Tag: Food

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Blackberry Cream Shortbread Cake (GF)

This will give you a good reason to go blackberry picking!!

I made this for my friend’s birthday, BBQ and dance party! There’s nothing like fresh cream and locally picked blackberries on a shortbread cake to top a perfect summer afternoon!

I used Gluten Free flour and coconut sugar to create a more shortbread style cake that wasn’t too sweet, but regular flour and sugar are fine, too!

Ingredients for the Shortbread Cake:

  • 2 Cups Organic Brown Coconut Sugar (Big Tree Farms)
  • 1 Cup Butter (2 sticks at room temp)
  • 4 Eggs
  • 3 teaspoons Vanilla extract

Grease and flour 2 x 9″ pans. Mix the coconut sugar and butter together until creamy. Beat in the eggs, ONE at a TIME, and add the vanilla extract.

  • 3 Cups Flour (Bob’s Red Mill GF 1 to 1 baking flour)
  • 3 teaspoons Baking powder
  • 1 cup Half & Half or whole Milk
  • 2 tablespoons Apple sauce

Mix the baking powder into the flour and fold into the creamed mixture. Add the milk and apple sauce. Keep mixing until smooth and creamy! Pour into pans and bake at 350 for 30 mins! Let cool.

  • one egg at a time
  • fold flour into mixture
  • Add cream or milk
  • Blend until creamy

Ingredients for the frosting & filling:

  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 2 cups blackberries
  • 1.5 tablespoons maple syrup if the blackberries are too tart

Heat the blackberries in a pan until simmering, keep stirring until you have a nice thick reduction. Cool in the fridge and strain into a bowl.

  • 1 pint heavy whipping cream
  • 1 cup organic seedless blackberry fruit spread / jam


Whip cream until fluffy. Set aside 1/4 cup reduction. Add remaining COLD reduction to the cream and stir. Keep the blackberry cream in the fridge.

  • Heat blackberries
  • Strain
  • Reduction
  • Add reduction to fresh cream

Filling: Tap the COLD cakes out of their pans. Spread a very generous amount of seedless blackberry fruit jam over the bottom cake and a layer of blackberry cream. Then spread a generous amount of blackberry fruit spread on the BOTTOM of the top cake before you place the layers together.

Frosting: Cover the cake with fresh whipped blackberry cream and drizzle the 1/4 cup of reduction over it. Cover it all all with fresh blackberries; et Voila! Delicious Blackberry Shortbread Cake ~

Recipe by Sooz at Melinas Garden! Please let me know how yours turns out! 🙂

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Know Your Spices!

Choose spices that work for each family member!

It’s hard to cook a meal for a family that everyone likes or that is ‘beneficial’ for everyone!
Well, there’s a solution to this if you understand spices!

For example; you might have a child who is putting on weight eating the same amount of food as another child in the family. Perhaps one child is predominantly Kapha and the other Pitta or Vata. Of course, there could be various reasons, like not exercising or other underlying causes, BUT with spices you can help this child’s digestive system manage the food better.

I make different pots of spice blends for each family member according to their constitution (Kapha, Pitta, Vata). At meals they are able to use their personal spice to create a more compatibly healthy meal.

Try it and see! Make one for you and your spouse, too.

For more details and help choosing which spices, book a session with me here![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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Hydration and the perfect salt

The vast majority of Californians, arid desert dwellers and crispy, crunchy, salty food eaters run dry. Super dry!

Re-hydrating your body is essential to manage healthy organ and tissue function.

What to do? Start by deleting table salt from your diet and your cupboard. It has no healthy place in your kitchen. Swap ‘bad’ table salt with ‘good’ grey or pink salts or other mineral rich sea salts that can be found in most stores that sell a variety of spices.

Next, use ‘good’ salt dissolved in water to create an electrolyte drink that you use once or twice a day. In Ayurveda there are two ways to make this electrolyte rich water. You can either stir a quarter teaspoon of ‘good’ salt into a full glass of room temperature water and drink it, or you can make a ‘Sole’ (described below) and drink it daily.

Sole is best prepared in a glass mason jar with a plastic lid or a metal lid that has parchment paper or a napkin between it and the glass. (metal and good salt do not go together!)  Fill quarter of the mason jar with your choice of ‘good’ salt and fill the rest of the jar with spring water. Let the salt and water sit overnight. This is ‘Sole’. Do not stir the salt and water. In the morning drink one tablespoonful of water from the ‘sole’ in a glass of regular water and again in the afternoon if you feel tired and need a ‘pick me up’.

Note: Use wooden or plastic spoons, NOT a metal spoon, as metal de-ionizes the salt. It’s also a good idea to put ‘good’ salt on your food AFTER you cook it to avoid de-ionizing the salt during the cooking process.