Valentine's Day Outing

Any excuse will do for a chocolate event, so why not visit the new Chocolate Museum? Pick up some artisan bars and make a day of it!

Waitrose chocolate brownies

I'm making this recipe. Lessons learned so far:

1. The new blender has very touchy buttons. It's best to turn off the power before trying to wrest the jug from the base.
2. Blending with the lid off, even for short periods, results in walnuts everywhere. Twice.
3. Beating by hand makes me too tired to do the dishes while the mix is in the oven. On the other hand, this means the attempt will be recorded officially for posterity!
4. 2 small rounds cake-tins are not always a good substitute for a large rectangular cake-tin.
5. Kitchen scales are *cool*.

In about 30 minutes, I'll take a look to see how they turn out!

If only they'd given me chocolate before math in high school!

According to a report in Confectionary News,

"researchers at the UK's Northumbria university found the high level of cocoa flavanols anchored in chocolate improved cognitive performance in arithmatic tests. "

“Foods containing high levels of cocoa flavanols, found in chocolate, have been shown to increase cerebral blood flow, and...."

blah, blah, blah, some other stuff,

said Crystal Haskell at the Brain, Performance and Nutrition Research centre at Northumbria university,

Obviously my deficiency in flavanols explains why I am drinking so much cocoa these days.

I was particularly delighted by this paragraph:

Commenting on the findings Professor David Kennedy from Northumbria university added: “The results presented in the symposium show that medicinal herbal extracts and plant-derived chemical compounds from common foodstuffs can also improve cognitive performance and mood.”

They're just figuring this out now?

Flavanol-rich chocolate drink helps maths performance