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Posts Tagged ‘cashews’

  1. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter Pecan Milkshake

    March 15, 2011 by julie

    Sometimes you wake up craving a green juice.  Other times, you wake up wanting a bowl of butter pecan ice cream.  For those kinda days, I recommend making this:

    I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter Pecan Milkshake

    Better than Cheerios!

    Who says you can’t have a milkshake for breakfast?  Certainly not the President of the World Raw Vegan Health Organization! (Okay, so I admit, there isn’t such a president nor even such an organization but if there were, he or she would certainly agree that you can definitely have this milkshake for breakfast.).

    This is what attracted me to the raw vegan lifestyle in the first place – the fact that you can have dessert for breakfast and still be healthy, look great, and feel energetic and vibrant (and no, it won’t make you fat).

    Raw desserts, my friends, are the gateway drug to the raw vegan lifestyle.

    You get hooked in with them.  You start off eating “cheesecake”, “milkshakes” and “chocolate cake” and before you know it, you’re playing drinking games with shots of wheatgrass and eating kale chips and raw vegan chili on Super Bowl Sunday.  Of course, eating only raw desserts is probably not a good idea (greens should eventually make up the bulk of your diet), but it’s liberating to know that you can have a milkshake for breakfast and know that it was packed full of nutritious plant protein, vitamins, minerals, and healthy plant fats (which your body needs!).

    Have I sold you yet, or did I have you at “milkshake for breakfast”?

    The following recipe is a variant of my Shamrawk Shake from last night.  Note that this makes a huge batch – you can feed your whole family a large glass for breakfast, or keep it a secret so that you can have it for yourself throughout the day.

    Ingredients:

    3 cups of vanilla almond milk, unsweetened

    2 cups of raw pecans, soaked for a couple of hours (see here on soaking)

    2 cups of raw cashews, soaked for a couple of hours (see here on soaking)

    1/2 cup of liquid vanilla (see here)

    2/3 cup raw agave

    1 tablespoon of yacon syrup*

    3 tablespoons of soy lecithin (see here)

    1/8 teaspoon salt

    *Yacon syrup is a great sweetener derived from the yacon plant.  It’s full of antioxidants and is great for those suffering from diabetes, as it doesn’t raise your blood sugar levels.  It has a caramel/molasses flavor, so I thought it would help me get that “butter pecan” taste.

    I got this at the Santa Monica Farmers' Market but you can find yacon syrup at Whole Foods or any health food grocery stores

    Looks and smells like molasses!

    Super Complicated Instructions

    Put everything into a high-speed blender and blend until smooth and creamy.  Put in your fridge to cool and thicken, then enjoy!

    Frothy goodness

    Blueberries and butter pecan milkshake - the breakfast of champions

     

    P.S. I was trying to make butter pecan ice cream but my ice cream bowl still won’t freeze (have a bad feeling that it’s broken) so I’ll have to settle for milkshakes for the indeterminate future.  So sad.

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  2. Shamrawk Shake

    March 14, 2011 by julie

    It’s that time of the year again.  The time when my husband and I drive from one McDonalds location to another (usually in the middle of the night, as that’s when the craving seems to hit him) in search of the elusive Mickey D’s dessert only offered in March in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

    I see some of you nodding your head.

    The Shamrock Shake.

    The disturbingly fluorescent green milkshake flavored with artificial mint, artificial vanilla, high-fructose corn syrup,  yellow 5, blue 1 and God-knows-what else (knowing McDonalds, I’m sure they put some beef lard in there as well).

    And every year, the same thing happens.  My husband gets the largest size there is of this green milkshake, gulps it down on our drive back home, and has a stomachache and heartburn all night long.  Then the next year rolls around, amnesia hits him and he wants to go back for one again.

    This year, I’m hoping to circumvent this search-drink-feel-ill cycle by making him a much healthier (and hopefully still tasty) version of this shake.  So folks, tonight I bring you:

    The Shamrawk Shake

    This recipe is based on the vanilla ice cream recipe from Sweet Gratitude, with some modifications and additions to make it shamrock-y.

    Fresh mint is so much better than Yellow 5 and Blue 1

    Ingredients:

    1 cup of almond milk, unsweetened (I used the Almond Breeze unsweetened vanilla flavor for convenience but it’s even better if you make your own!  Future post to come, I promise)

    1 cup of soaked (raw) cashews*

    1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons agave syrup

    1/4 cup liquid vanilla (see here)

    1 tablespoon soy lecithin*

    1/4 + 1/8 teaspoon salt

    3 and 1/2 tablespoons of fresh mint, chopped into small pieces

    1/4 teaspoon spirulina*

    * Cashews: Soak cashews overnight (or at least a few hours) in cold water.  Once soaked, drain the water and rinse cashews thoroughly.

    Soak cashews in cold water overnight

    Soy lecithin: This is a supplement found in health food stores.  In this recipe, it acts as a natural emulsifier and makes the shake creamier.

    Spirulina:  A ridiculously nutritious superfood.  Spirulina, a type of blue-green algae, is rich in protein (has approximately 60% protein content), vitamins and minerals.  It’s an acquired taste (and a scary green-blue color) but I only add a bit to this recipe to add a pretty green color to the milkshake (so much better than yellow 5 and blue 1).

    Step 1: Blend!

    Put the almond milk, cashews, agave, liquid vanilla, lecithin and salt into the blender and blend well.  Stick your finger in the blender (once you’ve turned it off, of course) and taste.  It should taste like melted vanilla ice cream.

    Blending away sans fingers

    Step 2:  Put the mixture in the freezer

    Put the mixture in a container and put in the freezer for about 30 minutes.  You want it to get really cold.  Originally I was going to make this mixture into an ice cream and then put the ice cream in the blender, but I’m impatient and didn’t want to wait for my ice cream bowl to freeze (24 hour wait! Who can wait that long for ice cream?!).  If you have an ice cream maker and have more patience than me, try making ice cream with the mixture, use the ice cream for your milkshake and tell me how it goes! And send me some while you’re at it.

    Step 3:  Blend again

    So I have a confession to make.  I drank some of this vanilla mixture while it was chilling in the freezer because, well, I really wanted some.  And, because I drank it straight from the container (I know, I know), I have no idea how much I drank.

    I wanted to give you folks exact measurements for the mint and spirulina (wrong measurements could result in disaster, especially with the spirulina, and you would hate me forever, trust me), so the following instructions apply to only 1 cup of the liquid mixture.  Adjust accordingly and feel free the drink the leftover mixture like I did.

    Put 1 cup of the liquid mixture, mint and spirulina in the blender.  Blend well but be careful not to blend too long or you will warm up the milkshake.  Put the milkshake in the freezer a bit longer for it to thicken and get really cold and enjoy!*

    Shamrawk Shake - No beef lard in this one!

    * For my husband’s colleagues: I am sending him to work tomorrow with a bottle of this (about 2 cups).  Feel free to bug him for a sample!

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