I have awesome friends.

I have awesome friends who let me borrow their fancy blenders, no questions asked. And friends who tell me about secret local food co-ops. And friends who dehydrate our spent grain from homebrewing and then spin it up into flour for me. Just because.Are you jeal? My friends are AWE-SOME. Just full of love.

Remember when I wasn’t sure about moving to GA? Well now I’m not sure about leaving. I love these crazy Southerners! They really grow on you.

These tiny crackers were my first project with my spent grain flour. If you’re curious, spent grain flour is just dried spent grain (leftover from the brewing process) that is ground into flour. I just used a little bit in this recipe- it’s pretty powerful stuff. You don’t need much to get that robust, deep-grain flavor.

If you don’t have any spent grain flour, you can certainly substitute another whole grain flour or seed. I think the crackers would be great with the addition of sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, chia seeds or maybe some millet. Whatever you have on hand, just throw it in and see how it goes. You can’t really ruin these. Unless you leave them in the oven too long.. I can’t help you there.

If you make your crackers tiny like I did, the recipe makes approximately a bazillion crackers. It will seem like you will never run out of dough. To make it easy on yourself, you can just cut them into squares- no need to get fancy with the little cutters.

The nutty, whole-grain flavor goes great with sharp cheddar, by the way.

Share them with your awesome friends (I know you have them, too).

What’s up!?

The toddlers have amazed me by sleeping for TWO HOURS so here I am- bringing you some cookies. I wish I could bring them to you personally, but the inmates are running the asylum around here and they just won’t let me out!

I’m surprised at how much I’ve been in the kitchen this week. These kids are always hungry! We finish breakfast and 10 minutes later they’re asking for snack. I don’t know what people do with multiples- so many dishes, so many sippy cups and so many growing mouths to feed at one time. I salute you, mothers of multiples/childcare workers/mothers of many- you are keeping this world turning.

Some important things:

No refined sugar, no eggs, no dairy- great if there are allergies in the family (unless you’re gluten or wheat-free, sorry. You have to make the cookies out of something!) Easily adaptable with whatever nut butter you prefer or have on hand and you can mix in anything you like- chocolate chips, chopped nuts.. cacao nibs taste amazing, too. They’re easy to mix, scoop and bake. Kids will gobble them up. You can make (and eat all of) them in under 30 minutes.

I was going to feed these cookies to the babies when they wake up as their afternoon treat, but they are just sitting there on the counter calling to me.. they’ll never know what they missed, right?

(Just kidding. I will exercise some self-control and only eat one.. or two. Definitely not more than four or five. Gotta make sure I have enough for their second/third snack-after-snack.)

Something strange happened last week.

I had leftover AVOCADOS. That never happens, like, ever.

We were heading out of town for a few days and I needed to use them up quickly. While I have used frozen avocado before with success (just mash and freeze flat in a freezer bag), I wanted to make something we could snack on in the car and for breakfast during our trip (breakfast guac?). I also had a borderline-gross banana looking to be used, and I thought.. avocado banana bread? Why not?

Why not, indeed!

It may seem like there are a lot of ingredients, but it’s worth rummaging around your cupboards to find everything. The avocado gives the bread richness and color- I love the bright specks of avocado peeking out in each slice. They almost remind me of pistachios- next time I’ll throw some of those in, too.

The ingredients come together quickly, but of course, it takes an hour to bake, plus cooling time.. so you’ll have to wait a bit before you dig in. I know they call them quick breads because they mix up quickly, but they should really be called it’s-going-to-be-really-hard-to-wait-for-this-to-cool-before-you-stuff-your-face breads. Just my opinion.

Hopefully you have an extra avocado around waiting to be baked up into this bread.

I would also recommend just smashing it up on some toast with sea salt.

And I’ll bring the breakfast guac back on the table- that’s a solid option, too.

Avocado for president!

I’ve been a little scared to get back to baking. My brain is trained to grab the sugar immediately!

But I am retraining.. and grabbing the honey instead.

These brownies came about after a long internet search for a brownie recipe without refined sugar. I found black bean brownies, gluten-free brownies, vegan brownies.. but nothing seemed to be appropriate for me. So I started my own little brownie experiment.

These brownies are made with whole wheat flour, carob powder, mashed banana, honey and olive oil- a little different than your typical ingredients. The texture is not like your traditional brownie (I don’t know if you can ever really get that signature brownie bite without refined sugar), but it is pleasing, and doesn’t leave that sugary coating on your mouth.

I hesitate in calling these “healthy” – I am finding that word means many different things to different people and doesn’t really define food anymore. I do believe they are nourishing, won’t give you a crazy sugar rush and are appropriate as a daily treat or snack. If you want to cut back on the sugar a bit, these are a good way to ease into it.

I’m getting back in my baking groove..

surely some sweet, strange concoctions are on the way.

I love posts that have the labels “chocolate” and “vegetables” together. Sometimes it seems my main goal in life is figuring out how to fit chocolate into every meal.

Still working on it.

Chocolate-covered broccoli probably wouldn’t go over well with my crew. Or would it..

Back to reality!

I made this cake last night because

a) we had nothing sweet in the house to consume (????)

b) we have a fridge bursting with garden produce

c) I need chocolate to survive.

I really want to say this cake is healthy, but it would be more accurate to say it is healthier than most cakes. It has lots of ingredients I deem healthy (zucchini, olive oil, greek yogurt, whole wheat flour), but also a few of the usual suspects like sugar and chocolate chips and butter (which I actually think is not so bad if you get it from a good source- we need good fats, people!). If you are feeling like a super-healthy person, I’m sure you could sub out the sugar for another sweetener and switch out anything else you don’t like, but it will probably taste less like cake and more like a chocolate-flavored brick. But, by all means- eat, drink and make chocolate bricks if that’s your thing.

I’m going to be real and tell you the reason I didn’t photograph the full cake is because I cut two giant slices for the hubs and I to eat not more than 10 minutes after it was out of the oven. Hot chocolate cake with smooth chocolate ganache running down the sides is like a big chocolate party in your mouth. For research purposes only (ahem), I tried it at room temperature today- it was still tasty, but I could tell it was losing a little moisture (due to all that healthiness inside). This can surely be remedied with another batch of ganache. Or some ice cream. Or a giant glass of cold, cold milk.

Raise a glass of raw milk and get your forks. Here’s to your health!

(Recipe adapted from Buttered Up.)

I am always on the search for the best recipes out there. I know that doesn’t sound strange- who isn’t looking for great recipes? (Hopefully that’s why you’re here reading Oven Love.) But I mean I’m looking for the perfect recipes- the recipes you finally keep after months or years of looking. The recipes that you come back to again and again.

This roll recipe is the best I’ve found to date. It is exactly what I want when I think of a whole wheat dinner roll. I have tried others before- they came out too dry, or didn’t rise, or just tasted like cardboard. I eventually found this recipe through Saving Naturally and haven’t looked for another recipe since.

These rolls are soft and dense, not airy. I love to slather them with honey butter right after they come out of the oven. They are just as tasty at room temperature- I recommend using them to make sandwiches with leftovers, too. These rolls do not last long in our house.

The recipe below makes two dozen rolls (two of the pans pictured). If you only need one pan of rolls, you can freeze the second one (fully baked), you can form them into larger buns, make a loaf of bread, or even use it for pizza crust.

If you’re looking for a trustworthy roll recipe made with healthy, whole grain flour, you should give this one a try. You can feel good about feeding these to your family and I can guarantee they’ll enjoy them. This one’s a keeper.

Oh, how the times have changed.

If you told me five years ago that I’d be recommending that you eat beets in any form, I would have laughed in your face. But here I am, about to tell you why you need to make beet pancakes- and soon.

This weekend, I had my first experience cooking with beets. Hubs brought home four beets for me from our farmer (Hilton) and I knew it was time to experiment. Is it weird that I am not ready to eat a plain roasted beet, and that I’d rather put it in a pancake first? Weird or not, that’s what I did. I roasted those babies up, trimmed and pureed them (all with GLOVED hands, which I highly recommend unless you want stained beet fingers), and mixed them up into my batter.

The verdict? Sweet and delicious. Hubs thought they could use a little extra syrup, but I didn’t think the earthiness of the beets came on too strong. The little guy enjoyed them, too (that means he actually took a few bites and didn’t run the other way asking for M-I-L-K).

If you’re new to beets, too, I would encourage you to start with this recipe. It’s a fairly safe introduction into the world of beets. Some day soon, I hope to face my fears and actually eat a beet on its own.. but until then, I’ll be sitting down to a plate of these sweet, pink cakes.

P.S. Like most pancake recipes, these are freezable!

Lesson learned so far in life with two babies: sometimes you will just need to make cookies.

In some ways, parenting two has been easier than I thought. I bounced back from the birth easier, I am actually able to get us all out of the house in a decent amount of time, I can manage them both by myself. Some days I think I’m doing pretty great at this mom thing. Other days, when one is screaming, then the other is screaming, then they’re both screaming.. well, cookies happen.

These cookies have been on my list to try for a long time. They didn’t turn out quite like Joy’s, but I like the changes I made and they sure are addicting. I love the addition of coconut to a basic chocolate chip cookie, but the browned butter and coconut oil mixture takes this one over the top. My cookies didn’t spread much, so I like to think of them as little nuggets of deliciousness (see recipe below for my thoughts on that).

So the next time you’re having one of those days with all the screaming, make these cookies after things quiet down. They’ll help you forget all about it.

If you’re craving something sweet, rustic and easy to put together, than this cookie will be calling your name.

Just looking at this iron skillet reminds me of summers spent at my family’s cabin- but that’s just nostalgia talking, since our typical treats up there were things like oatmeal pies and roasted marshmallows. But I think this cookie would be perfect on a cool night, curled up under the blankets.. maybe with a little ice cream on top for good measure.

I promise you won’t miss the white flour in this cookie recipe. I actually prefer the nuttiness of the whole wheat flour, not to mention the health benefits. This doesn’t exactly qualify as health food, though, don’t worry- there’s still plenty of butter and sugar involved to classify it as dessert.

You probably have most of the ingredients on hand in your pantry to make this. If you don’t keep whole wheat flour on hand, you should take the plunge! I can’t think of a better way to introduce yourself to whole wheat baking than with a giant chocolate chip cookie. Yum!

Even though I’m not living the vegan lifestyle anymore, I’m still finding ways to enjoy vegan recipes in my diet.  I saw this recipe this morning on Miss Mary‘s blog and I had to jump right in and make them!  They looked delicious and simple, and they were.

The name CocoNana refers to the coconut milk, cocoa and banana in the recipe(the title of the original post was way too long and boring).  I made just a few changes to Mary’s recipe- I used white whole wheat flour, added chocolate chips and upped the cinnamon a good bit.  I also loved the idea of baking these as minis.  They are a perfect small bite for the kids and you can easily pass them off as dessert.

The best thing about this vegan recipe is that you don’t have to use any strange, unfamiliar ingredients.  You might have everything in your pantry (or an easy substitute).  Thanks, Mary, for the excellent idea!