A Stell-Raw Banana Caramel Pie

Have you ever eaten a whole pie all to yourself? I have! And now you are wondering what kind of pie, aren’t you? It was a lemon meringue, homemade by my grandma at Christmas a couple years ago. It all started off with one bite, then another, then holy crap it’s all gone. I went from having a bite of dessert to having THE dessert.  

So this Easter I wanted to make a dessert that not only I could eat but both of my sisters could eat too. Almost all desserts that get brought to big family suppers contain either eggs, dairy or gluten, all of the things my sisters and I don’t eat. So what could I make? I had a ton of bananas in my house, so something banana. That’s when I thought of a banana caramel pie, and I was going out on a limb and make it raw too!

What I love about this pie recipe is that it doesn’t take long to prepare and it only contains four ingredients! It is gluten free, dairy free, egg free and can be any type of nut or seed crust you want. So if somebody in your family has a peanut allergy, then you can use almonds, or vise versa. But the big kicker about this pie is that it is delicious! I had my family try it and everybody raved about how good it tasted. Even grandma, who has never tried anything like this before, gave me rave reviews. To see her reaction my sister Naturally Ashley video tapped her reaction, click here to see it!

I came up with the name Stell-Raw Banana Caramel Pie because this Easter we lost our Rottweiler Stella to gastric dilatation. Needless to say, this Easter has not been that joyous and writing this post is really hard. She passed away so suddenly that it will be truly hard to get over her loss, she was such a huge part of my life and I miss her so much.  So I thought that I would name this pie after her, mainly because one of her favourite foods was bananas. I would be in the kitchen peeling a banana and she would be able to hear it from anywhere in the house. I am not surprised though because I would always give her my last piece, when it came to her I was always such a push over. So in memory of my little, I dedicate this post to you Stella, I miss you girl! 

Ingredients

Crust

1.5 cups of cashews, or your favourite nut

10 majool dates, pited and soaked in water at room temp for 1 hour

Carmel Sauce

2 bananas

8 dates

¼ tsp vanilla, powder or extract

Filling

7 bananas

This is quite a simple pie to make. In a food processor or high speed blender, blend the cashews and dates together. Pour into a pie pan and using parchment paper flatten evenly all the way around. Put in freezer for 15 mins.

While crust is freezing blend the bananas until smooth, then add dates and vanilla. Set on high and puree until creamy and smooth.

Take crust out of the freezer and thinly slice 3 of the bananas and place neatly on the crust. Then thinly slice the other 3 bananas and gently fold in with the caramel sauce. Pour on top and then top with one more banana sliced.

Depending on how full you want the pie you can add or subtract the amount of bananas. I used seven!

Place in the freezer for at least 3 hours and serve immediately. Enjoy!

An upclose picture of the curst and the caramel sauce.

Stella and her sister Lucy!

No Bake, Choclate Quinoa Bites

This past Friday Devon and I got the privilege of babysitting our nephews and having them sleep over night. We have never had a sleepover with them before so we were really excited for them to come over.

 I wasn’t too sure what we were going to do, because Devon and I don’t have a lot of things for them to play with. But we improvised and they had a blast. The first thing we did was blow up the air mattress they were sleeping on that night and put it in the living room. We were going to watch a movie after supper and thought it would be fun to lay on the floor and eat popcorn. Well the movie was put on hold because Auntie Nikki blew up SO MANY balloons that they wanted to play with those instead. At first Brody and Carson just played with the balloons, but then Brody had the idea of lining them up on the air mattress and then taking a running jump and knocking them all off. It was quite the game, so simple yet so much fun!

They also played with our dogs, Lucy and Stella. Our girls haven’t been around kids much so I was a little wary on how they would respond to having them overnight. But they did awesome! It took Stella a little while to calm down and get used to them being around, but after an hour she was sitting on the floor playing with her chew toy. Only when the kids had food was she on them like white on rice. But Brody and Carson had no trouble telling them to ‘go lay down’ and ‘No Stella this is not yours!’ When they left the next morning each dog took a couch and slept for hours, recuperating from the constant (yet awesome) play time and attention the boys gave them.

Brody giving Stella a hug

Carson hanging out with Lucy

After supper we made some cookies! I had came across this recipe a while ago and thought it would be fun to make seeing as they are ‘No Bake’. I tried the recipe out and immediately knew I had to make some changes. The original recipe calls for ¼ cup of coconut oil, plus ½ cup of peanut butter and I knew that it was going to be way to much oil. But I made it first seeing how it would pan out and I was right. There was so much oil, that the pan they were on had little pools of coconut oil underneath them. This time while making them with the boys I omitted the coconut oil and they turned out perfect. Also I substituted the honey for date syrup and made them balls instead of cookies!

After letting the cookie dough cool off, the boys and I got to work on forming our very own cookies. I gave them free range to make what ever shape or size of cookies they wanted. Which was quite interesting, some turned out like patties, some were balls and some were ‘worms’. Those didn’t make it to picture stage, a) because they ate them b) they looked like cat poop. Yup I said it, cat poop. I know that sounds weird but its true. To the boys they were making worms but to Devon and I, it was something else. No worries though, because they were the kids cookies and they had fun making them!

In the morning I made pancakes for everyone, including myself. I came up with a recipe that didn’t turn out that bad, but they weren’t awesome and I am not posting a pancake recipe that isn’t awesome. The regular pancakes got rave reviews from Brody and Carson, they said I made the best pancakes EVER and that they wanted to eat them every day. I wont lie, that made me feel great, what is it about a kid giving you a compliment that just makes you feel like you are the queen of the world?

By the time breakfast was over, the kids had already got the dog beds from upstairs and were dragging them down to the bottom of the stairs. They wanted to jump off the stairs into the pile of beds, and why not? I used to jump off the stairs, so why cant they? I think they did this for 2 hours, everything from counting each stair as they jumped off, to throwing balloons while jumping and trying to race it down.

We had a lot of fun, only a couple stubbed toes and brotherly fights, but all in all we had a lot of fun spending time with our nephews. Hopefully this is not the last time we get to do this while they are young, I know Jen and Sean wouldn’t mind us taking the boys for the night.

Ingredients Makes - 18-20 cookies

1/2 cup date syrup (recipe below)

4 tablespoons cocoa powder or carob powder

1/2 cup peanut butter or almond butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/3 cup shredded coconut

1/2 - 1 cup cooked white quinoa

Over medium heat, combine date syrup and cocoa powder. Bring to a simmer, stirring constantly for 2-3 minutes and remove from heat. Stir in peanut butter, vanilla, coconut, and quinoa. You can either use a spoon or your hands to make the balls, but be warned that the batter is messy! Place them onto parchment paper and set in the refrigerator to set (about 15-20 mins)

Date Syrup

5-7 large majool dates

1/4 cup water

Blend in high speed blender until smooth.

Thanks for reading!
Xoxo -N

Parisian Brunch feat. Vegan French Toast and Berries

This weekend was very eventful for me because it was my birthday!! I have always loved my birthday weekend, and when I say weekend I really mean weekend. I feel that your birthday shouldn't just be one day, I feel that you should try and stretch it out as much as you can. Especially when food is involved!!

When deciding what do to this weekend, my mom decided to have brunch on Sunday. I thought that it was perfect, I love breakfast food and I have wanted to try out a new French toast recipe. And of course I wanted to do a vegan recipe, so I replaced the eggs and milk for bananas and coconut milk.

Now my brunch wasn't a surprise brunch, but I was not expecting such an amazing spread of food and such am awesome theme! The only thing I was I told is to wear something black that is simple yet dressy. So when I walked into my mother’s condo I was so surprised that there was a theme at all. There were pink and black balloons, with an Eiffel tower and hat boxes decorating my mom’s kitchen. It was a Parisian Brunch! Then I was told that the men had to wear fake mustaches and the women had to wear red lipstick.

So we cracked open the bubbly, made mimosas and started on preparing brunch. There was a tower of berries, coconut milk whipped cream, vegan and regular French toast, scrambled eggs, and maple glazed ham. We were also doing gluten free French toast and regular French toast, boy there was a lot of food.

Vegan French Toast

2 ripe bananas

½ cup of coconut milk

1 tsp of cinnamon

1 tsp of vanilla (optional)

Heat up your non stick skillet on medium/high heat. Put all of the ingredients in the blender and puree until smooth. Dip your bread in the mixture, gluten free or regular bread (gluten free went over the  best in our house, even with people who are not celiac).  Brown on both sides, and serve with whipped cream and berries!

Kitty wanted to join the brunch after we all left the table,
And I don't blame her, it was good!

 All of these amazing pictures were taken by my sister Ashley from Ashley Clark Photography. 

Thanks for Reading!!

xoxo -N