Tag : Chocolate

This fast, easy and naturally sweet, but very low carb and low fat chocolate chip cookie recipe uses two of my favorite things, almonds in the form of almond flour, and chocolate chips. These are not just any chocolate chips, however – they are sugar free, nothing but 100% chocolate, and amen to that. For a while, baker’s chocolate had to suffice – along with time spent chopping it up, which wasn’t pretty.

Sugar, along with sugar alcohols, artificial sweeteners and other additive sweeteners like agave, are so overused in our food supply that it is truly rare to find an unadulterated, unsweetened product like Pascha Organic Dark Chocolate Baking Chips, which are 100% cacao, and nothing else. These chips are unsweetened, nut free, wheat and gluten free, and dairy and egg free as well as free from soy.

A product of Peru made for the Pascha Chocolate Company in Toronto, Canada, I found my curiosity piqued and visited their site to see the bag of chips on their front page along with that ever-so-important tagline: One Ingredient. One of their site’s main menu categories is “Free From.” It’s what I look for most of the time these days, simple things without all the BS in order to keep the “cup runeth over” diseases and syndromes at bay.

Recommendation made, so let’s get to the recipe, which is super quick and easy. You’ll need:

*Canola oil was chosen for its low saturated fat profile (and as a money saver). Choose any oil that is right for your purposes, but be wary of the saturated fat content.

Combine all ingredients except chocolate chips in a medium-sized mixing bowl, like so…

…and mix all ingredients until the dough is uniform:

Next, add in your delicious, decadent-without-the-shite chocolate chips. Enjoy these photos…

…I could take an extended, slow, sensual bath in this stuff…

…and I’d do it all day if I could stave off my chocoholism for long enough. But, having preheated the oven to 375 Fahrenheit degrees on a hot day, I gotta get back on track here.

After mixing in the chocolate chips, take two regular flatware teaspoons and spoon out the dough in small dollops – about 2.5 cm or an inch or so in circumference each – onto a baking sheet or whatever you have available. As all my other baking sheets are out on other projects at the moment, I’m using the oven’s broiling pan, which turns out to be better than the baking sheets I’ve been using. It has enamel instead of that chemicalized non-stick material that is now lodged in all our body tissues, is better than that crappy non-stick anyway, and it also makes for a great contrast with the little No-No dollops. They kind of look like little space cookies, don’t they? Cute!

Bake these at 375 for 10 – 12 minutes, remove them from the oven and scarf them up before anyone else sees them! These are a great low carb way to answer the chocolate chip cookie craving, which is absolutely fierce and must be answered. The good news: These are entirely BINGEable – I have eaten half the batch in one sitting and had no blood sugar issues at all. I’ve found them to be priceless while working on reducing insulin resistance, often eating these on the days I’m not doing HIIT (high intensity interval training) when I find myself craving something sweet, filling and “carby” tasting.

The tally here is about 16 of these dee-lish little gems:

I’m also cooking up a gingerbread version of these…I’ll add that variation in when it’s passed the taste test. Enjoy!

Yours in great health,
Alison

If you have issues with gluten AND sugar, wow. Sucks to be you!

And me, too!

One would think that in 2019, we’d have the sugar-free/gluten-free lifestyle covered as far as desserts and sweets go, but I’ve noted we’ve still got a long road ahead of us, and so I have come up with more than a few things that are sweet, but leave the gluten and sugar at the supermarket.

One such recipe is this little ditty, which I call Lazy, 4-Ingredient Chocolate Cashew Nibbles. And even though they are lazy, they have nuts in them, specifically cashews. So if you are not a fan of nuts, please take note.

This recipe requires melting some baker’s chocolate – the kind with NO sugar added whatsoever, that when you eat it plain, you’ll taste a whole lotta fatty-bitter melting in your mouth. Which I’ve done on occasion, being the chocoholic that I am. To sweeten things up, I use monk fruit and stevia, two zero-calorie, zero-sugar natural sweeteners that are NOT in the sugar alcohol family either.

You’ll want to gather:

First, grab your non-stick pan by the handle and put it on low heat. Add in 2 ounces of baker’s chocolate – this turned out to be 2 thick squares of the Dagoba…and no, I don’t always use the expensive stuff:

While the chocolate slowly melts, spoon out 4 tablespoons of cashew butter into a small bowl, and add in your stevia powder:

Then, add in the quarter teaspoon of monk fruit powder:

By now the chocolate has most likely melted, so just use a plastic or silicon spatula to scrape it all out of your non-stick pan and into the bowl for mixing together with all the other ingredients:

This almost looks like an ice cream sundae at this point before you mix it all together:

Next, get your silicon ice cube tray or candy mold ready for filling. I use a hybrid silicon/plastic ice cube tray that has silicon bottoms, which makes for an easy job of popping out the finished Nibbles:

Pour a little of your chocolate-cashew butter-stevia-monk fruit mix into the tray:

Some of the little compartments may remain empty, depending upon how big you like your Nibbles…note there are varying sizes in my tray, and that’s okay…

After you load up the tray with the chocolate mixture, let it cool for a few minutes, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for a few hours.

And this is something I’m always working on with all things homemade and chocolate: These little Nibbles will remain firm to a point. If you live in a hot second floor apartment and make these on a summer’s day, maybe not. If your house is cool, they probably will stay firm enough without refrigeration to serve as is. So, I usually just err on the side of caution and keep them in the fridge, where they will stay fresh for at least several days.

These are GOOD!

Enjoy,

Alison