A Calculated Whisk - Page 4 of 33 - Creative paleo and gluten-free recipes

Grain-free Instant Pot Pumpkin Pie

December 18, 2017 By Becky 23 Comments

This grain-free Instant pot pumpkin pie is easy to make in your pressure cooker, and is the perfect size for an intimate holiday gathering. Recipe from Emily Sunwell-Vidaurri’s new cookbook, The Art of Great Cooking with Your Instant Pot.

It’s time for an Instant Pot dessert! I recently took a little poll over on Instagram stories, and found that 74% of you have an Instant Pot. If you’re among the 26% that doesn’t have one yet, you should add it to your Christmas list–it’s my very favorite kitchen appliance of all time because of its cooking speed, ease of use, and versatility. It sautés beautifully, plus it does the work of a slow cooker, rice cooker, pressure cooker, and more. And now, we’re using it as a pie maker!

32 Paleo Comfort Food Recipes for Winter

December 11, 2017 By Becky 26 Comments

This collection of paleo comfort food recipes will keep you warm and nourished all winter long!

Looking for more delicious paleo recipes? Check out my roundups of Whole30 Instant Pot recipes and Whole30 sheet pan dinners.

Raise your hand if you could use some comfort food right about now! Between the cold weather and the seemingly incessant parade of Christmas treats, I’ve been craving healthy, hearty, hot dinners. In case you have been, too, I put together this collection of my very best and favorite paleo comfort food recipes.

Between all the cookies and the shopping and whatever else you’re up to, I hope you can find time to share some of these dishes with your family (or just make them for yourself!). Many of these recipes are great to make ahead and/or Whole30 compliant, so I’ve noted details like that below. Which one will you try first?

Here’s to a healthy and happy holiday season filled with plenty of satisfying meals!

Gluten-free Chocolate Peppermint Thumbprints

December 4, 2017 By Becky 38 Comments

This post is sponsored by Pamela’s Products.

These gluten-free chocolate peppermint thumbprints are festive, delicious, and a snap to make with just one flour!

Happy cookie season! As soon as Thanksgiving is over, baking cookies is pretty much all I want to do, and these gluten-free chocolate peppermint thumbprints are going to be happening over and over again this year and for many years to come. The pairing of a buttery cookie and a rich chocolate ganache, both with just the right amount of peppermint flavor, is really hard to resist. That’s what’s so special about thumbprints–the combination of textures leads to such a satisfying chew.
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Instant Pot Meatballs

November 28, 2017 By Becky 29 Comments

These Instant Pot meatballs are so easy and quick to make–no stove or oven required–and are the ideal paleo & Whole30 comfort food.

How was your Thanksgiving?? Mine was pretty good. I made an apple galette first thing in the morning and we left for Atlanta around 11 to go to a big family Thanksgiving at Ben’s cousin’s house. Amazingly enough, traffic from Chattanooga to the ATL was very light, and we made it in under two hours. I managed to eat only a relatively appropriate amount of dessert and even brought some galette back home, which made a perfect Black Friday breakfast.

6 Ways to Top Roasted Sweet Potatoes

November 22, 2017 By Becky 22 Comments

This post is sponsored by the North Carolina SweetPotato Commission.

With these six ways to top roasted sweet potatoes, everyone will be sure to find something they love. Pick one or two to make for dinner or go all out and try all six!

Happy Thanksgiving Eve! I’m here today to tell you about a delicious meal idea that, while not necessarily meant for Turkey Day itself, is certainly perfect for any busy night (or day or even morning) of the year when you need some fast and healthy grub.

Bok Choy Salad with Apple and Persimmon

November 14, 2017 By Becky 6 Comments

This vegan and paleo bok choy salad with apple and persimmon is healthy enough for a detox but beautiful and tasty enough for your Thanksgiving table!

Is anyone else in need of something delicious and fresh, but still kind of festive? I’ve got you covered with this bok choy salad with apple and persimmon. Amidst all the pie and stuffing and mashed potatoes and even a few early cookies, I am fairly sure that we all could use something like this.

If you’re surprised that bok choy can be eaten raw in a salad, you are not alone. I just learned this recently myself. A couple weeks before our wedding I decided to do Alisa Vitti’s four-day detox, and this bok choy salad is based on a very simple one that she shares as part of the cleanse. I was initially quite suspicious that a combination of raw bok choy, onion, and apple could ever taste good, but since I get bok choy all the time in my CSA and it cooks down to almost nothing in a stir fry, I decided to give the salad a try.

Chocolate Pumpkin Crème Brûlée

October 18, 2017 By Becky 24 Comments

This post is sponsored by Rodelle.

This chocolate pumpkin crème brûlée is a showstopping grain-free dessert that’s perfect for Halloween or any fall occasion. It’s also easy to make ahead of time!

Who’s excited for Halloween, all things pumpkin, and/or Season 2 of Stranger Things??

I am! I can barely think about anything other than the upside down. However, despite how pumped I am about the show’s return, I can definitively say that I am WAY MORE excited about this chocolate pumpkin crème brûlée. It’s the best dessert I’ve made in all of 2017 and possibly longer. It tastes amazing, it’s easy to make, and best of all, it’s really fun!

Let me walk you through the layers. On the bottom there’s a chocolate sauce. This is not just ANY chocolate sauce, though. It’s an intensely-chocolatey-but-not-too-rich chocolate sauce, like what you might have gotten on your sundae at a really good old-school ice cream parlor.

Initially, I was worried I wouldn’t love the sauce. It’s cocoa-based, so there’s no melted chocolate, and there’s also no cream and just a tiny bit of butter. When I tasted the sauce on its own I was happily surprised by how good it was, but when I tasted it along with the finished crème brûlée I was blown away by how much I loved it. With the addition of chocolate extract and without the distracting richness of cream or cocoa butter, the chocolate flavor shines through in a way it doesn’t in most chocolate desserts. I know this may sound paradoxical, but the chocolate flavor is richer because the sauce itself isn’t that rich. As a foil for the super creamy pumpkin layer, it’s just perfect.

Hubbard Squash Soup with Pistachio Gremolata

October 9, 2017 By Becky 20 Comments

This easy hubbard squash soup with pistachio gremolata will quickly become a favorite in your fall weeknight rotation. The slightly sweet soup and punchy gremolata complement each other perfectly.

It’s October (how?!?), and it’s time for squash soup. Posting squash soup has become an inadvertent fall tradition here at A Calculated Whisk, beginning with butternut squash soup with fried garlic and chili oil in October 2014. The tradition continued with 2015’s parsnip and pumpkin soup and last year’s butternut squash and potato soup (with bacon and pomegranate on top!).

Autumn 2017’s squash soup feature is this hubbard squash soup with pistachio gremolata. I invented it on a whim when I got sick a few days after my wedding and have not been able to stop eating it since. The soup is rich and delicious on its own, but worlds better with a few dollops of pistachio gremolata swirled in.

I originally made this soup with a red kuri squash from my CSA–the one pictured in the top right of this photo. Since then, I’ve had trouble getting my hands on another red kuri, so I turned to buttercup squash (pictured above), which is another member of the hubbard squash family. I have a slight preference for red kuri squash and am constantly on the lookout for it, but either will work (and other orange-fleshed winter squashes like butternut will probably work, too).

Pitaya Peach Smoothie

September 21, 2017 By Becky 16 Comments

This pitaya peach smoothie has quickly become my go-to power breakfast because it’s easy, healthy, gorgeous, and delicious. What more can you ask for in the morning?

Thank you to Rodelle for providing products for use in this post!

Big news: Ben and I are married! We started dating almost six years ago, before the idea of starting a food blog had even crossed my mind, got engaged almost three years ago, and tied the knot on Saturday. I’m so happy and in a way amazed that we are finally married, mostly because we’re not the best at planning big events. However, we somehow pulled it off (with a huge amount of help from our families and especially my mother, who put together all the little decorative elements and details into something better than I’d ever imagined) and are so thrilled to be husband and wife. Also, Ben’s sister and her husband threw us an outdoor rehearsal dinner that was so fun I worried the wedding itself couldn’t top it, complete with a gorgeously decorated tent in their driveway and a late-night fire pit. I could go on and on about our wedding weekend, but should probably save it for a separate post since I also have lots to say about these smoothies. If you’re interested, though, here are a couple of photos from our first look shot by my dear friend, bridesmaid, and photographer extraordinaire Lindsey Lowe.

So, smoothie time! I have been making smoothies all spring and summer long, and this pitaya peach smoothie is my very favorite. I shot a cookbook written by someone else this summer (more details coming!) for the first time, and had 60 photos due just over two weeks before my wedding date. As if photographing a cookbook and planning a wedding wasn’t enough, I also continued to work 30 hours a week as a speech therapist and took on several other freelance projects. To say I didn’t have time to cook breakfast would be an understatement. This is such an easy breakfast, especially if you use an immersion blender like I do–you can make your smoothie in a big jar and drink it from there, too!

Pinchos de Pollo from Latin American Paleo Cooking + Giveaway

September 5, 2017 By Becky 17 Comments

These pinchos de pollo (Puerto Rican chicken skewers) from Latin American Paleo Cooking are a snap to make, packed with flavor, and super healthy.

So, hi! I’m back from what I think was my longest blogging hiatus ever, and I have really missed you. I have a post coming up soon with details on what I’ve been up to in case you’re interested (spoiler alert: planning our wedding and lots of freelance work!). From now on I’ll be sharing recipes more regularly again, and am really excited to get back in the game with this amazing and super simple recipe from Amanda Torres’ new cookbook, Latin American Paleo Cooking. Amanda is the brilliant recipe developer and writer behind the blog The Curious Coconut, and she wrote the cookbook with her mother in law, Milagros Torres, who grew up in Puerto Rico and has been cooking since she was ten.

The book is full of tempting recipes for family dinners, party food, quick and easy meals, sides, cooking essentials like sauces, and desserts from many different Latin American countries. Since I’m trying to slim down for my wedding (it’s in less than two weeks!), I have not even looked at the dessert chapter. However, I’ve been poring over everything else and have a huge list of what I want to make. Empanadas are at the very top of my list (and the top of the cover of the book–don’t they look amazing?)!

Pineapple Peach Margaritas

July 18, 2017 By Becky 6 Comments

These creamy, frozen pineapple peach margaritas are just the thing for hot summer evenings.

Somehow a whole month has passed without me sharing a recipe, and it’s felt like no time at all! I didn’t intend to take such a break, and I’ve been sitting on these scrumptious margaritas for quite some time, but one thing after another kept piling up. I’ve been hard at work on some exciting freelance projects that I can’t wait to tell you about as soon as I’m able!

For today, though, I’m offering a simple, sweet, and creamy libation. These pineapple peach margaritas are made with ripe summer peach, frozen pineapple, fresh-squeezed orange and lime juice, and a splash of cream or coconut milk. I like a mix of sea salt and raw sugar for the rim, which helps strike an ideal and refreshing balance between sweet and salty tastes.

Appalachia Food Photography & Styling Workshop

June 30, 2017 By Becky 18 Comments

Beautiful galettes made by Linda Lomelino and Hannah Messinger and styled by Julián Ángel.

Over Memorial Day weekend I had the opportunity to help out at a First We Eat food photography and styling workshop held by Eva of Adventures in Cooking and Carey of Reclaiming Provincial. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may recall that I attended a similar workshop with Eva and Carey a couple of years ago on Cape Cod. That first workshop was a huge turning point in my styling and photography and a wonderful way to spend the weekend of my thirtieth birthday, so I was thrilled to get to join them again almost exactly two years later, here in my new home state of Tennessee.

We stayed in two cabins adjoined by a giant figure-eight wrap-around porch and tucked into the woods of Beersheba Springs, a small town at the edge of the Appalachian Mountains. Linda Lomelino, Maggie Pate, Hannah Messinger, and Lauren Michelle were in attendance to teach food styling, natural dyeing, food writing, and working with plaster, respectively.