avocado

avocado & oat cookies

| kahmen
Being good to yourself is important, but so is being kind to yourself.
Being good to yourself is important, but so is being kind to yourself.

Is it possible to have your cookie and eat it too?

I’m so glad you asked. Summer is well and truly here, bringing the whole healthy eating thing into glaringly sharp changing-room-lights focus. Not just because of the amount of skin we’re starting to show (a pretty terrifying prospect all on its own), but also because the heat makes it so much harder to feel good if we’re eating badly.

There are lots of differing opinions out there as to what constitutes ‘eating badly’, but I think you can’t go too far wrong if you listen to your body. For me, that means I physically feel pretty awful if I’m on a constant diet of deep-fried foods, fatty meats, sugary drinks and refined carbs (basically all the fun stuff). But at the same time, mentally I feel pretty awful if I’m restricted to lettuce leaves and a wistful, longing look at the wine list.

So is there a balance? I think so. I feel pretty good and fairly sane if I’m eating complex carbohydrates like brown rice and wholemeal bread, a smattering of lean meats, loads of vegetables and the occasional reality check of eating whatever I want to.

avocado and oat cookies
avocado and oat cookies

Which brings us nicely to today’s recipe. It’s basically an adapted Anzac biscuit recipe, made with wholemeal flour, a reduced amount of sugar and without butter. Once again, I’ve gone with avocados in place of butter – honestly I think I ought to take out shares in an avocado farm – which lends the cookies a brilliant green tinge. Take a deep breath, and think of pistachios.

The final product has a dense chewiness (from the oats and coconut) amidst a soft, moist, cake-like texture (from the flour and avocados). They hit a fine balance of sweet-but-not-too-sweet – I personally think that they could go either way and be served alongside a coffee or on a cheese plate. Without strongly-flavoured ingredients, you do get a sense of the avocado, so if that worries you you might like to add a handful of chocolate chips, a mashed banana, or some cheese and tomato.

These cookies hold their shape, so make sure you're happy with how they go into the oven.
These cookies hold their shape, so make sure you’re happy with how they go into the oven.

Avocado and oat cookies (makes 12)
2 small ripe avocados
1 cup rolled oats
½ cup wholemeal flour
2 tablespoons caster sugar
¾ cup (60g) desiccated coconut
¹⁄3 cup golden syrup
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons hot water

Preheat your oven to 165 degrees. While heating, you can toast the oats lightly while you get on with the cookies.

Place the flour, sugar and coconut into a large bowl.

Mash the avocados finely.

Place the golden syrup in a pot and heat gently, then add the avocados and stir until combined. This produces a slightly alarming-looking green mixture which may cause you to lose faith.

Add the hot water to the baking soda and then pour into the pot. The green mixture will turn into a frothy green concoction. At this stage, it would be perfectly natural for you to wonder what kind of crazy recipe you’re following.

Add the toasted oats to the flour and then pour in the wet ingredients and mix.

Shape into 7cm discs and flatten. Without butter, these cookies don’t spread at all so you can afford to place them quite closely together.

Bake at 165 degrees for 15 minutes and cool on the tray for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

savoury avocado scones

| kahmen
Golden goodness.
Eat them whilst still slightly warm from the oven, with avocado or cream cheese. Bliss.

I’ll be honest: ever since I realised you could substitute avocado for butter in baking quite successfully, I’ve been dreaming of muffins, cakes, loaves and scones.

The only thing that has stopped me from going completely nutty with the cupcake tray is the sugar. I’m not going to get into eating philosophies (there are so many, and they all claim to be backed by some kind of science), but the one thing they all seem to agree on is that limiting refined sugar is probably a Good Idea.

So this week, in order to feel truly smug and virtuous, I went with the savoury option: cheesy tomato and herb scones made with wholemeal flour and avocado.

Pop them in the oven and go and polish your halo.

Cheese and herb scones.
Cheese and herb scones.

Wholemeal Avocado Scones (makes 9 large scones)
1 cup plain flour
1 cup wholemeal flour
3 heaped tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
2 ripe avocados
½ cup milk (soy milk works too)
100g grated mature cheddar (I used low-fat)
1 tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp mixed herbs

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

In a large bowl, sift together the flours, baking powder and salt, then mix through the herbs and grated cheddar.

In another bowl, mash the avocado thoroughly and add the eggs, milk and tomato paste. Mix (it will look lumpy and disturbing, but don’t worry).

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until just combined. It’s a very wet batter.

Drop scoops of the mix onto baking paper and bake at 200 degrees for 12-15 minutes.

banana and avocado muffins

| kahmen
A new way to use avocados, those versatile darlings.
A new way to use avocados, those versatile darlings.

This one requires a small leap of faith.

Not in the way of ‘here, eat these crickets, they’re really tasty and an excellent source of protein’ or anything, but enough that I ask for your trust as we explore the world of using avocados in baking.

What?! Why would you do that to a delicious avocado? Has the London smog gotten to your brain?

I know, right. And yet there is a point to the madness; avocados are a great substitute for butter. Whereas butter is over 50% saturated fat, avocados contain just 2.1g per 100g. Avocados are high in fibre, a good source of potassium and folic acid, and have no cholesterol.

Go on, get yourself an avocado. I’ll wait.

banana and avocado muffins... with hazelnuts and dark chocolate chips.
Banana and avocado muffins… with hazelnuts and dark chocolate chips.

Even knowing all this, using them in baking can be a bit of a stretch. What if my cake goes a lurid green? What if it tastes strange and salad-like? Should I dump the lot in cornbread with some jalapeños and just have an all-in-one Mexican meal?

Please don’t worry. These muffins are light and moreish; the avocado makes them moist without being greasy. I promise you can’t taste the avocado, and the wholemeal flour means that they also keep you full for a good long time. These muffins are smug, ‘I’m being good but also rather decadent’, win-win muffins.

I have it on my bestie’s authority that avocados are also fantastic in a smoothie – but that is another post for another time.

Light, moist and moreish. You'll just have to trust me on this one.
Light, moist and moreish. You’ll just have to trust me on this one.

Banana and avocado muffins
2 small ripe avocados
2 overripe bananas
1 cup sugar (I used about half a cup of golden caster sugar and then two tablespoons of honey)
2 eggs
1 tsp vinegar
6 tablespoons milk
1 cup white flour
1 cup wholemeal flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
Nuts and chocolate chips (optional, but who are we kidding)

In a bowl, mash the avocados really, really well. If you leave any lumps you’ll see it in the final product, so be diligent with that fork.

Add the sugar and whisk thoroughly with the avocado.

Add the eggs, milk, baking soda and vinegar and whisk away. The vinegar is there to activate the baking soda and you won’t taste it in the final product. If you don’t have baking soda, just use two teaspoons of baking powder in the next step.

Place the flours and baking powder in a sieve and sift into the bowl, mixing very gently. You don’t want to overmix, so stir until combined.

If you want to have nuts or chocolate in your muffins, now is the time to add them.

Drop the muffin mix into a greased muffin tray (or make pretty tulip cases by pressing greaseproof paper into the tray) and bake at 180 degrees for 35 minutes.

waiting for avogodot

| kahmen
Avocados: not exactly the world's most photogenic fruit, but oh how we love the taste.

I came back from a week in Dublin and opened my fridge to find my formerly hard-enough-to-be-used-as-a-weapon avocados only marginally less lethal. A whole week had passed, and still they persisted in retaining their rock-like status.

I was not about to become Beckett’s Vladimir or Estragon. I don’t have the patience. So I looked up ways in which to ripen an avocado tout de suite and roadtested them to be sure.

Avocados are climacteric fruits, which means they mature on the tree but ripen off the tree (that’s bananas! – sorry, I couldn’t resist). They give off ethylene gas, which helps them to ripen – so basically every method of artificially ripening them consists of trapping the gas and feeding it back to the avocado to speed the process up. Here are the most popular:

The wine method.
‘Men are like grapes,’ I read once. ‘They need to be stomped on and kept in the dark until they mature into something you’d like to have dinner with.’ Stomping aside, avo-experts recommend storing an avocado at room temperature in the dark.
1.    Place the avocados into a paper bag. If you don’t have a paper bag, wrap them in newspaper. You’re basically encouraging ethylene gas to be produced and then trapping it in the bag.
2.    Add an apple, banana or tomato to the bag as these all give off ethylene.
3.    Check on your avocado every day to see if it’s ripened enough for you to eat it. The skin should give slightly when pressed.

The dinner party method.
You wanted to impress people with your homemade guacamole – Mexican is so in, darling – only to discover, to your absolute horror, that your avocados have stubbornly refused to ripen. The bag method is out because you didn’t think that far ahead. Never fear! As a very last resort, you can microwave your avocados to help them soften.
1.    Prick the skin of the avocado.
2.    Place onto a paper towel on a plate.
3.    Microwave it in 30-second bursts until it becomes soft enough to eat.

The avocado gets surprisingly hot in 30 seconds so be careful when you pull it out of the microwave!

Allegedly you can also wrap the avocados in foil and place into a low-heat oven for 10-15 minutes to achieve the same result, but being ovenless it’s not something I could check out.

They say this is the very last resort because it will alter the avocado’s flavour. It also becomes a bit strange on the textural front, but it’s not bad and if you’re going to make guac I doubt anyone will notice anything apart from how fabulous Mexican food really is.