Desserts & Sweets

Vegan Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Blondies

by Sophia & Michael

För recept på svenska, klicka här: Veganska blondies med jordnötssmör och mörk choklad

We just couldn’t help ourselves – after we got completely hooked on these Black Bean Brownies we made a few months back, we’ve been eager to experiment with white beans in baking. While brownies are delicious, so are blondies – and all the testing in the kitchen eventually paid off. These peanut butter-chocolate blondies are both decadent and filling, and also give you a nice little boost of nutrients – plus, the recipe comes together quickly and doesn’t require a long list of ingredients either. We can’t get enough of these and hope you’ll like them just as much as we do – and hey, we love hearing about the recipes you try from here so let us know what you’ve made (and hopefully liked)! If you’re on Instagram, using #liveslowrunfar is an easy way to share with us what you’ve been cooking up. Otherwise, the comment section is all yours. That’s all!

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Vegan Morning Glory Muffins

by Sophia & Michael

För recept på svenska, klicka här: Veganska mellanmålsmuffins med morot och äpple

Muffins! Muffins galore! It’s certainly hard to find a more convenient and to go-friendly sweet treat, as well as one where flavor combinations are more abundant. This will most likely be our last muffin batch that has a fall/winter feel to them for this season, so bear with us – it’ll be all berries and fresh fruit in no time, but for now, just a little more of that warming cinnamon smell and crunchy nuts, ok? These are on the more nutritious and hearty side of the spectrum, with whole grain flours, grated carrots and a fairly anonymous amount of sugar, making them the perfect snack any time, any day of the week. They’ll last for months in the freezer and defrost quickly, no need to hold back on the batch size here. Oh, and they’re entirely plant-based, but that you’ll see as soon as you read the ingredient list. Hope you’ll like these as much as we do!

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Run Far Energy Balls

by Sophia & Michael

För recept på svenska, klicka här: Run Far energibollar

We all have our preferences when it comes to nutrition choices during training and racing – some prefer only liquid (as in sports beverage of some kind), others like primarily solid foods and many prefer a combination of both. Learning what works for you and what optimizes your performance doesn’t have to be a tricky task, but it certainly can be. We’re still figuring out how we like it, but the one thing we’re sure of is this: sports nutrition products are expensive, and we can think of many other things we’d rather spend money on. So. For the past 6 months, we’ve been experimenting with energy balls suitable for eating during running, and this recipe is the outcome of that. Using ourselves as guinea pigs, we’ve tried different flavors and ratios and found what both our taste buds and stomachs like the best. Practicing eating and testing out specific things is key to nailing your nutrition game come race day, and after a few stomach blow ups in the past, we’re trying to do it right this season! (We use nutrition when we go for runs 30k and up, by the way.)

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Crispy Vegan Oat Waffles

by Sophia & Michael

För recept på svenska, klicka här: Veganska våfflor med havremjöl

Once a year, on March 25th, it’s National Waffle Day in Sweden. We eat waffles more often than that (of course), but it’s a fun tradition and we’re not the ones to turn down yet another opportunity to dig into a pile of crispy goodness topped with berries or jam. So we don’t! This entirely plant-based recipe only features ingredients available locally – no oils from far away or exotic flour mixtures here – and if you happen to have some berries on hand from last summer, this would be a great time to dig them out of the freezer. We did, and went for blackberries – but any will obviously do. And instead of heavy cream, we strained oat yogurt – a great plant-based alternative to e.g. Greek yogurt. That’s really all there is to say about this one – except enjoy, of course! And Happy Waffle Day!

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Chocolate Dipped Chickpea Peanut Butter Energy Balls

by Sophia & Michael

För recept på svenska, scrolla nedåt eller klicka här: Chokladdoppade energibollar med kikärtor och jordnötssmör

Wait, chickpea balls? Seemingly covered in chocolate? Calm down. It’s not as crazy as it might sound. Mike suggested a while back we could try making an energy ball using chickpeas as the main ingredient, his mind obviously thinking of ways to make these types of snacks nutrient dense and perfectly acceptable to munch on whenever. An overall balanced diet usually provides us with all the macro nutrients we need, thus no need for the protein-packed this or protein-packed that even for us mostly plant-based folks, but listen to the micro nutrient bonanza in these balls: heaps and heaps worth of folic acid, vitamins E and K plus B1, B3 and B6, selenium, zinc, iron, phosphorus, calcium, potassium and magnesium.

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Chocolate Winter Squash Muffins

by Sophia & Michael

För recept på svenska, scrolla nedåt eller klicka här: Choklad- och pumpamuffins

This past summer, we made about a gazillion of these Chocolate Zucchini Muffins, using up the zucchinis that had grown waaaayyy too big for “normal” eating. We (obviously) ate a lot of muffins then, preferably when soaking up the sun somewhere, but we could also put many in the freezer for later. We literally just finished the last ones from the summer – which can serve as an indication of exactly how many we actually made – and so, it was time to make new muffins. Because really, isn’t it just unbeatable to have chocolate muffins in the freezer that you can defrost in no time and fend off any blood sugar dips with? It is to us, at least. But with no zucchinis on hand now, during the winter, what to do? Introducing: winter squash. With essentially endless storage possibilities, winter squashes can be used throughout the whole dark and cold season, all the way until the garden is back to former glory. By making a puree using butternut squash, you’ll end up with the most moist, borderline sticky, muffins ever. No dry crumbs here, be sure of it. I was, after all, raised by my mother – a fan of all things sweet and dessert-like, and with a strong preference for stickiness and gooeyness.

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Easy Squash and Nut Bread

by Sophia & Michael

För recept på svenska, scrolla nedåt!

We mentioned a month or so ago that we had been hit by a big storm, which knocked out our power for a week and left 30+ giant trees down just in and around our immediate property. Now, we’re busy cleaning up the mess Alfrida (as she was named) created, which involves a lot of schlepping, pushing, lifting, dragging, moving, hauling and chopping, as well as a decent amount of grunting – but that’s of course just for show. We had a neighbor help us sort out the situation initially, when the scene looked quite treacherous – some trees were fallen but resting on others still (sort of caught halfway), some had roots attached, holding a dangerous amount of tension. And some were simply too wide for our chainsaw to work through, so these trunks we got help sawing up into the 30 cm/1 ft pieces (or round blocks) we’ll eventually chop into firewood. Needless to say, the amount of stuff we have to take care of is… mind-blowing (at least for just two people). In order to not get overwhelmed, we’re tapping into “a little bit at a time”-mode. Yes, we’re all like “Rome wasn’t built in a day” out there, as we’re moving the blocks, one by one, and creating a giant brush pile with all the branches. By glancing at the pile of blocks we’ve currently moved into one and the same place though… we have firewood for 15 years to come.

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Black Bean Brownies

by Sophia & Michael

För recept på svenska, scrolla nedåt!

In all honesty, we were kind of like… really? when first hearing about black bean baked goods. Don’t get us wrong (I doubt you would by now), we LOVE beans and lentils. They’re the best. But we also love our baked goods. Cakes, cookies, buns… you know, the whole spectrum. And around here, we tend to lean towards the attitude of “if you’re going to bake buns, bake buns. Not a ‘health-ified’ bun that no one will really enjoy anyway”. I think you get my point. But we also happen to know that from a sports nutrition point of view, having an evening snack with a touch of protein is beneficial. And one simply can’t have too much of all the good stuff in legumes. Enter black bean-based baked goods.

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Granola Bars

by Sophia & Michael

För recept på svenska, scrolla nedåt!

Making your own energy bars is a MUST if you’re on a tight budget. Store-bought ones are expensive, and making your own is as easy as it is cheap. We started making our own in 2016, when we had decided we were going to quit our jobs and move to Sweden. We were looking to save up as much money as we possibly could, and our little apartment quickly turned into a DIY studio as a result of that. Granola, yogurt, packed lunches… we had a whole operation going on.

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Saffron Caramel Popcorn

by Sophia & Michael

För recept på svenska, scrolla nedåt!

Mike pointed something out to me the other day – something fairly obvious but, you know, nothing I had really given much thought before. Popcorn is just a whole grain popped to deliciousness. Ha! In search for less refined and processed products, and maybe especially in the snacks department, popcorn is… a whole food. Pure and simple. It’s brilliant! It’s also one of our favorite snacks in front of a movie. And now, finally, we have them here in a Christmas edition (which might not qualify for a particularly healthy snack, but what can you do?). I love caramel flavor. Always has, always will. Salted caramel ice cream is my go-to during the warmer half of the year, and as I kid, I’d go for caramel sauce over chocolate sauce any day. Yes, it can be overly sweet. But boy, it’s good. And one of the good things about making your own caramel-flavored food items is that you can sweeten it to your liking. You get all the same flavors but just a little less of that tongue-rolling sweetness shock.

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