Gluten-Free Yacon Drizzled Blondies with Essential Oils

I have been having a blast discovering new ways to use Young Living’s Yacon Syrup to uplift recipes. Although our main goal is to teach our taste buds to desire less sweets and more variety of flavors, it is fun to figure out how to re-invent old favorites with uplifting healthy ingredients. Sometimes just planting the seed of something delicious being healthy too is enough to get even the most stubborn critics to start improving their diets. You don’t have to be a chef or spend hours in the kitchen to create beautiful, uplifting foods.
In our book “Essential Gluten-Free Recipes” Mary Vars and I share simple, nutrient rich, essential oil infused meals and beverages. It is so much fun to show others how to create their own works of art from scratch or as my mother used to do, “doctor” up existing recipes or mixes. This recipe is a variation of our “Birthday Treat Makeover” in the Freshies and Goodies section of our book.  For those of you familiar with sprouted flours, gluten-free or not, those are still our first choice. They are easier to digest and full of nutrients. A great vendor and resource for this is To Your Health Sprouted Flour Co.

However, many folks are not familiar with using these great sprouted flours so we chose the Namaste Gluten Free Blondie mix.  Our nutrient rich substitutions and additions lift the recipe and bring more taste and value to the mix. Easy to follow and add your own personalized tastes. For example, we used melted palm oil as our oil. If you tolerate butter use farm fresh butter or ghee. We used herbal tea instead of water. Farm fresh eggs, squash puree, rose water and cinnamon, lemon and tangerine essential oils are other fabulous contributions.

Lately, we’ve been playing with adding ground chia seeds and ground flax seeds. These are best absorbed ground just before using. Seeds are usually more difficult to digest, so grinding makes them easier for the body to use. Tip: This addition sometimes dries out the batter so you might need to add extra oil or herbal tea. Homemade applesauce is a nice twist too.

Chia Seeds

With all these beautiful substitutions you cook times and temps might vary. Best to cook slower and lower to avoid burnt edges and gummy insides. Another factor can be altitude and humidity factors. I have notices cook times have changed from when we lived on the east coast with humidity to now living in the desert.

I stated in the beginning of this post that reducing our desire for sweets is our best choice. Using sweeteners with nutritional benefits and better handling in the body is very important to good health. Agave was once thought to be our new nectar of the gods, has become a controversial topic. There is a great article on this at the Weston A. Price Foundation website: http://www.westonaprice.org/modern-foods/agave-nectar-worse-than-we-thought

Yacon is a sweetener from a root found in Peru and Ecuador. It has the look and vibe of molasses but not quite as “earthy” of a taste. It’s a bit on the luxury side of price, but really is great in tiny amounts. A jar can last you a long time! I drizzle it over salmon add it to tea or coffee, drip it over coconut yogurt or muffins. Less is more with this beautiful treat. If you would like to see specific benefits of Yacon syrup, click here for an article link from Livestrong.com. I purchase both my food grade essential oils, stevia (brown rich and wonderful tasting) and Yacon from Young Living.