Butternut Squash Banana Pie (Paleo)

A new Thanksgiving dessert recipe! Well, kind of. I wouldn’t limit this to Thanksgiving. It’s too good to eat only once a year.

Fear not if you think butternut squash is weird to include in a dessert (I have my Butternut Squash Chocolate Pudding, Butternut Squash Chocolate Truffles, and Chocolate Almond Butternut Squash Cookies to prove you wrong, by the way) because the taste of it is not detectable! This tastes like a good ol’ banana and peanut/almond butter pie. The butternut squash acts as a filler to make extra volume. And who would complain about a more voluminous pie?

Not this girl here 😉

And as a Thanksgiving special, I’ve included a 2 in 1 recipe! Pie filling and a pie crust. I have long stopped using store-bought pie crust. This recipe is a lot healthier than what you can find in a store. Plus it takes only 3 seconds to make!     

Butternut Squash Banana Pie (Paleo)

Pie Crust Recipe:

Ingredients:

1 cup of raw nuts (almonds, pecans, walnuts…whatever you fancy!)

1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1.5 tbsp water

1/4 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place nuts and and coconut in food processor and pulse until fine. Add in rest of ingredients. Pulse, scraping sides if needed. Dump pie crust into a 9-in pie pan and press down and up against the sides. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes. Meanwhile…

Pie Filling:

Ingredients:

1 cup cooked and pureed butternut squash

1/4 cup nut butter of choice

3 ripe bananas

2 tbsp coconut oil, melted

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp salt

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in food process and blend until smooth. Spread in a prepared pie crust and freeze for 3-4 hours. If freezing for a longer period of time, allow to thaw before eating. 

Advertisement

Coconut Flour Bacon and Jalapeño Cheddar Biscuits

When I was little, I never looked forward to Thanksgiving. To me, it was just an early dinner with my family. And since I didn’t really enjoy eating (I just wanted to go play), Thanksgiving dinner was just boring. Except for the biscuits.

I ate those biscuits like it was my job. And would then get in trouble for eating too many

However, times have changed and I have come to love Thanksgiving (and obviously food!). While turkey and sweet potatoes have replaced biscuits as my favorite Thanksgiving food, I still have a soft spot for biscuits.

In case you haven’t noticed, more and more of the recipes on my blog are grain-free. After much research, I have eliminated grain from my daily diet. HOWEVER, this does not mean I will never have a slice of cake again (I’ll save it for special occasions). I’ve just decided to stop making recipes that use flour. Since I often cook for myself, my grain-intake has automatically dropped.

Anyway, this decision led to my urgency to create recipes that can be substituted in for recipes using grain. Which leads us to these biscuits.

True, the bacon and jalapeño are not part of a traditional Thanksgiving, but I think it adds a nice and complex taste to the meal!

Happy Turkey Day!

Coconut Flour Bacon and Jalapeño Cheddar Biscuits

Ingredients:

1 egg

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup cheddar cheese, shredded

2 and 1/2 tbsp coconut flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 strips of cooked bacon, crumbled into small pieces

1 tbsp jalapeño pepper, finely chopped

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a bowl, whisk together the egg and water. In another bowl, combine the shredded cheese, coconut flour, baking powder, salt, bacon, and pepper. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix together. Let sit for 3 minutes for the dough to thick. With a spoon, scoop up the dough and drop it onto an oiled baking pan. Repeat process of each biscuit. Bake for 15 minutes. Let sit for 10 minutes before eating. 

Creamed Spinach (Paleo)

Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching. Where has November gone? No complaints here, however. It just means that I’m closer to the semester being over 🙂

In honor of Thanksgiving, I’m doing a “creamed”  spinach recipe this week!

I’ve found that as I’ve gotten older, I rarely drink milk anymore, let alone cow’s milk. Water is my drink of choice. Therefore, it’s annoying to use a recipe that calls for milk (or cream that I then replace with milk). After I use it, it usually just sits in the fridge until it goes bad. Because of this, I’ve been using more and more of canned coconut milk lately. And I guarantee you, that does not go bad in my house. Plus, it makes this dish paleo-friendly 🙂

Need another Thanksgiving recipe? I made these biscuits last year. Ironically though, they do require milk!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Paleo Creamed Spinach

Ingredients: 

22 oz fresh spinach

1/2 of one butternut squash, cut into SMALL pieces (you can add more or less, depending on how much squash you want)

1 tbsp ghee

1 small onion, chopped in small pieces

1 tsp nutmeg

salt and pepper

1 cup full-fat, canned coconut milk (or more)

Directions: 

Fill a large pot with 6 cups of water. Bring to a boil and gradually add spinach. Once all the spinach is wilted, drain in a colander, pressing against the spinach with the back of a spoon to release as much liquid as possible. Set aside.

Melt ghee in a deep skillet over medium-low heat. Add in butternut squash and cook until tender, about 10 minutes (this might take a longer or shorter amount of time depending on the size of your pieces.) Add in onions and sauté for 5 minutes. Add in spinach, followed by coconut milk, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Cook for another 5 minutes before serving.

Biscuits

Every time I’ve visited my Reader recently, I have been overwhelmed with Thanksgiving recipes. (Not that I’m complaining, heck I’d love Thanksgiving recipes in July!) And so, I’ve given in to blog peer pressure and decided to post my own Thanksgiving recipe. And yes, I know, eyes are rolling because, please, who’s going to look at a simple biscuit recipe when you’re going to be bombarded with stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey, and pumpkin pie? Well, first off, I’ve taken note that every time I go over someone’s house for a holiday dinner, they have made store-bought, frozen biscuits. And I understand that in the haste of preparing a feast, biscuits might be the last thing on the cook’s mind. However, I started making my own biscuits last year and everybody noticed the difference.

Secondly, to be perfectly honest, I haven’t come up with many recipes for Thanksgiving. While my family is good sports about trying my creations, Thanksgiving is the one time that they want the traditional stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey, etc. And so, I have very little flexibility (Note: I say little because I do change things up a little bit. Hey, if they are not going to help me cook, they can’t blame me if I “accidentally” add something in that’s not apart of the standard menu 🙂 )

Biscuits

Ingredients:

2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp salt

4 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp unrefined coconut oil, melted

2/3 cup milk + a few additional teaspoons

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. In a bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder. Mix in the coconut oil and milk. Kneed a few times with your hands, adding TEASPOONS of milk, if the dough is too dry. Break the dough into 10 small balls and press each down slightly on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 12 minutes.

Enjoy and have a Happy Thanksgiving!