If you’ve been following me on social media or my blog for the last few holiday seasons, you know that I love me some egg nog. Like a lot. It’s always one of my favorite treats. There’s something that feels so decadent and festive about it around the holidays and I just can’t get enough of it.
Until I can. Last year I went on a major egg nog binge (yeah, it’s a thing) one night and my stomach paid for it. We were up in Truckee and I picked up whatever egg nog they had at the local Safeway downtown. I’m pretty sure it was their generic brand and I’m even more positive it was loaded with thickeners and cheap sweeteners. Shortly after my egg nog bender, I created a non-dairy paleo version for the Blendtec blog so I could indulge without destroying my stomach. You can find that recipe HERE.
As I’ve been on my food journey though I learn more and more what my body can tolerate, what’s important to me in food and how to make better choices. I think that’s something safe to say we all do.
One of the things that I’ve begun to incorporate back into my diet these days is high quality (preferably local) dairy. Dairy has been one of the hardest things for me to give up over the course of my food explorations because it’s just so darn delicious. But I needed to address how it was making me feel. I’ve even gone several months this year with no dairy at all. Like I mentioned though, I’ve started incorporating good quality dairy back into my diet and have success with it so far.
Prior to eating clear / plaeo / whatever-you-want-to-call-it my dairy consumption was as follows: individually packaged flavored yogurts at breakfast, highly processed cheese on my sandwiches at work, lots of non-fat milk, and tons of Haagen Daas from the bodega across the street and ranch dressing on anything that made sense. Not exactly the picture of a quality diet and dairy consumption.
Today is a bit different. It usually isn’t a part of every meal, although I do frequently cook with grass-fed butter, but I DO enjoy it as a treat and only if it doesn’t have lots of other stuff added into it. I love sprinkling some local goat cheese on top of roasted vegetables, I use sour cream to compliment a dish and I of course indulge in the sweet nectar that is known as egg nog. When I focus on the quality and quantity of the dairy I consume I find that my body can process it much better. Hallelujah!
With that being said, last week I had the opportunity to visit Humboldt Creamy as part of a blogger field trip I was invited on. It was AMAZING to see what goes on behind the scenes of a dairy farm that is doing things the right way. Their dairy is organic (which means it’s also GMO and antibiotic free), their cows are free of hormones that are used to speed up milk production and they graze on pasture whenever possible and in turn are fed a diet of predominantly grass. Not to mention, they have Farmer Jim who is so incredibly sweet and informative. 🙂 You can learn a bit more about our trip HERE.
Lucky for me one of the products Humboldt Creamery produces is egg nog. I happened to come across their product at my local Whole Foods prior to our trip and picked some up, clearly I had to sample some before I went, right? As an egg nog aficionado I have to say it’s one of the best I’ve had. So many other brands in the stores just end up tasting like sweet cream but Humboldt actually nailed the egg-nogginess of it all. I even taste tested it against another local brand that people rave about and this was still the winner in my book. For the record, this isn’t a sponsored post. I’m not getting a dime to rave about Humboldt Creamery and their egg nog, I really just love it!
So I did what any food blogger would do and created a recipe around it. I have to say, it took me a few tries to get this recipe down. Most blondie / brownie recipes don’t contain liquid so it was hard tinkering with the recipe to be able to pack enough of the egg nog into it for flavor but still maintaining a brownie like consistency. But I think I got it just right for you! I went with more of a dense cakey consistency vs. fudgey as I realized unless it’s chocolate flavored a fudgey consistency just seems to be a bit raw. 🙁 I also didn’t make this recipe super sweet on purpose. I’m not a fan of overly sweet desserts because I think they end up covering the other flavors up. If you’d to make it a bit sweeter feel free to add an additional 1/4 of sugar. I tested that recipe as well and the additional sugar didn’t change the consistency. You can also swap out the maple sugar for coconut sugar but it will change the taste a bit.
Anyways, the recipe is super easy and I think you’ll love it!
egg nog blondies
Ingredients
- 1 C. almond flour
- 1/3 C. tapioca flour
- 3 TBSP. coconut flour
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 1/2 C. maple sugar
- 2 eggs
- 3/4 C. egg nog
- 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 1/3 C cashew butter
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350*
- In a large bowl combine almond, tapioca and coconut flour, salt, maple sugar, 2 eggs and egg nog.
- Whisk ingredients together thoroughly
- Stir in nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla
- Add cashew butter and stir in until creamy
- Line an 8x8 pan with parchment paper and grease pan with coconut oil palm shortening
- Fill pan with batter and bake 30-35 minutes until a took pick comes out clean
- Let cool and cut into squares
If I don’t have tapioca flour but I do have almond and coconut flours, can I substitute with either?