healthy and balanced recipes
A simple, moist cake that’s perfect as a make-ahead breakfast for several days. The base consists of eggs, cottage cheese or Greek yogurt, rolled oats, an apple, and nuts. Dates and plums add natural sweetness, while cinnamon and gingerbread spice beautifully highlight its fall-inspired flavor. The quantities listed here will make 4 hearty breakfast servings or 6 smaller pieces.
Stuffed zucchini is a simple yet satisfying meal that’s perfect for lunch, dinner, or packing in a lunchbox for the next day. The filling combines ground turkey or chicken, mushrooms, tomatoes, and salty feta cheese. Plus, the scooped-out flesh is used directly in the mixture, so no part of the zucchini goes to waste. You can serve them with rice, bulgur, couscous, or simply with toasted pita bread and a fresh salad.
If you have fresh blackberries at home, this cake is a great way to use them. The yogurt keeps the batter beautifully moist, the coconut adds a delicate aroma, and the blackberries provide a pleasant tartness. A little jam further enhances the fruity flavor while allowing you to cut back on some of the sugar. The result is a simple, seasonal cake that’s perfect with coffee, as a summer dessert, or as a sweet snack for the next day.
A moist chocolate cake in which the zucchini is barely noticeable, but helps keep the batter pleasantly moist. Buckwheat flour gives it a slightly nutty flavor, while melted chocolate and cocoa create a rich chocolate base. The cherries complement the cake with a fresh, slightly tart flavor and perfectly balance its sweetness.
Homemade granola is one of those recipes you love to come back to, especially when you’re craving something fragrant, crunchy, and simple. This week, with the chilly, rainy weather outside, it’s absolutely perfect—it fills the kitchen with the lovely scent of cinnamon, brightens up a slow morning, and helps use up any leftover oats, nuts, or seeds. I bake it in one big batch, let it cool, and then break it into larger, crunchy pieces. This makes it great not only in yogurt or porridge, but also just for snacking on as a quick snack.
When we think of barbecuing, the first things that usually come to mind are grilled meat, fish, or vegetables. But it’s often the sides that determine whether the entire meal will be truly exceptional. These two are simple, fresh, and ready in no time—fluffy no-rise yogurt flatbreads and a salad with grilled peaches, feta, cucumber, and a honey-mustard dressing. The flatbread is made with just a few ingredients, requires no rising, and after baking, simply spread with garlic butter and parsley. The salad is a lovely summer combination of arugula or lamb’s lettuce, sweet peaches, salty feta, crisp cucumbers, and nuts or seeds.
This time, I made a sheet cake version of my small cheesecake batter—and honestly? It might have been even better. The fluffy, tender dough, sweet strawberries, and crunchy crumble topping create a combination that tastes perfect when still slightly warm. But other fruits, a layer of homemade jam, or even plum jam would work great here too. The cake is best fresh, but you can easily pack it in a container for the next day.
Mango purée is one of the simplest recipes that can transform an ordinary dessert into something extraordinary. All you need are a few ingredients and some ripe fruit, and in just a few minutes you’ll have a versatile base that’s perfect for yogurt, chia pudding, or even as a refreshing layer on a cake.
These blueberry muffins are simple, moist, and naturally sweet. Thanks to the combination of whole-grain ingredients, oats, and protein from cottage cheese, they’ll keep you feeling full and give you energy without any unnecessary spikes. Each muffin contains about 7 g of protein, and you can easily adapt the recipe to whatever you have on hand—they work great with other fruits or chocolate, too. Perfect as a quick breakfast, a snack for work, or a small treat to take with you that tastes good and makes sense.
These buckwheat pancakes are the perfect choice for winter mornings when you want to start the day with something warm, soft and fragrant. The buckwheat flour gives them a slightly nutty flavour, the cinnamon warms them up nicely and together with the whipped cottage cheese and blackberries they make a perfectly balanced breakfast combination. Whether you make them at the weekend or at a quieter time during the week, they always bring a nice sense of slowing down and homeliness.