What I ate: 05-06-12

My mother has been buying these cocoa coated almonds at Sams Club and they are really addictive. On this particular day I was wondering if I could make my own so I coated a bunch of almonds with cocoa and put them in the oven to roast.

I didn't add any sweetener and so they really tasted nothing like the store bought ones though. Of course then I looked it up online and found that lots of people have tried making their own version of these and pretty much everyone uses a sweetener of some kind. I was trying to be brave and healthy and go without it, but it just wasn't very easy to eat them that way so after roasting them I caved a coated them lightly with maple syrup. This made them better, but extremely messy. Yet another "Julie Surprise" where I'm the only one who seems willing to eat it. :P

Here's a recipe I found later on pinterest that I should have used. Maybe I'll try again sometime.
The only real difference here (besides the order of ingredients) is that her recipe includes flour. I'm guessing this is to tone down the bitterness of the cocoa so it's not so strong. I wonder if I could find a good flour alternative that doesn't cost much. Hmmm . . .

What I Ate: 05-05-12

Sadly I have nothing amazing to show for cinco de mayo this past Spring, in fact I probably forgot about it since my daughter's birthday is the day before.

As such I had made my funny little five year old a special (and as healthy as possible) birthday cake for her fifth year celebration. I used a recipe called Hummingbird cake I found on Pinterest, which I decorated with dried pineapple flowers and edible pansies (and a plastic Tinkerbell of course.) I'll try to post some pictures up here soon so I can link to it.

Anyway, in the recipe online the blogger wrote about how the frosting turned out sparse so of course I doubled the recipe and the result was that I had about a cup of frosting leftover even after generously frosting the cake. So the next day I was looking at that extra frosting, trying to decide how best to use it and I recalled a blog I had read not to long before that in which an adorable expectant mother was always craving apple slices dipped in cream cheese frosting. I had apples on hand so I figured I might as well try it. 

It was pretty good, though my frosting was a little thick to make dipping very possible. I still think that caramel or peanut butter are a bit better. Of course the girl from the blog might have been using store bought frosting which would have tasted differently and was probably much softer. 

(No I did not eat all of that frosting in one day, or with apples--though I think I tried it one more time--it lasted weeks and I had to find other creative uses for it.)

I think I should note, when I made the hummingbird cake it was really good, but I had (or chose, in some cases) to make some substitutions. For example, I replaced the sugar with raw honey instead. I didn't have any pecans (sadly) so I put flake coconut in the frosting and I substituted part of the flour for oatmeal instead. My father-in-law who makes amazing cakes said he really liked the oatmeal in it, although he didn't know what it was at first. 

What I Ate: 04-03-12

On the morning of April 3, 2012, my girls were asking for eggs and toast for breakfast. We only had about two eggs left and so I wasn't sure how far that would go between the two of them. (let along their mom) Somehow in talking with them though, it occurred to me that I could make french toast and that would make the eggs go further. To my surprise my almost 5 year old asked, "What's french toast?" I was like, "Really? has it really been that long that you don't remember it?"  So I figured it was high time I made some again.
When I was a kid my mom always let us put powdered sugar on our french toast even in addition to the sugary jam or syrup. I have powdered sugar (possibly from my grocery shower seven years ago? o.O) but since we've been trying to cut out processed foods I hadn't touched it in forever. That particular morning though, I was feeling a bit nostalgic and decided to let the girls try some along with their organic butter and real maple syrup. Just for the experience. (I know, it seems a little backwards to give a child organic breakfast with powdered sugar on top.)
After two happily sugared up children left the table to go play, it was Mommy's turn for breakfast. We had one remaining slice of organic nine grain bread and barely enough egg mixture to just coat it, but I made it anyway and when it came to topping it I almost caved into the nostalgia of powdered sugar, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it, so I gritted my teeth and stowed it back in the pantry during which process my eyes fell on the container of pure cocoa powder and I had a little eureka.

Oh, my goodness! I was soooo goood!  After I took these pics and started cutting into my french toast the cocoa began to blend with the maple syrup and basically turned to chocolate syrup. Yet, not at all resembling the nasty plastic-squeeze bottle junk you can buy in the store. It was rich a sweet but wholesome tasting too. I'm so glad I discovered this trick!
I have since experimented with making chocolate syrup using those two ingredients and it works really well, only you have to expect it to be a bit thinner than the store bought version because when I used enough cocoa to make it thick it was a bit too strong, even for someone like me who loves really dark chocolate.