protein Pancakes

February 4, 2015 by Rebecca @ Strength and Sunshine 108 Comments

Whether for some self-love or love for another, these Wild Strawberry Protein Pancakes will make the perfect Valentine’s Day breakfast. Gluten-Free, vegan, chock-full of protein and strawberry flavor, you can’t help but fall in love!

I guess this will become my Valentine’s Day tradition here on Strength and Sunshine. I asked you guys over the weekend if you’d rather have Valentine’s granola or pancakes. Well, pancakes won by a landslide; not many wanted granola! That makes me kinda sad 🙁 Do you know I have 5 granola recipes I need to share and 2 more in development!? Mark my words, you will be getting granola, but I guess it can wait another week 😉

I guess you’re just lucky I like talking about pancakes. They’re one of those foods that have limitless variations and can work for any day, holiday, diet, preference, whatever. They can be indulgent or healthy (I go for the latter), but no matter what, they’ll make the recipient of their cakey-wonders a very happy camper. I wanted to learn a bit more about one of my favorite breakfasts (the extreme foodie nerd I am), so I searched for who invented the pancake.

Well apparently, no 1 person invented the glorious round cakes. But their history can be traced back to ancient Roman times (I knew I liked Latin for a reason!). They used milk, flour, eggs, and spices to make either a sweet of savory “cake” called Alita Dolcia (meaning “another sweet”). Then the pancake will spread to other European countries and start taking on forms we are familiar with. Eventually it becomes an ever-loved breakfast favorite.

O, the history of food. I find it so interesting! See, not only do I adore cooking, but I also love learning about what I’m cooking as well. It makes you appreciate the beauty of it more. Then you can really “cook with love” and everything you make tastes 1000x better. And when you cook with love, those who get to taste your creations will love you back 😉 So, making these lovely wild strawberry pancakes, with love, for Valentine’s Day just seems pretty perfect, don’t you think?

Wild Strawberry Protein Pancakes

Ingredients: (serves 1)

+ Flour Mix (3 TB of Buckwheat Flour, 2 TB Gluten-Free All-Purpose, 1 TB Wild Strawberry Protein Powder)

+ 1/2 Tsp Baking Powder

+ 1/4 Cup Pureed Strawberries

+ 1/4 Tsp Pure Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Extract

+ 1/4 Tsp Strawberry Extract

+ 5 Drops Vanilla Stevia (or sweetener of choice, optional)

+ 1/3 Cup Water (or non-dairy milk)

Strawberry Protein Frosting:

+ 2 TB Wild Strawberry Protein Powder

+ 4 TB Water

+ Unsweetened Shredded Coconut (optional)

Directions:

+ In a mixing bowl, combine the flour mixture and baking powder and give it a mix. Then add the liquid ingredients and mix again until you have a pancake batter.

+ On the stove, heat a non-stick pan (greased with coconut oil), over medium heat.

+ Once the pan is hot, pour 1/3 of the batter in the center. Cook for 2-3 minutes, flip and cook an additional 2-3 minutes. Set aside and repeat process for the rest of the batter.

+ To make the frosting, just mix the protein powder with the water. add more of less water to get desired consistency.

+ Top you pancakes with the frosting and sprinkle on some shredded coconut to make things look pretty!

Pretty pink, sweet, fruity, protein pancakes! A healthy little decadence to show someone you love them (or to show yourself how much you…love you!). What’s awesome is that Valentine’s Day is a Saturday, which means I’ll have time to make some pancakes! Woohoo! And even if you’re a “V-Day Hater” (yes, we should show our love all year long), it’s still fun to play along with the hype and at least make a cute breakfast! Are you with me?

So tell me:

+ Do you like learning about food and its history?

+ Who will you be showing the love to with these pancakes on Valentine’s Day? **Myself!**

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Recipe ReDux #14 Indian Christmas Rice

December 22, 2014 by Rebecca @ Strength and Sunshine 135 Comments

Christmas is this week. Yes. It is in 3 days :O How can that be! I love this season and just the feeling surrounding it. Everything seems more beautiful (even if it is unnecessarily rushed). It always makes me pause and see those little bits of beauty in the more mundane things. A simple recipe with a most common whole grain: rice. You wouldn’t think to showcase it simply boiled and plated, but cook it with some glorious aromatic flavors and the beauty will take your breath away.

December’s Theme: Grab a Book & Cook – It’s the end of the year and we’re taking a moment to reflect: ReDux has been around for 42 months! (Can you believe some of you have ReDux-ed 42 recipes?) To celebrate, we’re playing a little party game this month: Grab your nearest cookbook and ReDux the recipe on page 42 or 142. We can’t wait to see the books you’re cooking from these days – and how you make that recipe healthier.

I wanted to pick a random cookbook from my ever-growing collection. I love cookbooks! They are just so beautiful and bursting with inspiration. I chose The Indian Vegan Kitchen, by: Madhu Gadia. I also chose the recipe on page 142 for inspiration. I didn’t follow the recipe much at all, but used the theme of the flavorings and spices mostly.Read More

Snickerdoodle Breakfast Cake

December 17, 2014 by Rebecca @ Strength and Sunshine 115 Comments

Boy do I have fond memories creating this recipe! The idea, the inspiration hit one summer evening. I wanted something “cakey” for breakfast the next day, but not pancakes (I know, shocking!). So if this creation turned out okay in the oven then I knew prime photographing time was dwindling. This recipe would be a race with the setting sun. I whole-heartedly accepted the challenge though, I knew this one would be a winner. Why not bake it in the morning? Uh, because I’m hungry when I wake-up and baking would take to long!

However, I managed to snap a few right under the window next to the kitchen sink. (Mind you, this lighting conundrum would happen multiple times that summer. I just never learn.) I got so many that I couldn’t choose which ones to edit and post here today…so be prepared for a bombardment of yummy photos ahead!

I really don’t know what to call this little dish either. Breakfast bake was what I originally planned, then I though baked mug cake, but really this is more of a baked pancake. So I decided to call it just a breakfast cake! Snickerdoodle style! Perfect for the holidays, right? Right!

What I have written on the little scrap of paper I used to jot down the recipe was “SnickerDoodle B-Fast Bake”. Exactly like that. You should see these millions of jotted down recipes on scraps of colored notepad paper, stickys, ripped off corners of random papers. It’s really organized 😉 Just a bunch of random measurements, notes, lines, arrows, but barely any directions. I just remember all that in my head. Haha!

I’ll be one of those old grandmothers with all the recipes that the family will never be able to recreate of decipher. I’m completely a cook at heart. Just throw this, that, and a pinch of these in and done! Even when I’m baking (which can be risky). Call it laziness or call it skill 😉 I say the latter!

Anyway, I love snickerdoodles, or at least the idea of them! Warm, cakey, cinnamon love! Count me in! All in! Cinnamon is my favorite spice as you know. I go through the bottles like I go through sweet potatoes. Every day and in every way! So a snickerdoodle just seems like an obvious flavor choice for me. Plus, it’s festive and Christmasy. I guess that’s the sign of a goof food blogger too! Making out of season recipes to post for when they’re in season. But I am still behind. I still have a few pumpkin recipes to post! I just didn’t want to go recipe crazy and run out while I was away at college with no way of making really good new ones!

Enough of this blabber! Time to just give you the damn recipe! O and I felt pretty bad ass using cream of tartar here. Snickerdoodles always have it. I don’t know what it does, but I bought a little bottle just for the purpose of this recipe.

Snickerdoodle Breakfast Cake

Ingredients: (serves 1)

+ 3 TB Millet Flour

+ 2 TB Gluten-Free All Purpose

+ 2 TB Mashed Ripe Banana

+ 1 Packet of Stevia

+ 1/4 Tsp Cream Of Tartar

+ 1/4 Tsp Baking Powder

+ 1/4 Tsp Baking Soda

+ 1/4 Tsp Cinnamon (plus more for topping)

+ 1/4 Tsp Pure Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Extract

+ 1/4 Cup of Unsweetened Almond Milk (or other non-dairy milk)

Optional Vanilla Cinnamon Frosting:

+ 1/4 Tsp Cinnamon

+ 1 TB Vanilla Protein Powder

+ 2-3 TB Water

Directions:

+ Preheat an oven to 350ºF.

+ In a lightly oiled ramekin, combine all ingredients in the order listed above. Mix until a doughy mixture forms.

+ Bake the mixture in the oven for about 20 minutes. A toothpick should come out clean when done.

+ Stir up the vanilla frosting (if using), pour on top of the cake. You can also just top it with cinnamon…or nut butter 😉

+ You can also refrigerate this overnight to enjoy a cold cake in the morning or heat it up for a minute in the microwave like I did!

This is just screaming Christmas to me right now! Why are all the amazing flavors like snickerdoodle, peppermint, peppermint mocha, gingerbread, etc. only associated with the holidays? Screw that! I’m going to keep making my festive fare all year-round! Be a food rebel!

So tell me:

+ You could only pick from these: snickerdoodle, gingerbread, or peppermint. Which do you choose? Snickerdoodle!

+ How do you jot down recipes you’re making? Mine are also always gross, wet, and stained with food, haha!

*Recipe linking up for the week! WIAW, Allergy Free Wednesdays, #RecipeFridays, #RecipeOfTheWeek, #StrangeButGood, Gluten-Free Wednesdays, Real Food Friday, Gluten-Free Fridays, Tasty Tuesdays, Savoring Saturdays, Healthy Vegan Fridays, #WeekendBites, Real Food Recipe Roundup, Tasty Tuesdays, Meatless Mondays, Lena’s Tasty Tuesdays!*

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Gift Guide For The Guys

December 9, 2014 by Rebecca @ Strength and Sunshine 74 Comments

Aren’t guys the hardest to shop for!? Girls are so easy, get them anything cute, pretty, clothes, make-up, scarves, etc. But when it comes to the brothers, dads, boyfriends, grandfathers, it gets hard. Guys are boring, girls are way more fun to shop and get gifts for! But don’t fret! I’ve put together a quick gift guide to give you some ideas for the men in your life! And if you still are stuck, just make them food. Really, everyone likes to get food as a present. So whip up some spiced nuts or granola and be done!

These gift ideas are not only for the holiday season! They can be used all year and for any occasion. I tried to find affordable and more pricey items, as well as something for everyone.

1. iPad Foosball Table

2. Double Wall Gel Freezer Mugs

3. Table Top Mini Basketball Game

4. Herschel Supply Co. Men’s Roy Wallet

5. Neff Men’s Fold Beanie

6. Timberland Men’s Knit Touchscreen Gloves

7. Man Crates

8. Jawbone JAMBOX Wireless Bluetooth Speaker

9. Merino Wool V-Neck Sweater

10. The Mug With A Hoop

11. Golfers BBQ Set

12. Sony Headphones

However, the men in my life are going to be the lucky recipients of homemade gifts (as usual), made by the thrifty DIY-er I turn into during Christmas time 😉 They love because they never know what to expect 😉 My brother and I have this weird running joke about “rip-off” calendars (the daily kind). I think he got me one two years in a row, way back, and for some reason whenever we put our presents under the tree for each other, we always joke that what’s inside is a “rip-off” calendar. I have no idea why…it just stuck in our memories. My brother and I have some really weird things we remember and laugh about! (P.S. I love “rip-off” calendars and always get one every year! It’s the only type of calendar I use. I am religious about it!)

So tell me:

+ Do you find it hard to shop for guys?

+ Do you use “rip-off” calendars? Haha, the one year my brother got one, he made it to February and then never moved past that date 😛

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