"If it isn't smelling like Fall, I am not eating it!" This could be a representing line of this years favourite season (for some of us). When you are a foodie at heart and a real lover of Autumn's best foods, then you really give your effort to try as many recipes as you can. Like myself, last Sunday when I tried to make for the first time apple cider donuts. However, since I had no donut hole pan, I did the obvious...tried to shape donut doughs. As you can already guess (and laugh at my attempt), this did not go well at all. I ended up with flattened out baked doughs of nothing! How great!
In other news, I made a delicious pumpkin soup with carrots and potatoes as well and devoured it the whole week. I'm thinking of making a pumpkin pie next week that I haven't eaten for so long. When it comes to pies and pretty much anything I bake, I like to make everything from scratch. That means, even the buttery pie dough. I know that a lot of people use prepackaged ones, but I am a true believer of eating almost zero packaged food. It is an issue that bothers me quite a lot, because sometimes you just want to eat the damn cookie! But most of the times, I am the crazy lady reading the list of the ingredients and don't buy something unless I understand all of the ingredients.
I always felt like an outsider when it comes to food and exercise. This is the first time I am saying this here, but there used to be a time when I was overweight. I don't like to use the f word, cause really who am I to judge? Especially my own self. Since that time I completely changed my lifestyle, going from eating junk food and lots of sweets, to eating fruit, vegetables and a hell lot amount of oatmeal. Although I am at a great stable weight for years, I feel a bit conscious about my food, where it comes from, how it has been processed. But now, it has more to do with a healthy living and not so much with losing weight.
Back a few years I wanted to get into Nutrition studies, after I majored from Nursing Sciences. I keep myself informed with new health trends, superfoods and a lot of health related news, but I adopt very few in my daily living for several reasons, the most important being...very few things work on everyone's body. No matter how healthy we eat, we exercise, we keep up with certain diets, in the end if we experience stress and unhappiness in our lives, then it will backfire everything.
Few of my friends always ask me "How do you do it? How do you manage to cook, go to University, work and manage a blog, while being healthy?" I feel kind of bad when they ask me that, because I have no answer. I just do it. I don't feel like it's a big accomplishment. And there are days that I eat Nutella out of the jar (ask my boyfriend). My point here is that trying to eat healthy does take some effort and commitment. But the goal is to be happy and feel great, not over stress ourselves about it.
Now to the fun part of recipe. There is nothing better than plain old cake with your morning coffee, right? Also, there is nothing more delicious than a Gingersnap cake with a hint of bourbon inside. A simple recipe for all you folks who enjoy eating cake with a lot of ginger and spices. The initial intention was to use butter for this recipe. However, I find that olive oil makes every cake moist and not dry at all, so whenever I can, I incorporate it into recipes.
Gingersnap cake with Bourbon
ingredients
3 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup olive oil
3/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1 cup water
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
2 tablespoons Bourbon
icing sugar
how do I make it?
1. In a large bowl mix together honey and olive oil for about a minute or until smooth. Then start adding your eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Finally add the Bourbon and mix for a few seconds again.
2. In another bowl, mix together your flour, ginger, cinnamon and ground cloves. Take the bowl in the first step and start pouring its content to this bowl, mixing with a spatula or spoon until you've added all the mixture.
3. Boil the water and place the baking soda in a smaller bowl. Once the water is boiled, pour in into the baking soda, while stirring with a spoon. Then transfer the hot mixture into your previous mixture and mix again with a spatula.
4. Preheat oven to 180 C and place a baking paper into your pan. You will need a medium to large rectangular pan. Pour the batter carefully into the pan and let it sit for a couple of minutes.
5. Bake your cake for 35-40 minutes or until it has a golden surface and a toothpick inserted into it comes out clean.
6. Let it cool completely and then coat it into a lot of icing sugar.
No comments :
Post a Comment