Tag: healthier

Hard Chocolate Biscuits – a recipe

Welcome to 2024, it’s already moving fast.

Today I’m sharing a recipe for Hard Chocolate Biscuits.

Recently I needed to make something for a morning tea and these biscuits are easy to make. The recipe comes from a book called ‘The Eat Real Food Cookbook’ by David Gillespie.

For these biscuits, dextrose is the sweetener, which is a healthier option that caster sugar.

Hard Chocolate Biscuits

(Makes 20 to 28 depending on size)

Ingredients

100g butter

1 cup dextrose

175 g plain flour (I used gluten free)

2 tablespoons cacao powder

¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Method

* Preheat the oven to 180*C and line a baking tray with baking paper.

* Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

* Then add the dextrose, stirring until dissolved, taking care not to let the mix boil.

* Remove the pan from the heat, add in the flour, cacao and bicarb, mixing well.

* Roll spoonful’s of mixture into small balls, place then on the prepared tray and squash with your fingers.

* Bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until coloured but not dark – the biscuits will harden as they cool.

* Cool on the tray until the biscuits harden, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

My notes – I used a tablespoon to scoop my mixture and when the biscuits cooked, they spread quite a bit. This also resulted in only 18 biscuits being made.

I also found that my batch were not a ‘hard’ biscuit. This is fine by us as we like a softer biscuit. If the biscuits aren’t as hard as you like, once they are cool, put them into the oven again for another 5 minutes, then allow to cool completely again.

I hope you enjoy making these biscuits and find them to be a tasty treat.

There is another biscuit recipe in the book I’m going to try and I will let you know how that works out.

Till the next post,

Live clean n prosper.

Slow Cooker Osso Buco – recipe

Today I’m sharing a favourite recipe – Slow Cooker Osso Buco.

We are back from our road trip holiday which was spent mostly in the warmer North Queensland. It is definitely cooler here in the South East.

At this time of year, we generally use our slow cooker a lot more to make some lovely winter warmer casseroles. One of our favourites is Osso Buco.

Not only does the slow cooker method save time, it also keeps so many nutrients in the dish. Making this style of cooking so much healthier.

It is a very simple, nourishing dish that is so easy to make, so today I thought I would share our recipe.

Slow Cooker Osso Buco

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 tbsp olive oil

4 slices of beef osso buco (approx. 800g)

1/2 large brown onion, diced

1 stick of celery diced

3 cloves garlic, crushed

2 medium carrots, peeled and diced

4 mushrooms sliced

1/2 cup red wine

1 400g can crushed tomatoes

2 tubs Continental Beef Stock Pot Sensations

4 sprigs of thyme

3 bay leaves

Method
  • Heat oil in a non-stick frypan over medium high heat. Add the slices of osso buco and sear until browned on both sides. Transfer into the slow cooker pot.
  • Then add the onion, celery to the frypan and cook until soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute, adding a tbsp or 2 of water to the frypan to loosen up the mix and add the lot to the slow cooker pot.
  • Then into the pot goes the diced carrots and sliced mushrooms
  • Followed by the canned tomatoes, wine and the stock, then stir to combine. Add the bay leaves and thyme sprigs.
  • Cover and cook on high for 4 hours or low for 8 hours. or until the meat is tender and falling off the bone.
  • Discard sprigs of thyme and bay leaves.
  • Serve with mashed potato or rice and steamed green vegetables. Sprinkle fresh parsley on top prior to serving, if desired.

Those ‘Healthy’ recipes and Sugars

Today I am talking about the ‘healthier’ recipes and sugars.

There are many magazines and books available that contain healthy recipes lately. It can be quite a task choosing one that suits your needs. Manufacturers, authors, cafes and restaurants use the term ‘healthy’ very loosely in recent times, as most of us are aware.

Healthy is a buzzword that has been used to describe all sorts of foods.

Focus on Sugar

You may be trying to limit your intake of sugars as part of a healthier diet.  Most people would like to think that recipes for ‘health’ foods and snacks would have less sugars and processed ingredients.

The use of dates or other dried fruits has become popular as a way to sweeten cakes, bliss balls and other desserts.

Fresh fruit contains lots of fluid, which fills us up. Dried fruit is stripped of its water content, which then concentrates the sugar. To put this in perspective:

– Half a cup of fresh cranberries contains 2g of sugar. One cup of dried cranberries contains a whopping 37g, or 9 teaspoons.

– One date is over 60 per cent sugar and 30 per cent of this is fructose.

In my experience, including these ingredients in the recipe is instead of adding processed sugars, as they are sweet enough.

Recently I was looking through a free recipe magazine. Of particular interest were some ‘Bliss Ball’ recipes, as it’s always good to get some new ideas. I was always of the belief that these great little snack balls were developed to help people to make better snack choices.

Consequently it is very disappointing to see that these recipes also included brown sugar in the ingredient list.

Less is Best

People are becoming used to cakes and slices being very sweet. It appears that the authors feel that the addition of extra sweeteners is necessary.

It is a scientific fact that sugar is addictive. Therefore the more sugar we eat, the sweeter we want our food to be. It is a vicious circle that leads to certain decline in our health.

That many people are still having issues with weight gain, is not surprising, with these types of recipes being published as a healthier option.

At the end of the day, everyone is looking for his or her own version of a healthy diet. Each of us has different needs and goals.

Our preference is to reduce our sugar intake. Over the past couple of years we have managed to remove added sugars from most of our diet. We have found that over time, the less sugar we consume, the less we crave or can eat.

Till the next post,

 

Live clean n Prosper