Hazelnut brownies and my war against 'diets'

This is sort of a rant post. Why? Because I'm really sick of hearing about the newest diet that comes out every other year. The Atkins diet, the pineapple diet, the juice cleansing and the latest and most annoying, Paleolithic diet. I will say this right now, before I go on my rant. I am not a nutritionist, I am not a doctor and I have no health training other than reading literature about the chemistry of the human body.

I do however, have a good friend who is a nutritionist. I have commented with her that I am most certainly against these miracle diets that make you lose weight by eliminating a food group from your diet completely. She agrees. Now, don't take me wrong. If you're vegetarian or vegan and you have moral issues with eating certain foods, I get it. What I don't get is this idea that we should eat like the paleolithic man. Who by the way, wasn't even the same species of human we are.

Turns out that during the Paleolithic era, humans evolved from Homo Erectus, to the neanderthals and then to Homo Sapiens. Part of the human evolution was diet based. We introduced more foods to our diets and that allowed us to migrate to new regions and survive in periods of the year with less animals (meat) around. Turns out there are about 2000 years of Paleolithic history where humans started agriculture.

But wait, there's more. The paleo diet wants you to eat like a species of human that was LESS evolved than us. Had less brain capacity and shorter life expectancy. Seriously? am I the only one who finds this utterly ridiculous?

Anyway, I just don't believe in diets. I have tried them all. The Atkins, which gave me terrible results and meant I had to test my urine for compounds that in excess could be very detrimental to me. Does that sound good to you? The dissociated diet, so not mixing certain food groups with others. And so on and so forth. The result? none of them work. They all made me hungry, cranky and I didn't lose all that much weight.

You are obviously all free to do whatever you like with your body. I personally stick to eating low processed foods, local farm raised and grass fed animals (in a much lower proportion than veggies and grains) and no junk food. In combination with exercise, about 5 times a week, the result is 24 lbs lost in less than a year. I am not hungry, I am not cranky, I eat brownies, muffins, candy and whatever the hell I want. In moderation. I love carbs, I love grains and legumes. And I'm personally not about to give up any of that for a funky fad diet. I feel better than I have felt in my entire adult life.

That's my motto folks. Eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full. Exercise. If you want to control your candy/pastry intake, you can establish a rule. When it comes to baked goods, you pretty much don't eat anything you don't bake yourself.

One of my recent food changes has been to use only pure cane sugar. No refined sugar, just raw, turbinado, call it whatever you want. In my opinion, it tastes much better and the texture it gives to baked goods (and oatmeal) is much more interesting. Crunchy and with more depth of flavor. So when Madeleine at Zulka offered me to review their non-processed sugar, I was happy to do so. These brownies were made with their sugar and they have a slight crunch and almost a molasses flavor. As a disclaimer, I'll warn you that I didn't get any monetary compensation for reviewing this product. I got it for free, I tried it, I liked it and I'm letting you know about it. Pure cane sugar is the only one I've used for a few months now and Zulka is available at all major grocery stores. (Oh, the zip closure is a plus for clumsy people like me).

As I said before, I'm no doctor. I'm just offering my personal experience as a person who has struggled to lose weight her entire adult life and has managed to do so without going into radical diets. That's my five cents. And here's the recipe for hazelnut brownies. They taste almost like the hazelnut/chocolate spread you find at the store. But without all the junk. Enjoy!

Hazelnut brownies
adapted slightly from Alice Medrich

1 stick of butter
1/2 cup Zulka, or any other turbinado sugar
3/4 cup dutch processed cocoa powder
2 large eggs
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup hazelnuts, chopped, plus a few for decorating

Preheat your oven to 350 F
Over a boiling water bath, melt the butter along with the sugar and cocoa powder until you have a thick but runny mixture (2nd photo). Remove the mixture from the heat and add two beaten eggs while whisking to prevent any curdling. Add the flour and hazelnuts and mix gently with a spatula. Do not overmix or the brownies will be tough. Pour the batter in a pan lined with parchment paper or aluminum foil. If desired, decorate with a few whole hazelnuts. Bake for 20-30 min until a knife inserted in the brownies comes out clean. Let the brownies cool before slicing. These freeze really well.

Homemade Longhorns/Turtles and a trip to Texas

This post is certainly long long long overdue. But such is the life of a grad student. 

Over Christmas break I had the pleasure (not kissing ass here) to meet my boyfriend's family. I could try to find something to complain about regarding the trip, but it would be quite hard. It's difficult to remember a week so filled of cooking, eating, talking, laughing and just relaxing. 

The boy's family is all about food when it comes to the holidays. As such, we spent about 11 hrs making cookies two days before Christmas. Now this might sound like a nightmare to you. But I got to use a giant kitchen with a kitchenaid and so many baking supplies you'd think you're at some fancy store. There was a batch of sugar cookies, a batch of gingerbread men and women, big and small, chocolate chip cookies and chocolate mint cookies. I made dough and formed into balls. The boy rolled the sugar cookies and gingerfolks. All said and done, it was 1 AM and there were more cookies I've seen together in my life. 

Come to think of it, it might be all because the boy is from Texas. And everything is bigger in Texas, right?. Oh well, those stereotypes that I've come to realize are so incredibly not true in a lot of ways. 

Anyway, the day before Christmas we made pies. Pecan pie, chocolate pecan pie, pumpkin pie and cherry pie. On Xmas eve we watched 'A Christmas Story'. (I fell in love with the movie, btw) and prepped some food for the day of. While eating, of course. Stuffed mushrooms, some homemade dips, veggies and other snack-y things. The list of Xmas food is gonna sound ridiculous to you. And it might be ridiculous. But there were a lot of hungry people expecting to eat all their favorite things. There was turkey, of course, along with lots of appetizers, cornbread stuffing (amazing), potato salad, broccoli salad, roasted ham and homemade cranberry sauce. I'm sure I forgot something but you get the idea. 

Christmas was full of food even when it came to gifts. I got a box of Longhorns. What are longhorns? Same thing as turtles but better. Delicious Texas pecans covered in chocolate and caramel. The box made it to Oregon but didn't survive the week after  being opened. So for Valentine's day I decided to make some more longhorns. With dark chocolate, pecans from our friend's tree and homemade caramel. Here's the recipe. 

Homemade longhorns

6 oz chocolate

1 cup pecans roughly chopped

1/2 cup homemade caramel sauce (recipe follows)

Melt about 80% of the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over boiling water. Once it is all melted, add the rest of the chocolate and check the temperature. You're looking for a temperature of 90F in order to ensure the chocolate has been tempered. This step is optional but it ensures that the chocolate will be nice and shiny as opposed to opaque and gritty once it dries. 

Pour enough of the melted chocolate in a mold of your choice to cover the bottom. I used a peanut butter cup mold that makes chocolates of a reasonably small size. You can also try free-hand longhorns and do the whole process in parchment paper. In that case, pour a small amount of chocolate in a rounded shape over parchment paper. 

Once the chocolate is set, add the chopped pecans in each mold

 Now add the homemade caramel sauce on top of the pecans. In order for it to be runny it'll have to be slightly warm. This could potentially melt the chocolate but I had no problems with it. If you're afraid this could happen, place the mold with the chocolate in the fridge before adding the caramel. 

Finally, cover the tops with more melted chocolate and let it all set for at least an hour. And you'll have this!

Oh and here's the recipe for the homemade caramel

Homemade caramel sauce

1 1/2 cups water

1 cup sugar

1 cup heavy cream 

Pour the water and sugar in a pot and heat at medium heat until it boils. DO NOT STIR. This is very important. If you stir, you'll evaporate the water before the sugar cooks and will end up with a white goopy paste that doesn't look like caramel. You are aiming to slowly caramelize the sugar (Grignard reaction, for the nerds out there). Let the water evaporate and the sugar cook and do not walk away from it or it'll burn. You can do this without adding water, but this way, the process is slower and the risk of burning it is lower. Once the sugar acquires an amber color, it is ready for you to pour the heavy cream. Now, there's very many tones of amber, you're aiming for something that looks like honey. Once you get to this stage, remove the pot from the stove and add the heavy cream. Do not panic if all the sudden you have a solid blob of caramel surrounded by liquid. And be careful not to splash yourselves with hot caramel. Once you've added the heavy cream, put the pot back in the stove and stir with a whisk until you have an homogeneous mixture. Basically, until the cooked sugar dissolves. You can cook the sauce as little or as much as you want, depending on how thick you want it. Take in account that it'll become thicker when it cools down. Pour in jars and store in the fridge for 2 weeks or the freezer for months.