I’ve written quite a few posts about having a baby, but not much about feeding one. Luckily whether I’m feeding myself or my daughter, it works out to pretty much the same menu – so don’t worry, this is not about to turn into a baby food blog! I have a very straightforward approach to to healthy eating.
I was making brownies the other day and I got halfway through the recipe before realising I had no cacao powder. I did, however, have cacao nibs, so I made a few hasty adjustments and came out with Accidental Blondies – brownies that aren’t brown, but in this case have chocolate flavour from the nibs and dark choc chips.
Sometimes I wish I had more of a sweet tooth. I realise that’s a strange thing to say. You see, I’m the savoury person who smugly says no thanks to chocolate, only to savage an entire family-size bag of chips the second no one is looking. The fact is, it’s easier to turn sweet recipes into healthy versions.
As we established in my last post, healthy cooking has been a rare occurrence in my house over the past 6 months. I thought about it a lot though. I thought, how nice would it be to have protein balls to snack on – while elbow deep in a bag of Niknaks.
Rocky Road is the stuff childhood dreams are made of. The crunchy biscuit surprise as you bite into the sticky chocolate square, the stringy marshmallow that stretches like melted cheese tightropes to your mouth. It’s hard to imagine a world where kids don’t get to experience this delight.
I’m getting lazy in my third trimester – baking seems like such an effort. I’m far more likely to reach for a bag of Tumbles than I am to break out the cacao and rustle up a healthy snack, but every now and then I rouse myself from my human-growing stupor and manage to bang something out.
I’ve just realised how long it’s been since I last posted. Getting ready for a baby is full on, let me tell you. We’ve spent most of September scouring online sources for good second hand deals (because why spend R10k on a pram when the baby’d be just as happy in a toy wagon?
It might seem like an oxymoron, using healthy and chocolate fondant in the same sentence, but once you get into the swing of it you can make almost any dessert healthy by substituting a few key ingredients. Before I give you the recipe, this is good to time talk about what makes a dessert healthy.
One of the earlier side effects of my pregnancy was an all-consuming, get-out-of-my-way-or-I will-kill-your-firstborn craving for sugar. I even ate random things that I don’t actually like, such as boiled sweets and lollipops (lollipops? Take me back to the late 90’s club scene with a pair of white gloves and a sweetie dummy).
I officially have a baby bump. It’s not very big and if you didn’t know, you could be forgiven for thinking I’d gone into a chocolate shop and come out packing. But it’s there, and my jeans are getting tight. It’s a weird sensation to eat lunch and feel three times as full as you should because your pants are like, dude hey, what’s with the crowding?
Every now and then, I make something that makes me feel like a rock star. Not because I rate it as off-the-charts amazing – I’ve learnt to contain my reactions to my own baking until I’ve tested it on a human guinea pig, so as to avoid potential humiliation when they shrug their shoulders in a mediocre ‘eh’.
What makes a pancake a pancake and thus not a flapjack? To answer this most divisive of questions, I turned to the most obvious source of validation in the 21st century – instagram. For what is collective social definition if not a hashtag?
I’ve written quite a few posts about having a baby, but not much about feeding one. Luckily whether I’m feeding myself or my daughter, it works out to pretty much the same menu – so don’t worry, this is not about to turn into a baby food blog! I have a very straightforward approach to to healthy eating.
I was making brownies the other day and I got halfway through the recipe before realising I had no cacao powder. I did, however, have cacao nibs, so I made a few hasty adjustments and came out with Accidental Blondies – brownies that aren’t brown, but in this case have chocolate flavour from the nibs and dark choc chips.
Sometimes I wish I had more of a sweet tooth. I realise that’s a strange thing to say. You see, I’m the savoury person who smugly says no thanks to chocolate, only to savage an entire family-size bag of chips the second no one is looking. The fact is, it’s easier to turn sweet recipes into healthy versions.
As we established in my last post, healthy cooking has been a rare occurrence in my house over the past 6 months. I thought about it a lot though. I thought, how nice would it be to have protein balls to snack on – while elbow deep in a bag of Niknaks.
Rocky Road is the stuff childhood dreams are made of. The crunchy biscuit surprise as you bite into the sticky chocolate square, the stringy marshmallow that stretches like melted cheese tightropes to your mouth. It’s hard to imagine a world where kids don’t get to experience this delight.
I’m getting lazy in my third trimester – baking seems like such an effort. I’m far more likely to reach for a bag of Tumbles than I am to break out the cacao and rustle up a healthy snack, but every now and then I rouse myself from my human-growing stupor and manage to bang something out.
I’ve just realised how long it’s been since I last posted. Getting ready for a baby is full on, let me tell you. We’ve spent most of September scouring online sources for good second hand deals (because why spend R10k on a pram when the baby’d be just as happy in a toy wagon?
It might seem like an oxymoron, using healthy and chocolate fondant in the same sentence, but once you get into the swing of it you can make almost any dessert healthy by substituting a few key ingredients. Before I give you the recipe, this is good to time talk about what makes a dessert healthy.
One of the earlier side effects of my pregnancy was an all-consuming, get-out-of-my-way-or-I will-kill-your-firstborn craving for sugar. I even ate random things that I don’t actually like, such as boiled sweets and lollipops (lollipops? Take me back to the late 90’s club scene with a pair of white gloves and a sweetie dummy).
I officially have a baby bump. It’s not very big and if you didn’t know, you could be forgiven for thinking I’d gone into a chocolate shop and come out packing. But it’s there, and my jeans are getting tight. It’s a weird sensation to eat lunch and feel three times as full as you should because your pants are like, dude hey, what’s with the crowding?
Every now and then, I make something that makes me feel like a rock star. Not because I rate it as off-the-charts amazing – I’ve learnt to contain my reactions to my own baking until I’ve tested it on a human guinea pig, so as to avoid potential humiliation when they shrug their shoulders in a mediocre ‘eh’.
What makes a pancake a pancake and thus not a flapjack? To answer this most divisive of questions, I turned to the most obvious source of validation in the 21st century – instagram. For what is collective social definition if not a hashtag?
