We are always on the hunt for the perfect ‘no bake’ homemade snack and this is one of the best yet!! They are cute, sweet, salty and delicious. We recommend keeping them in the freezer so they don’t disappear too quickly. They are incredibly moorish, a real treat.
The base is oat and ground almonds, centre peanut butter and coconut oil and top chocolate and coconut oil- with a bit of sweetness added.
If you’re a choc PB lover you’ll love these, we promise!
Make the oat base; add the oats and almonds to a blender, pulse to blend. Add the honey and 1 tablespoon of milk, blend again until the mix comes together, add more milk if needed. Spoon the base into the mini mounds and push down with the back of a small spoon.
To make the centre; melt the coconut oil in the microwave or small pot, stir in the peanut butter and honey, mix well. Pour on top of the base and chill for 1 hour.
For the top; melt the chocolate and coconut oil together and spoon on top, smooth over with a spatula.
Chill again for 15 minutes.
Pop the cups from the moulds, sprinkle with sea salt and tuck in.
They will keep in the fridge for 3 days or in the freezer for 1 month. Take from the freezer 30 minutes before eating.
Who doesn’t love something sweet once in a while. We’ve got so many gorgeous recipes for sweet treats that aren’t super processed and full of artificial stuff.
Some of these are incredibly quick to make and once you’ve tried our take on the chocolate caramel bar, you might not want to go back to storebought.
I honesty don’t remember any special Easter baking recipes from my childhood in Tipperary. As kids we were too consumed with the thoughts of getting an easter egg to think about what was being baked. My mother would usually bake her famous apple tart and a giant pavlova to have on Easter Sunday after dinner.
I was much older when I learned about hot cross buns at Easter time. They have been baked for centuries across Europe to symbolise the Christianity and Jesus on the cross.
This is a twist on the cinnamon and yeast bun. It’s a lot quicker to make and like the bun uses spice, dried fruit, orange zest and of course the signature cross too.
Preheat the oven 180ºc. Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
To a mixing bowl add the butter and beat for a minute to soften it, use an electric beater or wooden spoon.
Add in the sugar and beat for a further few minutes and then beat in the eggs.
Pour in the oats next and sieve in the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, mixed spice stir in the chopped date and orange zest.
Stir and mix all the ingredients together until a large dough forms.
Scoop or spoon onto the baking tray, push down to form round cookie shapes.
Bake for 18-20 minutes, until nice and golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
To make the icing mix the icing sugar with 2 teaspoons of boiling water until you have a thick paste. Transfer to a piping bag or a zip lock bag leave to cool for 5 minutes then snip off the corner and pipe a cross onto the cooled cookies.
I am sitting here on our tractor at the bottom of the farm as I write. The tractor ironically being the noisy beast it is, is a great place to find peace. There is something highly satisfying about tilling the land.
As much as there is a business to be managed, the luxury of being in the field at least on occasion is something that really grounds and reconnects a person to nature. Whilst margins and spreadsheets and efficiency ratios are all important all of these things can sometimes cloud the real reason of why it is we do what we do.
Don’t pay enough attention to those variables of course and the tiling of the land is nothing but an idle dream. Pay too much attention and you run the risk of getting lost and losing track of “The why”. It was brought to our attention last week by ‘the traveling stoic’ on Instagram that ‘the restrictive practices order 1987 prohibits the sale of grocery products at below net invoice price’ but this law does not include fresh produce! It is deemed permissible to allow loss leading on all things fresh, and that includes you may be surprised to learn not only fruit and vegetables, but also milk, meat, and fish.
All our primary producers are essentially being told: ‘We don’t value what you do and we will sell your produce for less than the price of production.’ This is upsetting on a number of levels, but especially when you consider the time, energy and care each producer puts into their produce. It is demoralising and financially unsustainable. We know we cannot possibly compete with supermarkets.
As I was writing this on my phone, for some mad reason spell check but in ‘cartels’! maybe that is a more apt description of these institutions!Supermarkets can afford to squeeze the producers, they have all the power, they can dictate terms. This approach has led to more and more growers saying enough is enough, and sometimes over the seemingly paltry sum of 5c per piece.
That is a sad situation. Those skills especially when it comes to vegetables as there are fewer and fewer of us are gone for ever. Many moons ago we decided that we would quit supplying supermarkets for good. It was a decision taken in the heat of the moment, which usually are very poor decisions indeed. We were told one Monday morning that unless we reduced our pricing and became responsible for the waste in their stores we should look elsewhere for custom.
I can’t say here what I said then, but we never supplied those supermarkets again. It was rash, but it meant we doubled our efforts at making a successful business of growing our own food and supporting other Irish growers and delivering direct to you, our customers.
We, only with your help are still here today 18 years later and we are thankful for that. I think Emmanuel (our farm manager) may be getting a little concerned now, not having seen our tractor move for some time. Writing and tiling are very difficult endeavours to multitask at! So, I think it’s time to put the phone down and get back to it.
This one is for all you bakers out there. And for not-yet bakers that want to give it a try because, honestly, these recipes are super easy and delicious, anyone can make them! Go on, go on, go on…
From baked oats for breakfast to flapjack snacks to afternoon cakes to dessert, we’ve got it all.
Save this recipe to make over Easter. It’s a crowd pleaser, fun as a starter or part of a buffet. These are so delicious and fun to make with kids. Brush with a blend of butter, parsley and garlic or if you are lucky enough to live near a patch of wild garlic, you could make wild garlic butter for an extra special seasonal treat. We use our favourite Naturli butter to keep it dairy free, have you tried it yet?
Liz x
Ingredients (makes 16)
Pizza dough:
450g flour
7g instant yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp olive oil
350ml warm water
Garlic butter:
50g butter
2-3 garlic cloves
a handful of parsley
salt and pepper to taste
flakey salt to serve
Method
Start with the pizza dough, it will need time to prove. Measure all the ingredients into a mixing bowl and use a wooden spoon to combine and work into a sticky, stretchy dough. Scrape down the sides and cover the bowl with a tea towel. Leave somewhere warm until doubled in size (this takes around an hour).
When your dough is doubled in size, turn the oven to 200C and flour a clean work surface. Scrape the sticky dough out onto the floured surface and, using your hands as little as possible (this dough is sticky!), use a dough scraper to gather and turn the dough over into a ball. Use the dough scraper to cut the ball into 4 pieces. Then cut each quarter into four additional pieces. You should have 16 pieces of dough now.
Roll each piece into a rope and then fold and twist into a bunny shape (see video). Place all the bunnies onto one or two large, lined baking sheets and cover with a clean tea towel. Leave to prove and almost double in size again in a warm spot.
When your bunnies are ready, pop them in the oven to bake until golden brown (around 15-20 minutes).
Meanwhile blend the garlic butter ingredients together in a small food processor. Or you can mince the garlic and parsley and stir into softened butter and season to taste.
When the bunnies come out of the oven, spoon and brush over the garlic butter whilst it is still hot. Serve on a board or platter with the leftover butter and a sprinkle of flakey salt. Enjoy!
Got some guests coming for Easter who don’t eat eggs or dairy? This quiche is the perfect spring centerpiece. Serve with salad and/or roasted vegetables. It’s protein rich, satisfying and so delicious!
Liz x
Ingredients
Shortcrust pastry:
150g flour
75g dairy free butter
3 tbsp cold water
‘Egg’ mixture:
350g silken tofu
4 tbsp chickpea flour
150ml oat milk
3 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp thyme
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp each salt & pepper
Vegetable filling:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 leek, washed & chopped
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
1 scallion, chopped
a mug of frozen peas
1 tsp dried thyme
salt & pepper to taste
grated vegan cheese to top
Method
Start with the pastry. Blend the butter and flour together until crumbly, then add the cold water and keep blending until the pastry comes together into a ball. Press evenly into a flan dish and chill for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile turn the oven on to 175C and prepare the fillings. Blend the ‘egg’ mixture into a smooth batter and sauté the leek with the olive oil, garlic, thyme and salt. Remove from the heat and stir through the scallion and peas. Once cool, mix in the ‘egg’.
Prick the chilled pastry with a fork and blind bake for 10 minutes to set the crust. Then fill with the veg and ‘egg’, top with cheese and bake for another 30-40 minutes until the quiche is set and golden brown on top.
Enjoy in large slices with salad and/or roasted vegetables. Change up the vegetables and herbs in the quiche for any combination you like.
Chocolate mousse with hidden butternut squash, we couldn’t wait to try this one!! An indulgent chocolate mousse that is made mostly of healthy stuff sounds too good to be true.
This one pass the test with my kids and the butternut squash went undetected! The mouse is delicious on its own but if you want to give it a lighter texture try folding whipped cream through it, this is how I served it to my kids.
TIP: For a really tasty mousse its important to use a good quality chocolate.
Serve with a dusting of cacoa powder, whipped cream or cremé fraichê and toasted hazelnuts or almonds, banana or raspberries would be delicious too
Method:
Peel, deseed and cube the butternut squash. Put it in a medium sized pot cover with cold water. Put on the hob, bring to a simmer and cook until completely soft, 20-30 mins.
Melt the chocolate in a microwave or on a double boiler on the hob.
When the butternut squash is cooked, strain and add to a blender along with the melted chocolate.
Blend until silky smooth.
Pour into a large bowl or individual bowls. Leave to cool on the worktop then transfer to the fridge to set for at least 4 hours, overnight if possible.
Four Guinness Barrels and some scaffolding planks, that was our first makeshift packing table. My dad myself and Jenny used to pack all the boxes and then load them into the back of our small Peugeot partner van. I would head out do the deliveries and the packing week would end with a bottle of wine at about 12am on a Wednesday night, all deliveries done.
Life seemed Simpler then, but our mind often plays tricks on us, remembering the sunshine and forgetting the rain: who remembers summers that were hotter drier and longer when we were kids? (Or were they?). There was little money for anything, we made do with whatever we had. Jenny was working full time and that was our income.
Our packing week may have finished on Wednesday, but the working week never actually finished. We didn’t have the luxury of somebody to look after quality or packing or the farm, it was all done by us. Now we have great people doing amazing work, the care that goes into the packing each one of your orders certainly puts my early days of packing to shame.
I remember those days of not having a cold room to store our produce and of going out to the local pub carpark to meet the trucks to hand ball and unload some of our bought in produce.
There was one very funny, (well funny now, not funny then) incident where an artic truck came onto our farm, despite insistent communication that there was no way to turn a truck of that size. As I was eating my dinner one evening there was this giant truck parked right outside our house and the delivery driver waving in at me!
The driver decided on his own initiative to turn in our front field, needless to say this monstrous truck got stuck in the muck. Luckily through the kindness and help of two neighbours with very big tractors did we manage to get the truck out of that field.
These were the trials and tribulations of starting out in farming and business and making it up as we went along. But when all was said and done, we did what we did because we wanted to produce and sell sustainable food grown without chemicals, we wanted to do it whilst respecting nature and biodiversity and doing what we could for our planet in our own little corner of the world.
We did that and planted trees and hedgerows and food and got through those first few tough years. It struck me as the bean counters were totting up the figures for last year that although we are bigger now, we are back to the point of having to make difficult decisions to ensure we keep the farm and business afloat.
As Teagasc published another report detailing the pressures facing primary vegetable producers this week, with some farms closing their doors for good, and the amount of land area being farmed for vegetables decreasing due to the financial strain, it makes me wonder when will the value in good healthy fresh food be realised. When will the devaluation of fresh food by supermarkets end, when will they see the “value” rather than the “cost” in healthy fresh food.
As we look to the year ahead there is uncertainty. We are not sure what is to come, nobody is. This is our first ‘normal’ year in three years and for a business and farm it is hard to know what will be thrown at us, but whatever happens we will never compromise on our values.
Cauliflower doesn’t just taste great, it’s also really good for you. It’s high in vitamins C and K, and is also a good source of folate, which supports cell growth and is essential during pregnancy. On top of that, it’s high in fiber, calcium and potassium.
Here are a few ideas if you’re unsure what to cook with cauliflower. Click on the bold part to go straight to the recipe.
