Homemade coconut and chocolate sugar scrub

Since discovering count oil as the saviour of dairy and gluten free cooking I've been reading up on other uses for this miracle product.

I wash my face with it, I clean my teeth with it (google oil pulling and there are a million articles on it) and now I use it in a body scrub. 

Pinterest is a gold mine of thousands of other suggestions for coconut oil from cleaning make up brushes to moisturisers, face masks, fixing squeaky doors, even a treatment for head lice. 

But whilst I was trawling pins for inspiration one of the ideas that stood out for me was body scrubs. 

Made with store cupboard ingredients you can whip this up in under half an hour. It costs much less than the beauty brands' body scrubs and it also makes a wonderful gift.

This particular scrub caught my eye as it's chocolate and I don't think it's possible to have enough chocolate in your life. Being dairy free I don't eat chocolate bars anymore so this is a fantastic way to get a blast of chocolaty scent without eating any. Although, in reality,  you could eat this as everything contained in it is completely edible. I bet you can't say that about many store bought beauty products!!!

This was the second body scrub I made (the first was also divine and I will blog that soon) and although that first scrub was wonderful, it was difficult to take into the shower in batches and I didn't want to leave my Kilner jar in the shower to go rusty. As I was using the scrub in the shower - my best ideas come to me in the shower - I thought about setting the scrub in ice cube trays so that I could store the cubes in a jar and simply pick up a couple of cubes before jumping in the shower.

Whilst searching in the depths of the cupboard for the ice cube tray I found a shaped muffin silicone mould - perfect for  chocolate body scrub roses! 

These would make a fantastic gift wrapped in little cellophane bags finished with a ribbon or bow and my friends and family might just find a few of these in their stocking this Christmas!!

 

Chocolate and Coconut oil sugar scrub roses 

1 cup mixed sugars (I used a combination of soft brown, demerara and granulated) 

1/2 cup coconut oil 

2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

 

Mix the dry ingredients and add the coconut oil. Place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water to melt the coconut oil. Do not let the bottom of the bowl touch the water. 

 

Once melted, give the sugar a through mix to ensure the coconut oil is evenly distributed. 

 

Press the mixture into moulds, or put directly into a jar. If using moulds chill for 20 minutes to reset the coconut. 

Be aware that the oil will melt if it gets too warm. 

I'm done with all these posh and expensive beauty products that are full of chemicals, perfumes, parabens and Lord knows what else. I'm going au naturel!!

You will love the smell of this scrub when you take it into the shower; it smells like chocolate cupcakes baking!!! Let me know how you get on. 

IKEA recipe hack - gluten free flapjacks

I love IKEA. Pure and simple, it's a happy relationship. We only see each other every few months but when we do it's like we've never been apart.

If I started to list everything we own in this house that originated from the big blue warehouse in Wednesbury I'd lose you before the end of the paragraph. Suffice to say, the bedroom furniture I had when I was ten years old is still going strong, baby puddleduck's nursery furniture has been handed down to the boy, the playroom is Expedit'd to the rafters and Hektar takes pride of place in the living room.

I'm not sure what I enjoy most, meandering round the dream-like room sets following the arrows as if magnets are drawing me round the store, or catching five minutes on Pinterest searching for Ikea hacks to inspire organisation of the chaos in this house! (OK - honest Wednesday - I never spend just five minutes on Pinterest, I think I managed to loose just 42 once when I was having a good day and no matter how many storage units, space saving devices or ikea hacks I follow to the letter this house will never be organised!!!)

Such is my passion for Ikea, I am a Family Card member and have subscribed to the email newsletters.

Imagine my delight then when the lovely people at Ikea sent out a recipe from Izy Hossack which landed in my inbox on the very day two bananas were embarking on their final step towards the compost bin, never to be seen again.

Does anyone else manage to get through an entire bunch of bananas before at least two turn inedibly black? No? Just me? OK.

This recipe went to the top of my baking hit list at the speed of light as I have yet to find the perfect flapjack recipe, given that most contain dried fruit which I cannot stand the sight of never mind digest. I'm also a guilty convert to the current trend that is coconut oil (homemade body scrub blog post coming soon) so off to the local supermarket we trotted to buy gluten free oats and maple syrup and get this recipe started.

I've called this blog post Ikea hack as I made a few substitutions to the recipe - the shop didn't have maple syrup so we had to make to with golden syrup combined with the remnants of maple syrup I managed to dig out from the back of the baking cupboard, and I also substituted the sugar for 14g of Sweet Freedom natural fruit sugar.

The recipe is naturally dairy and gluten free so again = winner!

The presence of bananas in the recipe was also timely given that our banana tree has fruited this year. I think that's quite rare. Cue arty photograph of banana and oat flapjacks in foreground with fruiting banana plant in the background.

ORIGINAL RECIPE BY IZY HOSSACK - topwithcinnamon.com/ for Ikea. 

90g coconut oil

2 mashed over-ripe bananas

120ml maple syrup 

2 tablespoons demorara sugar (I replaced this with 17g Sweet Freedom Original)

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

pinch of salt

240g porridge oats (gluten free)

50g dark chocolate, melted

Combine oil, syrup sugar, vanilla and salt in a saucepan and heat slowly until the coconut oil has melted. Stir in the oats and stir well to ensure they are all coated. 

Pour the mixture into a greased baking tin and flatten. Bake at 180 C / 160 C (fan) for 20 minutes. 

Drizzle with the melted chocolate. Cool and cut. Serve. Eat. Enjoy. 

Despite baking for years I've never used my silicone baking 'tin' but we'd already popped a quick batch of brownies in the oven and my other tin seemed too big for the amount of mixture. I bought this one from Denby in the sale eons ago when it was priced so low it would have been rude to leave it there on the shelf. Finally it got its first outing with this recipe. 

It was perfect for the flapjacks. No need to line or grease the tin first, the flapjacks cut really easy when still inside the tin and easing round the edges they released easily. Think I'll be trying more recipes in this! 

Gluten, sugar and dairy free treats

How hard is it to find or make gluten and dairy free treats? I want to share with you a very quick and easy recipe that will fill the void with none of the guilt!

Dairy, gluten and sugar free chocolate crispy cakes 

Ingredients:  

Half a bar good quality dark chocolate (check the ingredients to make sure it doesn't contain dairy)

30g gluten free cornflakes - check your cereals, a lot of 'corn' and 'oat' based breakfast cereals also contain wheat. This ones I used were Whole Earth.

Teaspoon of honey - I used a jar from a local beekeeper.

Method

Heat the chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of water, very slowly. You want the chocolate to melt, not cook, or even worse, burn. 

Don't take your eye of it, keep stiring, it won't take long to  melt. 

When it's fully melted stir in the honey. 

Finally stir in the cornflakes. It will take a bit of stiring until they're fully coated. Place in cupcake cases to set. Enjoy! 

Gluten and dairy free, one bowl, simple chocolate cupcakes

This weekend we were invited to a family get together. My mum is one of seven siblings so it can be quite a gathering when the whole family turns up. 

This time it was relatively quiet, but with culinary skills running in the genes there was the usual semi-competitive bake off. 

A homemade chicken pie, a beautiful pork pie and two home baked loaves made my humble cupcakes pale into insignificance. But at least my offering was gluten and dairy free. 

When we arrived one of my Aunties proclaimed "I've weighed our breads and Sylvia's is the heaviest!" I mis-heard and thought she said "weighed our breasts"!! Oops! 

The beauty of these gluten and dairy free cupcakes is that you would never know they aren't 'normal'. It's the simplest recipe and if you use Doves Farm Gluten Free flour you don't need to worry about finding gluten free baking powder or Xantham Gum. 

I was really pleased with how these baked. They were soft and spongy and I defy anyone to tell the difference from a traditional chocolate cupcake.

I have to hold my hands up and admit they don't quite live up to The Pink Whisk's chocolate cake recipe in which vinegar is added to milk to cause a chemical reaction that results in a really rich and gooey texture that's just divine. If you're not dairy-free I urge you to try this.

However for a gluten and dairy free treat, these will do just fine!

I had some leftover buttercream from last week's orders so I topped half of them with icing roses so anyone not following gluten and dairy free didn't feel too hard done by.  

The allergen-free ones were topped with icing sugar using a (cheap) heart shaped icing template hence the rough edges and different sizes! 

RECIPE

120g Dove's Farm self raising flour

120g margarine or dairy free spread (check the ingredients, I used Pure Dairy Free Spread) 

120g caster sugar

2 eggs

4 tablespoons cocoa powder (I used Green and Blacks organic, it's just divine) 

1-2 tablespoons of dairy alternative milk e.g. almond milk, oat milk, rice milk or soya milk. 

METHOD

There really is no detail to the method. Put everything apart from the milk substitute in the bowl of a mixer and go. Start slowly and work up to full speed. You'll literally need just a couple of minutes and it's done. If the mixture is on the thick side, add a small amount of milk substitute and remix. 

This will make 12 cupcakes. 

Pop in the oven for 20 minutes - 190 C (170 C for Dan oven) / 375 F / gas mark 5. 

When the timer goes off, pop a cocktail stick in one of the cupcakes and if it comes out clean they're done. Bob's your Uncle and Fanny's your Aunt as they say! Although they're not - despite such a huge family there isn't a Bob or a Fanny! 

Happy Baking!