About Me

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Portugal
I am from Coimbra, Portugal, and am currently teaching in a school in Soure, about 30 km away from Coimbra. I have been a teacher of English for over 20 years and have already taught different levels and age groups. After all this time I can say I love working with adult groups because there are no coursebooks and I can create my own resources. I am an avid reader, a blogger and very curious about free tools and their implementation in the classroom.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Yummy ... Chocolate!

Source: darkchocolatehealthbenefits.org
Can you imagine life without chocolate???
At my place no one can and as far as I know it is not so bad...
Many scientific studies have already linked chocolate with health benefits which include:
  • decreased risk of stroke
  • cancer prevention
  • an increase blood flow to the brain thus helping performance and alertness.
  • improvement of certain brain functions of people facing, for instance: aging, sleep deprivation or fatigue
Of course all this also depends on the chocolate quality with all studies pointing out that dark chocolate is, by far, the best. That doesn't give us an excuse to eat chocolate by the pound! Moderate consumption - as everything in life.
Back to my place... at weekends (and only at weekends) I always bake at least a cake or prepare a dessert for family and guests. By this time, I'm sure you've already guessed my children's favourite: chocolate cake, chocolate cake with chopped walnuts, chocolate cake with chocolate chips...
Well, some days ago, I decided to try to do something slightly different with...chocolate and came up with chocolate muffins!
Here are the ingredients:
200 g all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
150 g sugar
120 g dark chocolate
50 g butter, melted
2 large eggs, beaten
1 teacup cream
150 g chocolate chips (or you can cut up a chocolate bar into chunks)
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water

Method:
Pre heat the oven at 220º. 
Grease each muffin cup thoroughly (or simply use paper-lined muffin cups).

In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, sugar and the melted chocolate with the 50g melted butter. Add eggs and cream and beat everything with the help of an electric blender. Add milk and water and mix. Finally, add some of the chocolate chips and mix again for a minute. Spoon mixture into prepared muffin cups, and add the remaining chocolate chips on top of each muffin.
Bake at 200º for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean :)
Cool for five minutes before removing from pans. YUMMY!!!
My kids loved them and you know what? My students also because I've already shared the recipe with them and one of the students tried it out and took the result to school. Here they are - Flavio's muffins:

They look great, don't they? I can assure you that they also tasted wonderfully! Congrats Flávio, keep on!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like very much chocolate, but teno to diet. I make the cake and eat only alitlle!!!!!! Ana Duarte.

LN said...

Life without chocolate?!?!? NOOO!... :D
Thanks for the recipe, I'll definitely try it!
xxx

Alexandra Duarte said...

I do like chocolate but sometimes, just like Ana, I don't even taste them...
Do try it, LN, and tell us about your experience. Have you got any recipes to share?

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