recipe Archives - Vesna en violet

Food

My favorite healthy breakfast

7. 5. 2017

Today I’m sharing my favorite breakfast of this year with you: a healthy green smoothie bowl! This breakfast is so yummy and filling and will actually make you feel amazing for the rest of the day. What I usually do is blend some greens, such as kale or spinach, with a banana, some ginger and maybe a few pieces of frozen fruits. Then I toast a few tablespoons of rolled oats and coconut flakes with a teaspoon of coconut sugar to add some sweetness. When they turn golden brown, I pour my smoothie in a bowl and top it off with oats. I usually add some frozen strawberries or blueberries just to make it look a bit more special! Bon appétit :)

♥

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Food

Sour cherry pie & chocolate frosting

18. 4. 2017

I’m a huge pie lover and since we’ve had an amazing weather in the last couple of weeks (this week excluded), I felt an extreme urge to bake. Pies, that is. ANY pies with a fruit filling! They are so easy to prepare, you just throw everything for the crust together and experiment with different sorts of toppings. So the first pie I made two weeks ago was a vegan and gluten-free sour cherry pie with coconut-chocolate frosting. I wasn’t particularly happy with the rice flour crust as it was too dry, but the rest of it was amazing.

For the sour cherry filling I used 450 g defrosted sour cherries, 2 tablespoons of agar agar flakes and 2 tablespoons of coconut sugar. I simmered them for about 10 minutes to let the agar agar flakes dissolve completely. Then I poured a slightly cooled filling onto the pre-baked crust. As for the chocolate frosting, I melted 100 g of a good quality dark chocolate and two teaspoons of coconut milk, I like this combo so much! I poured that on top and tried to cover the whole pie with the chocolate using a spatula. I put it into the freezer overnight and served it the next day. I love the combination of sour cherries and chocolate, it’s so refreshing and I love the fact that there is no additional sugar. Yummm!

♥

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Food

A dessert-for-breakfast smoothie!

20. 4. 2016

As you can see from the title, we’ll be discussing smoothies again, yay! I’ve posted quite a few recipes over the last few years, but none of them was so good that I would eat the exact same type every single day for weeks. Let’s see how to make it and what it has to offer:

2 ripe bananas ♥ a bunch of greens (eg. spinach, rocket) ♥ a big cup of blueberries
2 tbsp peanut butter ♥ 2 tbsp cacao ♥ 1 cup water ♥ 1 tsp chia seeds

Smoothies are such an easy dish to do: just put everything in a blender and let it do its job for a few minutes. Then pour in glasses and sprinkle with chia seeds, voilà!

I just want to mention that try to get a peanut butter without any additional oils or sugar – some store-bought peanut butters are full of hydrogenated oils and who knows what else. I get mine at DM as it is only made of peanuts!

This smoothie is a health bomb in a glass! Bananas are full of potassium and will give you lots of energy, blueberries and cacao are packed with antioxidants and chia seeds will provide you with a bunch of beneficial nutrients. I usually add a teaspoon of maca powder as well, I think it gives me so much energy that I don’t need my typical cup of coffee in the morning at all!

You can also take a look at two of my other smoothies – although they are completely different in color, I promise you they are just as amazing: 1) a pink one and 2) a good old green smoothie! Enjoy!

♥

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Food

Guilt-free bounty bars

30. 8. 2015

I am actually writing this post with a huge delay as I am currently on my vacation in Greece! :) Nevertheless, I have to share the recipe for these bounty bars with you. You can find countless recipes on the Internet, but this is how I like to do them. Honestly, the best dessert I have ever made, and I don’t say that easily. It is low in sugar, consists of lots of healthy goodness and tastes amazing. All in all, this cannot be even compared to the store-bought Bounty! And the ingredients are far healthier… Oh, and the taste! Plus, it is done in a heartbeat. You’ll need:

4 cups shredded coconut ♥ 3 tbsp raw honey ♥ 3 tbsp coconut oil ♥ 200 g coconut milk ♥ 1/2 tsp dry vanilla

And for the chocolate:

tbsp coconut oil ♥ 6 tbsp cacao powder ♥ 2 tbsp raw honey ♥ 5 drops stevia

Put shredded coconut in a big bowl and add honey and vanilla. In the meantime, melt coconut oil and coconut milk and pour the mixture over the ingredients in the bowl. Thoroughly mix with a fork or hands. Cover a small baking pan with plastic foil, transfer the mixture onto the foil and press it firmly down so that the bars won’t crumble too much. Then place them in the freezer for 20 minutes.

You can make the chocolate yourself or use a regular dark chocolate. Either way, melt the coconut oil, cacao powder, raw honey and stevia (or just pieces of dark chocolate) in a bowl over a pot of simmering water. Remove the bounty loaf from the tin and cut it into small bars. Dip the bars in the melted chocolate and place them on a plastic foil. When all the bars are done, put them in the freezer for another few minutes.

I just have to add that homemade chocolate melts very quickly, so I do not recommend using this one if you’re planning a summer party outside! ;)

♥

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Beauty

Lavender scrub for silky soft skin ♥ (and has an amazing scent too!)

12. 8. 2015

To me, DIY body care has always been something incredibly difficult to do. I always thought that you need a ton of ingredients, nearly as much as on the packaging of drugstore products, but the truth is far from that. All you need are some cold-pressed and essential oils and that’s it! Although I like shower gels with scrub, I decided to make myself a creamy body scrub out of sugar, salt, coconut oil and lavender. And we all know how beneficial natural scrubs are for the skin.

Since there is lots of lavender around the house, I dried a few teaspoons of lavender flowers beforehand. The scrub is very calming and you only need a few ingredients. Before we start, let me just point out that try not to overuse lavender or any other essential oil as they can cause rashes or even some severe conditions if used in larger quantities. But worry not, a few drops won’t do any harm. Here is what I used:

1/2 cup sugar ♥ 2 tsp salt ♥ 2 tsp dried lavender flowers ♥ 3 tbsp coconut oil ♥ 5 drops lavender essential oil

♥ 1 glass jar

First mix all the dry ingredients. Then add the coconut oil and lavender essential oil – you can add more than 5 drops, but try not to exaggerate. Mix thoroughly and add some more sugar/salt/coconut oil if necessary. When the mixture is even, transfer it into the jar and sprinkle with some more lavender leaves. Easy peasy, right? ;)

I use it on my arms and legs up to twice a week as I feel my skin tends to be very dry on those parts. The coconut oil will moisturize your skin and keep it soft, but you can nevertheless use some shower gel afterwards (or mix some scrub with the gel and use it in this way!). This is actually not my first lavender scrub, I made a lovely lavender lip scrub last year – you can take a look here!

Take care ♥

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