healthychoices

Since we haven’t cooked in a while, yesterday we decided to make something very heathy and low-calorie that is still sweet enough to call dessert. I have to mention that we haven’t attempted to bake a healthy dessert ever, so the result was a surprise for us as well. I’ve always loved a sweet treat but I hate the idea of stuffing my body with sugar, when I clearly know it does not need it, or at least not in the industrial amounts found in normal desserts.

For these chocolate cupcakes we haven’t used any sugar, nor did we use and white flour, choosing to use wholemeal flour instead. We also chose the darkest chocolate we could find (85%), and if you want to go overboard with the healthiness, you can easily use only a quarter of the butter we used (since this was our first attempt, we didn’t really know what we were doing) and discard the egg yolks (D really likes them, so I thought I’d just use them).

These cupcakes were really easy to make and it took us a total of 40 mins to make them, considering that they spent 20 mins in the oven. Here’s what you’ll need I order to duplicate the 12 cupcakes we made yesterday:

175 wholemeal flour
3 eggs
4 oranges
2 lemons
50 gr of butter (choose the one with the most fat in it, as it’s the best for cooking)
125 gr dark chocolate (at least 75% dark – we used 85%)
vanilla essence
mascarpone (this is optional and it will only be used as a topping)

Making these cupcakes is really easy and you only need to be following a few simple steps.

As usual, arrange all the ingredients in order to make this perfect photo.
Cut the oranges and the lemons in perfect halves, carefully squeeze all the juice and clean all the remaining contents until you are left with clean cupcake citrus-peel holders.
Put all the chocolate and the butter into a bowl and microwave it for 2 mins, then stir well until all of the content is creamy.
Put the eggs over the flower (you see 6 eggs in the photo because we had to make 24 cupcakes) and stir well until you get a batter -like composition.
Add the melted chocolate and carefully stir until fully incorporated.
Pour a glass of orange juice over the batter and stir well with and electrical mixer.
Fill the orange and lemon peels with the batter and put them in the oven for 20 minutes at 175 degrees.

For the topping, which is optional, you’ll need the mascarpone cream cheese, half of glass of lemon juice and a vial of vanilla essence. Mix everything together and that is it!
Once you get the cupcakes out of the oven, let them chill for 10 mins and decorate them with the mascarpone topping.

That’s it! It’s that simple to get a healthy, low-calorie dessert ready in just 40 minutes. Using the current recipe, each cupcake carries around 120 kcal, which is very good considering the fact that by using the wholemeal flour, they ended up being very satisfying and you are really full after only one eaten.

I have a hunch that if you only use a quarter of the butter and only the egg whites, the fat as well as the cholesterol will go down a lot, making these very very healthy. We probably will try to adjust the recipe a bit next time.

I hope you’ll enjoy this recipe and find it as delicious as we did!

Ok, so here’s how things stand: I either hear my alarm at 5:15 in the morning and I can spare 10 minutes in the morning for a nourishing and complete breakfast, or I take my coffee on the go because I hit snooze one too many times. Recently, I’ve mostly had time for my 10 min breakfast, so I thought I’d share my ‘super-bowl’ recipe.

What you need:

A nicely coloured bowl (mine is blue and reminds me of beaches and crystal clear skies)
A spoon (no fun options there!)
A nice pot of plain natural yoghurt
One scoop of Protein World Slender Blender protein powder (I use the chocolate flavoured in the morning)
One teaspoon of acai powder (packed with antioxidants)
Dried goji berries (these are the only dried fruits I could find that didn’t contain sugar)
One teaspoon of canah fiber powder (tastes like dirt, but you won’t feel it, and it’s great for digestion)
One tablespoon of chia seeds (gives great texture and they are considered a super food)
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon powder (amazing taste and very healthy)
1/2 teaspoon of ginger powder (makes the whole combo taste like gingerbread on a Christmas morning)

All you have to do is mix everything together with a spoon (no fancy mixer needed) and VOILÀ! you got yourself a nice breakfast super-bowl!!

The great thing about this bowl of goodness is that it provides you with everything you need first thing in the morning, from protein to fiber for around 300 kcal, as well as some unsaturated fats (the good type of fats), while giving you only 7g of sugar and 54 mg of sodium. It tastes great, you can adjust the flavour by using different types of protein powder, and it keeps me full until lunch-time, which for me is about 6 hours later.

Unlike D (lucky bastard!!!!), who has the time to actually have a warm cooked breakfast in bed every morning (later post on that), this is all I have time to get as a daily meal to start my day.

P.S: D says that I’m doing this post the wrong way as according to him, the end result pic should look better than the ingredient photos, weathers my end result looks more like a bowl of purple-puke not superfood-bowl. In spite of his opinion, I hope you’ll give it a try.