Red, white, blueberries. French fries, brownies, and Oreos. Hot apple pie and chocolate chip cookies. From a culinary standpoint, this is what America means to me. What follows are 18 healthy July 4th recipes sure to brighten up any party or barbecue. No fireworks required.
July 4th Recipes
Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies
Secretly Healthy Chocolate Mousse
Question of the Day:
What foods are symbolic of your country?
Becca says
Hey Katie! I’ve recently decided to go on a minor weight gain plan. Nothing major, but I just want to put on a little weight. The thing is, I don’t want to go eat tons of junk food. Any tips for how to make healthy recipes a little higher in calories without losing the healthiness? I think you’ve had some experience with this, so I just thought I’d ask!
Thanks!
Becca
Chocolate Covered Katie says
Hey Becca,
Hopefully one of these posts can be somewhat useful. Good luck!
https://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2012/03/04/my-high-calorie-recipes/
https://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2012/03/01/my-high-calorie-diet/
Becca says
Perfect! Thank you!!
trajayjay says
If you’ve noticed, most of Katies recipes include options that make them higher in fat/calories. Most of the time, you can sub oil for applesauce, or soaked cashews for tofu. The Larabars, and the samoa pie, are pretty high in calories.
Suzanne says
Blueberry ketchup?! I need to try it!
Canada is famous for some strange foods: back bacon, poutine (gross), and Nanaimo bars. My favourite of course is maple syrup!!
Samantha says
It is a really good recipe actually. I have made it several times!
Kevin says
Look like some great recipes. Those Zucchini brownies are calling out to me.
Canada Day yesterday, but good ideas for any time.
Suzanne, how can you not like poutine? Fattening as heck, but so good.
Katie, if you’ve got a way to make poutine a little more fat friendly, that would be something.
Aly says
Don’t forget about Canadian foods like butter tarts, BeaverTails (I wish they were gluten-free), Bannock, Tourtiere, Screech (its not a food, but its Canadian), Tim Horton’s, Tarte au sucre (sugar pie), blueberry grunt, President’s Choice decadent chocolate chip cookies and ketchup chips! I agree with Kevin, Katie can you please make a healthy version of poutine? Maybe a sweet potato fries with some sort of vegan gravy and Daiya cheese?
Neko McEvil says
Denmark has some great and not so great dishes. We are well-known for eating lots of pork.
What we are most known for are our “Smørrebrød” which is rye-bread with different kinds of toppings or “on-lay”. The on-lay is usually cold cuts of meat, spreads or cheese together with salat and different kinds of dressing, like mayonnaise or Danish tartar sauce (called remoulade).
One of our well-known spreads is “leverpostej”, which is like liver pâté, but more coarsely grounded and made from pork liver and lard. Mostly it served on rye-bread with either cucumbers, roasted onions or pickled beets on top.
In general, pork is used a lot in Danish cuisine. We have a dish called “frikadeller” which is a Danish meatball, made from minced pork. Pork roast or “flæskesteg” is commonly served at Christmas. Bacon is in a lot of our dishes as well etc.
We also serve a rice pudding containing chopped almonds, called Risalamande. Usually we have a game at Christmas where we hide a whole almond in this dish and try to find it. The one who finds it gets a present.
Rice pudding is common in general, mostly served around Christmas.
And of course, we have the Danish pastry… though we called it “wienerbrød” which means Viennaese bread. I do not know why we called it that.
Here are some more traditional Danish dishes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Danish_cuisine
Michelle says
Katie, I am always amazed on how you come up with these recipes, that actually turn out to be SO delicious. Do you tend to experiment a lot of times in the kitchen before you nail something down? I have just made my own blog and I hope that I can become just as successful as you are! Again, thank you for sharing your recipes.
Chocolate Covered Katie says
Oh definitely yes! Sometimes I’m lucky… but more often than not, a recipe will go through at least 3-4 trials. The zucchini brownies took like 6.
Jenny says
I am from Denmark and in the summer it is “koldskål” witch is made from buttermilk, suggar and lemon, some uses eggs as a tikner some uses yogurth
Lisa says
Great recipes for the holiday time! We had our Canada Day celebration yesterday, but even if I missed out on bringing these goodies. There’s on harm in making these solely for myself 😉
Danielle says
Thanks for this! I am trying to get some ideas for the 4th of July!
http://www.keenbeauty.com
Zainab @ Blahnik Baker says
I love your view of America! Agree that all these choices remind me of American foods 🙂
Lily says
Hi, Katie! I’m new to your blog, and I quickly fell head over heals for your recipes. I am trying to get the ingredients you use, but I’m having a lot of trouble. I don’t like ordering things online, but it seems as though I must (spelt flour, nunaturals stevia, and xylitol). I was wondering, because I found coconut sugar (YAY), do I need to get xylitol and stevia since I have the coconut sugar?
Chocolate Covered Katie says
Hey Lily,
You definitely don’t need the stevia or xylitol in this case. Any time one of my recipes calls for stevia, there’s always an option listed for using sugar instead. And as for the xylitol, it’s a 1-1 replacement for sugar, so you can always sub sugar when xylitol is called for. So you are good to go :).
Kali says
I made the zucchini fries last week, and then the brownies this week to use up the spare courgette.
Most traditional British food involves pork. Fry ups, Sunday Roasts, etc etc. I make an excellent lazy vegan fry up, the sunday roast is easy to veganise if you make your own yorkshires and use veggie sausages, nut roast, or seitan, and I make fantastic vegan pork pies with vegan margarine instead of butter in the pastry, and seitan seasoned with mace and all spice. Vegan toad in the whole is easy once you’ve mastered the yorkshires. Bubble and squeak (the remains of a sunday roast fried the next day) is as vegan as the roast was. Gooseberry fool, which I’m making now that my gooseberries are ripe is vegan. I’ve made vegan bread and butter pudding before now, and I’m now working on vegan spotted dick.
Nessa says
Love these!
Bird says
Hi I’m new to your site and email and I am passing out from all of the awesome 🙂
Tiffany Wall says
I don’t know about you, but I am definitely looking forward to a little time away from work for some fun in the sun and the chance to get to eat my favorite All-American summer foods . Plus, my sister is coming to visit, the weather will be in the mid-to-high eighties (which means lots of pool and beach time) and I capped off this week with an appearance on Channel 6, San Diego Living. It was my first time on live TV and I had so much fun doing a live cooking demo of a Red, White, and Blueberry Tart for the Fourth of July. Since it was right before the holiday weekend, it was the perfect time to share a classic red, white, and blue dessert recipe like this tart. I know some people that are local to San Diego already tuned in live yesterday morning, but you can watch the clip here!
Kelly Wang says
Hi Katie! I live in Vietnam, so I’d say Phở is definitely a symbolic food. It’s not a vegan dish but I’ve tried the veganized version of it.
Also we have lots of great vegan friendly desserts too 😉
Sarah says
I’m Swiss, so I would say chocolate and cheese…
trajayjay says
I’m from America, so McDonalds and TV dinners! Basically anything that will give you a heart attack within a week of eating
Sarah the official CCK Drooler says
I think that hot dogs (if you’re not vegan, of course) and potato chips should be added to the list!
Actually, I have no idea whether potato chips are inherently American, but I’m pretty sure we eat the most of it!
Oh yeah, let’s not forget bbq flavored anything!
jo @ includingcake says
Yay …Happy July 4th 🙂 Um, I would say Britain’s symbolic food is fish & chips or a roast dinner. The first is a little tricky to replicate but i’m most definitely a nut roast kinda girl so roast dinners all the way!
Tammela says
I love your questions of the day! I’m American but I lived in Ukraine for 2+ years; one of the classic dishes there is borshch, beet soup: http://taplatt.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/recipe-%D1%83%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%97%D0%BD%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9-%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%89-ukrainian-borshch/
Am says
Happy 4th of July Chocolate Covered Katie! 😀
Some foods I associate with being Indonesian, from living over there for a bit are: Nasi Goreng – fried rice, since everybody made it, and they would add little gray beef like meat balls (these are really what I associate with Indo: no idea what was in them, they were pre packaged). Our favorite dish was Beef Rendang – a way to use low grade beef: cook it a looong time with a spiced coconut sauce – so awesome. A ginger tea drink, with pink gelatinous balls, peanuts and bread chunks, sweetened with sweetened condensed milk – so delicious but weird to us at first! Loved these dishes! Some of them I won’t go back to now, being vegetarian, but I still drink my own version of the ginger tea drink sometimes 🙂
Samantha says
So many fun posts about other country traditional/symbolic food! I almost wanted to write something on all of them, but it would have been too many comments. 🙂
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Savannah says
I’m from Australia so I’d have to say a good old Aussie BBQ and some prawns 😉 plus lamingtons, meat pies, Anzac biscuits and of course, delicious damper!
Kaycee @ FitFace says
even though I’m not American.. I plan on partaking in all of the festivities that include THESE treats in the next week/year… because I’m going to make them all. YUM!
Shani says
I have never been to the USA, so I can only take your word for those foods being American. I am Australian, and some of our most iconic foods would be:
pavlova, lamingtons, damper, an aussie BBQ, meat pies, and kangaroo steaks.
Trajayjay says
My family didn’t go to any cookouts, but we did make a Jello-Cake (not vegan). I baked a yellow cake and poked holes in it, and poured jello in it. Then I let it chill and topped it with cool whip, then I arranged strawberries and blueberries on it to resemble the American flag. Looked something like this
http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT6nro916HlnUbJivVG_o20T-_Uph-lMUZllW2CX6aZC7VXzwhvqg
Maybe I could veganize it by making one of your cake recipes, and topping it with that agar whip, and pouring agar jello into it.
Aurora Faulkner says
On the 4th I made a diabetic friendly red, white and blue dessert to take to a cookout. I was not sure how it would go over….but knew that there were several diabetics in the group….myself included. I was tickled to death when it was all eaten and the little bit I had left over(it would not fit in my trifle bowl) I went home and took back to one of the ladies at the party so she could have it for breakfast. I was smiling. They will never know what they did for my cooking self-confidence. Anyways, it was a recipe I snagged off of Pinterest and it was delicious. So, I thought I would share the dessert and recipe with you this morning. It does not have to be eaten only on the 4th it can be eaten anytime. Bon Appetit!
Sayed says
All these recipes sound delicious!! I really want to try the Oreo pie, Thanks for sharing!
Tanya @ Playful and hungry says
Nice collection! =)