Usually I'm not a fan of the whole healthy baking trend. Low fat or low sugar, they just never taste right and to me they take away the enjoyment of tucking into that delicious and ever so naughty baked goodie.
Last month I was sent a copy of Mich Turner's new book, Have Your Cake and Eat It and to be honest I was pretty sceptical on the whole concept of the book. Curiosity though got the better of me and I decided to try out a recipe to see if for once I could have a bit more success with healthy baking.
The book makes for quite an interesting read as not only is it divided up into your typical chapters of Muffins/Biscuits/Cakes etc but it has a whole chapter devoted to ingredients explaining the myths behind good and bad fats, different types of sugar and even what goes in to the chocolate that we eat. Did you know the lower the cocoa content the greater the sugar and added fat will be a lessened nutritional benefit, i.e. dark chocolate is best and white chocolate (which I adore) is the worst type of chocolate you can eat.
When I was flicking through the book there were loads of delicious recipes but one downside I found was that many of them contained nuts. Now I absolutely hate nuts, the smell alone makes me want to heave and peanuts in particular are the spawn of the devil - ick!!
One recipe though that did catch my eye was this chocolate coconut shortbread (is a coconut an actual nut though?) so I decided to give it a go.
I'll be honest here, when I saw the recipe had wholemeal flour in it I wasn't holding out hope for it to be a success and when I first took it out of the oven I was convinced it was for the bin but in actual fact it tasted great. You couldn't tell it had wholemeal flour in it at all and I found myself going back for a second slice. I got Tom and my bestie to try them and they both really liked them. Tom enjoyed them so much he took the rest of them in to work the following day for a departmental meeting.
Chocolate Coconut Shortbread
300g unsalted butter
40g cocoa
300g wholemeal flour
210g soft light brown sugar
3 tsp baking powder
150g desiccated coconut
175lm double cream
150g dark chocolate
Preheat the oven to 180C (fan)
Grease and line a 30 x 20cm cake tin
Melt the butter and stir in the cocoa
Remove from the heat and stir in the sugar, flour, baking powder and coconut. The mixture gets quite stiff at this point but keep stirring and it will eventually come together.
Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes until it is coming away from the tin.
To make the ganache heat the cream until warm not hot and stir in the chocolate until melted.
Once the shortbread is baked set it on a wire rack to cool then pour over the ganache and pop in the fridge to cool.
Once the ganache has set, cut up and enjoy!
