Celebrate World Chocolate Day

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World Chocolate Day, also known as International Chocolate Day, is here once again on 7th July and it is a great reason to ditch your healthy eating plan and enjoy the good stuff, guilt free.

With so many bars and brands out there, just where do you start when it comes to chocolate?

‘I love nothing more than a Double Decker and quite like Rolos too.”
Jane

“I love dark chocolate and have a couple of squares everyday.”
Danni

“For me it’s chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce.”
Vicky

“I wish I could stop at one chocolate but no, I can eat an entire tray of Thornton’s in one go.”
Annie

Whilst you can go out and buy a Mars Bar, Twix and family bag of Maltesers to enjoy on 7th July, why not make this amazing fool-proof chocolate cake that is bang on the cocoa money.

For one delicious cake you will need:
225g of plain flour
350g of caster sugar
85g of cocoa powder
2 teaspoons of good quality vanilla extract
1½ teaspoons of baking powder and the same of bicarbonate of soda
2 large free-range eggs
125 ml of vegetable oil
250 ml of full fat milk
250 ml of boiling water
For the top of the cake you will need
200g of good quality, dark chocolate
200 ml of double cream
1 large bag of Minstrels or similar

In preparation for baking, wash your hands then preheat your oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4 then grease and line two 20cm sandwich tins.

To start making your cake, put all the ingredients, except the water, into a mixing bowl and beat the mixture until smooth and lump free. You can do this using a wooden spoon or an electric whisk.
Next add the boiling water a little at a time, until you have a smooth liquid – don’t worry this is how it is meant to be.

Divide the mix in two and pour into the sandwich tins and bake for around 30 minutes, or until the top of the cakes are firm to the touch and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

When ready, take the cakes out of the over and allow them to cool on a rack before you add the icing.

To make the icing, you will need to put the chocolate and cream in a pan and let them melt over a very low heat. Once they have melted, take away from the heat and whisk the mixture until it is smooth and thick then cover and let it rest for around an hour.

When ready, spread the icing onto the base of one cake, add the second cake then ice the top with the reminder of the mixture.

You can then get creative and add an extra chocolate hit with the Minstrels or sweets of your choice.

Serve as it comes or with ice cream and enjoy!

Team Pure Beauty

The good news about chocolate

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antioxidants, bad news, beauty routine, blood flow, blood sugar, brain, British Medical Journal, calories, chocolate, chocolate cake, circulation, cocoa, control your weight, Dr. Will Clower, Easter bunny, eatend, eggs, expectant mothers, Facebook, fat, Finland, good stuff, goodness, green tea, guilty, happy pills, Harvard Medical School, heart, hormones, insulin sensitivity, iron, KitKat, levels, lower blood-glucose levels, Mars bar, meal, memory decline, mini eggs, mugs, non-chocolate-eating parents, potassium, protect, RDA, researchers, scientists, selenium, sugar, Sun cream, sun damage, treat, trigger, two, win, zinc

The Easter bunny might be long gone, but it could be that you still have some chocolate eggs hanging around waiting to be eaten. Or not!

If you have and you are feeling guilty about finishing it off, we are here to tell you not to.

We have it from the powers that be, that chocolate is good for you.

Now, we aren’t talking about cramming down a family bag of mini eggs followed by a KitKat chaser, but as with most things, eating it in moderation doesn’t hurt.

It would seem that good quality, dark chocolate with a cocoa percentage of around 70% or more, can be good for the heart, circulation and brain, and could be beneficial for managing conditions such as obesity and diabetes.

Dark chocolate is full of health boosting minerals including potassium, zinc and selenium, and a 100g bar of the really good stuff provides 67 per cent of the RDA of iron – great for anyone looking to boost their iron intake!

Blood sugar levels are tricky to control but eating a square or two of dark chocolate can help maintain healthy levels of insulin sensitivity and turn this helps to lower blood-glucose levels. Win, win.

Research published in the British Medical Journal has suggested that eating a little dark chocolate could help lower the risk of developing heart disease by one-third, and that’s got to be worth considering?

Eating an entire chocolate cake with a side of Mars Bar isn’t going to help your waistline but, a little can help control your weight. The scientist, Dr. Will Clower, believes a small square of good chocolate melted on the tongue 20 minutes before eating a main meal triggers the hormones in the brain that says you are full. so you eat less. Think about it and finishing a meal with the treat and trigger could reduce subsequent snacking.

Apparently one mug of cocoa (using pure cocoa powder) has double the antioxidants of green tea and we think it tastes way better too. It is also worth noting that two mugs of cocoa may help keep the brain healthy and prevent memory decline, thanks to better blood flow. That’s according to scientists at Harvard Medical School, so it must be true.

Dark chocolate is jam-packed with the helpful flavonols that help to protect your skin against sun damage. You still need to layer on the sun cream but good to know that evening snack is helping your beauty routine.

Forget happy pills, if you want to feel good a little chocolate will boost your levels of dopamine, a natural painkiller, and serotonin, which produces feelings of pleasure. Eat up and feel the love.

We believe researchers in Finland found that chocolate reduced stress in expectant mothers, and that the babies of those mothers smiled more often than the offspring of non-chocolate-eating parents. Watch out for those new baby photos on Facebook to see who is snacking on chocolate.

The bad news! Yes, you know you couldn’t have it all. Sorry. However much goodness is packed onto a bar of chocolate, it is still pretty high in calories, fat and sugar – so make sure you eat in moderation if you want the good to outweigh the bad.

Team Pure Beauty