Our NQN Cocolo Organic Fairtrade competition was a huge success! Not surprisingly, it seems that everyone loves their Cocolo

Our winners are:

Karyn R. from QLD

Karina W. from NSW

Anna G. from QLD

Your chocolates are on their way to you now!

Look out for our new competition starting in a few day’s time

Love,

NQN

xxx

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I know, most of us are still in our first few weeks of our New Year’s Resolutions and even so, enthusiasm is waning. Eating healthily shouldn’t be a burden but it sometimes is, especially when confronted with delicious food. A friend asked me to make her some muffins, low in fat and high in fibre for she was absolutely gung ho about her NY resolution to lose some kgs.  I humoured her for a while thinking that it would pass but when she kept asking me I realised that she was serious. This New Year’s Resolution was going to stay, however unwelcome it was.

I had made low-fat items before and I knew the best way to reduce oils was with apples or apple sauce. With the fibre I could have added some All Bran but I never have any in the cupboard as I think it tastes only marginally better than the cardboard box it comes in. Then I remembered I was sent a bottle of Fibresure along with a Donna Hay Cupcake kit and a baking tray. Aha by George I think I had my recipe! This recipe is adapted from Jessica Seinfeld’s Deceptively Delicious book in which she suggests ways of incorporating vegetables into dishes. This one has pureed carrot in it although you could substitute it for pureed squash or leave it out altogether as the Fibresure ensures that there’s plenty of fibre adding 20 grams of fibre.

I won’t lie, these aren’t exactly like regular muffins, I don’t think it’s possible to make them with that crumbly, buttery texture without a lot of butter and oil but they’re not bad, especially with the buttery, sweet streusel topping. It all depends on your expectation too. I had friends baulk at the Jessica Seinfeld Spinach brownies only because they had expected a chocolatey, gooey brownie which of course you’ll never get unless you add a lot of butter, sugar and eggs. But if you want something healthy that taste good and wholesome these will definitely satisfy a sugar craving.

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I know someone that is a huge traveler. She has a passport stamped with virtually every country on earth save Antarctica and she will not stop. Her travels are often borne from the search for food specific to the region or country with just one disastrous attempt to find Kobe beef in Kobe. When she was visiting me in Japan, she didn’t realise that Kobe beef was indeed available at my local Tokyo Supermarket so she traveled to Kobe and wasn’t able to find any Kobe beef. To add insult to injury, she ended up defeated, at McDonalds eating a Chicken burger. I’ve told her many a time that if she’d just stop traveling for a second, she’d be able to write a blog about her eating adventures but she cites a short attention span as preventing this.

After one trip to South America she brought back a treasure trove of goodies, including dulce de leche cookies. My oh my, these are things of beauty. I forgot all pretense of eating a couple of  dainty cookies and polished off a whole layer of the box.  If I see Dulce de Leche flavoured anything on the menu I’ll order it, mainly because it’s not really widely available or known here. For those of you unfamiliar with it, I urge you to become instantly familiar, indeed downright intimate with it. It’s a gorgeous caramelised milky syrupy jam. Like the most gorgeous caramel you can use it in biscuits, cakes, ice cream or on toast for something different.

For me, I set about making some pots of this for Christmas presents. I wanted friends to try something that they may not have had before. And Christmas time seems to be the time when diets and restrictive eating goes out the window. And yes I know what you’re going to ask next: it is wonderful by the spoonful from the jar. It is essentially like the Caramel Top N Fill but what is the fun in buying it when you can make it and infuse it with your own flavours.

This version is for the forgetful, clumsy or prone to drama who are scared of boiling the cans for several hours at a risk of the cans exploding. I am one of them, fearful of having caramel coating all kitchen surfaces. My husband told me a story of being on a boat sailing and one of his friends cooked frankfurts in a pressure cooker and the skin of one got stuck in the hole and the whole pressure cooker exploded. One gentleman got a sausage in his ear and over the next few weeks they kept finding bits of frankfurt all over the boat. I’d like to avoid this fate, especially where caramel is concerned.

And when I saw fellow blogger’s Angela’s milk ice cream with Dulce De Leche on it I knew I had to whip up some to go with it so in the way she approached it as a milk ice cream with some Dulce de leche on top, I approached it the reverse way as some Dulce de Leche with some milk ice cream. Brilliant minds think alike or so I like to think

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