Chocolate, Blueberry, 'Splat' Cookies

Cookies, or 'biscuits' as we call them here in kiwiland, are not so much my thing, personally speaking. BUT, sometimes the occasion requires a delicious biscuit, and in such emergencies, I can cinch the apron and make it happen, quickly.

Click Here for Printable Recipe

This yummy bickie is more accurately pile of chocolate and blueberries stuck together with a bit of cookie dough. Crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside (chewy gooey if still warm), they've never been a miss and only take a few minutes to make. No food processor needed.

Why 'splat' cookie?  

That's because the dough is very sticky. You don't mould them, just 'splat' spoonfuls on the baking tray, and then they 'splat out' further as they cook. They're splat cookies.  That's just how they are, in their souls.

There's nothing particularly healthified about it.  It's got sugar, yes real sugar.  You could sub in coconut sugar, or a stevia/erythritol unsugar if concerned about such things, it's up to you. In my case, I'm not diabetic, low-carbing or cane sugar allergic and don't eat any dessert often enough to be too concerned about the type of sweetener.

And let's not get me started on "sugar-free" things that contain dates, agave or rice syrup (a.k.a. sugar). :-/

The recipe!

Ingredients:

• 2 cups self-raising, gluten-free flour                                                                                                          (or 2 cups gluten-free flour (e.g. rice flour) + 1 tsp baking soda)
• 1 cup of sugar, brown or white
• ¾ cup of melted coconut oil
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• ¼ tsp salt
• 100-150g dairy-free dark chocolate (e.g. Green and Blacks
• 85%)
• ~ 125g fresh or dried blueberries

Instructions:

First you’ll want to turn your chocolate into chunks.

I’ve found the quickest way to do this is to take a pestle (the club shaped part of a mortar and pestle) and pound the unopened block of chocolate into submission. This is heaps of fun.

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Combine the sugar, oil, egg, vanilla and salt in a bowl.

Mix vigorously until everything is combined, then add the flour and mix further. It will be sticky!

Add the chocolate chunks and blueberries, mix some more.

Once everything is combined, drop (‘splat’) spoonfuls (size is up to you) of mix in evenly spaced lumps on a non-stick baking tray. A silicone mat is great, or line a regular tray with greased baking paper (no point in a quick and easy cookie if the clean-up is a nightmare).

Bake at 180C until the edges are turning golden and the middles are not sticky. They will spread out quite a lot. Mine took 15 minutes.  They may appear a little underdone but will firm up upon cooling.

Once firm enough to remove from the baking tray, let them cool on a cookie rack.

Eat. Slightly warm is best, as the chocolate will be enticingly melty.

For a dessert, add icecream, cream or yogurt (coconut version if you want to maintain the ‘dairy-free’ status).

A closer look? Smells so gooooood. Nose to the monitor please.

Glowing, badness, meat salad, kombucha

Heads up! Look out for a 48 hour end of exams giveaway starting tomorrow at 1 p.m.

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I've just wasted at least 5 minutes of stats revision time on trying to capture a most interesting phenomenon with my phone selfie camera. Have you ever seen a niacin flush?

Raw, Vegan, Gluten-Free Ganache Cake

Hellooo.. Theobroma

As you may have perceived, it's goodbye to the Sanaworld blog. Well, not gone, just facelifted, and renamed to the Fit to Blog blog. The main reason is that I wanted to give the blog an identity that is more distinct from Sana Direct, which I'm a part owner of.  

I love Sana, but the blog is not advertising. I want people to read it and be able to trust what I say 

without thinking I'm trying to make a sale.  Hopefully, the new name will do that. What do you think?

Now... let's talk about chocolate Easter. 

I know that chocolate appreciation is not the reason for Easter, but there must be a link there somewhere. 

Mamasana is quite religious, and she turned up yesterday bearing precious things from Theobroma:

Wooooah....

Two things you want but don't know it yet...

1. Chocolate Zucchini Cake.  Our garden is booming waaay past the point of daily consumption. Never mind, there is always baking. 

Allrecipes.com describes this cake as 'fudgy', and I'd agree. It is fudgy, gooey soulfood. With undetectable veges.

For once, I followed the recipe exactly.. almost.  I subbed half the zucchini for grated beetroot and used choc chunks instead of walnuts. I feel that in cakes, nuts interfere with the smoothness of the cake-scoffing experience. Nut butter, yes, but not actual nuts. 

There is a lot of sugar in this cake (two cups). I will make it again using a combination of stevia and erythritol and see if that works. It should. Stevia tends to go well with anything involving fruit or veg.

Foodie Friday - Choc Caramel Biscuits

It was a very Foodie Friday yesterday. Check out these droolworthy specimens!
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These are a variation on last weeks Stuffed Dark Chocolate Cookies, which were based on this recipe from the Love Veggies and Yoga blog.

Just in case you missed it, here are the ones I made last week.

Chocolate and Veges

Chocolate and veges; I am a fan of both, so why not combine them? I've been motivated by reading that the longest lived woman ever, Jeanne Calment (122 and a half years old), ate about a kilogram of chocolate a week.  She also biked, danced and was very active to a late age. Perhaps this is the whole secret of longevity: exercise and eat chocolate. That seems doable.

You think chocolate and veges might not work together? Have a look at these little foodie assignments I've worked up between my university assignments.

Exhibit A: Kumara (sweet potato) pikelets with melted chocolate:

These were made from leftover baked kumara, which I threw into my mighty kenwood, along with two eggs and some cinnamon and salt. Then I cooked dollops of the batter in a mix of coconut oil and butter. This is the mix I find best for non-sticking in my steel frypan. They look a bit overcooked in the pic but they were perfect - just slightly crispy on the outside and soft in the middle. 

I chopped some 85% Green and Blacks chocolate and sprinkled between the layers as I put them on the plate. As I was doing this I starting thinking about people that say crazy things like 'I use dark chocolate because you are completely satisfied with just a little square of it'. Not me.  I could easily munch 100g a day, but obviously I don't, because I value fitting my skinny jeans. It's vanity, not 'oh, I just couldn't'.

Exhibit B is an avocado icecream:

I guess whether this counts as containing a vege depends on if you think an avo is fruit or veg. Technically it is a fruit, of course, but for today, it can be a vege. The contents of this ice are: frozen banana, about 1/3 of an avocado, tbsp WPC, a pinch of salt, tiny amount of stevia and squeeze of lemon juice all processed with a little water. I've discovered that to avoid an avocado-y taste, you must use the dark green avocado's that have a thick skin. The light green ones that are not very textured just don't work at all. 

If you have been looking for recipes that you can use stevia in without getting a gag-worthy aftertaste, this is one of those. Anything with a bit of citrus tends to counteract that nasty stevia afterglow. That's a bit of science that I learned when formulating various flavoured powders. Citric acid counteracts bitterness by confusing your tastebuds. I would never try to use stevia with anything like chocolate or vanilla. You would give yourself an aneurism trying to figure out how to make it taste ok, let alone awesome.

I made a chocolate sauce by melting chocolate and honey together in the mickeywave and drizzling it over the top.

Yes, that was lunch today.. I'm on my way to 123 years.

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Tonight I am off to an album launch for singer Amiria Grenell, which I suppose means I'd better get right back on that essay I'm attempting to finish today. There is nothing quite like having psychopaths or posttraumatic stress on the brain while trying to socialise. Also, it makes people shuffle away when I  accidentally drop into psychobabble. Best avoid by getting the draft finished. :D

Sunday in pictures

The market! Park your dogs here:

Enter your kids in the spud growing competition here:

Definitely stop by the She Chocolat stand for a free sample and a cacao ball

That's a cacao pod

I think this is the altar of chocolateness

The Nikau stand is usually right next door

Don't forget to pick up some sauerkraut or a juice smoothie at the Lotus Heart stall

Snacking and lusting after delicious things is absolutely allowed, probably even compulsory

On the way home, take time to admire the signs that spring is here and feel lucky to live in shaky Christchurch.

Hard to give it away...

While jetlagged in Heathrow airport, I picked up this amaaaazing box of Belgian chocolates from 'The Chocolate Box' as a present for the fam. I got chatting with the guy that works there and he told me that if I wanted to impress anyone with ready access to Swiss chocolate, then the only option was Neuhause chocolate from Belgium.

Although the 28 piece box cost just £1 less than two bottles of alcohol in the duty free shop, it was certainly easier to carry and, in my marginally-conscious state, I was an easy sell. These chocolates have the Belgian Royal Warrant. I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds important.

After presenting the gift, and following through with a slight amount of hint-dropping, I was allowed to try one. It was just perfect, as real chocolate should be. Only just sweet enough, the perfect amount of melt-in-your-mouth-ness, and many layers of flavour. 

I chose the one shaped like a cacao bean.  Then fell asleep for 12 hours. Jetlag... it makes you a most fun houseguest.

Crazy little world

Picture Source

Like everyone, everywhere, I've been quite distracted by the destructive natural events in Japan and feel enormous sympathy for the people there. Like New Zealand, Japan is affected by movement of the gigantic, relatively mobile, tectonic area known as the Pacific Plate, which covers the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The edge of this plate is known as the 'Ring of Fire' because it is dotted with volcanoes and prone to quakes. Of course, we like to ignore this because the countries around the Ring of Fire are beautiful places to live. Humans... not known for making decisions based on logic.

Although the 'perts are telling us that the Christchurch quakes and Japanese quakes are not related, I'm not sure how they can conclude this. Perhaps they are just trying to quell panic? At this stage, I'm in favour of all experts just opening their mouths to utter one phrase: "we don't know". Really guys, at a certain point, when earthquakes keep popping up all around the Pacific Ring, doesn't that get a bit embarrassing? I'm not sure that anyone really has a handle on what earthly events are connected or what will happen next. We are just not that good at understanding our planet.

We live on a revolving ball that is hurtling through space and is made of plates that basically float around on a bed of soft rock and magma. I guess we can expect things to move now and then - although it would be preferable if the earth could master the art of small movements. Sometimes I like to think about the celestial reality of our existence and feel simultaneously awed, terrified, and angry that humans treat the earth (and space, come to think of it) with such disrespect. We have no real idea about the forces at play and yet feel quite happy to continue sucking whatever we can out of the earth and pumping the poisonous by-products into the atmosphere. Sometimes, rather than fall into a funk about it all, I find it's best to just think about something else.... like people that inspire me.

Today, for those asleep at the back, was the Run for Christchurch. This inspiring and enterprising group of runners have not only raised almost $10,000 for the Red Cross here in Christchurch, but also managed to surprise themselves by creating something of a global event - a truly amazing effort. Although the Japanese disaster has rightly taken the full attention of the media, this does not diminish the level of need here in Christchurch - a fact that is sorely obvious to those of us that see it every day - and every cent will be well spent. To everyone that participated or donated, I would like to send a big "Thank you" and "Well Done!". I would have been running myself except for the little issue of agonising backpain.

Whinging about my condition seems petty considering the current level of global catastrophe, but I have to admit that today I'm a bit pathetic. The second and third days after a disc blowout are generally the worst, so I'm just taking it easy and popping a panadol if it gets too extreme. Although I could get a strong prescription painkiller, my general preference is to feel a bit of pain so that I know when I might be causing myself more damage. Today I managed a trip to the shops with my mum (Mamasana) who got back from overseas yesterday - she carried the heavy stuff and bought lunch ;)

She also turned up with gifts from my sister in Liechtenstein. Who couldn't feel a bit better with this little pile of wonderfulness in hand?

My special one

One thing I never considered, before becoming an Aunty, was how much my behaviours would regress to childhood just by being around a child. I took her to a bookshop the other day and she found a book called 'Walter the Farting Dog' (seriously). Although it was an intriguing book, with a riveting storyline, I was doing my best to get her to swap it for something that wouldn't get me in trouble, like fairy princesses or ponies. I went to take it from her and she clasped it to her chest, put a painfully earnest expression on her small face and said, with complete sincerity 'but this is my special one.' Gah! How do you compete with that?? I'm such a pushover. The girl has learned that tantrums don't work and now she has developed superior manipulation skills. It's really quite fightening.

So, you'll understand my behaviour when Jase walked in bearing a package for me, from Kek, who knows me very well and is obviously karmically connected to my deeper soul. I bounced around a bit, grabbed the parcel, clasped it to myself, whispered 'my special ones' and hid it somewhere very private. 

What was it? Only a box of the best chocolates in the universe from Koko Black. As I've moved away from compulsive eating and toward a more relaxed and aware attitude with food, I have become a real snob with treats. If I'm going to eat a calorie bomb it had better be well worth those calories. Those carefully crafted calories had better be more than fantastic and be placed into their box by polite ladies wearing velvet gloves, like at Koko Black. 

Has anyone here seen 'Ratatouille'? I'm like the food critic... "If I don't love it, I don't.. sssswallow'. My special chocolates also came with instructions to eat one a day for he best curative effect. It's working! My vision is improving daily. I really think that it's to do with my eye muscles doing something new. Like any muscle, they ache when learning a new movement and get weak when fatigued. Today I was practicing and got really good long distance vision, which temporarily caused my short distance vision to crap out. The change of pace, from looking at close things, to mid-distance, to long distance takes a little bit of adjustment - about 15 minutes. I can actually get good vision at any distance but not quickly and when I'm tired it all goes slightly fuzzy. However, it's all quite promising and I've still got four chocolates to go. I'm saving the walnut one (my very special one) for last.