The Nourishing Gourmet

Nourishing. Satisfying. Gourmet.

Coconut Milk

A Fix for Seized Chocolate: Fudge Sauce

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(Pennywise Platter is live! Add your thoughts and recipes).

The other day I wasn’t careful. I was melting chocolate (5 ounces in fact) for a project and it seized. Chocolate will seize if it’s exposed to water or any type of liquid while it is melting. I was left with grainy, unattractive and unusable chocolate…..or was I? I did a quick google search and found that you can make your grainy seized chocolate into a smooth chocolate sauce. I thought it was worth a try. It worked! This chocolate fudge sauce is seriously delicious, it really is. Probably one of the best chocolate sauces I’ve ever made. And there wasn’t a trace of graininess to the sauce, it was lusciously smooth.

If you ever have chocolate seize, may I suggest a better solution than throwing it away? Make it into fudge sauce! You can use it with many types of desserts. I hate to waste food (it’s just not frugal), so this was the perfect solution. Since I had my vanilla coconut milk ice cream on hand, I served it generously poured over it. Absolutely, most definitely, delicious. I don’t have a recipe for you since I was eye balling it the entire time. But I will give you the process so that you to can make your own fudge sauce out of seized chocolate.

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Chocolate Milk “Frappé” (Honey Sweetened and Dairy Free)

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chocolatemilkfrappe
Today is the last day to sign up for the stainless steel pizza pan giveaway!

It was the middle of the afternoon and I was starting to drag. I felt like I either needed to take a nap or have a snack. I choose to have a snack ( so much more fun than sleeping!). I wanted something that was refreshing and chocolate. I thought about just having plain chocolate milk, but it didn’t seem refreshing enough. So I decided to add a bit of ice and blend it up into a mock “frappé” chocolate milk for a very cold and delicious treat for a hot afternoon. Yum! This is a very chocoately, slightly sweet, icy treat. I sweetened it with honey and used coconut milk for a dairy free treat, but you could certainly use whole milk instead of the coconut milk and water combo.

A simple yet great afternoon pick me up!

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Rich, Dark Hot Cocoa (Dairy and Refined Sugar Free)

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hotcocoa
I’ve had a sudden fixation on dark chocolate. Long time readers here will know that I’ve always loved chocolate but I’ve been going weeks on end without having chocolate. Well, no longer. To satisfy my chocolate tooth, I started turning to hot cocoa. This version is dark, creamy, and delicious. I find it a perfect treat to have mid-afternoon (or an almost mid-night snack, which we did last night). And it’s pretty guilt free too, sweetened with a drizzle of maple syrup, full of the healthy fats from the coconut milk and unsweetened cocoa powder too.

Chocolate (without all of the yucky other ingredients added to it in most candy bars) is actually considered a very healthy food by many. Like cranberries, apples, onions, tea and red wine, chocolate is loaded with flavonoids. According to The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth by Jonny Bowden
, the particular flaonoids called flavanols found in chocolate “prevent fatlike stubstances in the bloodstream from clogging the arteries. When you reduce the blood’s ability to clot, you also reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke.” The author also mentions that chocolate is high in magnesium (which, by the way, is why many crave chocolate when they are low in magnesium). I’ve also read of several studies connecting chocolate to a healthy blood pressure.

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Mango Orange Smoothie

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smoothie

It’s been quite cold here recently, even cold enough to freeze our chickens water dish! But yet I still find myself making smoothies (and perhaps adding a layer or two of warmth with a jacket or sweater while I indulge myself). This smoothie is so very delicious that I could drink it everyday! Coconut milk is blended with bananas, oranges and mango- an incredible mix of flavors. My husband made this up for us the other night and I told him that we needed to take a picture of it to put on my blog because it’s so good!

It’s pretty sweet just from the fruit. In fact I think that this could easy qualify as a dessert. It’s also a great smoothie for this time of year because oranges are in season right now (and so holiday-ish) and mangos are in season on the other side of the world (this is when buying local isn’t an option).

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