November Mandalong and a Paleo Pumpkin Pie recipe

Hello and Happy Halloween! I honestly can't believe that we have already stepped foot into November, where has the year gone? Before we know it we will be hanging tinsel and sipping mulled wine (well some of us anyway). 

Earlier this month we took the kids to see Disney on Ice and to be honest it came as a bit of surprise to us all as both hubby and I kinda forgot that we bought the tickets ages ago, don't you just love it when this happens? We didn't tell the kids we were going and it was so lovely to see the excitement and complete shock light up on there little faces as soon as we walked through the arena doors. The show was amazing and the ice skaters did such an awesome job, just a shame that the much loved Elsa didn't make an appearance in the end, one little girl was very disappointed. 

Many of my old readers will know that even though I love a good plan, I also like to wing things, nothing is more satisfying that just going with the flow to see where we end up. When I started this blanket, I made no attempt to try and calculate how many squares I would need, in fact I went and bought 9 balls of wool in colours that I liked and thought that that would do the job. Well, it seems that unless I want a toe warmer I might have slightly misjudged the situation. As a matter of fact it seems I am going to need a great deal more squares before I can call it a blanket of sorts. So I am interested to hear from those of you who have made a blanket big enough for a single/small double, how many balls of wool did you use? So sadly for now, I have had to move it to the back burner to make space for other little projects that I need to work on, but I am still enjoying admiring them from a distance as they do look rather pretty and cheery. 

At the beginning of the school holidays we set off to visit a good friend of mine who lives in Knaresborough. We had such a lovely weekend with them and enjoyed a really lovely visit to the 12th century Knaresborough Castle, which I must say was rather fabulous. I love spending time in Knaresborough, it is such a pretty market town.

Halloween is something my kids, especially little Es talks about all year long, in fact she absolutely loves it, so needless to say this week our house was running high on Halloween fever. 

We had fun decorating the house and ...

a little more fun decorating ourselves before we set off to go and watch The Book of Life at the cinemas dressed and ready to scare. In fact I had to do a little alterations to my make up as I didn't want kids running out of the cinema because they were too scared of the woman sitting behind them, so I opted for red lips rather than stitched up lips in the end. 

The kids had a ball trick or treating and came back with enough sweets to last a month, so all in all two very happy kids. Happy Halloween!!

I even managed to do a little experimental baking on the day and ended up with a grain free and dairy free pumpkin pie, which to be honest was so so easy to make and both me and hubby (who are both paleo now) absolutely loved it, in fact ssh don't tell anyone but its gone. At least this time of year we can blame the ghosts, now who said whooooo?!

I shared the recipe on Instagram, but for anyone interested here goes.

To make the grain free pastry I used

250g ground almonds

4-5 tbsp melted coconut oil (you don't want it too sloppy so start with 4 and then add another if you need to)

2 tbsp honey

1 egg beaten

Simply mix all these ingredients together and then push it into a pie dish, I just use my hands and push it in ensuring that it covers the entire dish. You don't want it too thin or too thick. Bake at 180C for 10 mins max.

For the filling

1 can pumpkin puree

1 can coconut milk

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp freshly grated 

3 tbsp of honey

2 eggs beaten

I popped all these ingredients into my mixer, make sure to mix thoroughly before pouring it onto your pastry. 

Bake for 40-45 minutes and leave for at least 20+ minutes before serving. 

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. I think we will be making another one very soon.

So before I go, I will quickly share my November mandala with you. This month I made Marinke Slump's 12 Round Mandala as I figured it would be a little strange doing a whole year's of mandala's without using the staple pattern used by the queen of Mandala's right?! 

It is a quick and easy pattern to make and I really like the look of it too. Not my usual colour choices, but it was suppose to be gifted, so I opted for something a little different. Sadly I don't think I can gift it now as I am not very happy with the end result of the use of the standing stitch. It has created some holes in the mandala, which gives it a rather unfinished look. I have used standing stitches on other crochet projects in the past, but I have never used it with a mandala and I am not sure I am going to rush to do it again. I would really like to hear your experiences with using a standing stitch with mandala's or crochet in the round for that matter. Did it create a holes???

Last month I also mentioned that I had an idea and well, I figured a few mini mandala coasters might come in handy. What do you think? 

I really like them and they are so so quick to make. It took me an evening to make all four, so I have a little nifty plan to hook up a few more to slot into some Christmas presents. Speaking of Christmas, this month I decided that we should hook up something in preparing for the big day in  December and I figured if we like it, it gives us enough time to make a few more for presents.  Fortunately the very lovely Annette behind the gorgeous blog My Rose Valley kindly agreed for us to use and share her beautiful Christmas Mandala, so who's playing? It looks like a straight forward pattern to work and I love the Scandi chic style finish that it gives. I can see a few of these scattered around the house at Christmas. So for anyone on Instagram, please make sure to use the following hashtags: monthlymandalong, christmasmandala, myrosevalley and that way Annette can also see what you guys have been hooking up. Obviously I would still like you all to link up your pretties at the bottom of the page, so go on grab your hook and some christmassy cotton, you know you want to!!

So that is it for today my lovelies. I have been thoroughly enjoying some very beautiful sun rises before the clocks went back last weekend. We have been quite lucky that its been quite mild here in the North of England, but its all set to change tomorrow, so get those woollens out and light those fires or if yore lucky enough to live in the southern hemisphere I suppose it's flip flop time. I hope you are warm wherever you are and I also wish you all a beautiful and happy November. 

Make some beautiful memories!

Warm Wishes

Hannapat

xoxoxo

An InLinkz Link-up

Halloween and Gluten and Dairy Free Pumpkin and Cocnut slice with Lemoncream.

 

Happy Halloween everyone. It has most certainly been a fun filled couple of days around here. The house has been everything but calm over the last couple of days, the kids have been running wild with excitement of going trick or treating and going by the continued excitement, I think they've had heaps of fun. We decorated the house and I also made some last minute bunting (I sense a pattern emerging here!). Ma gave me a fat quarter of some really sweet Halloween fabric when I saw her over the summer, so I thought I would put it to good use. I had an Eureka moment when I was going through my stash trying to make the bunting big enough, and now the bunting can double up as Autumnal bunting too, with the reverse in pretty autumnal colours.

For this weeks bake I figured I might as well use the pumpkin flesh from the pumpkins I carved with the kids and attempt a pumpkin cake/slice. I have made pumpkin cake before, but to be honest, I have never been that big a fan. I love Pumpkin pie, but for some reason the pumpkin cakes, or muffins I have attempted in the past have never been a success. So how was I going to do it?

Well I drew inspiration from The Gluten-Free Goddess and Pippa Kendrick and figured that if I applied a similar approach to the cakes I have baked from these two fabulous gluten-free experts, then the result should surely be a success. So I set off and with a little guess pouring here and there, which to be honest was fun, a bit like making pretend cake in little Es's kitchen. The exciting bit was not really knowing how it was all going to turn out, but the end result is amazing!!! The coconut flavour is really lovely and I think I might try and add a little more Coconut flour instead of the all purpose flour next time. The recipe is gluten and dairy free and to be honest I don't know how it will work with gluten, but it's always worth a try. All the gluten hungry folk who ate it want the recipe, so I reckon it is worth a try.

 

So here is the recipe for my Pumpkin and Coconut Slice with Lemon Cream. I will add that this is the first attempt at this, so I am sure there is plenty of opportunity for doing a little tweaking  here and there, but with all the feedback I have had over this cake, I think it is fare to say, you won't be disappointed.

Ingredients
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 ground almonds
1 cup Gluten Free Doves all purpose flour, or similar
1 1/2 cup soft light brown sugar
1tsp baking powder
1tsp baking soda
1tsp xanthum gum
2tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2tsp fine seasalt
1/4-1/2tsp of ground nutmeg, or freshly grated if you prefer a strong nutmeg flavour
2 large eggs beaten
1 cup of pumpkin puree
1/2 cup of coconut oil softened
2tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup almond milk
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Lemon Cream Icing
100g Pure Sunflower or Olive Spread, or something similar
300g of Sifted Icing Sugar
Zest of one Lemon


Instructions

1.Preheat the oven to 180C.
2. Line and butter a 9 inch square baking tin, or anything similar, with baking paper and Pure Dairy free spread.
3. Mix all the dry ingredients together in an electric mixer or by hand for a minute or so and then make a well in the middle of the mixture.
4. Pour in the beaten eggs, pumpkin puree, softened coconut oil, vanilla extract and then mix for a couple of minutes until the mixture is fully mixed. It will now look a bit like peanut butter, so this is where I just poured in some almond milk, which I suspect was around 1/2 cup of almond milk, you can make this with normal milk if you like. Just keep adding a little milk if the mixture is still looking far too dry. This mixture wont be very soft, but it needs to slide off into the baking tin with a little help and NOT look like it is glued to the bowl.
5. Stir in the walnuts
6. Put mixture into your baking tin.
7. Bake for around 20- 25 minutes, this will depend on your oven, but start checking from 20 minutes onwards.
8. Now make the Lemon Cream. Soften the pure sunflower spread a little then sieve in your icing sugar and mix.
9. Grate the zest of one lemon or more if you prefer a very lemony taste, I think I might do one and a half next time, but one is really delicious so if in doubt start with one. Then add the zest to your butter and sugar mixture.
10. Leave your cake to cool completely before you ice it and once iced you can cut it into slices, which makes for easy eating and the ideal thing to put on your Halloween party table or any other for that matter.

This cake will be delicious all year round, but I love the fact that I just used the flesh of the pumpkins I carved for Halloween without letting any go to waste. For any of you wanting to bake this, please let me know how you get on and also give some feedback on what worked better for you. I will most definitely be making this again, so if there are any tweaks I will let you know.

I was hoping to find time to change the Friday Bake to Weekly Bake, but unfortunately that will have to wait until next week, but if any of you have done a spot of baking this week and fancy linking in, please do so at the bottom of this post at any point during the week. Hopefully I have also sorted out the link problem from last week as the lovely Anne from Marmalade and Catmint tried to link in her very delicious looking 'Sticky Treacle and Ginger Lime Cake', so if you didn't see this last week, do pop over to her lovely blog to have a look at this recipe.

I don't know about you, but we are fairly exhausted after this weeks spooky excitement, so we have a very quiet weekend in stall. There will however be a trip out for our very first Bonfire night as a family, as it is the first year I THINK my health will allow, so I am really excited about it. I just hope that the rain gives us a little clearing as it won't be much fun in the wet and cold. So what do you all have planned this weekend???

This weekend I am really looking forward to finishing Andrea Levy's Never Far From Nowhere, I really enjoy Andrea's books, and even though this isn't as good as Small Island or Long Song, I am thoroughly enjoying it. I love this time of year where we can light the fire and enjoy some relaxing time with the family, reading, playing or getting completely lost in Downton or Strictly. Oh Life is good. Wishing you all a very enjoyable and relaxing weekend.

Warm Wishes

Hannapat

xoxo

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