Khoshaf

I'll end this month of delicious spicy and Egyptian food with a simple but beautiful dish. This is Khushaf  or Khoshaf, a traditional Egyptian dish which is often made during Ramadan to break the fast. It's good for Ramadan because of the high amount of sugars to give you energy during the day and the protein from the nuts.

It's like a compote, but not cooked. Or perhaps like a fruit salad, but made with dried fruits and nuts. It's very quick and easy to make and makes a delicious dessert, breakfast or snack at any time of the day. It's a lot healthier than a lot of other things you could have for dessert and conveniently you make it the day before, so it is a stress free dessert to serve up to guests.

You can soak the fruit in apple juice instead of water if you want to make it sweeter - but in my opinion it is sweet enough! You can also substitute other types of nuts, if you like.

Khoshaf

Ingredients
1/2 cup raisins (I used golden)
1/2 cup whole prunes
1/2 cup halved dates
1/2 cup sliced dried apricots
1/2 cup halved dried figs
1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 cup dry roasted almonds (you can just used blanched if you prefer)
Water, to cover

To Make
1. Place all the dried fruit and the nuts in a bowl.
2. Cover with about 6 cups water, the fruit should be covered by at least 2 inches.
3. Leave in the fridge over night to soak. Check to make sure that there is enough water - if the fruit has absorbed all of the water then you'll need to add more. There should be plenty of syrupy juice left in the bowl after the fruit have absorbed as much as they can.
4. Eat! We just ate it as it is, but you could also serve over ice cream or with yoghourt.

Serves 6.

This month I'm featuring lots of delicious food from Egypt.

Check out my other Egyptian recipe posts:

Preserved Lemons

Limoonada (Egyptian Lemonade)

Mesa'a'ah (Spicy Eggplant)

Orange and Olive Salad with Cumin

'Ancient Egyptian Peasant' Beer Onions

Creamy Tahini Sauce

Ful Medames

Choc Banana Ice Cream Pie (Vegan & Sugar Free!)

Today is the day they vegans have their picnic!

It's the Vegan Virtual Potluck today and I have been very excited about it ever since I signed up. I can't wait to see what everybody else is bringing to the potluck - 103 bloggers will be contributing this year. So sit back and work your way through them all. Each post is linked to the next post so you can start at appetisers and work your way through to dessert. To start from the beginning and work your way through head to veganbloggersunite.com for the host post (with the most). If you've already worked your way through all the recipes before me then you must already be very full, but I hope you left some room because this is worth it!

Cooking for an event with a whole host of other vegan cooks from around the world, I knew that I wanted to bring something special because every vegan blogger already knows how to make vegan chocolate cakes, vegan cupcakes of all varieties and all the more common forms of desserts. I also wanted to make it something a bit healthy, and preferably free from processed sugars. It's true that fruits and vegetables naturally contain sugar, so nothing with fruit or vegetables in it is ever completely sugar free.

I've been meaning to try the chocolate ice cream posted by JJ at 84th & 3rd for the Death By Chocolate Blog hop for some time, so I decided to use it as the ice cream layer for my pie. It's made from avocado, banana and cocoa and that is it. So elegant that I had to try it. She calls it chocolate ice cream - but I've called mine chocolate banana ice cream because I can tell you that you can definitely taste the banana! You can't taste the avocado though, so no worries there!

You need to be a little bit organised and have a bit of time to prepare this - but the great thing about it is that it lives in the freezer. So you can make it as far in advance as you like and it keeps forever in the freezer. The first step you need to do it to freeze your bananas. Quick tip - peel the bananas first! It's perfect for using up the super brown bananas that you sometimes discover in your fruit bowl!

Ingredients

1 large ripe avocado (but not over ripe!)

2 frozen bananas

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1-2 tbsp kahlua (optional, contains sugar)

1 cup pitted dates, chopped

1/3 cup macadamia nuts

1/4 cup rolled oats

1 tbsp cocoa

To Make

1. Place the avocado, banana and cocoa in a food processor and process until smooth and creamy. Add the kahlua to taste (if using).

2. Transfer to a dish (a loaf tin is a good size and shape for the smallish amount of ice cream that this makes) and place in the freezer. Set your oven timer for half an hour and when it beeps get the ice cream out and give it a good stir, make sure you break up all the ice crystals that are forming at the edges. Do this every half hour 3 times.

3. While your ice cream is chilling, you can make the base. If you have a really good food processor then you can just put the dates in whole and add the nuts, oats and cocoa all at the same time. Because my food processor is a bit old and crap I started with the oats, nuts and cocoa and then I added the chopped dates a few at a time so that it didn't get overloaded. Process all 4 ingredients until fairly fine.

4. Grab a 19-20cm diameter spring form cake tin. Pour out your processed base and use your hands or the back of a spoon to press it down firmly and evenly all over the bottom of the tin. Place the base in the fridge now until  your ice cream is done (it should be in there at least half an hour).

5. After you've taken out and stirred the ice cream 3-4 times, pour it over the base and smooth over the top. Place back in the freezer and leave in the freezer for at least 2-3 hours (easiest just to leave overnight!).

Serving Tips

~Just before serving, take out of the freezer and leave to sit at room temperature for about 5 minutes (10 minutes in cold weather) to let it soften slightly

~ To ensure easier cutting and neat slices, heat the knife under hot water and then dry it with a tea towel just before cutting. If you are cutting lots of slices, you may have to do this several times.

~If you like, you can decorate with dark chocolate shavings - however, unless you have sugar free chocolate it may then cease to be sugar free :) Healthier garnishes would include fresh or frozen berries or cherries. Or maybe even some slices of banana.

Makes 1 x small pie. 

~If you want to make a bigger one, double the recipe and use a 23cm springform cake pan.

What's next for dessert? Time to move on to the next Potluck Offering. 

Hit this button to go to the previous post (Super Vegan Crepes by Bacon is Not an Herb) or click here:

Hit this button to go to the next post (Delectable Date Squares by In Fine Balance) or click here:

Now I'm going to sit back with a glass of wine and work my way through the 102 other dishes at this potluck! It's going to be a big night, I hope you'll join me!

Quadruple Hazelnut and Date Breakfast Muffins

Remember this Peach and Date Bircher Muesli post I did at the start of the month? You probably don't - so I'll recap! I admitted that I am terrible at eating breakfast in the mornings and vowed to change that! I also said I'd be posting lots of interesting new breakfast ideas. Well, I've kept half of that deal! I have been much better at eating breakfast this month and have only had 1 or 2 days this month when I have skipped breakfast, which is a big improvement. However, I haven't posted any more breakfast recipes since then - so I'm rectifying that now!

I've had fun making interesting breakfasts for myself - including a couple of different types of bircher muesli and my own vegan lemon curd (which is great on crumpets!). But I think the best idea for breakfasts is really - breakfast muffins. You can have one day a week where you make up a batch and then you are set for breakfasts for the whole week. Just get up and grab a muffin - no effort required! Muffins also make great healthy day time snacks.

These hazelnut muffins look plain and unassuming but their texture and taste are just amazing! If you are crazy about hazelnuts I recommend using hazelnut milk instead of soy milk and adding half a cup of chopped hazelnuts in - then it will be four levels of hazelnut in the one amazing muffin!

If you want more ideas for breakfast muffins check out my Blueberry Oat Bran Muffins and my Orange, Almond and Choc Chip Muffins!

On another note - I've been nominated for the Best Australian Blogs 2012 People's Choice Award - you can vote for me by hitting up this link: http://www.sydneywriterscentre.com.au/bloggingcomp/peopleschoice.html

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups wholemeal flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarb soda

1/2 cup hazelnut meal

2/3 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup hazelnut milk (or soy if you don't have it)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/3 cup canola oil

1/3 cup hazelnut butter

½ cup dried dates, chopped in half

NB: If you are crazy about hazelnuts then you could also add some chopped hazelnuts to this.

To Make:

1. Preheat your oven to about 180 degrees C.

2. Put the flour, hazelnut meal, sugar, bicarb, baking powder and salt in a bowl and mix well to combine and remove lumps (a whisk or a fork work well for this).

3. Make a well in the centre and pour in the hazelnut milk, canola oil, vanilla and hazelnut butter and mix well.

4. Stir through the chopped dates.

5. Either grease a muffin tray well or cheat a bit and use cupcake liners (which I did - it's just easier!!). Fill the tray/liners to the top and then bake for 23-25 mins. 

6. Remove from the oven when they are golden on top and transfer to a cooling rack.

Makes 10 muffins.

Peach, Date and Walnut Bircher Muesli

I have a confession to make. I'm not good at eating breakfast. I beat myself up about it a lot because I know how important breakfast is. I'm always telling my patients how important it is to have breakfast and yet each morning I struggled to get inspired to eat and I usually end up skipping it. But now, I'm trying to kick myself in the backside and eat more regularly and get a healthy routine happening. The big first step is making sure I have breakfast every morning.

There are two main reasons I don't ever want to eat breakfast. Firstly, I never feel hungry in the mornings (this may be something to do with the fact that I usually have a big dinner). Secondly, I just don't like many breakfast foods. As a vegan I don't eat eggs, milk or yoghourt. That cuts out a lot of traditional breakfast foods. I'm also not big on eating a lot of wheat because it just isn't the kind of thing I want to fill my body with! All that really leaves me with for breakfast is elaborate things like pancakes (which I don't have the time or energy to make every day). So, I have set myself the mission of coming up with new things for breakfast which will actually excite me and make me want to eat breakfast!

This gorgeous bircher muesli was a fantastic start and made me feel really excited about my new routine! The thing I liked best about it was the fact it takes me 5 minutes to prepare it the night before and then it's just in the fridge waiting for me when I get up - so quick and easy! I loved this so much I decided to make exactly the same thing again for my breakfast the next day.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups rolled oats

1/3 cup dates, chopped

1 tbsp pepitas 

1 tbsp sunflower seeds

1 cup apple juice

1 large ripe peach

1/3 cup walnuts

2 tbsp slivered almonds, lightly toasted in a dry fry pan or for about a minute in a pre heated oven

To Make:

1. Mix the oats, dates, pepitas and sunflower seeds in a small bowl. Mix the apple juice in and leave to soak in the fridge overnight (or minimum 1 hour).

2. Slice and pit the peach and dice. Break the walnuts up with your hands and mix them and the peaches into the soaked muesli. 

3. Serve sprinkled with toasted slivered almonds.

Serves 2.

You'll be seeing a lot of new breakfast recipes from me I hope! What is your favourite quick and easy breakfast?

UPDATE:

It't been a few months now since I pledged to find and share some yummy vegan breakfast ideas, so here are some links to the ones I had added:

For more great vegan breakfast ideas that are worth getting up for check out:

Vegan Blueberry Oatbran Muffins (plus variations!)

Rainbow Banana Pancakes with Bourbon Syrup

Peach, Date and Walnut Bircher Muesli

Quadruple Hazelnut and Date Breakfast Muffins

Cherry and Almond Bircher Muesli

Chocolate Raspberry Pancakes