Recipe Category Archives: Vanilla Bean Levana Meal Replacement

Gluten-Free Trail Mix Cookies Recipe. All Variations

My Trail mix cookies are not just delicious:

They are also super healthy, super customizable and super elastic. Chock full of superfoods, including Levana Nourishments. A whole meal in a cookie! Gluten-free too!
You never need to feel guilty after eating them. Perfect food at home or on the road when we are too harried to hunker down to a heavy duty meal. Throwing in Levana Nourishments makes these little gems perfect little nutritional powerhouses.
Minimally sweetened, as most of the sweetness comes from the banana, carrot and raisins.

Here’s my Basic Trail Mix Cookies Recipe

Now scroll down, and take it to as many exciting places as you like, depending on your favorite add-in ingredients and what you might have in your pantry.

You can even make trail mix cookies into energy bars

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Muffins. All Variations Including Cake

Muffins! You say cupcakes, I say muffins!

Gosh, I would hate to lose my popularity with the junior cupcake crowd, but many years of catering kids’ parties and watching their delighted faces as their lick their fingers put my fears at rest. This Muffin recipe is going to be your best friend. Your children will love me!

As if that was not enough, my granddaughter Musia recently described to me a birthday party she went to and said to me “The only thing I didn’t like is I had to wipe off all those blue and green and red creams off the tops of the cupcakes. Bubbie, why do they need it?” Yes, why indeed?

I make muffins, and make them festive in countless ways!

The festive part is not expressed in extra sugar or fat, or added  colorings. To name just a few examples: I make mini muffins; I use multicolored muffin liners; I sprinkle them with miniature chocolate chips, grated coconut, grated apple, blueberries or chopped nuts; I stick cute flags and candles into them at display time. However, if you absolutely must, top the muffins (excuse me, the cupcakes) with icing or frosting or whatever, I trust you will find recipes for that everywhere. But I sincerely hope you don’t…..

As always, I am starting with the simplest preparations.

This is my master muffin recipe, complete with all variations. You will be amazed at all the possibilities, all equally easy, delicious and nutritious. Mix and match, and get different results each time. You will never ever eat a store-bought muffin again, let alone a muffin mix: I am not even going there! This recipe makes a dozen and a half medium muffins, in less than ten minutes’ preparation time.

All these muffin batters are mixed by hand, no need for a mixer.

My muffins are all gluten-free-friendly.

Just one useful piece of advice: When adapting these recipes to gluten-free, always make muffins out of them, not larger cakes because the smaller the gluten-free item, the more manageable, and the less room for flopping and crumbling.

Scroll down for all my muffins variations, including cake!

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Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

adapted from Levana Cooks, using Vanilla Bean Levana Nourishments

chocolate chip cookies

My chocolate chip cookies recipe is in all my cookbooks.

I can never make enough of these; and apparently, neither can thousands and thousands of people. You would think I would get tired of them. Absolutely not!

Besides high-quality ingredients, the secret of good chocolate chip cookies is a soft and chewy texture, achieved by baking them only until they are just cooked, not a second longer: Remember, they continue to cook for a minute or two even as they cool.

No problem making chocolate chip cookies with gluten-free flour.

A good cookie sheet makes a difference too: The heavier the better, as a heavy sheet will distribute the heat evenly and gradually.

These chocolate chip cookies have recently won Best Recipe award in a health and nutrition site called Health Castle. Upon reading this, my friend Eve wrote me: “May your delicious cookies—we can attest to how delicious they are—melt in the mouths of millions with nary a hint on the hips!” Amen!

Recently, the Jewish Book Council invited me to write a few stories on their blog: one of them was on my CCC: You might enjoy reading it!

I have recently made a major tweak in chocolate chip cookies: reduced sugar. And it works!

Chocolate chip cookies often err on the sweet side, and even though I love them, I almost never got near them, and was reticent about tempering with the sugar. But now I see it works perfectly, and I (and you) can finally enjoy them more often without too much guilt.

Just one added very easy step you must take with reduced-sugar cookies: Flatten them before baking!

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Date Nut Bread Recipe. Muffin Variation

adapted from Levana Cooks, using Vanilla Bean Levana Nourishments

date nut bread

This date nut bread sounds too good-for-you to be good-good, doesn’t it?

But wait till you taste it: Plump and moist and chock-full of good-for-you goodies. Plus, this is a quick bread, meaning, no yeast and no kneading. It rises with baking powder and baking soda, so you might decide to make it at the drop of a hat.

I make my date nut bread with spelt flour too, so it’s a win-win.

In my latest cookbook, all sugars and sweeteners are “under investigation” in each of the book’s recipes. So, whenever possible (which turns out to be quite often, I am pleased to report!) I use natural sweeteners. But here is the beautiful thing:

This date nut bread gets naturally sweetened with dried fruit and nothing else!

If you love dried figs or apricots, as I do, you can substitute them for, or use them in combination with, the dates.

Great for breakfast too, as is or toasted, alone or topped with a little nut butter or butter.

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Cold Yogurt Soup Recipe

adapted from Levana Cooks, using Vanilla Bean Levana Nourishments 

cold yogurt soup

Cold Yogurt Soup is a celebration of green fruit and tangy flavors.

This soup is wonderfully refreshing, and so pretty, a summer soup winner. No cooking! For optimal results, fold in the reserved diced fruit just before serving. The  flavor match (honeydew, kiwi, mint, green apples, green grapes) is unbeatable.

We want to leave this cold yogurt soup pale green

So no extraneous additions like red or yellow fruit please!

Dairy-Free? No problem!

This soup will be perfect vegan as well, in fact I serve it that way quite often on Shabbos with meat meals. Just use coconut yogurt, and add a little lemon juice!

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