Non-Dairy Tofu No-Meat Meatballs

I'm having a really tough time recently trying so hard to avoid dairy food as I'm almost sure cheese is not well accepted by my own body. I never drink cow milk since a year or so and this was a big step, but cheese is my little weakness and removing it completely from my diet is too hard. I'm trying to eat it the least I can though, and one big step I've made is to stop including it in all the recipes I try even if they don't really need its presence. On the other hand I love tofu and I've always eaten tofu vegetarian meatballs with a lot of parmesan cheese included in the mixture, but recently I adapted my original recipe to my temporary non-dairy diet and they come out pretty good, so I wanted to share them with you...

For 5 tofu balls you'll need:

• 180g Tofu
• 1 medium egg
• 4 tablespoons chopped zucchini
• 2 + 2 tablespoons breadcrumbs
• 1/2 teaspoon + a pinch of salt

First thing I always do is chopping the tofu into little squares and throwing it into the mixer until it's all super finely chopped. I then move it into a big bowl and add an egg to the mixture, this will make it more sticky and it will be easier to build together our tofu balls in the end. I then added 4 tablespoons of chopped zucchini to enrich the taste, but here you can add whatever vegetable you'd like, I sometimes go for some lightly stir-fried leek or onion, but I also love them with some chopped eggplant, tomatoes or peppers. I then added two tablespoons of bread crumbs to make my mixture a bit thicker and lastly 1/2 teaspoon of salt. I mixed all together and then started shaping five medium balls out of it, rolled them in two (or so) tablespoons of bread crumbs and then fried them in a pan on both sides until they were golden brown. Lastly I dusted a pinch of salt on top.

If you don't like how tofu taste but want to add it to your diet for any kind of reason, this is the perfect recipe for you - it's so good and tasty, and you can spice it up as you desire to make it better to your own taste. These are so delicious, completely vegetarian, not too heavy but a complete meal and can be pared with a good old rich salad or just eaten on their own, they can also be stored and eaten a few hours later, maybe at work, just lightly reheated in a microwave. This little, super quick and easy recipe is now a staple of my vegetarian diet and I couldn't live without my super yummy tofu balls, so hopefully you can enjoy them as well!

Will you try this recipe?

My favorite food apps

Food is my weakness and one of the thing I love most doing in life is cooking and baking, so of course I have some food apps to check on my iPhone's screen. They come super handy when you don't know what to cook for lunch and what to serve for something different, or when you simply want to discover new recipes. There are lots of good food apps out there, but these four are my all time favorites and I thought I could share them with you today.

1. Primerose Bakery (£2,49) - founded by the owners of a London's phisical cupcake shop, this is a collection of the most delicious and beautiful dessert recipes out there. This is one of the first apps I ever downloaded and bought years ago, and they only recently added a few more recipes and gave it a little makeover and now it has the prettiest inferface and it's super easy to navigate through and find your favorite recipes. I'm so picky with non-free apps but I can't deny I didn't hesitate a single minute before buying this and I can't recommend it enough. My favorite recipes are their classic chocolate brownies (which are the best!) and their afghan biscuits which are such a breakfast staple of mine.

2. Yummly (free) - this is a super smart app that allows you to browse through some of the best recipes on the internet which you can save and "yum" in one of their category to have them all very organized and sorted through breakfast, dinner, appetizer, dessert... It also features a very clever shopping list which I never use, but which could actually come pretty handy, but the thing I love the most is how easy it is to find something interesting within the recipes recommended to you according to your previous "yums".

3. Gojee (free) - it's a beautiful collection of handpicked recipes with beautiful photos which make you crave food so badly everytime. This is very similar to Yummly with their engine which selects the recipes you could love for you, but here you can like your favorites but above all browse through their lovely named categories and some of my favorites are Tofu For You, with a tun of yummy tofu recipes, Nutell-icious!, because I love Nutella, Blondies & Brownies, featuring very innovative and creative blondies and brownies recipes, and Sweet Sunday!, with some super delicious weekend dessert recipes.

4. Filibaba Smoothies (free) - with its motto "pick, blend, drink" this app was thought and created by a group of Swedish lovely people to share their passion for smoothies and vegetarian and vegan food. I love the vast selection of flavors and ideas and this is such an inspiring and well done app to have on your phone if you love fruit and smoothies. I love that you can select the metric and how every recipe has its own description and reason to be there. They're all very easy and quick recipes but they all looks so good and I can't wait to try them all. This app inspired my beloved Healthy antiox smoothie which is absolutely delicious and one of my favorite things at the moment.

Which are your favorite food apps?

Lava cakes for two

Weekends are baking time for me and this time I decided to experiment with a new recipe for some delicious chocolate lava cakes and served it for breakfast - everyone was so enthusiast and being that this could actually be one of my favorite desserts to bake (& eat of course) I thought I could share my recipe with you. This can be a lovely dessert idea to serve to your better half after a special meal or for a romantic breakfast in bed and it's not a case this recipe makes the perfect amount of mixture to serve two super yummy chocolate lava cakes...

For two chocolate lava cakes you'll need:

• 125g dark chocolate
• 30g unsalted butter
• 1 egg and 1 egg yolk
• 15g white flour
• 1 tablespoon of white sugar
• a pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon of coffee powder
• icing sugar & strawberries for serving

Once preheated the oven to 220°C I melted the chocolate and the butter using a bain marie as it's my favorite way to do it but you can definitely go for microwaves if you prefer, but always remember to whisk often both cases. I then added the egg and egg yolk, mixed, added flour, white sugar, salt and coffee and mixed well again and again until I had a very smooth mixture. I then buttered two of my super cute (and cheap) Emile Henry Ceramic Ramekins and threw in my chocolate mixture in equal parts. Placed them on a baking sheet, they were ready to be baked in the oven for around 10/12 minutes (and not more). It's important to not overcook them as our lava cakes are meant to have a soft and liquid-y heart.

Once baked you can remove them from the oven and leave them cool for a few minutes or until the ramekins can be handled and then reverse it on a cute little plate. Using the icing sugar and the strawberries try to embellish your dessert - I cut a strawberry in half and placed it around my little lava cake and sprinkled a bit of icing sugar on top. When you'll cut it with a spoon, it will reveal a soft and delicious chocolate heart which will supply the perfect amount of sweetness in your weekend. This dessert is super delicious and can be served in special occasions to friends, family or lover to leave them all super impressed even if it's just the easiest and quickest dessert to prepare and bake!

Will you try my lava cake's recipe?

Life Snippets | 1

Being that I'm trying to make this blog more personal and have a really fresh contents that shows my personality a lot more, I thought I should embrace lifestyle posts a lot more and what better way to keep you updated than a weekly (or so) 'Life Snippets' kind of posts where I can show you I was up to that past week?

Spring is finally here but we are having a strange weather at the moment here in Italy and the sun comes out only occasionally, but I love when it shines in the sky and so do my cats who are always super happy to run in my garden or have a nap outside when the weather is good. There's nothing cuter than seeing how a bit of sunshine can change their mood!

On Tuesday I headed to Milan as I had to bring some uni books back and I took advantage of the free time and the warm weather to wander around and do some deserved shopping. It's passed a long time since the last time I had a little moment on my own in Milan and I love discovering new places where to shop or eat, so after a little Sephora treat, I walked to Eataly to get some Clipper Tea - which I never tried - and a little present for Mother's Day.

It's been a while since I decided I had to visit California Bakery and passing by it and their beautiful brownies wasn't helpful, so now I have to force my boyfriend to come there with me when we have a nice afternoon in Milan. Also I love walking down the streets alone and passing by a multitude of flower shops - it always makes me in a better mood!

On Thursday my boyfriend and I had some lovely gnocchi au gratin for lunch which were absolutely delicious, and an even better chocolate salami for dessert which brought me back some childhood memories of me and my mum putting together this super yummy dessert.

You know those days when you start craving some chocolate so badly? This was my Friday this week and so I went for a super sweet butter croissant which I filled with plenty of Nutella spoons and a super cute little Kinder egg which my boyfriend gave me and which was adorable!

Healthy antiox smoothie

I don't know about you, but for me as soon as it comes spring I'm all about good juicy smoothies in the morning and afternoon as they are delicious and fresh but also pretty healthy. Also I've actually never been a big green tea fan, but I know it is the biggest source of anti oxidants out there - just a quick one: a cup of green tea seems to contain the same amount of anti oxidants as seven glasses of orange juice - and they always suggest to drink more than a cup a day. But really, I think green tea's taste isn't for everyone, but I just recently found out that for me the solution is mixing it with a good fruit smoothie...

This super quick and easy recipe was inspired by one of my favorite food app, Filibaba Smoothies, which proposes a very similar way to incorporate green tea in your diet, and I found it so clever that being that I always keep some green tea at home, I immediately decided to try to customize it and make something I would really enjoy. And to stay on track with the all antiox theme, I threw in a good mix of ingredients which all have antiox proprerties.

For a cup of smoothie you will need:

• A frozen banana
• An apple
• The juice of one lemon
• 1/2 cup of green tea

First things first, I sliced the banana into pieces and put it in the freezer for one or two hours before starting preparing my smoothie so that the banana will be cold and almost frozen and will make your smoothie super resfreshing. Then I prepared 1/2 cup of green tea and let it cool for half an hour to avoid my smoothie to come out too warm, and finally I peeled my apple and cutted into pieces. Now it's time to start blending and mixing and using a blender I firstly blended together the banana and lemon juice, then added the apple and lastly the green tea. I blended it very well for a few minutes as I didn't want any big fruit pieces going on in there and then served it into a cute jam jar with two colored straws.

I'm not even a big fan of banana smoothies usually but this is seriously delicious, creamy, refreshing and amazing and I keep drinking and preparing it everyday since when I discovered it. This doesn't taste like green tea at all, and if you have a big blender I would suggest to prepare a good dose of it and serve it for breakfast to your family or store in the fridge and drink it within one or two days whenever you desire. You can also add a bit of sugar to your taste if you want, but I generally go without it as there's still the sweetness of an entire apple in there. Hopefully you will enjoy this delicious but healthy smoothie too!

Will you try this recipe? Which is your favorite smoothie flavor?

Black Cherry & Chocolate (Ben's) Cookies

Last month I was in London and of course I needed to give some Ben's Cookies a whirl for the first time. Fair enough I felt in love with them, and once I came home I knew I had to try baking them myself. A month later I came up with a pretty custom recipe very Ben's Cookies inspired and totally Luke Evans based (oh dear, check his channel out because he makes the most beautiful videos) and thought I could share it with you as I'm pretty satisfied with the result. I assure you, these cookies are delicious, my entire family loves them, and if you're looking for something easy to make but very impressive to offer to your family or guests, you should give them a whirl!

For 9 big cookies you're going to need:

• 300g brown sugar
• 200g unsalted butter
• 1 medium egg
• 325g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• A lot of dark chocolate and some sour black cherries

As you can see the ingredients are pretty basic and the majority of them I'm sure you all already have in your fridge, the only thing you may need to buy are black cherries, but these cookies are very customizable and you can add whatever you want and make them as you prefer like nuts, almonds, white chocolate, everything really! They're also pretty easy to prepare, you just need to remember to preheat the oven at 220°C and having your butter at room temperature before proceding.

I simply beated all the ingredients together with a whisk as it's the easiest way: starting from butter and sugar, I wanted it to be very soft and fluffly so I beated those two ingredient together for a few minutes, then I added the egg and beated again. Once mixed flour and baking powder together, I added them to the butter, sugar and egg mixture little by little until the dough was formed and it was quite solid and firm and not too sticky. If you feel your doug is too sticky add a bit of flour and beat again. Then I chopped the chocolate and added it to the mixture with some black cherry as well and blended all very evenly so that all the cookies had the right amount of chocolate and cherry once formed. I created nine big balls with my dough, arranged them on a baking tin lined with parchment paper and flattened them a tiny bit with my hands. Keeping in mind these cookies will spread out, I placed them reasonably apart from each others. Then I baked them for 12/13 minutes in the oven at 220°C, and they came out very chewy and gooey, but you can definitely let them bake a few minutes more if you desire. Consider your cookies will continue cooking on the hot baking tin when you pull them out of the oven, so don't overcook. I left them rest and cool for 20/30 minutes before trying them.

I think the dark chocolate really compliments and balances the sweetness of the sour black cherries, but I can't lie, they are very sweet, and if you don't love super sweet things you may have to consider using a lot less cherries than I did. But these to me were perfection, and I'm really satisfied on how they came out, so I hope you can enjoy this recipe too and try them in the upcoming future! 

What is your favorite cookies flavor?

Eat sweet, stay beautiful: dietetic hot chocolate!

Nel mio scorso Insta-Week vi avevo mostrato una foto della mia cioccolata dietetica, ricetta inventata dalla sottoscritta, e in molto mi avete chiesto di condividerla. Dato che, come al solito, mi fa sempre piacere condividere le mie "scoperte" (non che questa sia qualcosa di geniale), ovviamente in questo post vi mostrerò il procedimento per cucinare la vostra cioccolata calda dietetica senza grassi! Quindi questo sarà un nuovo capitolo per il grande ritorno della rubrica "Eat sweet, stay beautiful" inaugurata quest'estate. Se volete sapere come cucinare una cioccolata calda dietetica senza grassi con ingredienti sani, continuate a leggere!