Hey, hey Robust Recipes! Happy Birthday! I can’t believe you’re one year old today! One year ago I launched Robust Recipes. I can’t believe how fast my baby is growing up. Phew, I made it to one year of posting blogs, at least two times a week. It has been my dream to be a food blogger for several years. I have always had a love affair with food, especially healthy, homemade food. My need to share my recipes with others has always been strong. You may not know this about me: I had been … [Read more...]
Gluten-free Banana Bread
Banana bread was one of my all-time favorite treats growing up. My mom would squirrel away over-ripe bananas in the freezer until blackened bananas covered in frost would fall out of the freezer every time we opened it. Then my mom would get to work baking up a loaf or two of banana bread. I remember standing by the oven sniffing the sweet smell of bananas baking. Finally, after what seemed like a year the oven timer would ding and my mom would pull the bread out of the oven. I would bug … [Read more...]
Irish Coffee
Happy St. Patrick’s Day friends, a day early, but close enough! If you tuned in for Friday’s post and Monday’s, then you know by now that I studied abroad in Ireland my Junior year in College. Therefore, you know that I am smitten with Ireland and anything Irish. For this St. Patrick’s Day I wanted to share an authentic Irish drink. I was never much of a beer drinker while I was in Ireland. Bulmer’s Hard Cider was my drink of choice. I drank hard cider way before it was cool to drink it … [Read more...]
Easy Crystallized Ginger
Recently, I have been obsessed with ginger. I have been drinking ginger tea, adding ginger to my smoothies, and eating crystallized/candied ginger. Ginger possesses some wonderful health benefits. Not only is it high in antioxidants, it is also an anti-inflammatory, and helps to stimulate the metabolism and digestion. Plus, it can help fight off the common cold and sooth an upset stomach. (source) I have found that eating crystallized ginger or drinking a cup of ginger tea … [Read more...]
Almond Coconut Chocolate Chip Granola Bars
Granola bars. The ultimate on-the-go breakfast or snack, right? Only one issue. Most store-bought granola bars are filled with preservatives and outrageous amounts of artificial sweeteners, even the “healthy” ones. Granola bars were never really my thing. It was only when I began making my own from scratch that I decided I must always keep a batch on hand. The difference between store-bought granola bars and homemade ones is crazy. Store bought are too chewy for my liking, often … [Read more...]
Black & White Black Bean Brownies (GF)
Remember my vegan and gluten-free black bean brownies and my chocolate and strawberry gluten-free black bean brownies? Remember how those were out-of-this-world scrumptiously good? Well I’ve got news for you. These Black & White Black Bean Brownies may trump the previous two versions. And I am not just saying that. Then again, I may be biased about these little guys because they bring up quite a bit of nostalgia for me. My aunt introduced us to these wonderful cupcakes that we would … [Read more...]
Raw Gingerbread Cookie Bites (V + GF)
One of my favorite Christmas-time activities as a kid was making homemade gingerbread and sugar cookies with my mom. We would spend hours decorating cookies that we had shaped or cut into gingerbread men, Santa, reindeer, snowmen, and Christmas trees. At the end of the day we would have frosted cookies that were dazzled with sprinkles and sugar. I was a sugar-crazed kid who thoroughly enjoyed scarfing down both the sugar cookies and the gingerbread cookies. Even as a kid my favorite of the … [Read more...]
Orange Hot Chocolate
Have you ever had one of those chocolate oranges ? We used to get them in our stocking every year for several year when I was a kid. I remember the excitement of opening the box and whacking the orange-sized ball of chocolate as hard as I could on the floor. WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! Three good whacks usually did it. Then I would peel off the orange tinted wrapper to reveal these luscious, shiny, chocolaty pieces of orange segments. The chocolate was even textured to look like the skin of … [Read more...]
Pumpkin-Spiced Chia Seed Pudding Topped with Pecan Crunch
‘Tis the season for pumpkin pie. Who doesn’t love a nice creamy, pumpkin-y, perfectly spiced slice of pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving Day? If you are not a pumpkin pie fan, I am not sure that we can be friends anymore. KIDDING! Kidding. I love pumpkin pie so much that I begin to crave it way before Thanksgiving. To make a pie that serves 8 when there are only two of us to eat it is not the best idea. Those leftover slices would be calling my name every time I walked into the kitchen. And I walk … [Read more...]
Pumpkin Seed Mayan Dark Chocolate Bark
Halloween is just around the corner! Do you have your pumpkins carved and your costumes picked out yet? Since we just bought our first house in June, we don’t have very many Halloween decorations, but I am ecstatic to have a front stoop to display our Jack-O-Lanterns on! One of my favorite parts about carving pumpkins as a kid was, of course, the food. I loved it when my mom roasted the pumpkin seeds with some sea salt. They turned from these gooey, slimy guts of the pumpkin into these … [Read more...]
