Tag: Sustainable

Panela & Cacao Nib Muffins

Post author By Kevin
Post date October 16, 2024
7 Comments on Panela & Cacao Nib Muffins

I’ve been keen to try out a new ingredient I discovered on my recent travels, while visiting Cornwall’s Eden Project.

Panela is a block of totally unrefined raw sugar cane. Produced in Colombia, it retains the good nutrients and vitamins that are naturally present, but usually screened out by the refining process. It is reported therefore to be a healthier alternative to even unrefined brown sugar. Used in baking, it adds a golden colour (see my main photo above) and natural caramel, or toffee, flavour.

Panela was featured in the Eden Project’s Rainforest Biome, as a good example of organic and sustainable, small scale farming in South America. It’s available to purchase in their shop, sourced (of course) from the original producers on fair trade terms (I’ve since found that it can also be purchased via the internet).

I decided to keep the rainforest theme going in these muffins, by combining it with organic cacao nibs bought from a local refillery. Bitter, chocolatey, crunchy and naturally low in sugar, cacao nibs come with their own good mix of nutrients.

It all makes these some of the healthiest muffins I’ve featured yet on A Different Kitchen. And they’re delicious.

Servings

Makes 12 muffins.

Timings

15 mins to prepare, 25 mins to bake at 160C in a fan oven.

You Will Need:

280g plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
100g grated panela
70g dried fruit
1 egg
150ml milk
90ml rapeseed oil
60g cacao nibs

Method

Switch on a fan oven to 160C. Prepare a muffin tin or mould.
Sieve the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Stir in the dried fruit so it is evenly coated in the flour.
Place another bowl on a weigh scale. Pick up the brick of panela and coarsely grate it into the bowl until you have around 100g. Add it to the flour. Originally I thought I would slice off a 100g piece, then grate it. However, the block of panela is so solid it is impenetrable by a knife!
In another bowl, crack the egg and mix it with the oil and milk.
When the oven has reached temperature, pour the egg mixture into the flour and combine. Spoon into the muffin tin or mould.
Finally, stud the cacao nibs into the surface of the muffins, pushing them down gently so they adhere to the mixture.
Place in the oven for 25 mins or until evenly browned.

Customise It!

If you are unable to source panela, then the best unrefined brown sugar you can find, such as muscovado, will do nicely. I included the soft dried fruit to complement the crunch of the cacao nibs and add interest to the texture. My choice was organic dried cranberries but you can use sultanas if you prefer.

Have you come across, or maybe even used, panela? I’ll be interested to hear in the comments.

Here’s a track from an album I’ve been rediscovering since returning from holiday. I really enjoyed The B-52s’ Cosmic Thing when it was first released, but haven’t played it in years. A few listens have reminded me how many brilliant tracks it contains. Here’s one of them: The B-52s with Roam.

Tags Baking, Blogging, Cacao, Eden Project, Fairtrade, Food, inspiration, Muffins, Panela, Photography, Recipes, Sustainable, Travel

Blog Mains

Return to Eden

Cornwall’s Eden Project really is a modern day wonder. Not only is it a great day out – it really makes you think.

Walking around this vast green and floral park on a sunny September day, it is difficult to believe that, until just a few years ago, this was an abandoned mining quarry, grey and ugly, ravaged by decades of underground metal extraction.

The transformation began in the 1990s, with an ambitious vision to turn it into a vast green oasis, showcasing plant life from all around the world, over a 30 acre site. I visited it soon after it opened in 2001, and found it very impressive.

On my current travels around Cornwall I was keen to return, to see how it was progressing. I’m pleased to report it is thriving and continues to be a very popular destination for visitors to Cornwall.

The central attraction is the Biomes – the huge, golf ball-shaped structures nestled in the centre of the valley. The first maintains a warm temperate, Mediterranean climate all year round. The second contains a fully grown rainforest, no less. Both are big enough to lose oneself in, and host mature, fully grown trees.

I enjoyed climbing the steps to the Lookout high up in the Rainforest Biome. It was very humid up there, and the steps did swing around a bit, but the views were great looking down over the whole of the rainforest.

These are more than just large scale greenhouses. The Eden Project is on a mission to highlight the modern day challenges to the natural world through climate change and human behaviour. They do a great job of taking complex subjects and explaining them in terms that are easy to understand.

Amongst the cacao and coffee trees in the Rainforest Biome, I learned how deforestation simultaneously reduces carbon safely stored in trees and underground, and increases the carbon in our atmosphere, thereby contributing to global warming. Deforestation is largely driven by economic pressures on producers, and countries like Costa Rica come in for praise for their efforts to combat these through sustainable reforestation. I learned that we can all do our bit to support them by choosing to buy Fair Trade coffee and chocolate, which I will now try to do.

I like the art that is scattered around the landscape, such as the Rites of Dionysus, Greek god of wine, in the Mediterranean Biome.

We came across this mirrored tree goddess high up in the outdoor gardens, just inside what used to be the rim of the quarry, now known as the Wild Edge.

The art carries a loose theme that cultural diversity is important, and that resource management is better led by local communities than big corporations.

We had lunch in the Biome Kitchen. All the ingredients used are seasonal and locally grown. Suppliers are all Cornwall-based businesses, like soft drinks from Jolly’s, and ice cream from Roskilly’s. Even the catering promotes a sustainable local economy.

My choice for lunch was this griddled flatbread, topped with white bean pate, leaves, marinated roasted vegetables, tomatoes, balsamic drizzle, herbs and toasted seeds.

The overall message from the Eden Project is one of hope. If a team of people can successfully transform a disused quarry into a beautiful, green paragon of sustainability, then most things are possible. We learn that every one of us can do our bit – small changes made locally can contribute to wider scale positive change. It is never too late.

Time to add Coldplay to the ADK Playlist, with Paradise.

Tags Blogging, Cornwall, Economy, Eden Project, Environment, Food, Great Britain, inspiration, Nature, Photography, Sustainable, Travel, Vegetarian, writing

Bakes Blog

Winter Cherry Muffins?

Wherever I can, I try to be an ethical food shopper – conscious of the environmental and social impact of the produce that ends up for sale in our shops and market stalls here in the UK.

This means I have an issue with the black cherries that appear in our supermarkets this time of year. Nothing to do with their taste – they are every bit as delicious as they look. So what’s my problem?

Well, one look at the January frost on the ground in the UK will remind you that it is not exactly the season for luscious cherries to be blossoming on the trees. Just like Paddington Bear, they have travelled here all the way from South America. That is way too many food miles for my liking – the Earth could well do without the energy consumption and carbon generation associated with that amount of transportation, and the refrigeration needed to ensure they arrive here in fresh condition.

However, it’s never that straightforward, and this presents me with lots of dilemmas. Ok, I hear you say, so they’ve been shipped here from half way around the world, but isn’t it preferable that they have been grown naturally in a seasonal, sunny climate? Isn’t that better for the environment than the fruit, tomatoes etc that are grown out of season in a heated glasshouse closer to home, here in the UK or northern Europe?

And how is this different from the bananas, pineapples and other fruit and veg that we import? Or longer life items like tea, coffee and cocoa? If we boycott certain items, aren’t we damaging the trade of countries with less well-developed economies?

Aaagh! See – I told you it was a nightmare.

Over time, I’ve developed a few rules of thumb to navigate my way through this ethical minefield.

Firstly, as far as possible I buy and cook with food produced locally and in season.

Secondly, I’m fine with fruit and veg, and store cupboard foods, that we just can’t grow in our climate, like tea, coffee, bananas etc being brought here. When fairly traded, this creates jobs and helps the producer country develop and maintain a sustainable economy.

But as for foods we can grow here in summer (like cherries), I don’t see why we in the western world have to be so spoiled as to expect them to be shipped to us from wherever, all year round, regardless of the impact this has on the planet. If we really can’t do without cherries in our winter, we can preserve part of our own summer harvest, or put them in the freezer.

But wait – there is yet one further ironic twist that highlights the futility of this episode of global trade. This week in Sainsbury’s, the packs of South American cherries were all yellow stickered with massively reduced prices. They had reached their sell-by date without anyone buying them at normal price. Were my fellow shoppers taking an ethical stand and refusing to buy them?

It was too tragic a thought that all this beautiful fruit, having been carefully cultivated by South American farmers and brought all this way, would now begin decomposing on our shores, as soon as the yellow stickers expired later that day.

So I bought a pack – at a ridiculously reduced price that cannot possibly reflect the true economic cost of the whole enterprise to Sainsbury’s. I reckoned the loss-making exercise will have taught them a harsh commercial lesson, and that importing practices might now be changed.

For the record, I lovingly washed, chopped and de-stoned the cherries, mixing them with some cocoa and other long life, store cupboard ingredients.

I baked the choc cherry muffins shown in my main photo above. They were delicious, but I will wait to the summertime to post the recipe, when cherries are properly in season here!

But hey, here’s an idea: what if, for a couple of months this time of year, we get by with our native apples and the soft fruit we’ve grown through the summer, having preserved it or frozen it to see us through the winter. The planet can be spared the pointless exercise of transporting cherries half way around the world, and our lovely friends in South America can be left to enjoy their own fresh produce.

Now what’s wrong with that? Comments welcome!

In the meantime, here’s The Jam with All Around the World.

Tags Baking, Blogging, Economy, Environment, Food, Fruit, Globalisation, Shopping, Sustainable

Bakes Recipes

Cranberry & Pistachio Cookies

Post author By Kevin
Post date August 9, 2023
10 Comments on Cranberry & Pistachio Cookies

What to do on a summer’s day by the beach when the sun doesn’t shine? Why, bake cookies, of course!

Regular readers will know that I do like being by the beach (searching ‘beach’ via my site search bar throws up no less than 10 different posts).

This week I am staying by the beach on the English south coast, and have already been for a dip in the sea. However, today it’s rather overcast and a little drizzly – hey, it is the British summer after all! Sun is forecast for the rest of the week so, for this one grey day, I decided to pursue other activities.

Which naturally involves some baking. Not wanting to stock up unnecessarily on ingredients, I had the brainwave of shopping at the local refillery – Almond & Co in Westbourne. They have a terrific range of staple foods and will sell as much or as little of each as needed, to take away in your own refillable container.

I decided to make a batch of cookie dough, using their organic dried cranberries and organic shelled pistachios. Here is the haul from my visit, all items individually weighed, priced and bar-coded.

I bought just the right amount of organic plain flour, and to make things a little different, added organic buckwheat flour at a ratio of 1:3 to the plain. My dough also contains the zest of one of their organic, unwaxed lemons.

Notice any trend here? Yes, everything sold is organic. As a refillery, they are also free of plastic packaging. I think it’s good to support a shop that is trying to help us all live and eat more sustainably.

I’m pleased with the results – see my main photo at the top of the post. It just shows that being away from home does not have to mean missing out on home baking, as long as there is a good refillery nearby.