Simply Beautiful.
To celebrate a 'happy' first year selling my Lip Nourish Sticks I am combining the Beauty Kitchen website with the luk beautifood site to make my message clearer, more inspirational and educational. The shop will be easier to use plus updates and promotions easy to see.
That means I am writing a lot of new sections for the site - this is from the part on
'Baking for Beauty'.
The ability to make wholesome and healthy biscuits, bars, batters and cakes + savoury crackers, pastry and dough is essential because those items can be a major part of our daily diet. So if we are going to eat them – let’s make them beautiful using wholesome, clean, lower sugar, nutrient rich ingredients.
Move away from the learnings of our old school home economics days, traditional British heritage or parents habits and start to reduce the amount of refined white stuff (wheat flour and sugar), SWAP in healthier fats and oils, enrich our mixes with a variety of grains and meals of seeds and nuts and add vegetables to our cakes and pizza bases. Everything in moderation including moderation I say!
Where to start?
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Stock your pantry with the right ingredients. See this list for now
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Find some fabulous recipes. Start here in the Beauty Kitchen. Take a look at Jude Bleareau’s new book Wholefood Baking or Catherine Saxelby’s new book on Ancient Grains – Wholefood recipes for the modern table.
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Set aside 1-2 hrs per week to bake some biscuits and savoury crackers to add to your recipe repertoire and keep your jars stocked. Start to experiment and gain confidence in the kitchen.
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Experiment. Take some of your fave biscuit or cake recipes and work out how you can †˜beautify’ them. Eg Chocolate chip cookie recipe
- SWAP the refined wheat flour with a wholemeal spelt flour + almond meal (2:1) If nuts are not allowed replace the meal with say oat flour to †˜soften’ and decrease the protein level of the spelt flour that creates a tough or hard bite.
- SWAP the white sugar with a rapadura. Reduce the quantity by 20%.
- Use softened butter not margarine.
- Add in a tablespoon or two of sesame or chia seeds
- SWAP the choc bits for raw dark chocolate (less sweet, no numbers etc) – if they don’t come in bits, just chop it into chunks
- Lower the chocolate level and SUB in organic sultanas or chopped dates.
- If the mix is a bit dry, add a spoon or two of water at the creaming butter stage or melt the butter so you increase the liquids in your mix.
Let me know how you go.
Be delicious... inside and out!
Cindy x
