Warming winter recipes to beat the seasonal blues

A delicious option for lunch or dinner. You'll need unsweetened applesauce (about 120ml), almond milk (roughly 80ml), oatmeal (around 150g), eggs (2), maple syrup (1 tablespoon), vanilla extract (1 teaspoon), baking powder (2 teaspoons), ground cinnamon (1 teaspoon), nutmeg, and salt (a pinch each). Blend all the ingredients into a smooth mixture. Then add grated carrots (approximately 110g), chopped walnuts (about 30g), and raisins (3 tablespoons). Mix well.

Pour portions of the mixture onto a pan with heated ghee. When the pancakes turn golden and bubbles appear on their surface, flip them to the other side. Serve them American-style with maple syrup and melted butter. They also taste great with fruit or whipped cream.

In winter, it's worth eating salads with warming additions like ginger. How do you prepare an aromatic dressing with it? Blend freshly grated ginger (1 teaspoon) with olive oil (about 60ml), apple cider vinegar (1 tablespoon), Dijon mustard (1 tablespoon), maple syrup or honey (1 tablespoon), and season with salt and pepper.

Toast pecans (around 100g) on a dry pan until golden, then chop. Arrange rocket leaves on a large plate, sprinkle with nuts and crumbled feta cheese, cover with thinly sliced apple and pear, add pomegranate seeds, and drizzle with ginger dressing just before serving.

In shops and markets, we can increasingly find butternut squash with its characteristic shape (like a large peanut), thin skin, and sweet-nutty flavoured flesh. We'll prepare a delicious dish from it, perfect for a winter day.

Cut two medium squashes lengthwise in half, scoop out seeds and fibres, then place them on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and bake in the oven at 200°C for 40 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the stuffing. Heat olive oil in a pan, add fresh, chopped spinach (about 280g), smoked paprika, and chilli powder (each ¼ teaspoon), cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes. Then add crumbled feta (about 200g), mix with spinach, and season with salt and pepper.

Let the baked squash cool slightly, scoop out the flesh with a spoon, and add it to the spinach and feta mixture. Mix well. Fill the squash with the stuffing, sprinkle with toasted pine nuts, and fresh herbs: thyme and rosemary.

A tasty dessert-snack, perfect for a gloomy winter day.

Blend two peeled sweet potatoes, condensed milk (about 350ml), brown sugar (roughly 100g), lightly beaten whole egg and four egg whites, oil (2 tablespoons), freshly squeezed orange juice (2 tablespoons), ginger, grated or ground, ground cloves, and allspice (each ¼ teaspoon), and a pinch of salt. Pour the mixture into a baking dish, cover with aluminium foil, and bake for 1.5 hours at 180°C. After that, remove the foil, sprinkle with coconut flakes, and bake until they brown, and the pudding sets.

We usually stuff them with meat, cabbage, or cottage cheese with potatoes. However, dumplings are open to experimentation – you can stuff them, for example, with aromatic tangerines.

First, prepare the dough. Add a pinch of salt to about 300g of wheat flour, then slowly pour in melted butter (about 20g), stirring constantly. Next, add a beaten egg and knead everything into a smooth mass. Set the dough aside for half an hour, and in the meantime, prepare the tangerine filling – peel, remove the membranes and seeds from a few ripe fruits, cut into smaller pieces, and add to ground cottage cheese (about 300g), previously mixed with two yolks whipped with sugar (1 tablespoon) and vanilla extract (1 teaspoon).

Divide the dough into several pieces, rolling each into a disc about 2-3mm thick. Use a glass to cut circles, on which you place a heaping teaspoon of filling. Finally, carefully seal the dumplings and drop them in batches into boiling, salted water with a teaspoon of oil. When they float to the surface, cook for about two more minutes.