http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=africa-grows-too-hot-to-grow-chocolate
Climate change may be disrupting the cocoa farms of West Africa
Tag Archives: chocolate
Arjen’s Chilli Chocolate Shortbread
Ingredients
- 250g baking butter (variety with salt and cream), softened
- 2/3 cup icing sugar
- 2 cups plain flour
- 1 cup gluten free flour (contains tapioca as well as rice flour), this will create a nicer texture compared to the usual plain rice flour!
- 1 tbsp cacao
- 1 tsp chilli powder
Instructions
- Mix all ingredients together until the texture of the mixture resembles breadcrumbs – food-processor or hand-held electric mixer work best.
- Form dough by pressing together.
- Roll a decent chunk of the dough out on board dusted lightly with flour (approx 5mm thick, but more will work fine too although it may affect baking time).
- Cut out shapes, transfer to baking tray(s) also lightly dusted with flour. Works best if you grab the off-cuts from the outside rather than from the side of the shapes.
- Recycle off-cuts (via step 2) until all dough used.
- Bake at 160’C for about 30 minutes. Cookies should be dry and firm but not gone dark.
- Cool on wire rack.
- Keep in a metal cookie tin to keep fresh – although I’m quite sure they won’t last very long ;-)
Notes
- Quantity: number of cookies of course depends entirely on shape, size and thickness.
- Vegan: use vegetable based butter (such as Nuttelex) – you may need to add a pinch of salt.
- Gluten-free: substitute the regular flour with same amount of gluten free flour.
- Recipe neatly in line with Arjen & Stewart’s essential food groups ;-)
- Best not nibble the dough, uncooked tapioca (cassava) contains toxins. It’s fairly dry anyway, so quite unlike cake mix it won’t really stick to the processing equipment. Just bake and enjoy!
This recipe is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Alternative Food Groups
A few years ago, my good friend Stewart Smith (a vegan) and I (omnivore at the time, now vegetarian) came up with an alternative to the traditional food pyramid for balanced eating, visualised here for the first time:
We both love food, and we figured that regardless of whether you eat meat or follow other dietary needs/choices, you will choose foods based on essentials like flavour and texture, and that’s what these groups provide.
Fat is key factor in food texture, sugar provides flavour whereas salt is an essential flavour enhancer (in moderation – you know you can even add a tiny bit of salt to hot chocolate/cocao to bring out the flavour?)
Stimulants (caffeine, alcohol) are not essential but do deliver a nice extra aspect to flavour, and chocolate (more accurately, cacao) can be regarded as a wildcard (depending on the purity, containing fat and sugar as well).
Still doubtful? Name me a food that does not contain one or more of the above, and what you think about it? Some food and drinks covers all groups – and aren’t they awesome!