Whew, that title is a bit of a mouthful, huh? Well so are these cookies! Though they be small, they are mighty with flavor and warmth! Yes, another pumpkin recipe. And don’t expect it to be the last! Fall is my favorite season of the year, I think, and although Los Angeles isn’t very good at crisp weather, I’m still gonna do the pumpkin up! Whole-wheat pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, here we come! I based this recipe off of Tried and Tasty’s wonderful recipe!
If you’ve read our Jitlada review, you know we are a sucker for well-made mango sticky rice. What is mango sticky rice? It’s basically sweet sticky jasmine rice flavored with coconut with fresh mango on top. It’s simple, it’s sweet, it’s satisfying. It is especially satisfying after a spicy meal that you usually find at most Thai restaurants! Mangoes have been off-the-chain in season right now in California, meaning they are cheap and taking lots of room in our pantry. I’ve wanted to make my own mango sticky rice, but I was always too intimidated about the rice part. That is, until I found my hack.
Jet Tila is one of our favorite chefs and he came out with a stellar cookbook a few years ago called 101 Asian Dishes You Need to Cook Before You Die. And guess what was in there? Yup. Mango Sticky Rice. Still, I was nervous about the rice. I didn’t have a bamboo steaming basket and I had no sticky rice. So, I went to the grocery store and I got creative. I scoured the Asian foods aisle, hoping that some divine idea would strike from the florescent lights above. And it did! There it was. VeeTee microwavable Thai Jasmine Rice. Yes, yes, I know it’s not authentic, and it’s not nearly as good as doing it right, but I needed a shortcut and I found it. This isn’t a sponsored post for VeeTee, so really any Thai jasmine rice will work. And you know what, the dish turned out pretty dang good and took hours less time and fewer contraptions. Sometimes, I have time for long, intricate recipes, and sometimes, I, well, don’t.
Does it bother me that maybe there should be a hyphen in the title? Kinda. But I actually purposefully left it out to keep it vague and free. Anyhow. I bring you Honey Spiced Cookies based on the Honey Biscuits recipe from A Feast of Ice and Fire (aka Game of Thrones cookbook for those of you who *scoff* didn’t read the books). This is an incredible cookbook! I can’t recommend enough. It’s all based on foods that George RR Martin wrote into the books, and it splits the recipes into the different regions of Westeros. I’ve made several recipes from this cookbook such as applecakes and bread (both recipes serving the faithful Night’s Watch at the Wall). This recipe comes from the South from Lord Caswell’s kitchen.
These honey spiced cookies are warm, soft, and wonderfully potent with spices like pumpkin and ginger. The recipe takes under fifteen minutes and does not have a long ingredient list (honestly, if it’s too complicated, I don’t even want to make it). This recipe is probably best suited for warmer months due to its fall/winter-like spices, but I made this in a California heat wave (90 degrees F, ya’ll), and we still finished all of them in 1.5 sittings between the two of us. I mean, who says no to cookies based on the season?! Get real.
July 4th is literally tomorrow and I bet a good amount of you are going to some kind of event. Do all of you have the dish in mind that you will bring? If the answer is no, we are here for you! July 4th is for relaxing, catching up with family and friends, and usually consuming food and alcohol. At most of these events, be it party, BBQ, whatever, there will certainly be lots of food. And a good amount of it will not be healthy. And you know here at Hungry & Fit, we are fine with living it up. But what it’s all about is moderation.
So, we have come up with a list of 5 Hungry & Fit healthier (but still very tasty) recipes that you can whip up and bring to your event. Your friends and family will be impressed that you made it yourself and didn’t just buy from the store! We’ve brought you a mix of savory and sweet dishes perfect for this American holiday. You can thank me in advance for saving you some recipe-scouring time.
1. Cannoli Dip
What do you do when you have over-ripe bananas to be used? Bake, of course! But what to bake? Normally I would make these sweet banana cookies, but we are all out of oats! So I browsed the internet hard to find me something on the healthier side that featured bananas. And…drum roll, please…I came up with whole-wheat chocolate chip banana bars (found it from a great blogger’s site)! Banana bars? Sound weird? They’re not. It’s basically brownie-shaped banana bread with chocolate chips. Yeah, they’re good. Hungry brought them to work and he got major points from his coworkers.
The texture of the banana bars are cake-like rather than brownie-like, light and fluffy. Some hybrid of banana bread and cake. It’s yum. What makes this recipe healthier? Whole-wheat flour, no butter, and not too much sugar. Yeah, there are chocolate chips in it, but I mean, you got to live a little. Some baking recipes are complicated. This one is not. It’s basically mix together, put into sheet pan, and bake. And you know I love easy recipes. Alright, let’s make these delicious banana bars.
A vivid memory for me as a kid is getting a tin of these fluffy white things (probably from Trader Joes) and delighting to find that they were crunchy, but more importantly–delicious! I’m kind of scared to think back on how many I would eat in one sitting. Yikes. Well, fast forward to today and I now know what they are! Meringues. Beautiful, mind-bending, mouth-watering meringues. That amazing dessert that feels at the same time you’re both eating air and crunching into a godly snack. I’ve never made meringues before. If you would’ve asked me, I thought that the recipe must be really difficult. Let’s face it: I was intimidated! Such a fancy schmancy dessert and who was I to presume to try to do it?
That is, until I saw Skinnytaste’s instagram post of her “Black and White Chocolate Chip Clouds” and realized that maybe the recipe wasn’t over my head. I had a good friend’s cookie bake coming up and I said to myself, “You know what! I’m going to try it!” And I did. And it was a success! I made chocolate chip meringues and I cannot wait to make them again. And guess what? These are a healthy alternative to the normal heavy cookie. Now that I feel comfortable with the recipe, I want to really make them my own. I’m not sure what the hardest part was (the recipe is so easy)–separating the egg whites or waiting for them to be cooked. Yeah, that’s the difficulty level we’re talking here, folks. Just look at the recipe below!
I’ve been wanting to make some good oatmeal raisin cookies for a while now since we had some raisins in the pantry. After a recipe fail with some protein cookies, I was determined to make a great batch of cookies! After looking around the Internet for some inspiration, I stumbled upon this recipe and knew it was the one to base mine off of. Her recipe had flax seeds in it, but since Hungry is allergic to flax, I used chia seeds instead. This helped the cookies have a great texture and a good extra dose of protein. These oatmeal raisin chia cookies are healthy AND delicious! There is not much sugar in these, so no guilt necessary.
We’re still always so humbled when we see our material shared. Recently, we saw one of our favorite dessert recipes shared by a random woman and she tagged her husband on the post and wrote “…” after it. We can only imagine that she wants him to make that dessert for her. Now, if you know us well, you’ll know that Hungry does most of the cooking and Fit does most of the baking, and we think that might be the case in many other couples.
Another blogger reached out to tell us how inspirational it was to see us continue to post well into our fifth year of blogging. (We started H&F in August 2012.) When we started as a personal blog, we had no idea where we’d end up, but we’ve probably excelled more in the Hungry part of Hungry & Fit. Sure, you might have seen Hungry’s personal trainer showcase for an international publication, but who knew people loved our cooking (or baking) more than our training?!?
One of many delicious recipes to come from our Thanksgiving feast...pumpkin cheescake pie! Two beautiful things in one: pumpkin pie and cheesecake. I feel like pumpkin is the quintessential Fall food and I was more than happy to have stumbled upon this recipe from smitten kitchen! This may not be the most fit recipe, but I tried to healthify it a little by trimming down the sugar. I cannot explain or describe how wonderful this pie was. I’m usually not a huge pumpkin pie person, but I was eating this for every meal (yes, breakfast too). I just couldn’t control myself! Thebeautiful smoothness of the pumpkin with a cheesecake marble on top was too much for me to handle. A perfect dessert that isn’t cloyingly sweet.
