ArcaMax

When I was little, I attended a Catholic grade school. I learned about St. Nicholas Day from the nuns. I brought my new-found knowledge home to my mom and she went right along with it.

I was really into gifts (still am), so when the nuns told me you were supposed to put your shoes by the front door and gifts would appear the next morning, I was hooked.

St. Nicholas Day is the 6th of December, and is celebrated all over the world. It’s really big in the Netherlands and other parts of Europe. They even have parades and light fireworks.

So back to the gifts.

The idea is to put your shoes by the door the night before...

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Chocolate Cupcakes

These cupcakes are courtesy of Plan Z Dieter Ashley. Ashley is a professional pastry chef. She has done an amazing job of coming up with these cupcakes. They taste just as good as regular cupcakes but they contain just 12 grams of carbs each, where the average cupcake will come in at 29 grams of carbs or more. Thank you, Ashley!

Ingredients:

8 oz of high-quality high-quality chocolate, 70% cacao. Dice into small bits
½ cup of virgin coconut oil
6 eggs
1 tsp of vanilla
¼ tsp of grated sea salt
¼ cup of high quality unsweetened cocoa powder
2 Tbl of coconut flour
½ tsp of baking soda

Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

In a small saucepan melt your coconut oil over medium heat. When it’s clear and hot remove from heat and add the chocolate bits. Stir until they are fully melted. Set aside to cool down.

In a medium bowl, beat the eggs with the vanilla and sea salt. This will take a minute or two to get them nice and frothy.

Now, for the tricky part. Take just a bit of the cooled chocolate mixture and blend it into the eggs. If the chocolate is too hot or you put in too much too fast you risk cooking your egg mixture. So be careful and take your time. Once the first bit is blended in you can begin to slowly drizzle the rest of the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture and continue blending until you have it all mixed in.

Add the coconut flour and the cocoa powder. Mix again.

Add the baking soda and make sure that’s mixed in. Now let the batter sit for five minutes.

Grease your muffin tins or put in paper muffin cups.

Pour the batter up to three-fourths of the way up to the top (I got 11 cupcakes when I made my batch).

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. No fair peeking. These bake similarly to an angel food cake so you don’t want to be banging the oven door. The finished cupcakes will be rounded and beautiful.

Enjoy!
Cheers,
Zola