Quinoa Stuffed Peppers and Chocolate Bliss

Hi Friends, am I happy its finally Friday! This week has been crazy, but surprisingly I stuck with my commitment and posted every day. A lot has happened since I last posted and I am so excited to share everything I have been cooking! First up, why I love winter. No its not because of cold weather and snow, I despise them both… I love wintertime because that means citrus fruit is in season. I’m talking about oranges, tangerines, grapefruit, lemons, limes, clementines.. yessssss pure delicious citrus fruit! My mouth is now watering. Anyways, Dutch text me yesterday with this picture and the caption beneath saying “mine” and I cant remember the last time i got so excited!

Nerdy, I know. Strange, I agree but look at all that CITRUS fruit!

Of course I invited him over and told him to bring that box with him… we whipped up a fabulous breakfast including eggs with spinach and of course citrus fruit!

The eggs were good.. but look at the beautiful color of the grapefruit and orange.

i’m in love.

So after I got over how fabulous our fruit was I moved on with my life and into the kitchen to bake, snickerdoodles for a xmas cookie order.

Snickerdoodles

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter

2/3 cup dark brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/3 cups whole wheat flour

1tsp baking powder

2 tbsp raw cane sugar

½ tbsp ground cinnamon

Directions

Cream butter and sugar till fluffy. Add egg and vanilla. Beat well. Add dry ingredients.

Shape dough into 1 inch balls and roll in sugar cinnamon mixture. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Flatten slightly with a drinking glass.

Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

Probably one of the easiest cookies you will ever make.

I also made a batch of my little truffles which turned out delicious, gooey and chocolatey as usual

Once I was finished with my order Dutch came over and we got started on dinner, Quinoa stuffed bell peppers.

recipe adapted from: vegetarian times magazine

Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients:

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 Tbs. olive oil

1 ribs celery, finely chopped

1 Tbs. ground cumin

2 cloves garlic, minced

1  pkg. frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry

1  can diced tomatoes, drained, liquid reserved

1  can black beans, rinsed and drained

1/2 cup quinoa

1 cup vegetable stock

2 large carrots, grated

11/2 cups pepper Jack cheese, divided

4 large assorted bell peppers, halved lengthwise, ribs removed

Directions: Heat oil in saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and celery, and cook 5 minutes, or until soft. In the meantime bring the cup of vegetable stock to a boil in a large pot add quinoa and simmer 20 minutes or until cooked. Add cumin and garlic to the onion mixture, and sauté 1 minute. Stir in spinach and drained tomatoes. Cook 5 minutes, or until most of liquid has evaporated. Stir in black beans, quinoa, carrots, and 1 cups water. Cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer 10 minutes, or until quinoa is tender. Stir in 1 cup cheese. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Preheat oven to 350°F. Pour liquid from tomatoes in bottom of baking dish. Fill each bell pepper half with heaping 3/4-cup quinoa mixture, and place in baking dish. Cover with foil, and bake 45 minutes. Uncover, and sprinkle each pepper with 1 Tbs. remaining cheese. Bake 15 minutes more, or until tops of stuffed peppers are browned. Let stand 5 minutes. Transfer stuffed peppers to serving plates, and drizzle each with pan juices before serving.

look @ the vibrant colors of our bell peppers!

We got our onion and celery chopped and into a pan over medium heat with one tablespoon of EVOO.

While I was busy grating carrots and chopping garlic Dutch cleaned and organized the bell peppers so beautifully in the baking dish.

Into the pan the ingredients went and simmered for about 10 minutes just enough time for the flavors to combine.

The mixture looked good enough to eat on its own, but we couldn’t waste the beautiful bell peppers so we stuffed the mixture into them

and piled on the cheese.

Into the oven they went for 45 minutes until the cheese was melty and bubbly.

Dutch was concerned he wouldn’t get enough protein from our vegetarian meal, but after I told him each pepper contained 14 g of complete protein he piled a second on to his plate

Dinner was fabulous … dessert however can be described in three words: pure chocolate BLISS.

Double Chocolate Torte

Adapted from Oh She Glows

Ingredients:

Crust:

½ c + 3 tbsp whole wheat pastry flour

3 tbsp Hershey’s extra dark cocoa powder

¼ tsp baking powder

½ cup raw cane sugar

½ tbsp cornstarch

½ tsp sea salt

3 tbsp coconut oil

¼ c almond milk

1 ½ tbsp maple syrup

Filling:

2 avocados pitted and scooped out

¼ c almond milk

½ tbsp cornstarch

1/8 tsp sea salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

½ c + 1 tbsp dark chocolate chips melted with 1 tsp coconut oil

2 tbsp Hershey’s extra dark cocoa powder

Preaheat oven to 375 degrees. Sift together dry crust ingredients including flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, cornstarch, sugar, and salt. In another bowl whisk together the wet ingredients for the crust including oil, syrup, and milk. Add wet to dry and mix well. Divide into 10 even balls and pat into a greased muffin tin. Bake 12 to 15 minutes until cooked. Combine filling ingredients minus the chocolate chips in a food processor and process until smooth. Add melted chocolate and stir. After the crust has cooled spread on filling and freeze 2 hours until firm. Allow to come to room temp 10 to 15 minutes before serving. Serves 10.

All of the dry ingredients went into a bowl, followed by the wet.

I divided the mixture into 10 even balls and pressed it into a muffin tin greased with coconut oil. The crust went into a preheated 375 degree oven for twelve minutes until just firm.

Next up, the filling which consisted of avocados, maple syrup, cocoa powder, dark chocolate chips, vanilla, almond milk and cornstarch.

The mixture came together so rich and chocolaty you would never dream it was made of avocados.

I frosted my little tortes and popped them in to the freezer for 1 hour until they were just firmed up.

While they were in the freezer Dutch went to work on licking the bowl

clean.

After waiting patiently for an hour we were anxious to dig in to our newest creation

and yes, it was everything I could have imagined it would be. Crunchy chocolate crust filled with a divine, rich chocolate filling which just melted in my mouth. It was heavenly.

Well now that I have officially been eating non stop all night long I think its time I clean my messy kitchen and get to bed. More tomorrow of course have a fabulous night!