Carrot Cake Breakfast Treat

My new favorite breakfast item is in the form of a delicious Oh She Glows Carrot Cake Scuffin. Of course, I doctored the recipe to make it paleo friendly, and the results were, I dare say, amazing.

Paleo Carrot Cake Scuffins

Ingredients:

1 cup almond flour
1/2 tsp baking power
1/4 tsp sea salt
1.5 tsp pumpkin pie spice

2 tbsp coconut oil

1/4 cup pure maple syrup

1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 egg

1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1.5 cups shredded or grated carrots

• 1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

I combined the dry ingredients and then neglected to follow the rest of Angela's well laid out instructions...mostly because I was being a little bit lazy. Everything turned out okay in the end.

I shredded the carrots,

and combined everything in one bowl. The original recipe called for 1/2 cup oats, but I replaced these with shredded coconut to give the scuffins a less soupy consistency. I also reduced the maple syrup from 1/2 cup to 1/4 cup for less sweetness.

I scooped six scuffins on to parchment paper.



I topped them with shredded coconut and baked at 350 for about 25 minutes.

mmMMMmmm...carrots.

We prepared a Saturday morning breakfeast:

Scuffins, scrambled eggs and tiny plums with neon insides


We ate outside in the sun.

Chester wanted some. He didn't get any.

Sea Foraging in Gloucester

Last weekend, M and I had the pleasure of joining my mother and her boyfriend (also an M...so let's call him M2) for dinner in Gloucester, MA. M2 spent his boyhood summers there as a wee lobsterman selling lobsters for something like 25 cents per pound. Lucky for us, he still has lobster traps and an amazing fishing boat: our trips to Gloucester are, naturally, filled with lobsters and boat rides. Mama and M2 whipped up an amazing meal for us in one of the most beautiful and relaxing places on Earth.

The Aerie (Eagle's Nest)

M2 built these stairs leading up to the house. One of his many Sisyphus Projects.

I've spent many hours scaling these rocks. Back in my college marine bio days, I could always be found searching for crabs in the seaweed.

The view.

The dinner table.

We started off the night with a boat ride to Crane's Beach and a tour of the harbor. The sun was setting when we got back and started working on dinner.

We nibbled on cheese and summer sausage. Okay, everyone else "nibbled", I feasted.

The vegetables.

Yellow tomato, regular tomato and avocado.

Cucumber salad made with cucumbers and fennel from my mother's garden in VT.

Cucumbers, fennel, and red onion mixed with some Bragg Healthy Vinaigrette.

M2 caught two lobsters that we boiled up and ate with melted butter.

Surf and Turf. To go along with the two lobsters, we grilled us some steak. There was also corn on the cobb, but I don't do "the cobb" part. I hate corn stuck in my teeth. Plus, there's a surprising amount of corn on one cobb. I shaved it all off, and ate a little less than half of what was on my plate.

For dessert, I had made a traditional carrot cake in honor of my mother's 32nd birthday (*wink wink*). I followed a recipe from the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook. I substituted coconut oil for the vegetable oil that the recipe called for, but that was the only change that I made. Well, the cream cheese frosting recipe called for 5 cups of confectioners sugar, which I decided would give me instant metabolic syndrome. So I only used one cup of sugar, and that was definitely sweet enough for me.

The cake was perfect, if I do say so myself. Not too sweet, and wonderfully coconutty.

It was a delectable dinner with wonderful company in a beautiful setting. Sharing quality time with my family is very important to me, especially because my two sets of parents live in a different state than my sister and I. It's always a treat when they come to visit: we get spoiled with homemade mama food and people telling us we look pretty and stuff. Sometimes one needs a good dose of parental doting-- even when they're in their late 20's....