We try to always see things from the bright side even though we all have setbacks and things troubling us every now and then. That is why we have waited to tell you this story until we could find a happy ending to it.

When Luise was pregnant with Elsa she got chronic pelvic and tailbone pain. It was a pregnancy spent on crutches and in a wheelchair. During the last months it was so bad that she had to stay in bed most parts of the day. After Elsa was born it became better but not completely good. During the end of our trip around the world the pain got a lot worse again. Since then she has been on constant rehabilitation several days a week, working with the entire body. We feel a bit bad about not mentioning this in our weekly stories, since her injury and rehabilitation actually has been a huge part of our lives these last years, but as we hate focusing on the rough stuff we deliberately kept it out.

Looking at her walking, no one would probably guess how much her body was hurting. But each walk that she has taken has been punished with hours of pain. Running has been completely out of the question, even carrying Elsa has been hard at times. She has seen several doctors, osteopaths, physiotherapist, acupuncture clinics, homoeopaths and personal trainers, and all of them have given her different advices on how to get better, with no result. Finally she found a good clinic where she has been going for six months now. She has been working so incredibly hard, both there and at home, with small improvements each month. She has been going through intense treatments and medications. And you know what, a few days ago Luise took her first run outside! She only ran a couple of blocks and for about 10 minutes, but it was amazing seeing her in her running outfit again. With the biggest smile on her lips. She is still not fully recovered, but we think this is definitely worth celebrating. So here are our protein packed hemp bars. Perfect after a good run and for celebrating health.

Raw Hemp Protein Bars
Makes around 15 bars 

These bars are not only filled with protein, they are also magically delicious. They are sweet but it in a very nice and nourishing way. Have them after a workout or as a mid-day snack.

Dry ingredients
1 cup (240 ml) pumpkin seeds
1 cup (240 ml) coconut flakes
1/2 cup (120 ml) hemp hearts
1/2 cup (120 ml) hemp protein powder (you can use hemp hearts instead)
4 tbsp chia seeds
2 tbsp bee pollen (optional)

Wet ingredients
20 fresh medjool dates, pitted
6 tbsp coconut oil, melted
4 tbsp (raw) cacao powder
1 tsp grounded vanilla or vanilla extract

6 tbsp rolled oats
2 tbsp poppy seeds

In a food processor or blender, pulse the dry ingredients quickly. Do not over-process, we want it crunchy. Place the mixture in a bowl and set aside. Add all wet ingredients to the food processor or high speed blender and blend to combine. This might take some time, and if your blender isn’t strong enough you might have to help out by stirring around a few times with a fork or add a dash of water.
Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients, add oats and poppy seeds and stir until well combined. Spread the batter evenly into a 11 x 7-inch (28 x 18 cm) baking dish, make sure it becomes quite compact. Place in the fridge for about 30 minutes. Cut into bars. Wrap them in paper and store in an air-tight container. Will keep around a week in the fridge.

Cookies are like tennis to me. Does that sound strange to you? As you read this Luise and Elsa are in Denmark visiting family, and I am on a tennis camp in Portugal. I have played tennis since I was a kid. Even though I have never been the most talented tennis player, I have kept on playing, once a week, year after year. My game has of course improved, but not as much as I wish. Which is why I am on this camp, maybe a trainer can show me some tricks and help me pick up my game? Cookies are like tennis for me. I have been baking cookies regularly since I was a kid, but I have never been very good at it. I can make dinners and cakes easily, but cookies … they always come out too hard, too dry or too boring.

The only way for me to succeed with cookies is to follow someone else’s recipe. These Peanut Butter Spelt Cookies are much inspired from one of Heidi’s recipes, with a few adjustments. What is so great with these cookies is that:
1. You need very few ingredients.
2. The only flour you need is spelt flour.
3. It’s a recipe without butter, sugar and egg.
4. They have got a perfect consistency, they taste great and they are vegan.

I made an attempt to adjust this recipe by using three bananas instead of maple syrup. They tasted alright but the consistency just didn’t turn out right. I am quite sure though that a more talented cookie baker can succeed with this.

So, cookies are like tennis to me. I am on a tennis camp right now to improve my tennis. Where should I go to improve my cookies? Cookie Camp?! Hey, that’s not a bad idea actually …

Peanut Butter Spelt Cookies
About 2 dozen cookies

2 cups spelt flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp sea salt
1 cup natural peanut butter
1/3 cup tahini
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup olive oil
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Set the oven to 350F. Mix 1,5 cup of the spelt flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, combine peanut butter, tahini, maple syrup, olive oil, and vanilla. Stir until combined. Pour the peanut butter mixture over the flour mixture and fold them together until combined, try not to over work the dough. If it is too loose, you can add some more flour to it. Drop by heaping tablespoonfuls onto parchment-lined baking sheets. Press down on each one gently with the back of a fork. It’s a loose batter, Bake for 10-12 minutes, don’t over bake or they will be dry. Let them cool for  few minutes and transfer to a cooling rack.

After six months of traveling around the world, our life has now finally settled back to normal. And that is when we realize that we don’t know what normal is anymore. Even though me and Luise have been living together for a couple of years, it feels like our life as a family starts now. Just like Elsa, we are taking our first trembling steps towards our new family life. Right now we have no idea how that life will turn out, how we will find a balance between work and family, or even in which country our life will take place during the next couple of years. You might say that we have some figuring out to do. One thing that we do know, is that we will keep on sharing our favorite recipes with you. Like these Chai & Hazelnut Brownies that Luise made the other day. We would be lying if we called them healthy, but they are at least vegan, raw and gluten free. And they taste – pardon my french – fingerlickin’ good!

Before moving on to the recipe, we want to give you some basic tips when baking with dates.
1. Always use fresh dates. They should be dry on the outside, and very soft and sticky on the inside.
2. If you have to use dried dates, you need to soak them in drinking water a couple of hours before baking with them.
3. If you can’t find dates at all you can try using raisins, figs, dried plums or dried apricots (remember to always soak dried fruit first).
4. When you blend dates they should turn into a very sticky paste, so you need a strong food processor or blender.

Raw Hazelnut & Chai Brownies (adapted from the danish cookbook “Raw Cake”, by Caroline Fibæk)
Makes around a dozen brownies

What makes this cake special is that it is spiced up with chai spices, it gives it such an unique taste! Use normal tea bags, cut them open and just pour them in the dough, isn’t it easy? -and you can choose green, black or herbal chai tea!

2 cups (5 dl) fresh medjool dates, remove the seeds
4 tbsp coconut oil (room temperatur)
2 tbsp maple syrup
6 tbsp raw cacao powder, or ordinary cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla powder (not sugar) or 1 vanilla bean
3 chai tea bags, cut them open (we use Pukka or Yogi)
2 tbsp grounded flax seeds (you can buy grounded or use a coffee grinder)
two pinches of sea salt
1/2 cup (1,2 dl) hazelnut, roughly chopped (you can use any kind of nuts or seeds)

Put all ingredients, except the hazelnuts, in a high speed blender. Add the chopped hazelnuts and work the dough by hand. Take a brownie tin or a plate, cover it with plastic wrap and press down the dough to whatever thickness you prefer (ours are about 1/2 inch high). Rub a bit of coconut oil on your hands to prevent the dough from sticking on them. Put the cake in the fridge and let it set for a least half an hour.

Slice it up in pieces, sprinkle with cacao powder and garnish with whole hazelnuts.

Photos by: Johanna Frenkel.

Say hello to our first guest poster here on Green Kitchen Stories. It is the amazing raw food blog Golubka, which is run by a russian family – a mother and her two daughters – living in the States. They do amazing creations with raw food that most of the time looks like small pieces of art. If you haven’t visited their blog before you have to jump over there right after you are done reading this post. Enough said from us, we leave the word to them:

There are not many fruits in the world that I love as much as I do persimmons. Every time their season comes, from November to February, I get a feeling that I could live exclusively off those soft, plump, orange wonders. This tart is a combination of my two favourites – persimmons and chocolate. They make a great pair.

Our blog mostly focuses on raw food, and we work with ingredients, equipment, and techniques that might not be familiar to everyone. Although sprouting and dehydrating may sound intimidating at first, in reality it’s not any more difficult than baking and frying. If you like the process of creating and eating healthy and delicious meals, you will enjoy discovering these new ways of food preparation.

This recipe calls for sprouted oat flour, we make it ourselves. The process is quite simple, although it requires a dehydrator. (The dehydrator is a great kitchen appliance that can be used for making endless fun and healthy dishes and snacks.) To make sprouted oat flour, soak raw oat groats in filtered water overnight, rinse, and dry them in a dehydrator. Then grind them in a simple coffee grinder to achieve a flour-like consistency. We usually make a large batch of this flour and keep it in the refrigerator, using as needed for nutritious raw cookies, crusts, crumbles, and baby food.

Almond flour is made in a similar way, where almonds are simply ground in a food processor. You can also find almond flour in most health food markets.

Another ingredient that may sound new to you is date paste. It’s an excellent natural sweetener that can be made in advance and used on many occasions. To make, pit dates and soak them in purified water for an hour. Then puree in a food processor, adding a little of the soaking water at a time if needed.

Young Thai coconut has received lots of great publicity lately, and we feel that its amazing flavour and health benefits are well worth the effort of cracking its shell.

Chocolate Crust

1 cup sprouted oat flour
1 cup almond flour
/2 cup maple syrup powder
3 1/2 tablespoons raw cocoa powder
1/2 cup raw almond butter
1/4 cup date paste
2 tablespoons purified water
1 tablespoon vanilla extract – optional

Sift together all the dry ingredients. Add the almond butter and mix thoroughly. In a separate bowl combine the date paste, water and vanilla extract. Add the combined liquid ingreidents to the oat mixture and mix well. Line a tart pan with plastic wrap. Press the dough into the tart pan evenly. Dehydrate for 2 hours and remove the crust from the pan. Peel the plastic away and dehydrate the crust for another 6-8 hours.

Chocolate Cream

1 cup fresh meat of young Thai coconut
1 cup cashews – soaked for 4 hours or more
1/2 cup fresh water of young Thai coconut OR purified water
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup raw agave syrup
5 tablespoons raw cocoa powder

In a high speed blender, mix all the ingredients until smooth and creamy. Let set in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

Persimmons Soaked in Vanilla Agave
Ripe persimmons
Agave syrup mixed with a few drops of vanilla extract

Slice persimmons the way you prefer. Pour vanilla agave over the slices and let soak for 2-3 hours.

Assembly
Spoon the chocolate cream into the crust evenly. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 8 hours or overnight. Arrange the agave soaked persimmon slices on top of the cream and garnish with ground pistachios.

Text & photos by Golubka

On our way to Asia we stopped a couple of days in Sweden to visit my family. Elsa is the first grand child in the family and everyone was super excited to see her. During our stay she has been played with, danced with, fed, sung for and – of course – been given Christmas gifts. This meant that Luise and I could focus on eating Christmas food, taking walks in the snow and trying out a new recipe for Swedish Pepparkakor, my all time favorite Christmas cookie.

Pepparkakor or Swedish Gingerbread Cookies are very thin, crunchy, sweet and full of flavor. The traditional recipe calls for spices, sugar, butter, flour, molasses and sometimes even cream. Since we try to avoid most of those ingredients on this blog we decided to make our own version. It wasn’t all easy making a new recipe for pepparkakor since I have a life-long cake crush on the traditional recipe. Luise might kill me for writing this (since she doesn’t agree) but quite frankly, no oil in the world can fully replace the taste of butter in a cookie. We decided to try it anyway. And after a couple of not very good batches we came up with this recipe which not only got a similar texture and taste, but also adds some extra flavor and crunchiness to them. They are vegan, uses a more wholesome flour and less refined sweeteners. A not so traditional Pepparkaka with an almost traditional taste.

As you can see on the following pictures Sweden was drowned in snow and the contrast from sunny California could not have been bigger. It felt unreal walking around in this cold climate, knowing that we would be in a steaming hot Asia a couple of days later.

We are actually already in Beijing, China when we post this, but more on that in our next post. China has blocked facebook, twitter and youtube, so we won’t be able to tweet until we arrive in Thailand.

Swedish Pepparkakor / Vegan Gingerbread Cookies
Makes 20-40 depending on the size of the cookie cutters

1 cup almonds
15 dates
1/2 cup coconut oil, olive oil or canola oil
2 tbsp agave syrup or honey
2 tsp ginger, grounded
1 tsp cloves, grounded
2 tsp cinnamon, grounded
1-1,5 cup whole wheat flour or spelt flour
1/2 tsp baking soda

Grind the almonds into a flour in a blender or a food processor. Add dates, oil, agave syrup and the spices and pulse until everything is mixed into a sticky dough. Sift together flour and baking soda and start kneading the flour into the dough, little by little. When you can form the dough into a round moist ball without getting sticky, the dough is ready. Put it in the fridge over the night or at least for three hours.

Set the oven to 150°C/300°F. Line a baking pan with parchment paper. Roll out the dough roughly 1/8-inch thick between two sheets of plastic wrap, it keeps the dough from sticking on the baking pin. Cut it with cookie cutters and transfer it to the parchment paper. This dough is a little bit more brittle than normal gingerbread dough, so you need to be careful when transferring it to the parchment paper.

Bake for 7-12 minutes, depending on the size and thickness of the cookies. Keep an eye on the oven and make sure not to over bake them. Since they contain almonds they will burn easily.

Photos by David & Johanna Frenkel

And so we have left San Francisco. What a great time we have had in this city. Everyone has been friendly to us and we have found ourselves having long conversations with complete strangers on the streets and in food stores numerous times (which never happens in Sweden). We have constantly been eating good food and we even met a couple of new friends. And when we thought that the city couldn’t be sunnier or happier, the San Francisco Giants won the World Series in Baseball. Such a perfect ending.

Now we have rented a car and started driving down south. Highway 1 is beyond beautiful and we have made our first stop is Santa Cruz, but we’ll tell you more about that in our next post.

Before we left, we made this chocolate cake filled and topped with blackberries. Actually it’s not very difficult to make a normal chocolate cake, you can probably find 5 zillion good recipes on google and at least 70 on Martha Stewart. But our cake is made without eggs, butter, sugar and flour, which made everything a little bit more challenging. We tried three different versions of this cake before finding the right balance between fruit vs chocolate, sticky vs dry and sweet vs dark and rich.

In the end it feels like we nailed it. This cake is sticky on the inside, has got a quite fruity taste and a rich chocolate spread. It’s gluten free and it’s vegan. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that it’s healthy, but it is definitely more nutritious than your regular Martha Stewart cake.

Chocolate & Blackberry Cake

1 1/2 cup walnuts
15 fresh dates
5 tbsp cacao powder (unsweetened)
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp coconut oil or olive oil
4 tbsp apple sauce (unsweetened)
2 cups blackberries (use 1 cup in the cake and the rest on top of it)

Chocolate frosting:
150 g dark chocolate (dairy free or regular)
1/2 avocado
1 tbsp agave syrup
a pinch of salt

Place the walnuts in a food processor and mix them until they get the consistency of a crunchy flour, add the dates and pulse for a minute so that they get mixed with the walnuts. Add cacao, cinnamon, oil, apple sauce and pulse everything for a couple of minutes. Add the blackberries and mix them shortly (you want them in pieces but not completely dissolved). Pour the mixture into an 8-inch non-stick spring pan and bake it for 40 – 50 minutes at 325° F / 175° C.

Let the cake cool off after it is baked. Meanwhile you can prepare the chocolate frosting. Melt the chocolate, pour it in a blender and mix with avocado, agave and a pinch of salt. Spread the frosting on top of the cooled chocolate cake. Decorate with the blackberries before serving. Enjoy!

We have several reasons to celebrate today.

Number one. We started Green Kitchen Stories for exactly one year ago! It has been an unbelievable year, during which we have learned to know food loving people from all around the world. We are so incredibly grateful for all your cheering e-mails, tweets and comments. And even though we don’t answer all of you (shame on us), we read every single comment (more than once), and almost all the time they make us soooo happy (sometimes – very rarely – they make us a little bit sad and confused). So keep letting us know what you think about our recipes and stories and we will keep sharing healthy treats and vegetarian dinners.

Number two. Today is the first day on David’s paternity leave. And in less than two days we start our around the world trip! It’s such a perfect timing since Elsa becomes happier and funnier for every day that goes by. She is the kind of baby that never wants to sit where we put her, she always tries to stand up and look around, so we are quite certain that she will enjoy traveling.

Number three. We have decided where to go after 2 ½ months in USA. It’s pretty exciting. We just bought tickets to Beijing, Vietnam and Thailand!

It seems like we deserve a cake today, right?

Since we are leaving, our kitchen cabinets look pretty empty. We did find a bag of pumpkin seeds and a couple of dates, and that was all we needed to make these super easy mini cakes. We also made two different mousses and topped them with a fig. You could have any kind of filling on these, and since the cakes are quite sweet you don’t even have to add sugar to it.

Pumpkin Seed Cakes
Makes 8 mini cakes

1 cup pumpkin seeds
8 fresh dates

Divide the pumpkin seeds into three equal piles. Add the first pile into a blender and blend for 20 seconds. Add the dates and the second pile of the pumpkin seeds and blend until it becomes a sticky dough. You might need to help the blender by stirring around with a spoon. It gets easily stuck to the blender. Add the rest of the pumpkin seeds and blend for a short while, the point is to get a crunchy structure with seeds in diefferent sizes. Make 8 small balls with your hands and press them until they are 1/2 inch thick and 3 inch wide. Put in the fridge while making the mousses.

Raw Chocolate Mousse
1 avocado
1 ripe banana
3 tbsp raw cacao powder
1 tbsp raw cacao nibs
1 tbsp blueberries

Mix all the ingredients in a blender for about 45 seconds.

Lime Yoghurt Mousse
½ cup quark (or greek yoghurt that you’ve strained through a coffee filter for 30 minutes)
½ lime, juice
½ vanilla bean

Put the yoghurt in a bowl and whisk in lime and vanilla.

2 fresh figs for decoration, cut in boats.

Arrange the 8 mini cakes on a plate, put a dollop of mousse on each of them and decorate with a fig. Serve cold.

Yes, you read it right, we used beans and brownies in the same headline. And we don’t mean cacao beans or coffee beans. No, these brownies are actually made on black beans and garbanzo beans instead of flour, which makes them gluten free and much more nutritious than your ordinary brownies. Pretty cool, right?

If you follow a lot of food blogs this combination might not come as a total surprise to you, there are a couple of different bean & brownie recipes out there. And if you travel around in Asia you might come across a couple of desserts based on red or yellow lentils. But you still have to admit that it is pretty mind blowing that you can use one of the most nutritious food ingredients in one of the least nutritious cakes.

And how is the result, how beanie do they get? The truth is that they don’t taste beans at all, and I used quite a lot of beans in this recipe. I even brought them to work, and no-one could guess the secret ingredient. They do however taste a little bit different to an ordinary brownie recipe. The beans makes them a little bit more dense and they have a very rich taste, which basically means that you can’t have 10 of these at the same time, but that’s only a good thing, right? The agave syrup makes them sweet, but maybe not as crunchy as with sugar. In all other aspects they are similar, and depending on which dark chocolate you use you will get a variation in taste.

Bean Brownies Adapted from 101 cookbooks
makes 16 squares

125 g butter
180 g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
1,5 cup cooked or canned black beans & garbanzo beans (chick peas)
3 tbsp cacao powder
3 tbsp coconut flakes
1 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
a pinch of sea salt
3 eggs
2/3 cup agave syrup

Preheat the oven to 325°F and line an 11-inch square baking pan with parchment paper.
Melt the butter on low heat in a medium size pan, break 150 g of the dark chocolate into small pieces and add them to the melted butter. Stir around until the chocolate mixture is completely melted.
Put beans, cacao powder, coconut flakes and 1/2 cup of the walnuts in a blender or a food processor. Blend for about two minutes, then add the chocolate mixture and blend for one more minute.
In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs with an electric mixer for about 3 minutes, add the agave syrup and whisk for one more minute. Save four spoonfuls of the egg mixture in a separate glass and pour the rest over the chocolate and bean mixture. Add the remaining walnuts and dark chocolate and stir everything gently with a spatula until the whole mixture has the same color.
Pour into the baking pan. Drip the remaining egg mixture on top of the chocolate mixture and use a toothpick or a knife to create a marble effect. Bake for 30-40 minutes. They might still feel a little bit loose in the middle when you take them out, but the trick here is to wait until they cool off completely (I know, it’s hard, but it’s totally worth the wait). Enjoy!

During this first month of parenthood we have learned that being parents is not only about taking care of Elsa, it is also about taking care of all our relatives, neighbors and friends that stop by to have a look at our little girl. We wanted to take it slow, not stressing her with too many new faces and voices, but when we started counting we realized that we have had visitors almost every day since she was born. Some stay for lunch, others for coffee and a cookie … but since we don’t normally store cookies at home we have been improvising with what we find in our kitchen cabinets. And that is how these sticky nut bars were created.

The salty peanut butter, the sweetness in the dried fruit and the big chunky pieces of nuts make these bars really, really yummy. They taste kind of similar to Snickers, even though they are made without sugar, flour or butter.
We have also used the exact same ingredients to make nut truffles, which can be made in less than seven minutes. Follow the instructions from this recipe.

Sticky Nut Bars

10 fresh dates (chopped)
2 tbsp water
2/3 cup organic peanut butter (salted)
1 cup mixed nuts, we used almonds, cashew nuts and pistachio (coarsley chopped)
1/4 cup coconut flakes
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup dried fruit (we used green raisins, yellow raisins and goji berries)
1/2 tsp salt

Coat a springform pan with parchment paper. In a small saucepan, stir together dates, water and peanut butter and place over low heat. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir until the dry ingredients are coated. Add some more nuts if the mixture feels too moist and some more water if it is too dry. Pour the mixture in the springform pan and put in the fridge for half an hour. Cut them into squares before serving. Store them in an airtight container in the fridge.
If you don’t like them sticky you can instead make them as cookies, by baking them in the oven for about 20-25 minutes at 350°.

Chokococonut pyramids
Makes around 12

10 fresh dates (seeds removed)
75 g dark unsweetened chocolate (roughly chopped)
30 almonds (25 g)
3 egg whites
1 tbsp coconut oil
200 g coconut flakes

Preheat the oven at 360°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Mix dates, chocolate, almonds and egg whites in a blender for about a minute and set aside. Melt coconut oil (can be replaced with butter) in a pot on medium heat. Add the coconut flakes and stir around for about a minute. Add the date and egg-mixture and stir until everything is mixed well. Use your hands to form small pyramids (or hearts) and put them on the parchment paper. Bake for 10-12 minutes.