Deliciously Ella’s New Book
You already know that I am a super fan of Ella Mills, founder of the blog that today is almost an empire: Deliciously Ella.
Ella is a breeze of fresh air, always smiling, cheerful, an optimist. And there are those lovely dogs. The Delis, healthy restaurants that she has opened in London are also very “Ella” and definitely also worth the visit. They make a great Turmeric Latte!
Ella’s books are great and very well designed. If you are curious, you can browse them in these links:
So, although I already have the first two, I ended up pre-ordering the third. You see, pre-order! The name is Deliciously Ella with Friends. It’s a different book, less conversational than the previous ones, but absolutely as good. It remains very beautiful, the photographs are one of Ella’s strong points, and the recipes are quite different.
The first recipe I decided to try was the “Honey and Lemon Breakfast Bars” – which is also the first recipe of the book. For me, they work as snack bars because I don’t eat very sweet things for breakfast.
As usual, as I do not check everything as I should, I came home with all the ingredients I needed and found that the jar of honey that I knew I had … was there but it was empty!
Vegan And Gluten Free!
It was not a major inconvenience because I replaced maple syrup for the honey, and so the bars became vegan and a bit less sweet. Double whammy!
The recipe lacks clear instructions about the dimension of the tray where to shape the bars. I used my 20×20 square brownie pan and it was too big for the recipe. The bars turned up too thin and not very pretty. I have to do them again.
I kept the bars in the fridge and over time they got even tastier. Much more satisfying than the raw bars you buy. And cheaper too.
If you want to try them, here is the recipe for the Glow Chef version.
I changed a few steps in the recipe because it made more sense to me in terms of ease and final taste: I do not like hot lemon juice, I think it gets bitter, for example. It also seems more practical to use the robot to mix everything, rather than doing it by hand. And obviously I prefer a vegan version, replacing the honey – I call myself “part-time vegan”.
Ingredients
(for a 15×15 tray approximately)
- 1 tablespoon coconut oil
- 3 tablespoons organic maple syrup
- Juice and zest of one lemon (preferably organic, unwaxed)
- 1 tablespoon of tahini
- 70 g of pumpkin seeds
- 6 Medjool dates pitted and cut into pieces
- 110 grams of oats (I used gluten-free)
- 2 tablespoons chia seeds
- a pinch of salt (I used Himalayan Pink Salt)
Method
Start by lining the tray that you will use with parchment paper. Choose one that is smaller than my 20 × 20 cm …
Put the coconut oil and maple syrup in a small saucepan over very low heat. When the mixture is hot and combined, turn the stove off and add the lemon juice. Mix well.
In the food processor, blitz the sunflower seeds roughly, to maintain some texture. Put them in a bowl.
In the same processor, chop the dates to get pieces about the same size as the chopped seeds. Add the lemon zest, the tahini, the chia seeds, the salt and the oats. Pulse a few times to mix everything up.
Pour the resulting paste into the bowl with the pumpkin seeds and add the warm liquid (the oil with the maple syrup and lemon juice).
Put the dough in the chosen pan and press it down carefully. Refrigerate for 2 or 3 hours, until consistent.
Then you just have to cut the bars and eat them!
