Blendtec

Cooking With Kayla: Banana Oatmeal Muffins

January 11, 2013 6:54 pm By Janelle 2 Comments

Today for Cooking With Kayla, we experimented with Banana Oatmeal Muffins. We got the recipe from Keeping up with the Joneses, but apparently that blog has been deleted, so I have put the recipe below for your reference.

This should work fine in any blender, but I especially loved using my Blendtec, as it is so quick and efficient! My favorite part was the pouring into the muffin cups, instead of scooping! It was so easy for Kayla, with very little slop! I also found that pouring directly into the muffin tin, at least with this recipe, caused far less sticking than using muffin cups. I will have to try that with some of my other recipes!

These were really good, but I thought a little bit dense. I have some things in the back of my mind on how to tweak them a bit next time, so stay tuned!

For now, here’s our recipe:

1) Combine in blender the following:

2 very ripe bananas
2-1/2 cups Gluten-Free Oats (not quick cooking) – could use rolled or whole
1 cup Greek yogurt
2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

2) Pour into muffin tins.

3) Bake at 400 for 20-25 minutes or until cake tester comes out clean!

As with all recipes, make sure your ingredients are gluten-free and meet your family’s dietary needs!

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Avocado Dip Recipe Plus Blendtec Giveaway!

October 10, 2012 2:44 pm By Janelle 101 Comments

I told you a Blendtec giveaway was coming, and HERE IT IS! But first off, I want to share with you my latest recipe using this baby!

I got some Wholly Salsa the other day because I was craving tomato salsa, and I was soooo disappointed to realize they had changed the formulation! Their mild salsa used to be my favorite, but now it seems they only have one tomato salsa option, and it is more on the medium side, just a bit too spicy for me! So I dug through my recipe file and down a recipe my sister-in-law gave me a while ago, and tweaked it a bit to make some avocado dip! I had found avocados at my grocery outlet for $0.13 each (yes you DID read that correctly, they were 8/$1!!!!) and of course I had to grab 2, even though I had currently had no plans for them, so I had them in my refrigerator drawer, just waiting to be used!

I also had half a container of sour cream that was on its last legs, and this salsa that I suddenly wasn’t as much a fan of as I thought I would be. Here’s what my recipe looked like:

1) Combine the following in the Blendtec:

2 avocados, peeled, pitting, and cut into chunks
1 cup tomato salsa
1 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper

2) Blend! I used about a medium setting for about 10 seconds. We are not big “chunk” fans in this household, especially when it comes to anything fruit or vegetable-ish. By “we” I mean the hubby. And I thought maybe it would be more likely to be enjoyed by all if it was nice and smooth! He’s still not a huge fan, but the kiddos and I LOOOOVE it!

3) Enjoy with chips, crackers, or whatever. The flavor is wonderful!

As with all recipes, make sure your ingredients are gluten-free and meet your family’s dietary needs!

Now for the giveaway! Blendtec is giving away, to one lucky reader, a NEW Blendtec Designer Series Wildside! Yes, I’m serious! Here are the instructions if you want to enter:

1) Follow Blendtec on Facebook OR Twitter.

2) Go to Blendtec.com’s Recipe Page and pick a recipe you would try, if you had a Blendtec of your own! Then come back and leave a comment on THIS POST telling me what it is!

3) Fill out the form below (First Name and Last Initial, plus valid email address to contact the winner). Please make sure to read the Disclosure and Rules of Entry below BEFORE entering.

Disclosure/Rules of Entry: Blendtec sent me a Blendtec Designer Series Wildside free of charge in order to give an accurate review of their product. All opinions in this post are mine and those of my family. You can read my full Disclosure Policy here. The giveaway will end on Wednesday, 10/17/12 at 9 p.m. EDT. Valid for U.S. addresses only. One entry per household. Duplicate entries will be deleted. Must be 18 or older to enter. Winner will be chosen via Randomizer.org and contacted via email provided. If winner does not respond to email within 48 hours, an alternate winner will be chosen. Please add glutenfreelyfrugal@gmaildotcom to your address book to avoid your award email being sent to your spam folder. Void where prohibited.

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Cooking With Kayla: Our Creative Smoothie!

August 10, 2012 7:00 pm By Janelle Leave a Comment

Today Kayla and I decided to make a smoothie. But not just any smoothie. I was intrigued by this Sweet Potato Smoothie recipe, but don’t have any sweet potatoes in the house right now. However, I do have an abundant amount of frozen butternut squash, due to having gotten a bunch of Woodstock Farm veggies for almost FREE after a really sweet coupon several months back! We have painfully found out that no matter what method I use to make butternut squash, no one likes it, but I cannot bring myself to throw out food. This seemed like the perfect way to use up my butternut squash.

Here’s our recipe:

1) Layer in a blender (of course I used my new Blendtec!) in the following order:

1 cup milk
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 apple, sliced (I left the peel on but you could peel if you wanted to)
1 banana, broken into pieces
1 cup frozen (just slightly thawed for maybe an hour) butternut squash
1/2 to 1 cup of ice, depending on your blender and your preference on thickness

2) Blend! I used the smoothie setting on my Blendtec.

3) We used the extra in the bottom to fill up our popsicle sticks, so we can enjoy them frozen as well!

Kayla and I loved this smoothie. We truly could not tell there was any squash in there. Hannah wasn’t too big a fan, I think due to the nutmeg taste, since she loves both apples and bananas! This will definitely be a repeat recipe, until we clear out both freezers of my huge stock of butternut squash!

As with all recipes, make sure your ingredients are gluten-free and meet your family’s dietary needs!

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Cooking With Kayla: Peanut Butter Refrigerator Fudge

July 27, 2012 7:00 pm By Janelle 1 Comment

For Cooking With Kayla this week, we were hungry for fudge and decided to experiment with this recipe by Beyond the Peel. I didn’t have enough almond butter to do justice to her original recipe so I subbed half peanut butter. Here’s what we did:

1) Combine all of the following in a high power blender. I used the Twister Jar from my Blendtec.

1/2 cup coconut oil
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup almond butter (you could also try sunbutter if you have a nut allergy)
1/4 cup raw honey (alfalfa honey is my favorite!)
1/2 mashed banana
1 teaspoon gluten-free vanilla

2) Pour into a pan and either refrigerate or freeze. You’ll want to store in the refrigerator or freezer as well, because it will melt at room temperature.

Give it a few hours to firm up, then enjoy! We certainly did.

One change I would make is that I used too large of a pan, so it got way too thin (as you can see from the picture). I would use a smaller pan next time, or double the recipe.

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Chocolate Chip Cookie Bar Recipe

July 18, 2012 4:00 pm By Janelle 2 Comments

Here’s a great recipe for a Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Bar! I found this recipe a while ago (it’s been around various blogs so I’m sorry if I don’t give correct credit to the FIRST person to come up with this recipe)! Anyway, I found it to be so interesting because it uses chickpeas. Now, I am not a chickpea person. I detest both the taste and the smell. But this one intrigued me so much that I just had to try it.

Plus, I was anxious to see how my Blendtec would perform with a thicker batter. This recipe called for hardly any liquid. So I gave it a shot!

1) Blend the following ingredients in a high-speed blender or food processor (I used the “batter” setting on my Blendtec):

1 can (or approximately 1-1/2 cups) Chickpeas or White Beans (make sure to drain and rinse very well)
1/2 cup Gluten-Free Oats
3 tablespoons Applesauce (I used sweetened)
2 tablespoons Oil of your choice
1 teaspoon Gluten-Free Vanilla
3/4 cups Brown Sugar
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/4 teaspoon Salt

2) Once the batter is well-blended, pour into a separate mixing bowl and mix in 3/4 cup of chocolate chips. Pour into a buttered round pan. Bake at 350 for approximately 25 minutes. You can serve this warm (although it’s a bit mushy) or let it sit in the refrigerator. We found that it is delicious cold as well.

This is a wonderful recipe, and no one would ever guess that there are legumes of any kind in it! And the Blendtec performed excellently.

As with all recipes, make sure your ingredients are gluten-free and meet your family’s dietary needs!

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Black Bean Brownies with my Blendtec!

July 9, 2012 11:00 am By Janelle 1 Comment

I’m sure by now you’ve seen the “secret ingredient” Black Bean Brownie recipe floating around blogs, Pinterest, pretty much everywhere. I found mine here, although not really sure where it started to credit the right person. I had previously done a post on them on my blog but wanted to redo them since I got my Blendtec! Last time I made these they were ALMOST perfect, but still had a few unblended bean-y spots and I wanted to get the batter completely smooth!

In reading some of the comments about this recipe, I noticed that many people had trouble with the chocolate chips sinking to the bottom of the batter, which tells me that the batter is probably a bit too runny. So I figured, maybe it needs just a little something to thicken it. Coconut flour! Keeps it low-carb, doesn’t add any starches, still okay for all those grain-free folks out there. And to top it off, maybe will even further eliminate any “beany” taste by adding in the coconutty sweetness.

Here’s my recipe:

Ingredients:

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed very well
3 eggs
1/3 cup melted butter
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (I’m afraid I used a bit more)
2 tablespoons coconut flour (doesn’t seem like a lot, but it did the trick!)

This was so easy! I just dumped all the ingredients (except the chocolate chips) into my Blendtec jar (wettest ingredients on the bottom, then the drier ingredients on top) and hit the “Batter” setting. Let me tell you, those beans were pulverized! I ran the Batter setting twice just for good measure, but probably wouldn’t have needed to.

Then I poured the batter into a separate bowl and stirred in the chocolate chips. It’s kind of hard to stir in chocolate chips with the blade at the bottom. Pour into a buttered 8 x 8 baking dish. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, or until center is done.

That’s it! So easy to mix up, naturally GF, and they taste almost like fudge! I think they’re even better when they’ve cooled completely, rather than right out of the oven.

Enjoy!

As with all recipes, make sure your ingredients are gluten-free and meet your family’s dietary needs!

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My FedEx Surprise: A Blendtec!

July 3, 2012 12:00 pm By Janelle 1 Comment

I always love getting packages, but I have to say, yesterday’s takes the (gluten-free) cake! I got a Blendtec blender via FedEx yesterday! Now I knew it was coming, but the joy of anticipation just made it even more fun!

I have never had a good blender. I don’t know why, but they just break down on me! So, when Blendtec offered to send me one of their Designer Series blenders to use and blog about with my gluten-free recipes, I was ecstatic! Now that I’ve received this thing, I’m even more ecstatic. We’re still in the stages of trying it out (actually I wonder if I’ll ever get a turn with it, my hubby is so excited he’s kind of commandeered it for now).

Yesterday we whipped up 2 things with it (and boy do I ever mean “whipped up”)!!! We made our classic Fruit Smoothies and then tackled milkshakes in the evening. It wayyyy exceeded my expectations. Seriously, it just blends! It doesn’t smoke, shake, or act like it’s going to explode. It just does its job.

Here’s our smoothie recipe, which really isn’t a recipe per se, you just throw in whatever fruit you have, in whatever quantities you prefer, but here’s our favorite:

2 cups plain yogurt (I have a yogurt maker with the individual cups, which I think hold a little less than a cup each, and I use two of them – this is just an average)
1 cup milk
1 cup frozen strawberries
1 banana
1/2 cup frozen blueberries
Handful of spinach, de-stemmed
Stevia to taste

No chunks, that’s for sure!

Keep an eye out, I’ll be posting lots more recipes using my new “toy” in the coming weeks, and if you hang tight, I might even be having a giveaway. Yes, seriously, a giveaway!