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It's a dessert in a mug -- so you basically mix up your ingredients, microwave it, add
a single serving dessert. So you're craving some chocolate, you don't have to bake a giant
cake and have it sitting there tempting you.
So this is an awesome recipe, and Geremy is going to add some pear to it as well.
Pears, apples -- they go fantastic with chocolate. Especially pear. I love pear and chocolate
-- the combination. It's a great way to add a little extra fibre in there, and you're
sweeting it up naturally as well so you don't have to add as much sugar to it.
So this is a really cool recipe -- very simple, and everything is done in your mug. So little
mess which is fantastic.
So we're going to start off with a quarter cup of flour, chestnut flower -- but you can
use any flour. This is a gluten free flour -- there's no gluten in this. You can use
chickpea flour, spelt flour, which does have gluten but it's a little healthier for you.
Whole wheat flour would be great if you wanted to cut down on the fibre.
I chose chestnut flour because it is gluten free, but also chestnuts and chocolate are
another thing that works really well. It tastes fantastic.
If you are looking for chestnut flower, you can find it at health food stores, St. Lawrence
market in the basement there.
So a ΒΌ cup goes in, I've got about 2 tbs of unsweetened coco powder.
If you haven't already check it out, we've done a class that was all about coco. And
all of its health benefits - there's some amazing recipes online that are sweet and
savory.
Geremy made a cocoa nib rub -- it was fantastic.
So coco has a lot of health benefits -- but I don't want the chocolate fans to overdo
it with the chocolate, because a lot of the research has only been done in short term
studies -- so the long-term effects aren't known.
But there is some promising research that having chocolate or coco should be part of
your regular diet. It can help prevent diabetes, it can help to keep you thinner longer -- which
was an interesting one.
So when you're using the coco rather than melting chocolate, that's good too from a
calorie and a fat control standpoint. But if you are choosing chocolate bars, make sure
you go for at least the 65% coco or higher to get the health benefits from it.
I'm also adding some ground cardamom as well -- which I like with chocolate and pear, it
goes really nice together. You can also mix in some cinnamon, nutmeg.
So we're stirring up the dry ingredients first, then we're going to add our wet ingredients.
So a little bit of grape seed oil, a neutral oil, 3 tbs of milk or water, and that's it.
Mix that up again just until it combines together -- get all those floury lumps out.
Like Christie said, these desserts have become very popular -- and dangerous at the same
time.
Then we add the grated pear.
The great thing about pears is we don't often think of them as one of the antioxidant superstars
-- we think about the brightly coloured berries.
But pears are being studied for some of their polyphenols and flavonoids which are the plant
chemicals which have been shown to improve insulin sensitivity of your cells.
So when your cells are more insulin sensitive, that means your pancreas doesn't have to pump
out as much insulin.
So insulin levels are much lower in your blood, which is a very good thing for type 2 diabetes.
And there's also research underway right now looking at the link between high insulin levels
and breast cancer as well. So keeping your insulin levels low is important for diabetes,
and also to prevent obesity.
Very exciting! And I'm glad Geremy used the skin -- we always talk about using the skin
on your fruits and vegetables as much as possible because they usually contain their own type
of nutrients.
The skin of the pair contains cinnamic acids, which have been shown to have health benefits
in cell and animal studies, so no studies in humans yet.
But they've basically been shown to improve blood pressure. Very interesting research
coming out about pears.
So that's it -- you stir it up, stir the pear in there, into the microwave. Depending on
the microwave it should take about a minute to a minute and a half and it's done.
If you don't have a microwave, you can do this in the oven as well. It comes out a little
different, but I find 3750F for about 10 minutes, it does it pretty close to the same thing.
Another thing about the pears that I forgot to mention -- is there's some research showing
that they may help to prevent certain types of cancer. So there's studies looking at stomach
cancer, showing that people who ate pears regularly had lower risk, and there was another
larger population study that was looking at the risk of all types of cancers and looking
at all types of foods that were in the diet.
They found an association between those that ate pears and apples regularly and a lower
risk of esophageal cancer. So really exciting research about the cancer preventing effects
of these fruits.
This is our browine, chocolate brownie, and you can see -- it's nice and fluffy, a little
bit gooey.
If you wanted it a little more dense, you can put it in a little longer. I like that
kind of "molteney" chocolate underneath.
It's good as is -- but a la mode is much better. With the frozen greek yogurt.
The frozen greek yogurt is a newer trend -- and the cool thing about it, is that you're getting
some protein in your dessert which doesn't often happen. And what that does, when you're
taking in some sugar along with protein, it keeps your blood sugar more stable. Which
is good for a whole number of reasons.
You don't want your blood sugar going up and down and "yo-yoing" because then you'll feel
tired, you'll feel cranky, and most people tend to over eat when that happens.
So that's your quick and easy pear mug brownie!