Cooking. Kind of.

 I thought I would never say this, but to all intents and purposes I have given up chocolate.

I have! Honestly!

I used to buy milk chocolate in 100g bars and put four squares, 1/6 of a bar - about 16g - in my porage daily, along with a mashed banana. But the thing is, if you look at the ingredients in a bar of milk chocolate the principal one is sugar.

hmmm.

I looked at plain chocolate, but in decent French plain chocolate, if 86% is cocoa, then 14% is sugar.

hmmm.

So I did an experiment. Instead of adding chocolate to my porage I added a small quantity of good cocoa powder. 

I ate it with bated breath...

And it's fine! Oatflakes, banana and cocoa powder. Magic! Cook with water. Add a little milk for a splendid start to the day!

That set us thinking. The place which Marmite holds in the British soul, Nutella occupies in the French. Excepting, of course, that EVERYBODY loves it.

However, take one look at the ingredients in Nutella and you'll quickly see that a large proportion is sugar.

Now we have for some time been preparing our own peanut butter by blitzing the living daylights out of roast salted peanuts. Give 'em enough time and violence and the peanut butter is mighty fine. Works for cashews, too, and cashew butter is exquisitely sweet.

I added cocoa powder to the peanuts before marmalising them. 

The result? 

Beautifully chocolatey peanut chocolate spread. 

And not a trace of added sugar. 

Just roast salted peanuts and cocoa. Magic!

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