Healthy Sweets - A how to and the Best Chocolate Shake Ever!!!!

A few months a go I made a deal with my kids that if they would stop asking for store bought treats and turn down treats offered them by well meaning people I would make them all the treats they wanted at home. The treats you make at home will almost always be healthier than what you buy at the store and they will taste better too. Here are some tips on how to make your treat recipes even healthier.


1. Eggs - try to buy  free range organic, preferably from a local source.


** If you don't want to eat eggs at all. You can use a mixture of 1 Tbsp ground flax seed and 2 Tbsp water for each egg in your baked goods.

2. Use Whole Wheat Flour. Soft white wheat is the closest to white flour. You can also get Whole wheat pastry flour at some stores but it is more expensive.

3. Consider using Virgin Coconut Oil instead of butter or margarine. Here is a link that describes the health benefits of coconut oil. Here is a link for a great place to buy quality coconut oil for cheaper than you can get at the health food store. You want the virgin, unrefined one.  If you don't want to use coconut oil, use butter.

4. Replace the sugar with Sucanat, which is dehydrated, unrefined organic cane juice. You can also try Coconut or Palm Sugar.*

*I really like the palm sugar, nutritionally it is probably one of the best suagrs you can use.

5. Use Aluminum Free Baking Powder. You can find this at health food stores and most grocery stores.

6. Get Alcohol Free Vanilla Extract. Did you realize it had alcohol in it? I didn't until a few years ago. Finding alcohol free can be harder and it is more expensive. I have found some at Trader Joe's and my local health food store. I really like this brand.

7. Use Sea Salt (or Original Crystal Himalayan Salt) for all the minerals in the whole food rather than the processed salt stripped of nutrition, and cut the amount of salt in half.

Best Chocolate Shake

The only sweeteners in this are bananas and dates.

3 cups unsweetened almond milk
4 - 6 frozen bananas (Important – they must be frozen or it won’t be a “shake”)
2-3 medjool dates with pits out (we like 2)
1-2 Tblsp of unsweetened cocoa (we like closer to 1)

2- 3 Tblsp of natural peanut butter (optional)

Blend it all in your blender

** You can use regular milk if you want. We use Almond Breeze unsweetened vanilla flavored almond milk. You can find it at health food stores and some grocery stores.

** Whenever your bananas start to get too brown, break them in to pieces and freeze them in ziploc bags. I always have a ton of frozen bananas in my freezer. If you don't have a powerful blender, let the bananas defrost a little so you don't kill your motor.

**Start out with the smaller amounts of cocoa and dates and taste it, if you want more, add them.

**These are seriously so delicious. They taste like a shake you can get from a malt shop. So good.