- I love this question.
You guys know me by now,
I love idea of making food medicinal,
having it be a little bit more interesting
than just very nutritious,
but actually having some more magic to it.
That's we've done with our chocolates,
that's what we do with lots of our recipes
that we post on our YouTube channel
and IGTV, it's what we do at home all the time,
and I love that you're thinking in this way.
So just about any herb could hypothetically
be used in baking but it depends what's gonna be compatible
with the flavors of that herb.
Certainly chocolate and things that are chocolate flavored
like let's say you're making a chocolate cake
or some brownies, that chocolate flavor
with it's natural bitter notes to it,
it's gonna cover the bitter flavors in many herbs.
So that would open the door to things like
Reishi and Eucommia and Morinda and Rehmannia,
and He Shou Wu, for example.
So that would be one way of going about it.
But I imagine as much as you may love chocolate,
and even if you're like me,
not everything that you bake
is gonna be chocolate flavored.
So you want also then consider
what are the herbs that are milder in flavor
that can slide into something with not so much flavor to it,
like let's say you're making some almond cookies
or something with like a graham cracker
or a vanilla type flavor,
what can you use in there,
that's not gonna throw it off in too much
of another direction,
and take away the joy of what you're trying to make there
and probably the, you know,
the memories,
the childhood memories that you're trying to tap into.
So one here would be tremella mushroom.
Now when baking, you have to be strategic
about how you use tremella because it absorbs so much water.
So it's gonna act as a thickener
and you have to be ready for that
it's not like many herb powders
that you might use that you can just kind of add in
to whatever you're doing without worrying about
your recipe too much.
Tremella is gonna be a serious thickener.
So you have to plan ahead for that,
but it's very flavor neutral.
So flavor wise, you can run free with it.
But in terms of the viscosity of what you're making,
you have to keep in mind that tremella
is gonna act as a thickener.
Then another one would be astragalus
Astragalus has kind of like a very
mild vanilla graham cracker type flavor
so it can go well in lots of baked goods.
This is a great Qi-tonic a great immune tonic.
It is just one of the greatest antiviral herbs
that there is,
and it's helping your body to naturally produce more energy.
It's one of my favorites.
It's one of the herbs that I think I take most frequently.
And then another another along the same path
with a little bit more exotic flavor
to it but still very mellow would be lion's mane
the great brain herb for cognitive function
both short term cognitive performance
and long term cognitive health.
Then also pine pollen
would be another good one very nutrient
dense pollen coming from pine trees.
Now occasionally, when we mention pine pollen,
we get messages from a couple of well intentioned people
saying, "Hey, isn't that pollen for the bees,
"shouldn't you really reserve it for the bees,
"especially when they're so stressed these days
"and having such a hard time surviving?"
And it's important to understand
that pine pollen is of actually no interest to bees,
they don't care for it.
Because there's no flowers.
Bees only go after flowering plants
and take their flower pollen.
In the case of pine pollen,
it's not transported, the pollen, from tree to tree
by insects at all.
It's transported purely by the wind
if you live somewhere with pine
and the times that the pollen is coming out,
you'll see this stuff blowing all over the place.
It gets collected on the ground
and it's just-- for many people it's
an annoyance but for those of us
who appreciate it, it's pretty awesome.
Now so we're not taking anything away from the bees
here with pine pollen just to be clear.
Now another herb it's great in baking
is Cordyceps and other great Qi tonic
but also a Jing tonic, that's gonna be building that core,
kidney adrenal reserve energy a great adaptogen
and then if you wanna get a little bit more exciting,
visually speaking,
you could think of something like blue butterfly.
Again, a very neutral flavor
so you can use it in almost anything.
This herb does so much it has anti-aging effects
in terms of preventing glycation
which is the main metabolic process
that leads to aging and wrinkling of the skin.
It's great for blood sugar balance
It's an anxiolytic which means it helps with stress
and does so much and, you put in anything,
and it's gonna in turn that vibrant,
beautiful blue color,
which can just blow people's minds. Imagine like you do,
like I don't know a cake
or a cookie or something that has that amazing blue color.
Or what if we did like a cake
that have you put like some maybe
like a coconut cream vanilla frosting
on the outside but on the inside you cut into it
and it's vibrant blue, how cool would that be?
Maybe we have to do a recipe video or something like that.
Now that I think about it.
And then the last one I want to mention another one
of my absolute favorites is ashwagandha.
Now most ashwagandha products
have a very intense flavor.
And so you would only wanna use them very strategically
in things that were maybe along the
the chocolate and coffee,
earthy flavor kind of direction.
But our ashwagandha is extremely potent
and much milder in flavor
compared to most of what else is out there.
And so it's much more flexible.
Again, it's one of those things you can add almost anything
and it's so potent, you only need a very small amount
we're talking about an eighth to maybe
a quarter of a teaspoon with this ashwagandha
due to the concentration of the extract
and you have some great effects
and this is not just me saying that,
it's when you look at the studies
that have been done on this particular
kind of an ashwagandha extract,
you see this is the amount like 350 milligrams
once or twice a day is what you see being used.
So it doesn't take much
and it's a great way to enhance
the power of whatever it is
that you gotta be baking up
so keep us posted on what you're making.
I hope you'll take some pictures in your Instagram stories
and let us see and tag along for the ride
cause I'm excited to see what you end up doing.