This indulgent loaf is a nutrient powerhouse that’s perfect for morning, noon and night. Impress your guests with this delicious loaf over coffee, or keep it all to yourself and savour a slice with a cup of tea on a cold winter night.
1 cup dates (pitted and chopped)
1 cup lukewarm water
2 tbsp maple syrup
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1 tsp bicarb soda
3/4 cup rolled oats
1 1/2 cups pecans (chopped)
1/2 cup coconut sugar (you can substitute your favourite dry sweetener here)
4 green apples for stewing (you can use apple sauce if you don't want to stew your own apples)
1 cup Mixed citrus peel
Stewed Apple
Peel and dice four green apples and put into a saucepan over medium to high heat with a 1/4 cup of water. Stir often until and break down the pieces with your spoon.
When the apple has turned to mush, take off the heat and set aside to cool. When cool, measure out 1 cup worth for the loaf.
Main ingredients
Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease a 6.5cm-deep, 9cm x 19cm (base) loaf pan. Line base and sides with baking paper, allowing a 2cm overhang at both long ends.
Pour the maple syrup over the dates in and add the lukewarm water. Give it a stir and let it sit for 10-15 minutes.
Sift flour and bicarb soda together into a bowl. Add oats, pecans and sugar until all dry ingredients are well combined. Add the date mixture, stewed apple and mixed peel and stir until the whole lot is thoroughly mixed.
Pour the mixture into the loaf pan and smooth the mixture so the top is flat and even. Bake for around an hour or until you can poke a knife or skewer into the middle and it comes out mostly clean,
Notes
Serve with butter, creme fraiche, some of our creamy pecan butter or enjoy it on its own!
If you’re like us, this loaf will become a regular with household fights over the last piece. It’s also perfect for customising to suit your own preferences. You can change the sweetener, you can switch out the mixed peel for berries or your favourite fruit… the possibilities are endless.
What’s round, tastes great, is actually healthy and is made with Barefoot Farm love?
GOODIE BALLS! These high energy snacks are D.E.L.I.C.I.O.U.S. and they’re a great convenient healthy option when you need a little pep-up between meals.
A wholefood snack which is actually GOOD for you, there’s no weird numbers or letters (those are the little nasties that sneak up in your food and cause mayhem in your body without you realising). No ingredient list that resembles a conspiracy theory encrypted code here…we’re all natural here!. This means that Goodie Balls are nutrient dense and healthier for you than most other “Bliss Balls” without any compromise on taste.
There are three flavours to choose from: my ‘out and about around town’ favourite is Almond Date. Cashew Goji is my ‘at home doing stuff’ choice whilst Hazelnut Cocao is my ‘after the kids have gone to bed me time on the couch’ go too..
What’s the saying? “Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognise as food”. Have you ever tried to pronounce some of the things many company’s manufacture and then label it as “food”. Goodie Balls on the other hand have two main ingredients: a selection of nuts expertly mixed with a selection of fruits. Mother nature is amazing no need to go messing around with fandangled engineered foods sometimes the simplest things in life are actually the best.
No cheap fillers in these little goodies such as milk powders, rice or wheat flours, which mean our GOODIE BALLS are vegan and gluten free as well as being a low inflammation nutritious snack and FODMAP and gut health friendly.
What makes GOODIE BALLS different?
3 pack – perfect snack size, pop it in the beach or gym bag, take them to work or have it in the car when those tummy gremlins call begging for a snack. Our 3 packs are 100% biodegradable and home compost friendly.
Bulk pack (20 Balls) – The most economical way to buy GOODIE Balls perfect to have in the pantry ready for you whenever you need to pack a healthy snack. These are a good environmental choice, less packaging and buying in bulk can save on waste and help support you making healthy choices.
In store – Pick up a GOODIE ball from your local cafe, health food shop or deli, zero packaging healthy snack on the GO.
If you can’t find Goodie Balls in your local cafe, reach out to them and us and we will try and get the goods to you.
My grandfather, my Opa, Wasil Bojko was born in the Ukraine in 1912…his life is shrouded in tragedy and mystery and that’s about all I know. He had already passed away when I was born and what my family does know/remember is limited as he was very guarded about his past. In my personal quest to understand my heritage I’ve found it easiest to connect with long gone relatives through their cultural cuisine. A simple Google search and a few ingredients later and I’m enjoying a meal which might vaguely resemble something they once ate.
To celebrate the Ukrainian Orthodox Christmas we found a recipe in Olia Hercules’ book Summer Kitchens. It’s a fascinating book of authentic recipes, beautiful pictures and little stories where traditional knowledge is being passed down and it really feels like it was written just for me. We decided to lend our hand at Potato Cakes. Similar to a Rosti, her recipe for these yeast-leavened cakes were stuffed with beans and feta. They sounded yum on the page and were (as it turned out) flipping delicious. We did alter the recipe slightly but the methodology was pretty much the same.
Ingredients:
Potato “Batter”
1 kilo potatoes. We used Organic Sabago as we had some lying around.
1 brown onion
2 whole eggs
A 7 gram sachet of dried yeast. I think that equates to about a teaspoon.
2 teaspoons of dijon mustard
Flour. You can definitely use plain wheat flour. We didn’t have any at the time so we used Spelt.
Salt and Pepper
About half a bunch of parsley because that’s all we could get our girls to harvest.
Oil for cooking. We use Olive oil but hey…you do you.
Bean and Feta Paste.
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
1 tin of Cannelloni beans. I think that’s about 200g of drained beans give or take.
100g-ish block of Feta. I used Danish because I like the smooth texture of it.
About half a bunch of dill.
Salt and Pepper
Oil for cooking.
Garlic Yoghurt
About 150g of greek yoghurt
2 small gloves of garlic. We used the purple Australian garlic as it’s a bit sweeter.
Salt and Pepper
We made the bean and feta mix first. Drain and wash the Cannelloni beans, crumble the feta and put both ingredients in an oiled fry pan over a medium heat. Cook for a minute or two, squishing up those beans and feta before adding a finely diced brown onion. Continue cooking for another couple minutes to ensure the onion is cooked before finally adding the minced garlic. Once the garlic is in and cooked for about 30 seconds, remove from the heat and set aside to cool. Add the chopped dill and seasoning once cool, give it all a good stir and check that it tastes delicious. Maybe a dash of lemon juice at this stage could elevate the bean mix and give it some more complexity.
Then our attention turns to the potato mix. Grab the box grater from the depths of the kitchen utensil draw and loosen up your shoulders because there’s a fair amount of grating ahead. We chose to grate the potatoes on the course side and then the onion on the fine side but it’s up to you. Either way, squeeze out the excess liquid from your onion-potato mix but don’t throw it out (just strain it and walk away). Make sure there’s still a small amount of liquid left in the bottom of the bowl as you’ll need this to activate your yeast. Make like a decent well/volcano in your oniony-potato so you can clearly see the remaining liquid and to that add the two eggs pre whisked, about 50 grams of flour and the yeast. Give that all a quick stir so the yeast is no longer dry and grainy. Set aside for 15 minutes so it can begin its act-iv-ation (said like I’m imitating Arnold Schwarzenegger).
Whilst that’s beginning to bubbling along nicely, whip up the garlic yogurt number by mincing the garlic into the yoghurt. Simple. A some seasoning, maybe some chopped herbs or a small pitch smoked paprika for a touch of zhuzh.
Go back to the potato mixture and use your hands to bring it all together. Season with a really good amount of salt and pepper as it will handle the extra seasoning. Let sit for another 10 minutes for no real reason except to give the yeast another chance to do its thing.
Now the fun part. I preheated the oven to about 180 degrees in anticipation and I suggest you do the same because it’s a bit of a challenge getting these little darlings cooked all they way through solely from the heat of the pan. Anyway, in a decently weighted frypan on a medium heat, pop in two touches of oil and let it heat up. Once it’s hot but not smoking, get some of that worked potato mixture into the pan (reincorporate some of the liquid if it has separated). We did about a golf ball amount then flattened it out with the back of a spoon to maybe 10 cm in diameter. We did three of those in the pan then quickly add a small amount of the bean mix on top then another bit of potato mix, spreading that over to form a sloppy sandwich. Turn down the heat if needed and let that slowly cook for about 3 minutes. Check the bottom side regularly for golden-ness and before you flip the potato cakes over add a few knobs of butter…fry for a bit longer…now flip! Life lesson: fried butter makes everything taste about 6 times better! Cook for a few minutes on the second side before flipping again to try and get the heat into the centre or pop the Potato Cake into the oven to heat through whilst you cook another batch. Completely up to you.
Serve with the garlic yoghurt and enjoy. We added a homegrown and made homemade tomato sauce to the dish which was really nice. I’m making another batch of that this week as we’ve got bucket loads of tomatoes growing at the moment so I’ll include a recipe for that. It’s dead easy and freezes well so be sure to watch out for that recipe when it’s published.
Please, do yourself a favour a get your hands on Olia’s book Summer Kitchens. She has a few books available but I haven’t had the chance to read them all yet. She’s done a great job at flying the Ukrainian flag and I look forward to exploring more of her recipes such as the Flourless Poppyseed Cake or the Borsch with Duck and Smoked Pears. When I get a chance between recipes I’ll read about her Ukrainian culture…and take the time to imagine my Opa eating Potato Cakes in the Ukrainian countryside all those years ago.
We paired our lunch with this incredibly smooth Sheep’s whey vodka, which has a great back story in itself. If you can source it from Hartshorndistillery and amazing story and the most enjoyable vodka I’ve ever tasted, we enjoyed it neat in true eastern European style and was beyond expectation.
Amidst the recent searing drought, devastating bushfires, damaging floods and now the COVID-19 pandemic, a small pecan processor and gourmet value adding operation has found the silver lining within the environmental and economic chaos.
During the COVID-19 isolation, Barefoot Farm fast tracked their online sales and marketing strategy to take advantage of a nationwide increase in internet browsing. Simultaneously, the team at Barefoot Farm increased their weekly Farmers Market commitments to include 5 markets a week with goals of a further 5 a week once restrictions are eased.
“We closed our café because of COVID and to adhere to government restrictions; we then pivoted quickly into online sales and Farmers Markets which were deemed as essential services” Co-owner of Barefoot Farm, Matt James said.
“We are now giving our gourmet pecan products the time and energy they deserve. We are two chefs with a passion for the Paddock-To-Plate ethos and I believe our customers can taste that in our products”
“The idea behind value added products is fairly simple but sometimes it takes a worldwide pandemic to throw your hat in to the ring” Matt says. “We were apprehensive as we’d been running the café and Barefoot Farm parallel to each other for a few years, but to actually severe the ties to one of your businesses for the betterment of the other was really hard”. “But once that leap of faith was made and we stood behind our decision we haven’t looked back. I’d encourage anybody considering value adding as a business choice to ensure they’ve got a good quality product and don’t be afraid of the public because they want to know and buy from their local farmers” Ash remarked.
The ambitious couple have developed a very loyal following during their 6 year tender of The Eltham Valley Pantry, and are sad to close its doors after 13 years of operation. However, their famous pecan pie lives on! “The kitchen was originally designed for the weekend café trade but have now repurposed it to cater exclusively for pecan pie manufacturing and baking our extensive gourmet pecan value added products” Matt says. “We now have more time to dedicate to baking products and can attend more Farmers Markets and increase online sales”.
“We also have our third child due in August so we’re really happy with the transition from café owners to pecan extraordinaires” Ash continued.
With all eyes forward the pair have goals of stocking more cafes, delis, butchers and speciality shops with their range of gourmet pecan range, increasing their online sales and attending more Farmers Markets. With the Paddock-To-Plate ethos the pair take great satisfaction in meeting new customers and having pecan pies, chocolate coated pecans or their irresistible maple roasted pecans going into more households across the country. “We love our food, we love our customers and our focus is to see more people eating pecans!” Matt and Ash say almost in unison.
Our version of a classic – we like to cut back on refined sugars in this iconic dish, so we recommend using coconut sugar which has a lower GI, packed full of minerals and well as imparting a wonderfully sweet caramel flavour. The Maple roasted Pecan Granola crumble topping pairs so wonderfully with this apple crumble, and you may like to experiment with some variations like swapping apple for pear or 1/2 apple 1/2 peaches to make something unique and amazing.
Apple Mix
4 cups tinned apples
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla paste
1/4 cup water
Crumble
1 1/2 cups maple roasted pecan granola
120 grams butter (chopped and softened (if needed you can use oil or a vegan butter substitute))
1/2 cup coconut sugar
1 tsp vanilla paste
1 tsp cinnamon (optional, but we think it's worth it)
1/3 cup flour of your choice (we use a gluten free or spelt flour)
Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan-forced
Combine tinned apples, lemon juice, vanilla paste and water in small saucepan over low-medium heat. Cook, stirring for 3 minutes or until apple is slightly softened.
To make the crumble, combine flour of your choice and coconut sugar, maple roasted pecan granola and butter in a bowl. Use your fingertips to rub the butter into the flour mixture until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Transfer apples into a ovenproof baking dish, draining off most of the liquid
Sprinkle crumble mixture over the apples
Bake in oven for 20-25 minutes or until golden
Serve warm with ice-cream, vanilla yoghurt or whipped cream
If you love the Barefoot Farm Maple Roasted Pecans, this recipe is for you.
A subtle hint of maple syrup with a fresh twist of your favourite citrus fruit, these glazed pecans are the perfect addition to salads, desserts, chacuterie boards, grazing tables or just on their own for a delicious snack.
1 cup raw pecans
1 tbsp your citrus juice (we used mandarin)
1 tbsp maple syrup
Preheat your oven to 150°C
In a small bowl, combine the pecans, citrus juice and maple syrup and stir vigorously. Make sure that the syrup and juice is combined and that the pecans have been coated nicely.
Pour the pecans and syrup/juice mixture into a pan over low to medium heat and stir continuously for 5-10 minutes. It’s very important that you don’t let the pecans sit too long as they will burn very easily. You’ll know they’re ready when there is very little of the syrup/juice mixture and you can smell the amazing scent of toasted pecans.
Place the pecans on a flat tray in a single layer on a layer of baking paper. Try and make sure that no pecans are touching. Bake for 10-15 minutes while keeping a close eye to make sure that you don’t burn your pecans.
Your pecans will be done when they have a nice, glossy dark brown glaze. Pull them out, let them cool and put them on/in whatever floats your boat!
Notes
This recipe is based on 1 cup of glazed pecans. If you want more or less, adjust the amount of citrus juice and maple syrup you add depending on how many pecans you use.
This is a fun recipe that can be customised to suit your preferences or intended use of the final product. Experiment with different citrus fruits for some amazing variations.
