Ooooooh…look at these…Cacao Butter Cookies made from Cacao Butter and topped with whole roasted Balam (Mayan White Cacao) beans. There is not much to say except…yum!! And, look at my gallery of pictures to entice your senses and fill yourself with the wonders of cacao.
The pulp was removed from the balam beans, sun-dried and then roasted whole. The paler ones were lightly roasted and the darker ones were medium roasted.
This is an easy and delicious cooling dessert and it’s made from the bit that you usually throw away when you cut a musk melon.
This is what you do:
Scoop out the seeds of the musk melon and rub it through a sieve with a plastic spoon. You will end up with some thick sweet-tasting musk melon pulp.
Meanwhile boil 10gm of Agar in 900mls (1 quart) of water. You can buy agar from Chinese Super-markets or Health Food Shops.
Once the agar has dissolved, mix in the melon pulp. I also added passion fruit pulp with seeds. I used the wild Mayan Passion Fruit, Kun Batz…how’s that for something special!
Refrigerate for about an hour and enjoy! This is a healthy alternative to a cream bun. 😉
I have written about the making of banana flour in previous posts and our main reason for doing this was for preservation. From a completely practical point of view, if you are going to go through the trouble of processing (grating, drying and grinding), it is really important that you actually like eating it!
Hmmm….we were very dubious initially after making a banana flour pizza made from a recipe found on the Internet. The recipe called for 4 cups of banana flour and when I baked it in the oven, it came out like stiff card-board…let’s say that if you threw it at somebody you could cause bodily harm. We valiantly put toppings on it and ate it like a pizza.
The next morning…and a few days after…we were totally constipated…
We then decided to do the math:
4 cups of flour is equal to 32 bananas
therefore, we ate the equivalent of 16 bananas each in one sitting.
Imagine eating 16 bananas all at once! And worse still, without the water content of each banana!
This of course results in constipation!
Anyway, after that escapade, I was in no mood to make anything with this flour! A few weeks later, I decided to use it up and make dog food …I didn’t even think about it…I just put a cup of flour in a pot of water and let it boil. It actually came out like a nice porridge. Much to Gnome’s dismay, the tasty looking porridge was for the dogs and not for us:
“What do you mean it’s for the dogs?!!”
Since then, I have formulated the Banana Flour Porridge as follows:
1/2 cup of banana flour
1 quart (900mls) of water
1 can of sweetcorn (optional)
1 tbsp sugar
Pinch of salt
Place ingredients in a pot and stir on medium flame ( about 7 to 10 minutes) until the porridge thickens. Can be eaten hot or cold.
This serves 2 people. Yes, 1/2 cup of flour = 8 bananas! So, each serving is four bananas. The result: tasty meal and happily non-constipated!
Here is a recipe straight from the farm using our own green bananas and coconut cream.
Remember that you can buy our freshly squeezed cream at Green Supaul’s in Punta Gorda.
This is a wholesome vegetarian dish made from green bananas and lentils cooked in creamy coconut cream. The green bananas taste like yam and so adds an interesting texture to the taste experience. If you would like to view the recipe, click on this link to Green Banana and Coconut Cream Lentils.
It’s getting hot again in Belize as the dry season continues. Vanilla Agar Cubes is a really nice cooling dessert for these hot days. I managed to find agar at the Taiwanese store though I am sure that you could find some in a health food store in Belize. It’s a really easy recipe…light and refreshing.
You just need to put the vanilla flavoured agar into ice-cube trays and set. Agar is great in the Tropic because can set at room temperature (40C/ 104F) and sets quicker than jelly.
For the full recipe, check out Vanilla Agar Cubes.
Oooooh!!! Yummy without the tummy…it’s low fat too!!
Fry Jacks are puffed up fried dough eaten traditionally in Belize for breakfast. They are usually served with refried beans or eggs. I love fry jacks but I have never been able to achieve a good result with recipes found on the Internet. I mentioned this in passing to a Belizean friend and she was aghast at the fact that I had not mastered the art of Fry Jacks after all these years and promptly organised a lesson for me.
This is the authentic Fry Jack Recipe. It works great and the end result is a light puffed up fried dough.
Oooooh!!! I made these ones…
Thank-you Francisca!!
For the people of Punta Gorda, we have a fresh batch of coconut cream at Green Supaul’s. You can’t miss it…it’s in the same freezer as the ice cream and the almond Snickers bars. Here is a snapshot to remind you!
You can use the coconut cream for soups, stews and curries. Also try making shakes and desserts with it. Here is a recipe for a cooling coconut dessert for the hot Easter weekend (well, it’s going to be hot here). Haupia is a Hawaiian dessert; if you are using our coconut cream in this recipe, just use half a coconut cream bag mixed in water to make 1 and 1/2 cups (as a substitute for the coconut milk). This is a great recipe for gluten-free people because it is a delicious recipe made from cornstarch.
The sun is back out and we didn’t get any rains the last few days despite the great promises from weather forecasts. I did hear that Punta Gorda and a few other villages got some rains…it is interesting (and infuriating!) that the weather is so regional. Anyway, we must press on and besides, no amount of whining on my part is going to bring the rains on!
Hello Everyone!! We went into Punta Gorda today to deliver a fresh batch of coconut cream to Green Supaul’s. Just in case you are wondering, we make it by grating the coconut:
Next, we add some hot water to the grated coconut and squeeze the liquid out. The liquid is then left to sit for some time to allow the cream to separate and come up to the top (the coconut milk is at the bottom). The cream is skimmed off and sold in these bags. One coconut cream bag (about 4oz) is equivalent to one coconut.
This is fresh, organic, vegetarian, gluten-free, locally produced and politically correct in every way! 😉
!Sabor Natural! Ja-Ja!! 😉
We are making our own banana flour and coconut flour on the farm. Gnome had charged me with the responsibility of making something “yummy” with these ingredients. He actually scolded me and said,
“I know it is actually easier to use wheat flour because you know what to do with it. But you need to get used to using all these other flours that we make on the farm.”
I replied with a sheepish smile,
“I suppose you’re right.”
And so I sequestered myself into the kitchen and got busy with the Gnome challenge. I came up with Banana and Coconut Flour Patties:
This recipe is gluten free as I used eggs and cornflour as the binding agents. These spicy patties contain tumeric (yellow ginger), chilli powder and white pepper which add a nice “kick” to the taste experience. I think they turned out rather nicely! This isn’t the end of the challenge though…I still need to come up with more recipes!!
We are making our own banana flour right now. With huge bunches of green bananas, we find that the best way to preserve them is to process them into flour.
This actually involves quite a lengthy process but hey…that’s why we have chosen to live like this. The green bananas are peeled and then grated like so (by Munchkin of course):
The shredded bananas are then dried out in the sun. Once dehydrated, they are crushed by hand into crumbs and then milled (Gnome Job):
And this is what you get:
Eighty green bananas fills roughly half a gallon jar and weighs about 2lbs (1kg). And now Gnome has presented me with a challenge:
“Munchkin, cook something yummy with it!”
By the way, this product is not for sale because it contains too much blood and sweat! 😉