2014 Cooking Club Week 14: Saints and Sinners:Quinoa Base Pizza & Coconut Blondies

Lordy lordy. Does anyone else find themselves getting REALLY nervous when it comes to their week on the Cooking Club???!!

Yes, I am nervous. I really hope you guys like what I have in store for you this week.

My entry contains two recipes. Why? Well, over the past 10 years, I have been on so many diets. I have been vegetarian, trying to lose weight, on a gluten free diet and a migraine elimination diet! So upon browsing through some recipes online, I found myself getting really excited, only to discover that I couldn't eat half of the ingredients! It's very disheartening and very annoying. On the other hand, sometimes you just wanna splurge and eat something very bold and tasty. This is where the second part comes in. Neither recipe compliment each other in terms of theme but hey, i've never been a follower of fashion!

So, cook the first part if you do lots of training, are trying to lose weight (be it on slimming world ( pizza base is free on EE), Weight Watchers (2 points for the base) or as a calorie controlled diet), if you are gluten/wheat intolerant or if you just fancy something light and relatively healthy. All of the toppings you put on the pizza are extra calories. So be as reckless or as careful as you wish. .

Part 1 for the saints is : Quinoa base pizza.

I need to stress that this tastes absolutely awesome.

Quinoa is MEGA healthy. It contains all nine essential amino acids and is one of the most protein dense foods on the planet. This recipe is surprisingly very tasty.

Ingredients for the base:
130g quinoa
60ml water
half a teaspoon of sea salt
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of coconut/olive oil.

Method

First off, rinse your quinoa and soak it for 8 hours in cold water. Admittedly, I only did mine for 5 hours as I was stuck for time and it still turned out grand. Just use enough water to cover the quinoa in a pot. After you've soaked it, drain the water and rinse it again.

Preheat your oven to 220c. In a mixing bowl, add your quinoa, salt, water and baking powder. Use a food processor or hand blender to grind it down. A mixer will take 2 mins, a hand blender will take about 5. The consistency should be like a batter. It's certainly not thick like a dough.



Place a nine inch pizza tray on a piece of parchment paper and cut around it so that it fits into your pizza tray. Using your oil, grease the parchment. If you are calorie conscious, you can use fry-light but make sure to spray the bejaysis out of the parchment or else it will stick. Bake for 15 mins.

Next, flip the base and bake for a further five mins.



When that's done, now you can add your toppings. I went with a bog standard pizza of peppers, mixed herbs, chorizo, tomato puree and reduced fat mature cheese. You of course can add anything you like, When you have your toppings of choice, bake for another 5-10 mins, depending on your oven, until the toppings are cooked and the cheese has melted.

Et voila!



Onto the second part for the sinners, which is:

Coconut Blondies. I became obsessed with Pigwidgeon's 2011 week 3 cooking club entry which were fantastic raspberry and pecan blondies. I adored them so much that I developed an obsession with all things blondie. I started to experiment with different fillings and indeed my overall recipe. These ones always came out on top. They're amazing and so easy to make too.

Ingredients:
135g Plain Flour
1 egg + 1 yolk
300g brown sugar
85g butter
275g white chocolate chips
1/2 teaspoon salt
160g dessicated/flaked coconut

Method:
Preheat your oven to 180c

Melt the butter. Next, add in the sugar and then beat in the eggs. Add your flour and salt. Don't over combine the mixture. When that's done, add in your coconut and chocolate.



Spoon mixture out on a prepared baking tray and bake for 22-25 mins, depending on your oven.

Leave to cool on a wire rack before slicing.

Bobs yer uncle! Into the gob with it!