I have just joined the Chocolate Party! It is a great group of food bloggers who bake with chocolate and each month they decide on an extra compulsory ingredient. This month, it is cranberries. I am on a mission to reduce my intake of sugar and that might seem a little contradictory with joining the Chocolate Party but I did say 'reduce' not 'eliminate'. These muffins I made are completely without added sugar except for what is in the chocolate. I found the recipe at The Life of Clare blog and thought they mightn't be sweet enough but was willing to give them a try. In fact, the bananas are enough and that makes these muffins sugarless apart from the chocolate content. How amazing is that? And they taste good! You might have noticed that I am using a new recipe set up, Ziplist. If you click on Save in the recipe, you then create a free account. After that, each time you click on the save button, you add the recipe to your personal recipe box. You can also create a shopping list … [Read more...] about Banana, Chocolate, Cranberry & Coconut Muffins
healthy recipe
White Raspberry Chocolate Cookies
I have made these cookies before here but this time I changed the dried fruit and chocolate ingredients. I consider it one of my best granola bar/cookie recipes to date and so, when I was sent a bar of Whittakers' white raspberry chocolate, I decided to make them again and incorporate some of the bar. I say “some of the bar” because by the time I got around to do the baking, Adriano and Dario had almost demolished the bar. They swear I hadn’t said to keep their hands off it, but I know better. Whittakers sent me the chocolate as part of a promotion to advertise that 20% of the profits of this newly developed flavour go to Breast Cancer research. I agreed because I wanted to eat the chocolate and it was certainly no hardship to include it in a recipe. The 20% to breast cancer is a fortunate by-product since this is truly a cruel killer of women. Get your checks ladies and stay out of the statistics. As for the recipe, I doubled it to make sure we wouldn’t run out of them during … [Read more...] about White Raspberry Chocolate Cookies
Brandied Fruit Slice – morning tea tucker
Over the weekend I found these brandied fruit slices on one of my favourite blogs, Hotly Spiced. Charlie is a mother of three children, two of whom are teenagers and, while cooking delicious recipes, entertains us with stories of her day to day life and sometimes, past life as a mother. And very occasionally further back to her childhood. She is always amusing, taking the trouble and strife of her family in her stride and all the while turning out great food. Do pop on over for her recipe for these slices. You'll find it here. The base was a little dry but that will be due to my dumb-ass oven. But my Italian husband likes dry cakes and so this one suited him just fine. I guess Italians like their cakes and desserts dry so they can dunk them into their wine. It's a good theory anyway. In a couple of weeks we are going back to visit family in Italy for three weeks and I intend to test all the cakes and their ice cream will get a good seeing to as well. I will take photos to make … [Read more...] about Brandied Fruit Slice – morning tea tucker
Ginger, Coconut, Raisin & Oatmeal Cookies – Gluten Free
I have finally made the best gluten-free cookies in the world. I can't believe they didn't burn in our notorious oven and I can't believe how moist they are inside and so super tasty with the extra heat of the ginger. These are the accumulation of all the knowledge I have built up over the last months making different granola bars each week. I have taken the ingredients which have performed the best and put them all together and hey presto, super cookies. While I am here I just want to pass something by you all. On Pinterest there are millions of pins of uplifting sayings to make you feel good. You know the ones about following your dreams, live life to the fullest etc. But here's the thing. Sometimes we read those sayings and they make us feel vaguely uncomfortable. Have you ever analyzed that? Well here's what I think and I said this recently in a comment on a blog somewhere. I think we put way too much pressure on ourselves to live life to the fullest - it makes us always feel … [Read more...] about Ginger, Coconut, Raisin & Oatmeal Cookies – Gluten Free
Potted Mince & Cheese Pies
Mince and cheese pies are a classic New Zealand meal. We have dairies, bakeries, supermarkets and cafes all over the country with such pies. We have competitions to see who has the best pie in the nation. Men everywhere stop during their working day for lunch and buy a pie - many women too. One night, Adriano and my sister's husband hatched up a plan to open a New Zealand pie shop in Italy and then franchise it out. The more empty wine bottles that accumulated on the bench, the more elaborate the plan became. It's a shame they didn't follow through. It might have brought about a revolution in the Italians' way of eating. I found this recipe in the same supermarket magazine I mentioned a couple of nights ago. I am trying to lose some weight before going back to Italy to see family at the end of next month so I only ate half a pie but it took enormous willpower to stop eating it. If the truth be told, it was Adriano snatching it away that did the trick. This recipe is not low … [Read more...] about Potted Mince & Cheese Pies
Spicy Sausage & Bean Hot Pot
I didn’t discover chorizo sausages until a few years back and what a difference they have made to my culinary life. But you have to be careful how you use them or the strong, spicy flavour will overwhelm all else. Last night, I watched an episode of Kitchen Rules on TV and was surprised at the lack of basic cooking knowledge the couple displayed. They put a leg of lamb which was already cooked back into the oven to cook a little more and then covered it in foil to rest, which continued cooking it even longer. They also added one of the strongest herbs, tarragon, to a delicate flavoured entree dish and then for dessert made a lemon and lime tart with a passionfruit sauce – all sharp elements, which would have twisted my tongue into an arabesque. Pete hated the dessert but, strangely enough, French Manu liked it and they gave it widely disparate marks. The only other guests who liked it were the two men who love all things French and think the sun shines out of Manu’s .... you know … [Read more...] about Spicy Sausage & Bean Hot Pot
