Gluten free - grain free - dairy free - refined sugar free - additive free - vegetarian
     Banana flour is a gluten free flour, but has a few advantages over other gluten free flours.  Firstly, it's not only gluten free but also grain free- great for all you Paleo eaters out there!  Secondly, it's not a nut-based gluten free flour- great for those with tree nut allergies).  Thirdly, it's a Resistant Starch.  My attempt to explain what this means is as follows:  Resistant starch is resistant to the digestive enzymes in the stomach and small intestine, so it is not absorbed there like most other starches, and makes it all the way to the large intestine, acting like dietary fibre.
   The benefits of this include:
-keeping your bowels 'regular'
-reducing the chance of colon cancer
-doesn't give your body an instant glucose hit like other starches, and then the associated sugar-low afterwards (ie it's very low G.I.)
-keeps you feeling full for longer
-reduces fat storage after a meal that it is consumed
-promotes increased mineral absorption compared to other starches, especially calcium and magnesium
-promotes good bacteria off the gut (they can feed off it)
    No other food contains as much resistant starch per serve as bananas! Second in the running is rolled oats.
    Unlike many other gluten free flours that require altering recipes drastically to achieve the non-gluten-free comparison, it's easy to replace regular flour in your favourite recipes.  You use 3/4 cup of banana flour for every cup of wheat flour in the recipe, make sure you use baking powder or soda, and add one extra egg (or equivalent soaked chia seeds).
    This recipe was a childhood favourite of mine.  We called it Sultana Slice and it's in a hand-written in a book of recipes I transcribed from my Mum's when I left home.  I've been wanting to give it a gluten/dairy/sugar-free make over for a long time and the banana flour has helped to keep it excitingly close to the original taste and texture. 
     And, by the way, it doesn't taste like banana!  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup (125 g) coconut oil(or organic butter)
• 1/2 cup coconut sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract or paste
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup banana flour
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarb /baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon allspice (or add an extra teaspoon cinnamon)
• 3/4 cup desiccated coconut
• 1 1/2 cups sultanas (if you don't like dried fruit in slice, you could replace this with 100g chopped 70% cocoa chocolate)

Variation:  if you want to make this slice a little more 'adult', soak the sultanas in Port or Sherry for half an hour before using them (drain the liquid before adding them to the batter).

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius / 350F  (160C fan forced).
2. Line a small rectangular or square slice tin with baking paper. (about 19 x 28cm)
3. In a large saucepan, melt the coconut oil or butter.  While hot, stir in the coconut sugar and vanilla.
4. Lightly beat the eggs with a fork in a separate bowl and add to the oil mix in the saucepan.
5. Add the flour, bicarb soda, cinnamon, allspice, desiccated coconut and sultanas. 
6. Mix very thoroughly until as smooth as possible.
7. Spread into the lined tin and smooth out the top.
8. Bake for 10 minutes, then cover with foil and bake a further 10 minutes.  Do not overcook as it can get very dry and crumbly!
9. Remove from oven and allow to cool for a few minutes.  This slice is yummy served warm with some dairy free ice cream and caramel sauce for dessert, or it's great once cooled as a morning or afternoon snack.
10. Store in an airtight container.

Gluten free - grain free - dairy free- refined sugar free - egg free - vegetarian
    In my continuing quest to help inspire you all to make interesting, healthy, filling, ' Friendly' breakfasts,  I suddenly had the inspiration to convert a cookie recipe that I make regularly make something more breakfast-like.  The original recipe had egg in it and I decided I wanted to try and make it egg-free for those with egg allergies.  Replacing the egg with Chia worked really well. 
    Of course, this doesn't have to be eaten for breakfast.  It's pretty sweet (although only sweetened with honey) and these make a great lunch box snack too.  When eating for breakfast, I cut the slice into 12 pieces, but if using for a snack, I'd make it into 24.  It's really filling!  I have it pictured above with some Chocolate Avocado Mousse. 
    For something more indulgent you could replace the dried fruit with 100g of dark chocolate (says the chocoholic!!)

Serves 12 for breakfast, or 24 as a snack.
Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons Chia seeds plus 6 tablespoons water
• 4 cups almond meal
• 1 tablespoon coconut flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 cup desiccated coconut (organic/preservative free)
• 1 1/2 cups dried fruit of choice.  I use organic sultanas and apricots (chopped).  You could use chopped dates, currants, cranberries, gogi berries - anything really!
• 1 cup (300g /10.5oz) honey (or less if you prefer)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Method

• Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius /300F. 

• In a medium bowl, mix the Chia seeds and water together and leave to soak for 15 minutes
• In a large bowl, place the almond meal, then sift in the coconut flour, baking soda and cinnamon.  Add the desiccated coconut and dried fruit. Stir until evenly mixed.
• Once the chia seeds have soaked, stir, and add the honey and vanilla.  Stir or whisk until evenly mixed.
• Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until completely incorporated.
• Grease a 30cm x 22cm (12 x 9 inches) baking dish with coconut oil (or butter if tolerated).  Your dish could be a little smaller than this, but not larger.   Press the mixture firmly and evenly into the dish and smooth out the top with a spatula or fork. 
• Bake in preheated oven for about 20 minutes, until nicely golden on top.
• Leave to rest out of the oven for 15 minutes before slicing and serving (it needs time to firm-up). 
• If you don't wish to serve it warm, leave it to cool to room temperature before removing from dish and storing in an airtight container in the pantry.

For more breakfast ideas, scroll my recipes here.
For more snack ideas, scroll through my recipes here.

Gluten free - grain free - dairy free - refined sugar free - egg free - additive free - vegetarian
    I hope you're as excited about this as I am!! After four batches and a few too many calories in the stomachs of my family, I've finally found a balance of flavours that I LOVE!  Of course, it is free from gluten, dairy and refined sugar. It is additive and preservative free if you use additive free vanilla and organic medjool dates. It's grain free and egg free too! I was originally inspired by a blog post that was going around on Face book that had a heap of 'healthy chocolate bars'- recreations of some of the most popular you can buy. I was lured in by the 'Snickers' recipe. I made it and was frankly underwhelmed. It tasted nothing like a snickers (in my humble opinion). Don't get me wrong, it was actually really nice, but I have a problem with creating a healthy version of an iconic food and then giving it the same name when it really doesn't resemble the original at all. What it did do was inspire me to create my own little chocolate bar and this is what I've come up with!
     I have mentioned before that I'm a sucker for eating sweet and savoury together (my most classic example is eating salt and vinegar chips in the same mouthful as chocolate), so Salted Caramel is a no-brainer for me. It's sweet/savoury heaven. I just had to come up with a caramel consistency that was firm enough to hold it's shape in a bar, but soft and gooey enough to actually resemble caramel.
    And then there was the chocolate- my first attempt at making my own rather than melting down dark chocolate. I consulted a few other recipes and it took a few attempts make adjustments and find a flavour I was happy with. The ingredients are simply cocoa butter, coconut oil, cocoa (or cocao) powder and raw honey. I get my cocoa butter from my local organic food store. You can also find it online. If you don't want to use cocoa butter, you can replace it with more coconut oil. I have made it this way and personally find the coconut oil flavour a little to much in that quantity, but it will still work for this chocolate bar. I prefer raw honey for all it's amazing nutrients (the heating that most supermarket honey undergoes is done to stop it crystallising, but it destroys most of the nutrition). In this recipe the honey will get heated slightly in order to be able to whisk it into the other ingredients, but not so much to kill off all its goodness. 
    Having said all that, you could use melted 70% cocoa (dairy free) chocolate for this recipe if you don't want to make your own.  I'd recommend using 2 x 100g bars - one for the top and one for the bottom. 
   Anyway, enough explanations...let's get on with the cooking!!

Ingredients
For the caramel:

• 1/2 cup almond butter OR peanut butter (unsalted). Make sure you stir it to distribute the oil evenly through the jar.
• 2 teaspoons finely ground sea salt
• 2 tablespoons coconut oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla paste (or extract)
• 4 tablespoons raw honey
• 20 Medjool dates (2 tightly packed cups)

For the chocolate:

• 100g / 3.5oz cocoa butter (equivalent of 1/2 cup when melted)
• 110g / 3.8oz / 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 1/2 cup cocoa or cocao powder (preferably pure, fair trade)
• 1/4 cup PLUS 2 Tablespoons honey

Plus:

• 1/2 cup roasted salted cashews for the top (you could use peanuts if you prefer...I can't because I have a son who's allergic!). You must use salted cashews to get the full 'Salted Caramel' flavour.

Method

• Start the chocolate first. In a double-boiler (mixing bowl over a pot that has a little simmering water in the bottom), melt together the cocoa butter and coconut oil. Stir occasionally until completely melted.
  

• Add the honey and whisk until smooth.
• Take the bowl off the double boiler and SIFT the cocoa into the liquid. Whisk until incorporated or smooth.
  (Note : Please stick with this order when making the chocolate...I found out the hard way that mixing up the method produces disastrous results!)
• Allow to cool slightly while preparing the tin.
• Use a square or rectangular baking tin, or Pyrex or ceramic dish NO BIGGER than 20x20cm (8x8 inches). The dish can be smaller than this but not bigger or there will not be enough chocolate to adequately coat the bottom and top of the bars. Obviously, if it's smaller, the bars will be thicker than those in my pictures (I used a 20x20 tin).
• Line the dish with either baking paper or cling wrap.
  
• Once the tin is lined, give your melted chocolate another good stir and pour about half of into the bottom of the dish. Place in the fridge or freezer on a flat surface and leave it until it is rock-hard. In my fridge this takes about 1  1/2 hours. If it isn't ready, spreading the caramel on top will destroy the bottom layer (I also found this out the hard way!!)
• Leave the remaining half of the melted chocolate at room temperature until you need it.
• Meanwhile, make the caramel :  In a food processor, add all the ingredients except the dates and blend until totally smooth.
  
• Add the de-seeded dates one at a time for a gradual blend (most processors won't cope with mixing that many dates all at once).
  
• Scrape down as necessary and blend until completely incorporated and smooth.
• Chop up your cashews or peanuts into small, rough pieces and set aside.
• Once the chocolate from the fridge is ready, gently spread the caramel over the top. Please move slowly and carefully- the caramel is quite sticky and you can destroy the chocolate if you're too heavy handed. Smooth out the top of the caramel as much as possible.
• Give the remaining melted chocolate another really vigorous whisking and make sure all ingredients are evenly incorporated. Pour over the top of the caramel.
• Sprinkle the cashews as evenly as possible over the top of the chocolate. Use every little crumb, as this is where much of the salt will be, and it's very important in the overall flavour.