A glorious Sunday visit to my dear friend Alex in Coorabel who is just in from Peru – and me home from the Maldives – made for an enlightening catch-up, and a bounty of citrus from the orchard that is her garden.Â
With all things a bit wintery Down Under, here’s a little bit of sunshine to soothe you through the cooler clime.
Traditional Chinese medicine suggests that to keep the winter chill out we should enjoy an abundance of warming food. These ingredients have a healing effect on our bodies by heating our internals and keeping the cold at bay.
In addition to the ingredients in this loaf, other foods such as chestnuts, aduki beans, quinoa, pumpkin, lima beans, ginger and shiitake mushrooms also have warming properties – and may also help to dry our systems of unwelcome cold symptoms so prevalent during winter. Enjoy.
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How to make paleo orange and cacao loaf
Ingredients
How to make paleo orange and cacao loaf
1/2 cup chia seeds
2 cups almond milk (1 for chia, 1 more for loaf)
1 cup coconut flour
2/3 cup cacao
4 small eggs, room temperature
2 tablespoons coconut oil, melted and cooled
2 oranges, juice and zest
2 cups cashew nuts, soaked in water for 4 hours
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
Orange essential oil
Topping
Cacao buckinis – recipe below
1 orange, zest only
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 150 degrees.
- Soak chia in 1 cup almond milk for 15 minutes.Stir briefly after 5 minutes. Set aside.
- Meanwhile combine coconut flour, cacao, eggs in a food processor. Pulse to combine.
- Add remaining cup of almond milk, coconut oil, orange juice, zest and cashew nuts.
- Pulse to combine. Then add soaked chia, maple and salt. Gently combine the wild orange essential oil.
- Line a large loaf tin or flan dish with baking paper.
- Transfer the batter to the loaf tin or flan dish. Smoooth over the top with a spatula. Sprinkle with cacao buckinis and orange zest. Bake for 40 minutes or until cooked through. Test with a skewer.
- Allow to cool before serving. Store in the refrigerator for up to 3-5 days.
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PrintWild orange and cacao buckwheat buckinis
Description
Buckinis are usually made from raw activated buckwheat with raw cacao, coconut, cranberries and superfoods. Buckwheat Fagopurum Esculentum comes from the common dock and rhubarb family and is actually a fruit kernel. Often categorised as a grain, it belongs to the goosefoot family Chenopodiaceae that includes, spinach, rhubarb, beets and sorrel. Whole roasted buckwheat groats that have had the husk removed are called kasha.
Ingredients
2 cup raw buckwheat groats
1/2 cup dried cranberries or currants
3 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons cacao
2 teaspoons mesquite powder (optional)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
4 drops wild orange essential oil (food grade)
Salt
Instructions
- Soak buckwheat groats for 12 hours, drain well and pat dry.
- Transfer to a large mixing bowl, add remaining ingredients. Combine well.
- Either bake at 150 C for 20 minutes.
- Or for raw foodies –Â spread mixture on Teflex sheets.
- Dehydrate overnight at 45 C.