COCOFINA | COCO AVOCADO BROWNIES

This has got to be my favourite use of coconut to date, a simply delicious, indulgent and gooey brownie. 

I took the recipe from here and I did make some amendments to the ingredients, for instance I didn't add any icing or frosting as I really didn't think it was necessary, I also replaced the almond flour with coconut flour, so below are the ingredients that I used. 

• 120g dark chocolate (no dairy), chopped
• 2 ripe avocados, pitted + skins removed (I used frozen ones which I defrosted - they're cheaper and convenient)
• 3/4 cup cocofina coconut sugar
• 2 teaspoons instant coffee (optional)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup cocofina coconut flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Sprinkle of desiccated coconut

The mixture was much thicker than my usual brownies which are made from standard ingredients so upon placing this in the oven I didn't know what to expect but I was in for a great surprise.

And here is the finished item, and I have to say for a gluten and dairy free cake with natural sugar. 

I don't feel to naughty eating this from time to time and I have loved cooking with the cocofina ingredients and taking myself out of my comfort food, there are so many coconut based products that I am planning to try!

Cocofina kindly sent me of their fantastic ingredients to try, so huge thanks go out to them! 

Have you ever tried coconut flour? It's similar to almond meal but finer and so so versatile. Perfect for pancakes and well, brownies!

Cookie x

Brand V Budget | Food | Natural Yogurt

One basic weekly shop item that I like to save on is yogurt. We have a little tradition of having fruit, yogurt and muesli/granola as a weekend breakfast.

So this is something I currently buy once a week, but depending on my diet at the time I may buy more. For instance if I am being careful I have been known to use this in smoothies, salads (to make the mayo go further calorie wise), and as a 'dessert' alternative (with honey), I've even used it to make white sauce for lasagna and moussaka.

I always used to purchase the Yeo Valley yogurt, and on several occasions it wasn't in stock so I had to use an alternative, usually Tesco's own brand standard version, then I got a little brave and tried the value one, to be perfectly honest I don't know why I didn't do that sooner.

See below for a comparison of the yogurts I have tried and what the annual cost would be. Just to be clear the only ingredient in each of the below yogurts is Milk, as I would hope, watch out however as some of the low fat yogurts on the shelves contain thickeners such as modified maize starch (cornflour I think).

All low fat natural yogurt is fairly runny, all I do, say if I want a thicker consistency is strain it myself. It might sound like a lot of work but it's much cheaper than thick Greek yogurt, and the strained ones are much nicer, but more expensive than those that contain thickening agents. To thicken, I place a non fluffy clean tea towel or piece of muslin cloth in a sieve, I then balance the sieve over a large jug/bowl, add the yogurt into the tea towel and cover, leaving in the fridge over night. In the morning you will have a really thick, creamy yogurt! Truth be told I went through a phase of making my own yogurt, but it's a fairly lengthy process and it's so much easier to just buy it.

1 pot per week @ £0.45 (52 X 0.45 = £23.40 PER YEAR) 

1 pot per week @ £0.90 (52 X 0.90 = £46.80) 

£23.40 more expensive than Tesco Everyday Value over the course of a year

1 pot per week @ £1.50 (52 X 1.50 = £78) 

£31.20 more expensive than Tesco Own Brand over the course of a year

£54.60 more expensive than Tesco Everyday Value over the course of a year

And, here's the end result, I can afford to spend a little more on a healthy sugar alternative such as date nectar or agave nectar (derived from cacti), and a really delicious granola or muesli.

Now you've read this, is this something you currently save on? If not, is it something you will consider on your next supermarket shop? 

Cookie x

Healthyfoodbrands.co.uk Products | Review

Hi All,

I have done a lot of skincare, body and beauty product reviews lately so I thought today I would change the subject to another of my favourite topics.. Food!

I wrote to http://www.healthyfoodbrands.co.uk/ to ask if I could try some of the products in the ranges that they stock, they very kindly sent me 3 products from Rayner's essentials and a bottle of Honegar.

In addition to the products they also kindly provided me with some recipes, which is just as well because I dont tend to use malt or molasses in my everyday cooking or baking. 

These are cooking items but are less mainstream than your honey and golden syrup, these also double up as health foods and have many great health properties.

One of the recipes I received was for malted bagels, I have never made bagels so I thought 'Why not?'

The recipe wasn't 100% clear, and some of the ingredients were impossible for me to get on the day, for instance - fresh yeast and strong white flour.

I had to make do with plain flour mixed with a small amount of strong white that I had left, and another substitute of fast powdered yeast.

So, here's a loose idea of what I did. I used 500g flour (preferably strong white flour), a tsp of salt and enough lukewarm water to create an elastic (but not too wet) dough, I used about 350-80ml. 7g dry fast yeast. I also added to tsps of malt extract to the flour and salt mix.

I mixed the yeast in the water first and then added to the flour and salt mix. I used my Kitchenaid artisan with the dough hook to knead for 5-8 minutes until really elastic.

Once the dough was made I made it into a ball and oiled the bowl before putting it back in, I then left it for 1 hour and 15 minutes to rise in my proving drawer, if you don't have a proving drawer it will take longer. leave it in a warm place until risen to double size.

  

After the dough had risen I knocked it back and kneaded for a further 3-5 minutes, then cut it into 8 pieces. Once this was done I then placed onto a silicone sheet and put back into the proving drawer for a further 30 minutes to rise.

 

I used my finger to poke a hole in the bagels bearing in mind that these would eventually shrink.

The next step was to boil the bagels for 4 minutes (2 on each side) in water with 1 tsp of malt extract. They did pretty much double in size as the recipe suggested.

 

 

Once boiled I laid these on a silicone sheet and have them a little egg wash before sprinkling on sesame seeds.

  

These were put into a preheated oven at 190c for 20-25 minutes.

 and here is the final result. Yes they look a bit wonky but they tasted brilliant and I really enjoyed making them.

       

 I had these on day one with soup and then the next morning with scrambled eggs and they were delicious. 

I'd like to say a huge thank you to the company for their generosity and to Stephanie for all of her help along the way.

Please check out this company and the products detailed on their website. It really was great to be able to combine health with baking.

Cookie x

A weeks lunches

A couple of my posts recently have been about the saving that I make taking homemade lunches to work. I'm not going to lie, its a little extra work but see below for the some of the benefits:

• its half the price of take out lunches.
• It's not creating as much rubbish to go to landfill as the sandwich and snack packaging does.
• Importantly I can create healthy and balanced meals.
• It's completely tailored to how I want it and what I feel like eating.
• I can make big or small a portion as I feel like eating
• And I have full control over calorific content.

Monday: Oven baked red pesto chicken with salami, mixed tomatoes, olives and cous cous. As it was for lunch I just did the one large chicken breast for us to share and bulked this out with tomatoes and olives and added a serving of Ainsely Harriotts cous cous. I do use plain cous cous also but this is already flavoured etc and is only 70p per sachet, its a great cheat/quick fix.

Tuesday: Was a great varied salad of Sweet potato, fine beans, beetroot, Green lentils, some of my home grown tomatoes and radishes and feta cheese. This was dressed with a basil and oil dressing made using my fresh home-grown basil and smoky olive oil (they sell it in M&S).

Wednesday: Mixed chopped vegetables along with a small amount of cous cous and some homemade potato salad, I then added a little ham to this.

Thursday: Really simple noodle salad. It consists of a nest of cooked wheat noodles, a little spring onion, some grated carrot and to season I added a little sweet chili sauce. You can dress this up as much as you like and add chicken, peppers, whatever you have in!

Friday: This lunch was a little bit of a cheat, I bought the Spanish tortilla ready made in Tesco for £2, which lasts 2 lunches so is a great cheap lunch. This was accompanied with a fresh greek salad and some feta cheese. The dressing was made from lemon juice, olive oil and a little of my fresh home grown parsley. I love having herbs in pots at this time of year as I use them a lot and it makes much more sense that buying fresh each time and them only lasting a few days.

As always your comments are valuable so please let me know your thoughts.

Cookie x