Quite often while at work ideas for new recipes come to mind, and I jot them down on a post it note. This recipe came to me as I was at work thinking about a perfect fall salad recipe that I felt was still missing something. And than it hit me, make cinnamon sliced almonds that would lend sweetness, crunch and spice to my salad.  These almonds are seriously amazing, you can use them in your salad, as a topping for your pumpkin pie or pancakes or eat them all by themselves. To me they taste like cinnamon toast crunch. 

Toasty Sliced Almonds

Yields: 1-cup

Ingredients

• 1 cup of raw sliced almonds
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• Pinch of nutmeg
• Pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 420 degrees
2. In a small bowl mix the almonds cinnamon, nutmeg and salt together.
3. Fold in the maple syrup using a spatula
4. Spread the almonds on a parchment lined baking sheet.
5. Bake for 10 minutes, or until golden brown. Using a spoon mix the almonds around once or twice while baking to keep it from burning.
6. Remove from oven and mix with a spoon so it doesn’t form one large clump.
7. Once cooled store in a glass jar at room temperature.

DAY 20

Breakfast

• Golden cauliflower soup
• Banana
• Carrots

Lunch

• Leftover moqueca
• Cauliflower rice
• Fried plantains

Snacks: pluot

Dinner

• Drumsticks using nomnoms marinade recipe
• Ratatouille
• Arugula salad with caramelized onions, peaches, avocado, and walnuts
• 1/2 a roasted beet

Snacks: frozen grapes

Frozen grapes are amazing! During the summer my cousins and I would try to make popsicles out of anything we could think of. Some of our experiments included freezing capri sun packets, milk mixed with chocolate syrup (to make chocolate popsicles), juice, and soda. Even though most of our experiments were epic fails there was one thing that did work out for us, and that was frozen grapes. Its simple, just place the grapes in the freezer overnight and when ready to eat remove them from the freezer and let them sit out at room temperature for about 10 minutes.

We had a baby shower for my brother and his wife a few weekends ago. I had to choose a gender neutral theme since they don’t want to know the sex of the baby. So I picked a safari theme. It was super cute and fun. I am so happy with the results so I thought I would share a few pictures! (It was a dark gloomy day outside so sorry if the pictures kind of suck.)

I made 3 different centerpieces.

The zebras sat in wheat grass.

My favorite thing was the tree and giraffe cut out I made from cardboard. Isn’t it cute?

And we had TONS of good food and desserts.

I made this cupcake stand from cans and cardboard, the tutorial is over at annies eats. And I also made the cupcakes. The zebra cupcakes are chocolate with a nutella ganache frosting, and the giraffe cupcakes are a fluffernutter cupcake. It’s a peanut butter cake with peanut butter filling and a marshmallow fluff frosting. It was actually really yummy!

But now its over and all that’s left to do is wait for the baby!!! I am so excited! It’s the first baby in the family, so I get to be an aunt!

I hope you didn’t think I was just going to show you baby shower pictures, I have a recipe too! Today’s recipe was meant to be a breakfast bar recipe, but the texture was too soft for a bar. So I decided it would be perfect for a pie filling, so I slapped a crust on it and TA-DA!

This recipe is great for when you have leftover roasted sweet potato. But if you don’t have roasted sweet potato on hand than you can either nuke it in the microwave like nomnompaleo does or use canned sweet potato. I have tried the microwave method and actually really like it for when I am pressed for time.

Sweet Potato Pie

Ingredients

Crust

• 1 cup almond flour
• 1  2/3 cups walnuts
• 3 tbsp. coconut sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 1/3 cup coconut oil-melted

Filling

• 1 large roasted sweet potato or 1 Cup of canned sweet potato (works great with leftover sweet potato’s)
• 1 tbsp. coconut flour
• 1/2 cup almond flour
• 2 eggs
• 3 tbsp. maple syrup
• 1 tbsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 cup almond milk
• 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
• 1 tsp. vanilla

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and grease a pie dish with coconut oil. (I used my 9.5 pyrex pie dish)
2. For the pie crust add the first 4 ingredients and pulse 2 or 3 times.  Next add the coconut oil, you want to pulse just until all the ingredients are well combined and the dough seems crumbly but will stick together when pressed between your fingers. If the crust seems too dry add a bit more coconut oil. ~ I like to have big pieces of walnuts in my pie crust so that it adds a nice crunch, so I only pulse the crust a few times.
3. Pour the crust into the pie dish and using your hands press the pie crust into the dish making sure all the sides are covered with crust and that its as even as possible.
4. Place the pie dish on a cookie sheet and bake in oven for 20 minutes.
5. Meanwhile combine all the filling ingredients in a bowl and whisk all together until well combined. When pie crust is done take it out of the oven and raise the temperature of the oven to 425 degrees.
6. Once the oven reaches 425 pour the filling into the pie crust and bake it in the oven for 15 min. After 15 minutes bring the temperature down to 35o degrees and bake for 35 minutes. The edges of the filling will be set and the middle will look a bit jiggly.

I suggest serving it with a dollop of coconut whipped cream and a sprinkle of nutmeg.