Delicious Raw Scones

I've had this recipe for awhile, though I'm not sure where the original inspiration came from. This is easy to make and is such a yummy healthy treat to have on hand for a quick grab on the way out the door, for a light snack, etc.

2 cups grated carrots
2 cups grated apples
2 cups chopped walnuts
2 cups raisins
1 cup cranberries
1 cup ground flaxseed (I use a coffee grinder to grind these up quickly)
4 tablespoons agave or honey
quarter-cup lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil

Generally I measure the carrots, apples, and walnuts dry, going a little above the 2 cup amount. I throw all of these ingredients into my food processor, pour it out into a bowl and hand mix if it isn't evenly mixed already. Then I use my pampered chef scoop to make nice even mounds of the dough onto my teflex sheet on a dehydrator tray. Since nothing gets bigger in the dehydrator, you can put them really close together. This recipe fills one tray plus usually makes about a dozen more scones on another tray.

Dehydrate at 105-115 degrees for 15-20 hours, then turn them over (remove the teflex sheet) and do another 3 hours to get the bottoms finished. Store in a covered container in the fridge.

Cheesy Kale Chips

I have pulled myself away from devouring the latest batch of these delicious yummies in order to share the recipe with you. You will need a dehydrator that you can adjust the temperature on. I use and recommend the Excalibur dehydrator. (link to the left side of the blog for you to check it out)

First you need one of those big bags of washed, cut kale (or you could use collards) from the produce department. They are probably about 2 gallons in size.

At home you need to mix up the following ingredients in your food processor, blender, or whatever similar equipment you've got:

2/3 (two thirds) cup raw cashews

4 tablespoons lemon juice

6 tablespoons water

half a cup extra virgin olive oil

1.5 teaspoon sea salt

half cup nutritional yeast (this is what gives it the cheesy flavor and is a good source of vitamin B12)

about a half cup finely minced onion (I used Thrive freeze dried onion and added a little extra water to the mixture)

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon cumin

2 cloves minced garlic

half a teaspoon black pepper

Mix all of that up until it's mixed well. It'll be a little chunky because of the onion and cashews.

I used two very large bowls to put the kale in. If you take the time to rip the kale leaves away from their big stems, it will make for more convenient eatin' later on. (Those stems are very tough and not nice to eat. You can leave them on and just rip them away later as you're snacking, but once you see how fast you want to stick these in your mouth, you'll wish you could do so without the unpleasant surprise of those tough stems!)

I split the kale in two bowls just because the mixing goes a little easier. Pour half of the cashew and liquid mix onto each bowl of kale and just mix it up with a big spoon or spatula. You want to get all the pieces coated as much as you can.

Next you need your Excalibur dehydrator and the teflex sheets* that go with it. For this size batch I usually fill 3 trays with the now-coated kale leaves. Just gently plop them on the teflex and try to spread them out to be fairly even and not too lumped up on each other. When you put the trays back into the dehydrator you'll need to use every-other rung in order to have space for the height of the kale.

Put the door back onto your dehydrator and turn it up to 115 degrees and let it do it's thing for at least 12 hours or until not damp at all. It's a weird smell to wake up to, but very convenient to do overnight, since you can just let the dehydrator go til lunch time when you want some of these for a snack.

Warning: Turn off the dehydrator before you remove the door to check on the kale. The blower will blow the delicate, dehydrated leaves right out if you aren't careful. :) (ask me how I know)

Store these in an air-tight container. If they lose some of their crisp-ness, just throw 'em back in the dehydrator for a little while and that'll take care of that.

The large bag of kale costs less than $3 at my Kroger, and the ingredients for the sauce are quite economical. Such an easy way to enjoy your greens, and an easy way to sell them to your kids!

*If you don't have the teflex sheets, you could use parchment paper if you needed to. I've done it in a pinch and it worked fine, though not as convenient.

**I adapted this recipe from one I think I got from Green Smoothie Girl. I have tried some other kale chip recipes, but this one is the best tasting and most successful one I have tried.

Let me know how it goes for you.

Chocolate Almonds

2 cups raw almonds
1 Tbsp. coconut oil
2 Tbsp. honey or agave nectar
1 Tbsp. raw chocolate powder (or nonalkalized unsweetened cocoa powder)
1/4 tsp. sea salt

Soak your raw almonds in water overnight, then drain and allow them to air dry (an hour or two). Make sure coconut oil (warm it in hot water if necessary) is liquid, and mix all remaining ingredients well. Stir in nuts. Spread evenly on dehydrator tray and dry until no longer wet/sticky, about 14-18 hours, below 116 degrees. Enjoy!

I use and recommend the Excalibur dehydrator:

Teriyaki Almonds

This is my family's favorite raw almond snack. It is surprisingly delicious and addictive! Last year my mom didn't order any raw almonds because she didn't think she would use them. Then she came to my house for Christmas and got hooked on Teriyaki Almonds! This year.....she's buying 30 pounds of almonds! (Yes, this recipe is *that* good!)

10 cups raw almonds, soaked and dehydrated at 105 degrees (or less) approx. 12 hours
½ cup chopped dates, soaked and drained
½ cup Bragg’s Liquid Aminos
1/2 cup nama shoyu (or if you don't have this, just use Bragg's instead)
2 Tbsp. raw agave nectar (or honey, if you prefer)
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. cayenne or red pepper flakes

Blend all ingredients except almonds in your food processor, blender, vita-mix, BlendTec, or whatever you've got, on high until smooth. Pour into a very large bowl, add almonds and stir well. Let mixture sit for an hour to allow nuts to absorb liquid, and then stir again. Spread nuts on teflex sheets in dehydrator. Dry at 105 degrees for about 16 hours. Place nuts on mesh sheets and dry again until crunchy (about 10 hours).

Yes, it takes a few days in the planning and process, but it is extremely easy and worth it!

I recommend the Excalibur dehydrator. I love mine!


Special thanks to Green Smoothie girl who gave me this recipe.

Candied Raw Almonds

6 cups raw almonds, soaked and dehydrated at 105 degrees (or less) approx. 12 hours
2/3 cup chopped dates, soaked and drained
1 1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1/3 cup water
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 tsp. sea salt
optional: ½ tsp. butter or rum flavoring
Blend all ingredients except almonds in your food processor, vita-mix, or blender until smooth. Pour in bowl, and stir nuts in, stirring to coat. Let nuts sit for 20 mins. to absorb liquid, and stir again. Spread nuts on teflex sheets in dehydrator. Dry at 105 degrees for about 16 hours. Place nuts on mesh sheets and dry again until crunchy (about 10 hours).

Variations: You could also use soaked pecans or other nuts or combinations of nuts!

I use the Excalibur dehydrator. It is the best!


Special thanks to Green Smoothie Girl for this recipe!

Sweet Bread/Crackers in the Dehydrator!

The other day I really wanted some peanut butter on bread. But we didn't have any of our yummy Great Harvest bread, and I didn't want to eat the store bread that we had. I then got the idea to make a sweet version of the savory bread I made the other day when I also made crackers. That night I started soaking buckwheat so that I could get the project underway. Here's what I did:

Soak 2-3 cups of buckwheat for several hours or overnight.
Drain in a colander and rinse well. Then leave in the colander to sprout. (rinse morning and evening, keep colander covered lightly with a towel)
After about 2 days the buckwheat has sprouted and has little tails. Now you can use it!

In the food processor:
2 apples
2 bananas
about 3/4 cup agave nectar or honey
about a tablespoon of cinnamon
a teaspoon of vanilla
and all of the sprouted, damp buckwheat
about a half cup of flax seeds (you can grind them up in a coffee grinder, or leave whole)

Mix it all up well. If it does not seem to stick together well enough, you might want to add another banana. Taste a bit and see if it needs more agave or cinnamon. Adjust according to your preferences.

Spread onto teflex sheets for your dehydrator. Mine filled two 12"x12" trays to a nice thickness.

Dehydrate for several hours and then see it is is firm enough to cut with a pizza cutter. You don't want to put a lot of pressure on it. Just score the lines where you want your slices to be. (I do 16 slices on the 12"x12" tray--1 cut down the center, then into quarters, then turn and do the same on the other side to make bread slice-sized squares.)

When the top is dry enough, flip onto a mesh screen to finish drying. Will probably take around 24 hours to fully dry. Store in the fridge. Great for peanut butter, all-fruit jams, and other sweet treats!

As it turned out, I was gone for most of the second day when these were in the dehydrator, so they turned out crispier than I planned for them to. The good news is that this was a delicious development! This yummy stuff tastes like a cinnamon graham cracker. My boys and hubby loved it (me too) and I enjoyed it very much with some natural peanut butter on it tonite. Mmmmm mmmm good! My husband is so enthusiastic about how good it is that he mentioned being willing to eat the entire batch on his own in one sitting. I asked him not to. :)

I really love how these turned out and will definitely make it again. If I want it to be bread-i-er then I will spread it thicker next time. For now, the graham cracker-i-ness of it really appeals, and it help up great to the peanut butter spreading, which was the whole point in the first place. :)

Cranberry Coconut Cookies

I just sampled my newest raw food creation, fresh and warm from the dehydrator, and it is goooood! :)

Cranberry Coconut Cookies

Soak 2 cups of oat groats in water for several hours or overnight, then drain and rinse.

In food processor chop up at least 1 cup of fresh or frozen unsweetened cranberries. Then set aside.

In food processor combine the oat groats plus:
unsweetened shredded coconut
agave nectar (start with 3 tablespoons and then adjust as seems right to you)
cinnamon (start with 1 tablespoon and adjust as you like)
a teaspoon of vanilla
a banana

In a bowl combine the chopped cranberries with the oat groat mixture. Then drop by spoonfuls onto your dehydrator trays. (depending on how runny your batter is, you may want to start these out on teflex sheets and transfer to mesh later on)

Dehydrate at 100 degrees or less for 12-15 hours or until they are cookie-ish and easy to hold and eat. If you started your cookies out on the teflex sheets, at some point in the middle of the process move them to mesh screens so that both sides dry nicely.

Obviously, there are plenty of possible variations for this. Blueberries or other berries instead of the cranberries. You could play with the spices. You could use honey instead of the agave nectar. You could add nuts. And of course more or less of any of the ingredients I listed here can be used. Basically, as long as you can lump it together on the dehydrator trays, it'll work. I find that without the banana it has a hard time holding together.

If you want pink cookies, just throw the cranberries in with the oat groats and everything else in the food processor. They turn out very cute that way too!

Another possibility for this is to make it into granola. Just spread the cookie dough out on teflex sheets and dehydrate just like that. Use a spatula to break it up every now and then as it dries. At the end when it is totally dry, run it through the food processor a bit to break up the big chunks. Store in the fridge in a ziploc bag or glass jar.

Dehydrator Snack Crackers Recipe

I've had several people ask me about the things I make in my dehydrator, so today I'm sharing a recipe with you.

The thing about a lot of my raw crackers and treats is that it requires a little foresight. At first I found this really difficult because it was tricky to get the timing right. I mean, newbies aren't so good at planning 3 days in advance for some chip-type-things, you know?

Happily, by now I've gotten a good idea of what I like and what needs to happen, so I can keep things going without too much angst.

The first ingredient needed in this recipe is sprouted buckwheat. For that I take raw buckwheat hulls and soak them for most of a day. (in a bowl with lots of extra water) Then I drain them, rinse them well, and let them live in a couple of colanders for 2 days. I rinse them in the morning and at night, and keep them covered with a towel through the day. (try to spread the buckwheat out thinly in the colander, not all lumped up and deep in the middle) I put a plate under the colander to catch the drips.

Since sprouted buckwheat is a pretty common item in a lot of my raw recipes, I do this pretty regularly even if I don't know what I'm going to do with it. By the time the sprouts have grown for two days, I have usually gotten it figured out. If not, the drained sprouts can go into a ziploc bag in the fridge for several days, or they can be dehydrated and used for one of our favorite cookie bar treats: Buckwheatie Bars. (I'll tell you about those some other time)

For this recipe you need:

5 cups of sprouted buckwheat

3 cups of fresh veggies (I used 3 tomatoes this time, but you can use zucchini or anything else you've got around)

2 cups of soaked sunflower seeds (cover the seeds in water for a day, then drain. yet another thinking ahead step, but it's easy. If I'm not using them right away I freeze them.) You could use pine nuts or other nuts/seeds if they are more convenient for you.

1 cup of flax meal (raw flax seeds ground up in a coffee grinder)

2 tsp. sea salt

1 tsp. chili powder

2 tablespoons cumin

2 tablespoons honey or agave nectar

juice of 2 limes

2 pinches cayenne pepper

3/4 tsp. garlic powder

2 tablespoons olive oil

half cup pumpkin seeds (it's good to soak these ahead of time too)

2 tablespoons sesame seeds

The nice thing about this recipe is that it's not going to fly or fail based on exact measurements or if you have every single thing. You can really "cook from the hip" with this one, adding or deleting items to your liking.

You just whiz all of this up on your food processor (probably in batches since it's more than most food processors can handle), then mix it all up in a big bowl.

Spread it thinly onto teflex sheets on dehydrator trays. I do it thick enough to not have bare spaces. It thins out some once it's dehydrated too.

This recipe fills over 3 of my dehydrator trays. (they are each 1 foot square)

Once I get the batter spread onto the trays I take my pizza cutter and cut through it to score it. I go straight across for the first series of cuts, then diagonal for the second. That makes the chips turn out diamond-shaped which seems right for the flavorful flair that these chips have. :)

Dehydrate for several hours until it holds together well enough to flip it onto a dehydrator tray without the teflex sheet. (The teflex sheets keep liquid on the tray, but what you really want is for the majority of the drying time to be on the mesh dehydrator trays) It takes about 24 hours of drying for these to be done.

I save them in a large Tupperware container and this batch lasts us a few weeks, so it's worth it to me to bother to make it.

Other than the planning ahead, these are really easy to make. It probably took me 20 minutes to throw this together today, and now I'll be set with snack chips for the rest of the month, at least.

You can use these chips for dipping, although sometimes mine come out a little too thin to sustain much weight. I normally eat them instead of popcorn or some other salty or crunchy snack, plus I take them in the car if I know I'm going to be hungry and won't want to eat something junky instead.

This recipe comes from my favorite raw food recipe book by Serene Allison. it is called Rejuvenate Your Life and you can purchase the book from the resources at Above Rubies. We have many successful favorite healthy foods in our family thanks to her recipes, and things I have adapted from them.

A variation on this recipe is Garlic Naan bread. Basically I use this same recipe, except throw in some extra garlic, and spread it a little thicker on the teflex sheets. Then I use my pizza cutter to cut this into squares, approximately the size of a smallish slice of bread. Do the same thing with the drying process--let it get crisp on the one side, then flip over and let the other side get done. I sometimes have a piece or two of this garlic naan bread with raw guacamole spread on it. You can also slice up some cucumbers, tomatoes, or other veggies to add to the top. Very yummy, and surprisingly filling!

**A tip on flipping: The simplest way to flip foods from the teflex sheet to the regular mesh is to just place the mesh screen and tray on top of the food that is on the teflex sheet. Just hold them together like a big book, and turn it over. Now the crispy side is resting on the mesh tray. Lift the top tray off, and gently peel the teflex sheet away from the food. Done! :)

There you go! Let me know if you try it!

gRAWnola Recipe!

For years I've made granola in the oven, but I've been curious about raw versions of granola as well. After seeing some crazy high prices for raw granola in the health food store, I decided to experiment with making it myself. The other day I made a mistake when trying to make some raw cookies, and ended up developing a gRAWnola recipe instead! :) Here is how it goes:

Soaked 3 cups of steel cut oat groats overnight, along with some raw pumpkin seeds, raw sunflower seeds, and some flax seeds. (Just throw it all in a bowl and cover it with water. It'll expand, so be sure to have a big enough bowl and plenty of water.)

In the morning drain off the water. In the food processor throw in a banana or two, a couple cored apples, some cinnamon and nutmeg, some agave nectar or raw honey, and the oats and nuts. Process it all until smooth. Spread onto teflex sheets in the dehydrator. Dehydrate at 105 degrees or less for the whole day. (once you get to 110 degrees or so you are cooking the food and destroying the enzymes, so it's best to go for the lower temp and keep the good stuff in your food)

Throughout the day check on the progress. Use a spatula to break up the granola, flip it to expose the damp sides, etc. At the end of the day it will probably be dry enough to call it done. I then toss it back into the food processor to chunk it up better. I store it in the fridge in a ziploc bag.

Obviously, you could add more/less/different nuts, fruits, coconut, spices, etc. depending on what you're looking for. Very versatile, easy, and can be fairly inexpensive.