Grain-Free Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars Recipe

Sigh. Nothing can pull a girl's heartstrings like a good recipe for chocolate peanut butter bars. As a lifelong fan of Reese's peanut butter cups, I've always wanted to find a way to indulge my chocolatey peanut buttery cravings at home without having to succumb to mass market candy with all its not-so-lovely additives.

Enter this too-good-to-be-true chocolate peanut butter bar recipe by my fellow blogger Carol at Ditch the Wheat. She obviously understands the magical spell Reese's can hold over you, as well as the age-old struggle between trying to indulge in a decadent dessert and trying to eat better for your health.

I was delighted to discover her latest recipe book Indulge: 70 Grain Free Recipes included a recipe for chocolate peanut butter bars. Not only do these hit the spot perfectly, but the recipe is very friendly to those with allergies or anyone following a grain-free, dairy-free or paleo-style diet.

If you're trying to avoid peanut butter (for allergies or other reasons), or if you just want to give these a creative flair, you can also try making them with almond butter or cashew butter--I imagine homemade macadamia nut butter would be pretty finger-lickin' good, too!

 

How to Make Grain-Free Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars 

(Soooo Yummy like Reese's!)

 

Crust:

• 1 cup almond flour/meal, (250 mL)
• 2 tbsp extra virgin coconut oil, (30 mL)
• 2 tbsp raw honey, (30 mL)
• 1/8 tsp salt, (0.5 mL) 

Filling:

• 1 cup almond butter or cashew butter (or peanut butter, of course!), (240 mL)
• 3 tbsp extra virgin coconut oil, (45 mL)
• 3 tbsp raw honey, (15 mL)
• 1 1/2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder, (22.5 mL)
• 1/2 tbsp raw honey or more, (7.5 mL) 

• (Check out the marketplace page to find real food ingredients online!)

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line the bottom of a 4x8 inch rectangular loaf pan with parchment paper. 

• In a large bowl combine the ingredients for the crust.

• Evenly press the dough into the bottom of the prepared baking pan.

• Bake for 10-15 minutes. The crust is done when it is lightly brown and firm to the touch. Let the crust cool before spreading the filling.

• In a bowl, combine the nut butter, coconut oil, raw honey. Mix and reserve about ¼ of the mixture for the chocolate topping. 

• Spread the almond butter filling onto the cooled crust. 

• Place the bars in the freezer to firm up before spreading the chocolate mixture on top of the almond filling.

• To make the chocolate topping add unsweetened cocoa powder to the reserved almond butter filling and sweeten to taste.

• Spread on top of the semi-frozen bars. Place in the fridge to firm. Store the bars in the refrigerator. 

• Makes 8 servings

Easy peasy, aren't they? If you're ready to try more grain-free, primal-friendly dessert recipes, then you'll want to check out Indulge: 70 Grain Free Desserts. You'll get:

• Over 70 + recipes that include nut free & egg free recipes
• 162 pages of content
• All recipes are dairy free and adhere to Paleo principles
• Hyperlinked table of contents makes navigating easy
• Beautiful photographs
• Trouble shooting tips
• Bonus! A printer friendly copy

Save 20% today! Order Indulge: 70 Grain Free Desserts by Jan. 31, 2013 and pay $24.97 $19.98 with coupon code HOLIDAYDTW. 

Click here to order now!

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Raw Honey Mask for Acne

The best face mask for acne can't be purchased at a pricey department store. In fact, it only contains one ingredient and it's probably already in your pantry! It's one of my personal favorites: the raw honey face mask.

Raw honey has been prized for its healing properties since ancient times--it was even used like a modern-day antibiotic ointment on burns and scrapes. The raw honey mask for acne is an excellent alternative to conventional acne treatments that often do little more than make your skin dry and scaly. Raw honey, on the other hand, softens the skin and gives it a natural glow. Over time, honey's natural antibacterial properties can help prevent breakouts, but you will notice a difference in the suppleness of your skin right away!


Instructions for a Raw Honey Face Mask

One of the reasons I think honey makes the best face mask for acne is that it's so simple:

1. Use about one teaspoon of high quality raw honey.
2. Gently spread it over the entire face.
3. Leave the honey face mask on for about 15-60 minutes.
4. Rinse with lukewarm or cool water and pat face dry.

Tip: Don't be tempted to use too much honey. About one teaspoon is plenty. Any more than that and you'll be dripping honey all over the place! I had a problem with dripping at first, but once I cut back on the amount of honey I used, the problem resolved itself. Not to mention that it's a little more economical that way, too!

Question: What honey is best for a honey face mask?

Answer: Any honey will do, but I highly recommend using raw, unfiltered honey for your face mask because it retains more of the potent healing properties. I can even tell the difference between raw honey brands I use for my honey mask. A high quality local raw honey made my skin glow in a way I didn't notice with the other raw honey I tried. You can find a great source of high quality raw honey here on my Resources page.

Have you tried the raw honey mask for acne? What did you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday.

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Day 9 on RRARF: Adieu, Le Sucre!

I've always had a sweet tooth. And although my days of regular sugar binges are behind me (thanks mostly to real food and good rest), up until now I still liked to have something sweet with my meals. A little dark chocolate, a small fruit smoothie, a spoonful of raw honey, or a beverage sweetened with stevia would complete my eating experience. Without something sweet, my meals felt rather... unfinished. Since it never added up to much (and stevia is a free food, right?), I told myself this wasn't a big deal. After all, I wasn't gobbling up a quart of ice cream several times a week like I'd been doing before (you know, back when I thought low-fat dieting and cardio was the path to health heaven). So no harm done, right?

Wrong. The simple flavor of sweetness is enough to alter the body's chemical response to what you're eating, which can raise the weight set point, increase appetite and fuel cravings. Why? Because it activates the pleasure centers in the brain. That's why Matt Stone calls this phenomena PCAT (Pleasure Center Activation Theory). The idea is that the flavor of our food affects how the body responds to it by triggering surges of brain chemicals like dopamine. That's why fast food--with its abundance of chemical additives like MSG and sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup--is so addictive, and also why it appears to so strongly fuel obesity even beyond the individual metabolic effects these refined ingredients have on the body.

Matt wrote a post about PCAT here, where he says:

"In terms of promoting a rise in weight set point, which increases the appetite to metabolism ratio (AM Ratio – kinda like AM Radio), the most powerful promoters seem to be substances that are the most sweet. Saccharine, Aspartame, and Sucralose (Splenda) cause much greater increase in the AM Ratio than plain ol’ sugar. Of course, throwing caffeine into the mix activates those pleasure centers even more. Diet drinks are the perfect obesigenic substances when paired with a calorie-dense meal. Say what you want about Stevia, but that is another dime-a-dozen sweetener for raising your weight set point – it just comes without so much of the neurotoxicity of aspartame, or the bowel destruction of sucralose."

Sweetness appears to illicit a particularly strong response from our brain chemicals. This is indepenent of blood sugar and insulin, which is why non-caloric sweeteners can still activate the pleasure centers of the brain and thus cause problems with metabolism, moods, weight, appetite, etc. Listening to Matt's audio seminar on addictive eating really cemented the idea in my head. After all, if stevia can satisfy a sugar craving, then it is obviously capable of performing some function in the body similar to sugar. That function is presumably the release of brain chemicals like dopamine.

Adieu, Le Sucre!

My top goal while on RRARF is to allow my body to completely self-regulate. If sweetness interferes with the body's natural biochemical response, then it has to go. So, for the duration of RRARF (and hopefully beyond), I'm eliminating sweetness from the menu. No honey, no maple syrup, no fermented ketchup, no dark chocolate, and no stevia. I'm also not having any fruit for the time being, though I'm not bothering to eliminate some of the sweeter vegetables like yams, carrots and onions.

I've even gone so far as to eliminating milk during RRARF, because it is both liquid and sugar, and therefore may have some metabolic side effects when you drink it with every meal (which is basically what I've been doing). And though I don't believe that milk is inherently bad for metabolic health, with my individual pursuits being what they are, giving it the boot for a few weeks seems reasonable. (Okay, I'll be honest, this was Matt's suggestion when I asked him about milk... I'm very slow to voluntarily give up my milk!) In any case, I haven't had milk since last Thursday morning. Congratulate me. That takes willpower, at least for me. Take the cake, but for Pete's sake, give me my milk!

But in all seriousness, I have felt a slight longing for something sweet on a daily basis since starting RRARF, but no outright cravings. I honestly seem to be doing pretty well considering the sweets habit I was getting into. Nine days without anything sweet is officially the longest I have ever gone.

After RRARF? I can't imagine giving up sweets forever (though I may consider it after 30 days of this). But I'm considering eliminating daily sweets, and certainly not having them with every single meal. A weekly splurge might be forgivable (that is, if it doesn't lead to cravings). It's the daily stuff that has the most influence on our metabolic health, after all, rather than what we do every once in a while.

Matt Stone has done some truly remarkable research on the subject of metabolic health. If you have not yet had the chance, I highly recommend you download the complete RRARF e-book for free and find out a little more about the science behind these recommendations. And you can also see what Matt has to say concerning the truth about dieting in this video presentation.

Other RRARF Posts:

Day 1 on RRARF: What is RRARF?
Day 2 on RRARF: Why I'm Doing It
Day 3 on RRARF: Rest and Relaxation  
Day 7 on RRARF: Benefits Already!
Day 8 on RRARF: Eat the Food!
Day 9 on RRARF: Adieu, Le Sucre!  
Day 21 on RRARF: Deprivation is Dieting 
Day 23 on RRARF: Life Without the Scale
RRARF vs. The Milk Diet

This post is part of Fight Back Friday hosted by Food Renegade.

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6 Ways to Stop Sugar Cravings From Ruling Your Life

Let's face it: most of us have a sweet tooth. For some it's an occasional desire for an ice cream cone. Then for others it's more like an uncontrollable urge to totally immerse ourselves in a bag of candy and never look back.

Overcoming sugar cravings is not an easy task. I know this, not because I've never had a problem with sugar, but because sugar and I have had a love-hate relationship in the past. I hated to love it, but still I indulged in it every chance I could get. Then I'd feel terrible and wish I could swear off sugar forever. And you can probably guess that never happened.

But today sugar and I have a healthier relationship. Not perfect - I still eat too much at times - but something more within the realm of a healthy normal. How did I do this? Here's some tips that worked for me:

Eat plenty of fat and protein. There’s no use in trying to quit sugar before you’re eating enough real food, you’ll just get more cravings. Real proteins like meat, eggs and dairy combined with healthy fats like butter and coconut oil make for a healthy body that won't crave sugar to compensate for missing nutrients.

Eat enough food. Not taking in enough calories can make your body crave sugar when all you need is real food. In today’s world of dieting this one is all too common. The only time my sugar cravings go away is when I’m allowing myself to eat what my body needs.

Eat carbs. This goes against some popular advice, but it works for me. I lowered carbs for two months and after 4-6 weeks I started experiencing massive cravings for sugar (and caffeine, too). I started eating a moderate amount of carbs again (about 150 g/day) and my sugar cravings disappeared within a couple days. Weird, but true.

Stop doing so much cardio. I know too many people - myself included - who got nothing from 90 minutes on the elliptical except the desire to devour a whole carton of ice cream in one sitting. So, lay off the excessive cardio and do some more efficient exercise instead.

Try some stevia. I don’t use stevia exclusively, but I use it so I can reduce the amount of sweetener I would typically use. A small amount of raw honey and mostly stevia makes a great smoothie. And in beverages like coffee, I can replace sugar completely with stevia and it still tastes great.

Give yourself time. A lot of it. I knew my body was craving sugar because it needed to heal, and healing takes time. I started eating real food and stopped doing so much cardio, but it still took a few months before I felt more in control of my sugar cravings.

Are you and sugar friends? Or enemies? What has been your experience with sugar cravings?

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Ditch the Cough Syrups and Try Natural Home Remedies Instead

Well, cold and cough season is coming up. Like many others, my family experiences far less general illness since we changed to a traditional diet. But a mild cold or cough may still sneak up on us now and then. A few years ago, my knee-jerk response to a persistent cough was a trip to the cough syrup aisle at the drug store. Now, I wouldn't touch those chemical-laden syrups with a ten-foot pole (though perhaps they'd serve as an effective drain cleaner?).

Surprisingly, suppressing a cough is not really medically necessary in most cases. In fact, coughing is your body’s way of clearing mucus and phlegm from the throat, which is important for preventing and removing infection. But of course, there are times when a cough is just downright annoying. So if you’re trying to clear up a cough, whether for a business meeting or just to get some sleep, rest assured there are plenty of time-honored natural remedies available.

Honey is one of the most popular home remedies for a cough - because it really works (and it tastes delicious, too!). A 2007 study showed that just two teaspoons of honey at bedtime is as effective as medicinal cough syrup for reducing nighttime coughing and improving sleep. Another bonus: kids naturally balk at swallowing those nasty cough syrups, but getting honey into a child is usually not a problem. If possible, use raw honey, which is loaded with beneficial enzymes, amino acids, and trace minerals.

Here's some more great home remedies for coughing:

- Mix 1/4 cup of honey with 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice for a simple homemade cough syrup. It tastes pretty great and works absolute wonders. You can keep a small jar around and take a small spoonful as needed throughout the day.

- If you want to avoid the sugar in honey, a slice of lemon can also do the trick. Liberally sprinkle salt and pepper over the slice and vigorously suck out the juice. Repeat as often as necessary.

- Grapes are known for providing strong cough relief. Their juice can ease a cough while also encouraging the release of congestion, which can shorten the duration of your cough. Raw grapes and fresh grape juice are the best way to reap these benefits. You can also simmer a cup of raisins in 1/2 cup of water and 2 tablespoons of honey. Stir frequently until the mixture is thick and then allow it to cool. Use a tablespoon at a time to relieve your cough whenever needed.

- If a cough is keeping you from sleeping, try this calming tea that will suppress your cough and relax your nerves:

1 cup strong-brewed chamomile tea

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (or your favorite fresh juice)

1 tablespoon raw honey

A warm cup of this tea will help you get a good night of rest, which will put you on the road to recovery from your cough.

I don't know about you, but some of these remedies sound so delicious I might have to fake a cough so I can go make some...

Do you have any home cough remedies to share? Please share them in the comments below!

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