Chana Masala

Mmm. Thinking about this dish makes my mouth water! This dish was made possible by Budget Bytes. It was so full of flavour, and very yummy over some brown rice. OOOOOOO I love chick peas and spinach and tomatoes together on rice. 

INGREDIENTS

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 small onion 
• 2 cloves garlic 
• 2 tsp grated ginger
• 1½ tbsp curry powder 
• 3 cups or more of spinach
• 1 can tomato sauce
• 1 can chick peas

DIRECTIONS

1. Saute the onions, ginger, and garlic together with the oil until slightly browned on med-heat.

 2. Add in curry powder and continue to saute. 

 3. Add in 1/4 cup of water and spinach to wilt down.

 4. Add in drained chick peas and tomato sauce, and stir together and let it simmer for 5-10 minutes.

 5. EAT!

This dish makes great leftovers and tastes heavenly the next day. Easy, quick, delicious, and healthy!

Yummy Granola Bars - BAKE OR NO BAKE

Homemade Granola Bars

Literally anything that has to do with oats, peanut butter, or fruit, I love it. Granola = a combo of all of the ingredients. Granola bars = portable granola that is so easy to make and super yummy and healthy.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups of oats
• 1/3 cup honey/agave
• 1/3-1/2 cup of pb
• 3/4 cup of additions:cranberries, chocolate chips..etc. 
• I added some peanuts and 2 tbsp chia seeds as well!

DIRECTIONS

1. Mix the ingredients in a bowl until well combined and sticky. If not sticky enough, add more PB and or honey.

2. Mold onto a rectangular tray (or any other tray, I'm not discriminating any shape pans and trays here) lined with parchment paper.

4. Put it in the fridge for at least 1 hr before cutting. OR you could also bake at 350F for 15-20 mins or until the top is brown. Let cool before cutting.

DIY Christmas Gifts - edible

DIY CHRISTMAS GIFTS

I know it's only August, but this is something I made last year for my friends, and they all loved it! Super easy and cute DIY gifts for your friends, and also edible and yummy.

INGREDIENTS

• Pretzel sticks (got mine from bulk barn)
• Coloured candy molds (I used white, green, red, brown - Christmas colours!)
• Candy pieces: orange m&ms/reese pieces for the snowman's nose; sprinkles (white, green, red)
• Chocolate chips for snowman's hat and buttons

I dipped my pretzel sticks in the coloured chocolate molds (white for snowman base, regular chocolate/brown for other base)

SNOWMAN: I waited for the white base to dry, then stuck on my candy for the nose, buttons, hat, etc. with more candy mold.

REG CHOCO BASE: For the regular chocolate/brown base pretzel sticks, before drying, I made sure to sprinkle generously onto the pretzel sticks. You can also use a white base and sprinkle as you would for the reg. chocolate base, so it looks like this:

I then packaged it in cellophane wrap (I put different varieties together, so 1 snowman, 1 chocolate sprinkle, and 1 white chocolate sprinkle together) nd tied it with a Christmas ribbon. Attach a personalized message to your friends and your good to go! Easy and fun DIY you can do on your own or with friends. 

Easiest, delicious, and healthiest pancakes ever!!!

Pancakes. Growing up, I never actually had pancakes on a daily basis - asian family...I had rice for breakfast!! But when the occasion had occurred and pancakes were served, it was always a remarkable day. Honestly, PANCAKES ARE SO GOOD. But from my memory, the pancakes we ever had were the store bought box ones, or ones from restaurants - not healthy nor good for you! I came across this pancake recipe from ChezCateyLou and let me tell you, they taste SO good. So so good, and they're a single serving, and take 0 time to make in the morning. I tweaked the recipe to my own liking and here it is:

You can literally put anything in your pancakes! I used blueberries.

INGREDIENTS

¼ cup oats
2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
¼ tsp baking powder
1 tsp stevia 
dash salt
1 large egg or 1 flax seed egg
2 tablespoons vanilla yogurt
2 tablespoons milk/water
Handful of blueberries, chocolate chips, cacao nibs, anything you want!

DIRECTIONS

1. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl, expect for the stevia (oats, flour, bp, salt)

2. Combine the wet ingredients together in another bowl + stevia (stevia, egg, yogurt, milk/water)

3. Combine the dry ingredients in the wet ingredients bowl, and mix until combined. 

4. If you're using chocolate chips, cacao nibs, etc. fold them into the batter. If you're using blueberries, look at step 6.

5. Pour into a greased non-stick pan some batter (you can do whatever size you want) and cook for 2-3 mins on the first side.

6. If including blueberries, after pouring the batter into the pan, place the blueberries atop the pancakes.

7. When ready, flip! Cook for 1-2 minutes on the other side (the other side cooks a lot quicker)

8. Plate, serve, eat pancakes with milk (yes, this is necessary).

I used honey instead of maple syrup as a topping, but feel free to use anything you like! 

Look at that pancake scrumptious-ness. LOOK AT IT. 

Sweet Potato Fries

Oh. My. God. Looking at this just makes me hungry. SWEET POTATO FRIES! Super easy and simple to make, and so so full of flavour. Sweet potatoes are full of awesome health benefits: 

1) Full of vitamins and high in them(A, C, D, B3, B6) which can help with improving your immune system and overall health;

2) contains a source of iron and fiber which helps with our energy levels, and helps our red and white blood cell production;

3)this isn't a benefit, (kinda is), but they're SO delicious;

4) Honestly, the list goes on...

Anyways, enough with the babbling, make this and you will not regret it.

INGREDIENTS

(serving size: 1)

1 medium-large sweet potato

1 tbsp of olive oil

dashes of cayenne pepper

dashes of salt

dashes of pepper

[really, any other seasoning/spices you enjoy!]

OPTIONAL: 2 tsp of cornstarch (makes it crunchy, but I didn't use it)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat your oven to 350F. 

2. Wash and peel the skin off the sweet potato. (you can leave the skin on if you want, but make sure you rub and wash the sweet potato's exterior vigorously) 

3. Cut the sweet potato into strips/wedges (about 1/4 inch wide) - I just estimated what size I'd like it; if you prefer a thicker fry, cut it thicker but keep in mind you'd have to leave it in the oven for 5-10 minutes longer.

4. Place the wedges/slices into a bowl and cover with olive oil.

5. Add your spices/salt/pepper atop the wedges/slices and TOSS/MIX the ingredients together! Make sure its nicely coated. Use hands/tongs to do this.

6. Line a baking tray/sheet with the sweet potatoes. Do not crowd them together, otherwise it will become soggy.

7. Bake for 20-25 minutes at 350F. I flipped 10 minutes into the baking, and then left it in for another 10 minutes.

TA DA! That's it. You're done. I drench my sweet potato fries into ketchup before digging it - I love ketchup. I also sprinkled some sea salt atop afterwards. LOOK AT IT. LOOK AT THIS BEAUTY.

Delicious fries. Much yum. Such delicious. So good and super easy.

Graduation Cake Pops

 

Cake balls + sticks = cake pops.

I recently graduated from high school (yesterday) and wanted to make some baked goods for my friends. But not just any baked stuff...I wanted it to be somewhat symbolic of the occasion, so what better way to do so than make cake pops that look like graduation caps?! I followed what blogger Bakerella did in her cake pop grad cap tutorial, and they came out beautiful! Here is my version of it with a step by step picture tutorial. 

INGREDIENTS and MATERIALS

-1 box of cake mix (I used white)

-1/2 tub of icing 

-0.5kg of candy melts (blue)

-Yellow m&ms 

-Peanut butter cup candy molds

-Candy sticks and bags

DIRECTIONS

 Bake your cake according to the directions on the box.

Let your cake completely cool, then what I did was cut off any crust from the cake so it looked like this. This will make your cake pops more smooth. 

Cut the cake into 4 different pieces/squares, and rub them against each other to create a crumble.

...until it looks something like this (shouldn't have any big pieces)

Take 1/2 tub of icing (I used french vanilla)

Mix together (w/ spoon or hands)

Roll it into small balls (I used a little less than 1 tsp spoon as my guide) 

MAKE SURE YOU ROLL IT UNTIL ITS SMOOTH!

Let it chill in the refrigerator (I actually let mine sit in there for 24 hrs) 

 Then melt your blue candy molds and fill the bottom (I suggest the sides too) of the mold with the candy, and then place your balls in it. (lol)

Then fill the rest of the molds with more candy until filled and then stick in a lollipop stick inside the cake (only halfway)

Let it sit in the fridge for 10-15 minutes or until hardened, and pop them out from the back of the mold. DO NOT PULL FROM THE STICK, otherwise it'll fall apart and that'll be a waste :(

For the square part of the hat, I just poured melted candy over wax paper, let it dry a bit, then cut square shapes, put it in the fridge for 5 minutes (or until hardened) and got my shapes!

Glue your m&m atop, using the melted candy molds as an adhesive.

Then glue your cap onto your cake pop.

I actually liked using an egg carton while doing this.

That's it! (not really...it took me quite a while to make these) 

I made 26 cake pops, with A LOT of cake balls left over (I ran out of candy molds, but I didn't wanna make that many anyways) so I wrapped the remaining balls in plastic wrap, then wax paper, and put it in another bag and froze them so I can use them when I make cake pops another time!

Veggie and Ricotta Penne Pasta

I love pasta. I don't know anyone who doesn't like pasta. But, I'm trying to be and eat healthier, so I always try to find ways to re-vamp and 'healthify' meals/recipes. A lot of pasta recipes that I find have cheese in it, which is high in calories and high in fat. But, moderation is key to anything! I came up with this pasta dish that does have cheese, but very little of it - so, you get to enjoy a 'cheesy' meal without all the extra added calories. I used light ricotta cheese in this dish, so it really decreased the amount of fats and calories. Also, I used whole wheat pasta in this dish, which is something I usually use anyways when I cook pasta.

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup of uncooked whole wheat penne

1/2-3/4 cup of frozen vegetables (peas, carrots, corn) 

1/4 cup of light ricotta cheese 

2 tbsp of shredded cheese 

1 tsp of garlic spread* 

1 tsp of olive oil

2 pinches of chili flakes**

Salt, pepper - I added a lot of pepper, few pinches of salt

*you can also use 1/2 tsp of olive oil + garlic: put the olive oil in a skillet and saute the garlic

**instead of chili flakes, you can just sprinkle some cayenne pepper over the pasta

SERVES 1 BIG PORTION, OR 2 

DIRECTIONS

1. Cook your uncooked penne in 1 cup of water, and cook your frozen veggies in another pot until done. Once cooked, set to aside.

2. Take your garlic spread (or SEE NOTE) and let it melt on a skillet. Drizzle 1 tsp of olive oil as well, and add in your chili flakes. Stir for 30 seconds. (medium heat)

3. Add in your drained veggies and fry them for 1-2 minutes.

4. Turn the heat down to a low-medium, add in your ricotta cheese and cooked penne.

5. Add your pepper and salt, and mix together for around 1-2 minutes.

6. Turn the heat off, and add in your shredded cheese.