Coconutella

After my spreadable butter success I have realised that making spreadable spreads is addictive. So is Pinterest. Finding recipes on Pinterest and making them is addictive. The nutella microwave mug cake recipe I found on pinterest is so addictive that it’s dangerous. I am not a massive nutella fan, but I did end up buying it simply to make the microwave mug cake. I’m that kind of person, I have an addictive kind of personality. I was pretty excited about my delicious nutella microwave mug cake, untilI read the ingredients list on Nutella.

Sugar, vegetable oil, hazelnuts (13%), cocoa powder (7.4%), non-fat milk solids, emulsifier (soy lecithin), flavour (vanillin)

Just in case you are wondering the vegetable oil listed is palm oil, and since there is nothing mentioning that it is fair trade I’m going to go ahead and assume that it is not fair trade and that it is also highly refined palm oil. If you’re wondering why the use of palm oil bothers me check out this info on orang-utans.

Finding out that a supposedly healthy spread is only 13% hazel nuts and primarily sugar and palm oil is not a happy moment. In saying that I would happily go without, but my husband has a bit of a crush on nutella and I feel he has been having a closed doors affair with it behind my back because the tub I bought was full one day and almost empty the next. My microwave nutella mug cake has nothing to do with it of course…

Luckily, Pinterest provided me with a solution in the form of a recipe for home made nutella. I was excited! Until I realised I didn’t have chocolate or hazelnuts in the house. I also did not have milk powder… and come to think of it, how healthy is chocolate anyway? Back to the drawing board.

I decided to make up my own recipe based on ingredients I had, hopefully not a recipe for disaster. I muddled around with ingredients I had in the fridge, I tried to stick to healthy or whole foods. The resulting spread was not much like nutella (lacking the essential hazelnuts and chocolate) but instead tasted like a creamy coconut rough spread. It was scrummy! Here is the recipe.

Coconutella Recipe

1.5 cups of toasted almonds

3 heaping teaspoons of cocoa powder

¾ cup of milk

50gms of butter

50gms of coconut oil, maybe less. I can’t be sure. It was a chunk.

½ cup honey

These measurements are all approximate, I tend to just lug things in and hope for the best. Depending on the temperature of your fridge you may want to play with the ratios a bit. More milk will make it softer and more butter or coconut oil will make it firmer.

I toasted the almonds until they were golden, okay that’s a bit of a lie, I almost burned them. But they were still nice. Then I used my coffee grinder to grind them as fine as possible. After that I put the almonds in my blender with the coconut oil, honey and butter. In a saucepan I heated up the milk with the cocoa powder until it was bubbling around the edges. It’s important to heat the cocoa powder so that it doesn’t taste awful and goes a nice dark colour. I poured the hot milk over the mix and blended it. And blended it. And blended it… and then my machine started smoking, so I stopped. The resulting mix was quite liquidy but set pretty well in the fridge. The coconut oil had given it an amazing taste, like bounty bars or coconut rough. Not at all like nutella but something familiar and chocolatey.

I consider it a success.

Chocolate that is hot

I love hot chocolate, there is nothing more cosy than snuggling up with a hot chocolate on a rainy day. But it has to be perfect. It can’t be too sweet, it can’t be too bitter, it can’t be too hot and it can’t be too cold and if possible it needs to have zero calories and minimal milk because too much milk gives me a headache and makes my little nursling into a grumple bum.

Fussy much?

My favourite rainy day memories all seem to have hot chocolate in them, like when mum went to the states and brought back some traditional Mexican hot chocolate which she rationed out in little squares for special occasions and we would all hover over the saucepan of milk heating inhaling the delicious aroma.

Now that I have children I wanted to see if I could review hot chocolate to make it both delicious and healthy. It will be nice to have a family treat that can evoke similar memories. Proper hot chocolate is a fun thing to make and sharing a cosy rainy day with your kids is one of the small treats in life.

Here is a recipe I concocted:

Soak 8 almonds overnight per cup of hot chocolate so that is 8 almonds for 1 cup 16 almonds for 2 etc etc. If you didn’t plan your hot chocolate 12 hours in advance it is fine to use the almonds as is, but soaked is nicer. In a blender add 1 teaspoon of fair trade cocoa per cup, 1 teaspoon of honey per cup and 1 pinch of cinnamon per cup. You will also need 3 cups of liquid, at the most basic you can use water as the almonds will make it milky but if you want a really creamy mix you could use rice milk, oat milk or even cows milk. The options are limitless…

So if you were making 3 cups your ingredients list would be:

24 almonds (soaked)

3 teaspoons fair trade cocoa

3 teaspoons of honey

3 pinches of cinnamon

3 cups of any milk or milk analogue…. or water.

Place all of your ingredients in a blender and blend, and blend, and BLEND.  Once it is as smooth as your blender tip it into a saucepan and heat until steaming and beginning to bubble around the edges then strain and serve with plenty of marshmallows. You don’t need to strain it – I prefer it gritty but little children may not.

An adult’s version can be made with a pinch of chilli flakes and some dark chocolate smashed into pieces before blending. Delicious.