Flaxseed

This is the best vegan banana bread ever—super moist and deliciously sweet from the dates.

These muffins are loaded with good-for-you veggies, fruits, and seeds—and they’re vegan, too. The silken tofu replaces the dairy and eggs, and adds moistness and protein for a tasty breakfast or afternoon snack.

A lot of people wonder why adding healthy items like flaxseeds to a decent-tasting smoothie destroys the taste. The answer is that the smoothie recipe didn’t take into account the items you’d want to add. The normal fix is to add a ton of sweetener, but I don’t agree with that approach, especially in recipes for cancer patients. But the berry blast of this smoothie plays well with the vital flax and whey. The abundant antioxidants make this smoothie one for the books.

This is an outstanding loaf of bread and a great way to showcase your talents as an allergen-free baker. I have chosen seeds that I know can be found free of cross-contamination risk with other allergens (see Resources, page 177), but feel free to substitute.

Tiny bits of fresh vegetables give these muffins a fascinating flavor and texture. These are particularly good with pureed soups, as well as those that focus on one primary ingredient such as carrots or squash

When I have the urge to bake bread on a weekend and want something not quite so time-consuming as French bread, I often make this loaf. It is a healthy bread with a good texture and makes particularly delicious sandwiches. It is also great toasted for breakfast.

This is the most visual of all my tuiles, shimmering and translucent. The sugars lend texture as well as carry the delicate flavor of the flax seeds.

Here, I’ve created my version of sweet potato pie, but it’s not as heavy and not as sweet. The cranberry foam gives a nice added pop of acidity.

The use of countless aromatics to flavor bread lies at the center of Germany's rich whole grain baking culture. Breads are often prepared with different grains and grinds of flour to achieve distinctively textured loaves. In this 100 percent whole grain loaf, I use spelt for its pleasing mild flavor, but you can use regular whole wheat flour. Yes, this is a thick-crusted loaf, unlike any bread you will find in a U.S. supermarket or pretty much anywhere else, but the inside will be chewy and soft with seeds and spices. Give it a day, and the crust will soften from the humidity in the air. Enjoy this unusual aromatic bread with cheese and cold cuts as a simple supper, or use as a base for a nourishing sandwich. It's also delicious with a bowl of soup. This is an effortless no-knead bread made using an old technique, most recently revived by New York master baker Jim Lahey. I have taught students to make a slow-fermentation bread with minimal yeast for years, albeit in a plain old loaf pan — initially inspired by a recipe by German cookbook author Luise Brüggemann. I credit Lahey with introducing me to the use of a lidded heavy pot and a simple folding technique to get a truly spectacular artisinal bread — no wonder his method has won him cult status. If the lid of your Dutch oven has a plastic knob, be sure to wrap it in aluminum foil so it doesn't melt in the high heat of the oven.

Wheat Free If there was ever a reason to call a veggie burger hippie food, then this burger fits the bill. Inspired by watching The Drug Years on VH1 and, of course, dear and sweet Simon & Garfunkel, these burgers are sure to please your peace-lovin' pals. Normally, I advocate the use of fresh herbs, but for this one, dried ones work best. I also tend to overspice things, so please, unless you really like the flavors of these herbs, feel free to cut the amounts down.

Better than any store-bought energy bars, these are great for breakfast-on-the-go, brown-bag lunches, and snacks. Make a batch on the weekend to get you through the work week.

The juicy Honeycrisp apple is the sweetest of the bunch. Combine it (instead of berries) with tart, creamy Greek yogurt for a seasonal, satisfying breakfast.

Trust us, this combination is super-clean and green, refreshing and yummy. The alkalinizing fresh pineapple pairs beautifully with the spice of the arugula/rocket. And macadamia nuts are a high-energy food that adds a crunchy rich texture and a healthy dose of protein and fiber (we don't mind at all if they do not fully incorporate) as well as monounsaturated fatty acids—or "good" fat—that significantly reduce blood serum cholesterol levels. Think of this smoothie as a cleansing, satisfying meal replacement. Get to know chia seeds. These miraculous little seeds are a form of easily digestible protein that is full of minerals, vitamins, and soluble fiber. Rich in omega fatty acids, and similar to flaxseed, chia seeds have the significant advantage of being more stable.

A treat that's rich in superfoods—blueberries and flaxseeds!

My friend Melissa McDonnell is finishing up her architectural studies in Texas, but she always finds time to bake her famous ginger cookies. These cookies are chewy, hearty, and totally addictive. The dough does need to chill for an hour, so be sure to prepare accordingly. And keep a close eye on these—my husband is a ginger-cookie addict and stole almost half the batch while they were cooling.

In my house, baking cookies was a cutthroat competition among siblings, with my mother presiding, Iron Chef style, with one baby perched on her hip and the other clamped to her knee. Our approaches varied. Mary increased the sugar in an attempt to up the crunch. Patrick (ever the psycho perfectionist) altered the recipe and portion size teaspoon by teaspoon in pursuit of a product with Mom's thin and crispy edges. Bill made his backwards, just to act rad. It was never my intention to upstage your cookies, Mom—but you should know that I've never claimed a victory as great as when you tasted your first Babycakes NYC cookie and said: "These are better than mine." Slather an exceedingly generous dollop of your favorite frosting between two of these cookies and you've got your newest addiction, the Babycakes NYC cookie sandwich. Try freezing them.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are from A Baker's Odyssey by Greg Patent. I am indebted to Irish food expert and cookbook author Noreen Kinney, for sharing her family's Irish soda bread recipe. This bread is meant to be eaten plain with meals, or with cheese or with butter and jam, or used to sop up gravy. According to Noreen: Strictly speaking, there is no white Irish soda bread with raisins. Traditional Irish soda bread is brown, with a coarse texture and no fruit. It can also contain seeds and flax and bran, depending on the baker's desires. That is the reason I was shocked to see the white item passed off as Irish soda bread when I arrived in the States. However, in Ireland there is a famous old bread that was very popular with the poorer people in times past, and considered quite a treat for a special occasion or on Sundays. It is still popular today. Depending on which part of the country one is in, it is known as spotted dick or spotted dog. Basically it is derived from Irish soda bread, but it uses white flour in place of the traditional flours and other ingredients that go into the true Irish soda bread. To enrich the recipe, people added raisins when they became available, and they might add a full egg beaten into the milk, plus some white sugar. So it is the old Irish spotted dick that folks here call Irish Soda Bread. Everyone who makes Irish soda bread adds her or his own personal touches to the bread. To the mixture of whole wheat flour and white flour, Noreen, on any given day, might add wheat bran, oat bran, wheat germ, oats, sunflower seeds, flaxseeds, or poppy seeds. She varies proportions and grains depending on how she wants the bread to turn out. Think of the following proportions as guidelines, and feel free to vary the grain additions according to your tastes, adding from 4 to 5 ounces total by weight for each loaf. The bread's crust is coarse and firm, while the inside is rather dense but moist. A cross indented (not cut) on top of the bread allows the bread to be easily separated into quarters. Oddly, the sunflower seeds change color during baking, flecking the bread with an emerald green. The unexpected appearance of flecks of green in the bread the first time I made it surprised me. I could tell the color came from the sunflower seeds, but why did this happen? Food chemist Shirley Corriher, author of the classic Cookwise, had the answer. "Sunflower seeds are chock-full of good-for-you things," Shirley said, and by that she meant they're loaded with antioxidants. Among these are flavonoids, which turn yellow when they come into contact with an alkali (baking soda in the recipe). Other antioxidants, anthocyanins, react by turning blue. Put blue and yellow together, and you get green. Nifty.

Perfect for a Sunday-afternoon baking project, these light, crisp crackers take an hour to make (okay, maybe longer if you have a little helper).

Editor's note: The recipe below is excerpted from Cal-a-Vie Living: Gourmet Spa Cuisine and is part of a healthy and delicious spa menu developed exclusively for Epicurious by Cal-a-Vie.