Chocolate Calas

I have a bag of beautiful black rice. It has a wonderful buttery flavor and a great texture, not too mushy not too tough. I served it as a side earlier this week and then again with lunch, the only problem with it is that my kids don't eat it. My kids are not terribly picky eaters, but for some reason they only pecked at the rice. I don't like wasting food. My guess is that the color was throwing the kids off, so I needed a way to use it that wouldn't be obvious. Black rice pudding and black fried rice were not really options. However chocolate calas would revive the rice and bring it to a whole new level. Essentially calas are doughnuts or fritter made with leftover rice, usually with vanilla, cinnamon, sugar, eggs and flour. I opted for coconut flour for my version, honey and stevia combination and cocoa powder to embrace the rich color of my black rice.

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Spiced Fried Banana Custard

We are talking truly spiced here, not just a dab of cinnamon. I wanted to bring in the exotic and deep spices found in Indian or Thai food, without getting carried away... I may have gotten a little carried away.  I tried a bunch of different spices and combinations until I settled on just 5 spices; cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, orange peel and turmeric. These 5 spices were glorious when fried with the banana and coconut oil and then whirled into the coconut milk. Normally I let my kids have the spatula and mixing bowl, but instead I shamelessly licked the bowl (it's okay, they got to gobble up the custard)

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Cream Cheese and Cinnamon Breakfast Cookies (Grain Free)

I had planned to work on graham crackers today, but last night it turned from blazing hot, sleeping with all the windows open, fans blowing, and not a cover in sight to brisk, cool, find some covers and snuggle deep into them. It was such a pleasant feeling that every

one seemed to linger in their beds this morning. When I did finally get up there wasn't enough time for the breakfast casserole on my menu plan. My 4 year old asked if biscuits would be fast enough. I had made some quick grain free drop biscuits with cheese and herbs to accompany dinner the other night and all my boys loved them. So I set about quickly converting a simple biscuit recipe into these Cream Cheese and Cinnamon Breakfast "Cookies".

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Butternut & Cardamom Mousse

I love creamy things with fall flavors. Of course we are in the middle of a heat wave so my hopes of piping hot soups and warming spicy drinks have been put on hold for ice water, ice cream and creamy cold mousse. The flavor of fall in something light and airy. Perfect. I had leftover butternut squash after trying to make the ends into chips, so I roasted the fat ends to turn into baby food and was inspired along the way.

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Dark Chocolate and Orange Cheesecake Bites

I don't know how original these are. It seems like there are thousands of freezer candies (or fat bombs) out there. I didn't realize that until this morning when I was actively searching pinterest to try and make sure I wasn't duplicating something someone has already done. I came up with the idea because after having these freezer candies (yeah I know, fat bombs. But for some reason I just don't like the sound of fat bomb, so I will stick with freezer candy or freezer cheesecakes, that sounds much more delicious and doesn't remind me of WWII and the atomic bombs...eh, where was I?)

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