Culinary Workshop with Karen Yaworsky

I had the pleasure of being Karen Yaworsky‘s assistant for her December Healthy Holidays Culinary Workshop last Saturday!

As the Holiday season approaches, Karen created a menu plan to help us all indulge while nourishing our body. She created and made 6 Healthy Holiday treats; a savory appetizer, decadent sweets and even a holiday mocktail. All recipes were vegetarian, dairy and gluten free and made without using any refined sugar to support healthful diets. It was a guilt-free Holiday workshop!

While I’m not going to give away any of her recipes as she did an amazing job at preparing for those who attended, you can find more of her baking up on her blog!

But if you’re in the Ottawa area, or want to travel to Ottawa, here’s what to expect in the future and pre-register for her next workshop!

So this is what was on menu:

One of my jobs as the assistant was to pour the sparkling water over the mock-tails and hand them out to everyone that arrived. 

The first baked good was a savory Holiday Stuffing Ball. These were probably my favorite and I’ll definitely make them for a potluck in the future (co-workers get ready)! Serve over cranberry sauce and voila!

From there we started to get spoiled with the treats. And this is where Karen and I are similar. We could both rant for hours around how a treat for us is very different than most treats now a days. But we believe you can treat yourself without consuming inflammatory foods or spiking your blood sugar or feeling gross in your body. 

I won’t get started ranting so let’s get back to the Maple Spiced Nuts which were whipped up quickly and easily in a frying pan on the stove.

Now came the baking goodness…. From Ginger Chocolate Chunk Cookies…

To No Junk Food Bars, which were so freaking delicious but you most definitely need to be a banana lover to enjoy this one as the main middle layer is made with quite a few bananas. 

To Maple Almond Fudge, easy to make on the stove and then pop in the freezer over night. 

The piece de resistance was definitely the Nanaimo Bars, and while sweet, even after having a few bites your blood sugar won’t spike and won’t be left feeling sick or like your teeth hurt. Holiday treats really can be better for you than the tried and true favourites. 

We honestly had the best time. Lots of giggling, laughing, sharing a few tips and tricks of the kitchen to make baking life easier and I absolutely loved meeting everyone and helping Karen out. She was so kind to let me bring essential oil samples for everyone so I whipped up a Peppermint Mocha recipe for everyone to try over the holidays as well. 

So I will leave you with my Peppermint Mocha recipe: 

You can make it bulletproof with the coconut or MCT oil & coconut butter or grass-fed butter or you can simply froth it up with some non-dairy milk, add the raw cacao power, a pinch of sea salt and add a drop of dōTERRA’s Peppermint Essential Oil. Which is the only brand I’ll ever recommend using internally due to their safe and thorough and transparent testing practices (they are the only company that posts their testing results online for us to see on sourcetoyou.com). You can always find more info about essential oils over here on the blog. 

Enjoy!

If you’re in the Ottawa area, stay tuned for more, I think Karen and I are going to team up for a cooking with essential oils class in January!