This was one of my best muffin recipes yet! Super moist muffins, slightly sweetened. While warm the tasted like a blend between brownies and cake. Yum! I’ll finish the instructions soon!
In Hawaii, ulu is one of those food you should learn to love. This breadfruit pancake recipe is perfect for ripe ulu. Once picked breadfruit have a relatively short shelf life in their “green” or unripe state. After just a few days the flesh becomes mushy and soft and fragrant and sweet. Most recipes feature the green breadfruit as a starch like potato, ulu chips, fries, breadfruit flour, like a potato in soup, cooked in an imu until soft. However, fewer people choose to utilize the ripe breadfruit. I had a roomate that used to make a species of ripe ulu bread. While it was ok fresh and warm I liked it enough but, I found when it got cold I didnt care for it. It’s funny, according to my husband, the opposite is true for my breadfruit pancakes. He doesn’t like my ulu pancakes when they are fresh out of the pan. Instead he prefers them (if at all) when they are cold. I like them both ways. It guess, my point here is that ripe ulu can be somewhat of an acquired taste. It has a somewhat strange aftertaste that is pleasant if you decide that is it pleasant. Haha.
Breadfruit in Hawaii
Breadfruit not only grows easily here, can be found roadside, in gulches, and in tropic forests, but they are abundant. Each can produce 50-150 fruits a year that can range anywhere from 1-11 pounds. Some trees have even been noted as producing up to 700 fruits per year. So really, it is smart to have a small arsenal of ulu recipes for when your neighborhood tree starts going off. For a thorough history of breadfruit in Hawaii see this publication by the College of Tropical Agriculture and Nutrition at the University of Hawaii.
Tips for making breadfruit pancakes
I’ve been working on this breadfruit pancake recipe for a while. Originally, I made these without any added flour. But, they take a really long time to cook and a very very mushy still. So finally I’ve dialed in this recipe to include just a bit of cassava flour. Not tapioca starch, which is much more fine a gummy. Cassava flour is milled straight from shredded and dried cassava. That aside, you can use and flour you’d like. Just make sure you are familiar with how the flour reacts. For example, white rice flour is also very fine and a little gummy. This would have a total different effect that oat flour which is lighter and more airy. I also enjoy using eggs in this recipe for added protein and vitamins. But you could try using flax eggs to keep the recipe vegan.
Ulu Pancakes (Breadfruit Pancakes)
Delicious breadfruit pancakes recipe made with ripe breadfruit, eggs, spices. Can be make gluten-free and dairy free.
Scoop flesh out of ulu into blender (should be about 3 cups of gooey flesh). Look at your blender's measuring lines on the side. If its more or less you will want to adjust the milk and flour you add.
Add eggs, spices, milk, vanilla, baking powder to blender and blend until smooth
Remove batter from blender into medium bowl. Add Flour.
Heat large pan with coconut oil on medium or medium to low heat
Pour pancake batter into pan with heated oil. Cook for about 3 minutes on each side.
Pancakes will be a little gooey but as long as they've cooked for about 6 minutes eggs should be cooked through.
Keyword Breadfruit, Breakfast, Dairy-free, Gluten-free flour, Pancakes, Ulu
Yum! These are so so easy to make especially in big batches. Just blend up a variety of fruit and nuts that you have at home in stock, add some oats and dehydrate. Below I give you my recipe specifically for the ones I first made but you can substitute until your heart is content.
My fall farm harvest inspired this recipe for healthy carrot & pumpkin breakfast bars. Shredded carrots and shredded coconut, along with homemade cassava flour, homegrown squash, and home grown raw macadamia nuts.
Because it’s October and I made these tandem with healthy winter squash cheesecake, I went for the pumpkin spice theme. And, to be honest, I started out trying to make muffins. But after I made the batter, I noticed my muffin pan was rusted. All the better because my muffins are usually more like dense hearty bars anyways.
I hope you enjoy this recipe and/or gather inspiration for your own creations. OF course, you can use fresh ingredients, or canned squash, skip the cassava flour and use another favorite flour.
Carrot and Pumpkin Breakfast Bars
katiestropicalkitchen
This recipe is inspired by my "fall" harvest on our Big Island farm. Tropical winter squash (curcubita moshata), garden carrots, fresh shredded coconuts, and freshly harvested raw macadamia nuts. I even used our homemade cassava flour.
Using a blender, standup mixer, hand mixer or immersion blender mix squash, coconut oil, maple syrup, eggs, salt, spices, baking powders and baking soda until uniformly blended.
Fold in remaining ingredients
Fold in oats and cassava flour
Fold in carrots and shredded coconut
Add optional nuts and raisen (chopped figs, dates, etc).
Bake in preheated oven
Bake in preheated oven at 375° F in large baking pan for 35-40 minutes
They are done when you smell them, the top starts to lightly brown. They will be a little soft inside. Cool on wire rack and refridgerate some, share some and vaccum seal some for later!
This taro muffin recipe started out as an experiment when we returned from a long trip and had very little growing in our garden. In our freezer was vacuumed sealed taro, frozen bananas and in our garden 10 pounds of carrots. This is a surprisingly healthy muffin made with coconut oil, maple syrup, fresh carrots, cooked kalo and organic white flour.
This muffin recipe is also heavy on the carrot and the taro and the banana, because this is how we use up our homegrown food! The maple syrup and banana are just enough to sweeten it without it feeling like it should be a dessert. These are “hearty” or “hardy” muffins, perfect for the health food addict that still loves baked goods any time of the day. I encourage you to make them with as many organic or local ingredients as possible.
yield: 12 large muffins
you need: muffin tin(s), a blender, and a food processor or cheese grater and of course and oven.
Dry ingredients for taro muffins:
3 ½ cups white flour (or 2 ½ cups white flour, 1 cup oats)
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground ginger
Wet ingredients for taro muffins
6 small bananas
⅔ cups coconut oil (unrefined if you like the coconut flavor)
½ cup maple syrup
4 eggs
½ cup almond milk (or any other milk, you could try yogurt)
3 cups shredded raw carrots (peeled and put through shredder in food processor
½ cup raisins (optional)
½ macadamia nuts chopped roughly (pulse in blender on low works fine)
Steps:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease large muffin pans with coconut oil. Combine the dry ingredients listed above in a bowl. Next, in a blender, combine the wet ingredients listed above. Then, mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Then fold in the taro and carrots, chopped mac nuts and raisins. Fill muffin tins to the top, even out the batter and bake for 35-40 minutes until golden brown on top and muffin springs back at you when you poke it. Cool for a few minutes in the muffin pan and then continue to cool on wire racks. Enjoy warm, refrigerated or you can even freeze them (vacuum seal for best results).
This recipe for chocolate banana muffins with fresh coconut results in chewy hearty muffins that feel like a treat but still somehow healthy. They are full of organic grains, and healthy coconut oil and meat, and sweetened with unrefined sugar. They are just sweet enough to erase the bitterness of the chocolate but not so sweet that it will induce a sugar high. All my recipes are made with ½ the sugar or more that modern and secular taste bud are is used to.
Fresh coconut is that star of this recipe. This recipe uses fresh mature coconut meat from our farm. It is relatively hard to open coconuts and extract their meat if you don’t have the right tools. I don’t exactly have the right tools but I was motivated. My machete was too dull and it was too hard to husk the coconut completely so that it could be easily handled. But I persevered and cracked one open extracted enough and shredded it. Only took me ½ hour total. Which I guess is ok considering I salvaged at least 800 calories from it. That just half the day’s worth of calories.
Coconuts are high in healthy saturated fats (medium-chain fatty acids) including, capris, caprylic, and lauric acid. Lauric acid, out of these three, has the most antifungal, antimicrobial and antiviral properties. Coconut meat. is an excellent source of fiber contains more than 7 grams per cup. It is high in minerals, especially manganese, copper, magnesium, manganese, potassium and selenium. It also has calcium, zinc, and phosphorus. Additionally, it contains vitamin B1, vitamin B3, vitamin B5 and folate and choline.
Owing to these nutritional characteristics coconut meat has been known to: a) help eliminate parasites from the body b) regulate bowel activity c) balance blood sugar levels d) destroy candida and other harmful organisms e) support the immune system f) aid in bone health and g) reduce the risk of heart disease.
Recipe for Chocolate Banana Muffins with Fresh Coconut
Equipment:
oven
muffin tin
grater
2 mixing bowls
measuring cups and spoons
Yield: 6 large muffins, 12 small-medium muffins
Dry ingredients:
1 1/2cups organic white flour
1/2 cup instant rolled oats
½ cup unsweetened cacao powder
2 teaspoons baking powder (aluminum free)
1/2tsp fine ground good salt (like Celtic Sea salt)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Wet ingredients:
2 eggs beaten
1/2cupcoconut oil (unrefined or refined)liquid form (but not hot)
~1/3cup maple sugar (you can add a 10 drops of alcohol free stevia too)
1teaspoon vanilla
2-3 ripe bananas mushed well
Add last
2 cups shredded fresh mature coconut meat
Steps:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
Line muffin tin with coconut oil
Mix wet ingredients well in medium bowl
Mix dry ingredients well in separate smaller bowl
Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix well
Fold in coconut at the end
Bake for 40-50 minutes at 350 degrees F for 6 large muffins. Reduce baking time to 20-30 minutes for smaller muffins. Baking time varies on environment, keep a close watch on your muffins looking for a firm golden-brown edge and top.
Tooth pick should come out clean when inserted. Cool 5 minutes and remove from muffin tin.
Enjoy these chocolate banana muffins with coconut while still warm
These passionfruit banana fruit roll-ups are a hit with our family this holiday season. This simple recipe is gluten-free, dairy-free, can even be prepared RAW.
This Christmas 2017 we finally busted out our Teflex sheets. Last year we sent dehydrated bananas to our mainland families for Christmas. This year we needed a new trick. But since we had spent almost half of the year away from our farm, we had very little fruit and other foods to choose from…luckily the passionfruit vines Adam had planted years ago are now providing us with an abundance this winter. And, even though our banana forests were not maintained we still managed to find 3 racks of bananas. So – the lilikoi banana marriage finally happened with the help of our Teflex sheets we ordered for our mediocre dehydrater.
This super simple recipe was actually inspired by our friend in California who loves lilikoi. This kind family hosted us on and off for months. And – told us a story of how their friend tried to send them a box of fresh lilikoi, but it was opened inspected and not allowed through customs. In an effort to send our friends and family a little bit of the tropical vibe – we created these fruit leathers.
Recipe for Passionfruit Banana Fruit Roll-ups
Equipment needed:
dehydrator
teflex sheet
blender
Ingredients:
lots of ripe bananas
lots of ripe lilikoi (passionfruit)
honey
coconut oil (for teflex sheets)
Packaging:
unbleached parchment paper
You need omething to tie your fruit leather roll (better if it is food grade – or safe to put in our near your mouth)
Steps for making your own fruit leather
Prepare your dehydrator. If it has been a while since you have used your dehyradtor – take it out and give it a good wash. Here in the tropics, everything gets moldy real quick and easy. If you didn’t wash your dehydrator pristinely before your stored it from your last experiment, now is the time. Use warm soapy water. I even use a clean tooth brush to get in all the ridges and cracks.
After cleaning it, let it dry thoroughly and consider drying it with paper towels or a really clean towel. Our dehydrator is a mid-budget model. It is good because it has temperature control. Still it is on the smaller side and in my opinion a pain to clean. But all dehydrators are probably a pain to clean. I just looked it up and you can get it for $99 on Amazon:L’EQUIP 528 6 Tray Food Dehydrator, 500-watt. For making these fruit leathers I took out the plastic “grates” that usually accompany my dehydrator and replaced them with the fitted teflex sheets. See step 2.
Prepare your teflex sheets. The Teflex sheets Adam ordered were square. Not meant for the inside of our dehydrator. So I used a clean “exacto knife” – to be more exact I used the same kind of blade Adam uses for grafting – a hobby knife with a clean sharp blade. I roughly cut a circle in the middle and cut the edges to fit. After cutting the teflex sheets to the right size – I lathered them in refined organic coconut oil.
3. Blend up your ingredients. We have a Blendtec blender. I highly recommend it, or one of a similar quality. Especially when dealing with hard small seeds, like passionfruit seeds. This blender chops rights through them effortlessly. Furthermore we use the “wild side” jar for it. It is large enough to blend more than 4 cups (more like 6) without overflowing and making a mess. Here I put about 8 or so ripe bananas. 3-4 fresh lilikoi and 1 heaping tablespoon honey. I blend on high for 50 seconds until creamy.
4. Evenly pour your mixture onto your teflex sheets. I use about 2 blenders worth of the mixture per batch in my dehydrator – which has 6 levels. When pouring the mixture or batter in the idea is to make a even coat, where you cannot see through it. Try to pour evenly so that the “batter” doesn’t rub up against the middle or the sides too much making it a pain to clean. You can try using an oiled rubber spatula.
I used an angled icing spatula and found this was much easier than a rubber spatula. Although , it is still hard to get it completely even. Try but don’t drive yourself nuts. Shoot for ⅛” thick. Do not go more than ¼”. Wilton Angled Icing Spatula is one example you can find on amazon.
lilikoi banana mixture spread out on sheets
5. Start the dehydrator. For raw fruit leathers the raw foodies will tell you that you should not heat items above 105 degrees F. This is fine, but it will take a long time to dehydrate your passionfruit leathers. Especially because passionfruit pulp adds a lot of water to the equation. Consider your audience for the fruit roll-ups. For me, this Christmas 2017 the audience was our family – definitely not raw foodies. So I set the dehydrator around 115 F t 125F. I did several batches. If I was starting it later in the evening, I would set the temperature a little lower overnight. Then when I woke up would check them and flip them and adjust the temp for the day.
At 115 – 125 degree F, with about ⅛” thickness, most fruit leathers should be done at around 18 hours in the TROPICS. It is important to flip them over about halfway through. You should be able to peel the leather off the Teflex without compromising or ripping it and turn it over. If it starts to rip it is not ready to be turned over yet. The fruit roll-ups are done when they are no longer soft, or tacky.
6. Roll-em up. Use a large cutting board to cut the leathers in your desired length shape. At first I made small ones, like the horrible ones we all ate as children. But I found this to be labor intensive – so I began to make them as big as possible. Use the razor/exacto knife here again to help cut the leathers and the parchment paper.
Roll up as tight as possible, secure with your preferred method. At first I used scotch tape. But Adam gave me grief because it was hard to take off and he felt like he could taste/smell the sticky stuff on the tape. For lack of better options in our rural, humble town we used clean floss, like tooth floss for the remainder of our gifts. I am sure there is a better option out there. Please comment if you have any suggestions on that or anything else.
These banana brownies are a marriage between my oat flour banana bread recipe and chewy chocolate brownies. Bananas are so abundant here on Hawaii Island. They are also extremely versatile and especially great with chocolate. This recipe features coconut oil, maple syrup, and oat flour instead of wheat, butter, and refined sugar. It uses organic cocoa powder instead of processed chocolate chips. These are a guilt free dessert. Eat em up! Use a little less oat flour if you’ like them to come out more gooey than cake like, try substituting a different flour if you’d like a smoother brownie mouth feel.
Banana Brownie Recipe
Ingredients:
1 cup liquid coconut oil
3 cups mashed banana
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 eggs beaten
1 2/3 cups oat flour (ground oatmeal)
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/3 cup cocoa powder
macadamia nuts for topping
Steps:
Preheat oven to 350° F.
Oil 9 x 11 baking pan
mash and measure bananas. I use a immersion (stick) blender and its done in 30 seconds. You can leave some chunks if you want the banana chunk vibe
in a bowl combine all the ingredients starting with the liquid (oil, eggs, maple syrup, vanilla, banana).
Then add the dry ingredients (salt, baking powder, cocoa powder and oat flour)
This salmon and avocado salad is extremely convenient, simple and inexpensive. It is so good for you it’s hard to believe it takes 2 minutes to make. We use canned Wild Alaskan Salmon we got from Costco and local avocados. You could also try this with high quality canned tuna (but obviously only eat it occasionally because of mercury and other toxins). For this recipe you can serve the salmon salad over a bed a lettuce, top with Manchego cheese or make a sandwich. If you want you can also add diced celery, and use products like Veganiase to make it taste more like your traditional tuna salad.
Both wild salmon and avocados are high in omega 3 fatty acids, which are vital to our health. Most of the common knowledge about omega 3’s stops there, and that’s ok. We don’t all need to be nutritionists to eat better. In our increasingly “Westernized” diets, we have an imbalance of omega 3s (the good kine) and omega 6 (the kine we need to limit). Omega 6 acids are in many things that are good for us (in moderation) but also in many things we should avoid, especially the conventional and GMO versions (soybean oil, cottonseed oil, vegetable oil, corn oil, meat and dairy products, imitation cheeses, imitation eggs and egg mixes).
Recipe for Salmon and Avocado Salad
Servings: 2
Ingredients:
1 can wild salmon
1 small-medium avocado
1-2 dashes organic, or non-GMO, soy sauce (or gluten-free tamari)
A few turns of fresh ground black pepper
Steps:
drain salmon
mash salmon and whole avocado in bowl
add pepper and soy sauce to taste (careful not to add to much soy)
I’ll have to brag for a moment here about the wonder of a variety of bananas called ICE CREAM BANANAS. It is a cross between Musa acuminata and balbisiana known as Blue Java. I know they don’t carry these in any supermarkets, they are even hard to find at the farmer’s market here in Hawaii. But you can usually find some trees at home depot for $7, plant it and wait about 1 to 2 years.
If you get the chance, you MUST try them. They are soft and creamy, with notes of vanilla and resemble ice cream when frozen! The have a blueish tint when they are un-ripe, and once they are yellow and very soft they are at their peak ripeness. These banana trees like to lean instead of standing tall, so beware before you plant them on the side of your path. Read more about ice cream bananas at this article from the Huffington Post.
Banana Ice Cream Instructions:
To make ice cream banana “ice cream”, all you need to do is peel several ripe ripe bananas and add to your blender or food processor and whip into a creamy creamy puree and chill in the freezer for 1-2 hours.
Obviously, any bananas will work. Just don’t use ones that are browning or very bruised. An easier way to enjoy the taste, is to simply peel and freeze the bananas and enjoy as a super simple, sweet and satisfying dessert. If left in the freezer longer, it will still be good but the consistency will crystalize. If you have an ice cream maker, you may want to take it a step further and prepare the bananas by churning it to decrease the crystals. I have used my Kitchenaid Ice cream attachment with excellent results. You can try adding coconut milk for a coconut ice cream banana ice cream.
nd easy. If you didn’t wash your dehydrator pristinely before your stored it from your last experiment, now is the time. Use warm soapy water. I even use a clean tooth brush to get in all the ridges and cracks.
. For making these fruit leathers I took out the plastic “grates” that usually accompany my dehydrator and replaced them with the fitted teflex sheets. See step 2.
is one example you can find on amazon.
lilikoi banana mixture spread out on sheets
